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| May 11, 2025 |
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January 22, 2009
To the Editor:
It had been billed as the first Public Meeting called by Mayor Joe Gross and Village Trustees to consider a new Comprehensive Master Plan that they’ve been dodging since it was delivered to them by an all-volunteer committee 18 months ago (and 13 months after professional planners at the Orange County Department of Planning recommended its approval). Instead, the event last Saturday turned into a referendum on the village fire siren.
Those in attendance should have guessed what was coming when a snippet of paper that was cut by hand from a standard 8X10 sheet was passed among the audience. We were told it listed all the issues contained in this document that offers broad-based suggestions for the near-term future of Cornwall on Hudson. Four lines in bold type listed paragraph headings: Recreation, Traffic, Parking, Geography, etc. ‘Zoning’, at the critical core of any Master Plan, was buried away down on line 3. Leading the long list of issues? ‘Noise’.
With understandable emotion but surely less justified anger, a series of speakers from Storm King Engine 2, and friends, denounced a suggestion in the plan that the fire company work with the Village to study ways to lower the volume of the siren (99 decibels a block away) which sits directly across the street from the elementary school.
To be sure, there were breaks from this assault. For instance, one speaker commented on an aspect of the zoning proposals, another suggested that the village look at the advantages/disadvantages of merger with the town of Cornwall, one talked of plans for the riverfront…and a handful of Duncan Avenue homeowners pleaded once again for action to make the blind intersection of Duncan and Hudson Street safer (a proposal already contained in the master plan).
But ‘noise’ ruled the day and a lot of the invective about the plan’s siren proposal was aimed at me. As chair, I accept that. However, the irony is that the siren issue was suggested by others on the committee, not me.
The sad thing is that 18 months later, the primary upset was about noise…not the future of the village, and not that Joe Gross had kept the master plan salted away ‘on his desk’ for those long 18 months.
Lee Murphy
Cornwall-on-Hudson
Comments:
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I still think that placing sirens around the village at lower decibels would be a compromise for all. But we could all expect "not in my neighborhood"
After attending the budget meeting last night Maybe we should start looking at non polluting industry to raise revenue for the village. What is going on with the buildings on shore road is that our industry zone?
posted by john buescher on 01/22/09 at 3:28 PM
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The FD has already lowered the siren... not only that but the fire department turns the siren off at 10 pm so it does not disprupt the community while they are alseep.the siren is not turned back on until 6 am the next morning. the siren has been here since i can remember and when i was a kid i remember my mother telling me that when the siren sounded it was time to come home. the siren is also used as a back to the firefighers if they dont hear the pagers.
posted by Kristi VanDuzer on 01/23/09 at 11:44 PM
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