Dougherty calls for town resolutions on St. Gabe’s

Town Supervisor Jim Dougherty is continuing his campaign to prevent residential development of the St. Gabriel’s Retreat Center by using town money to preserve the property as open space.

At Tuesday’s Town Board work session, Mr. Dougherty discussed minutes from a meeting last month of the Community Preservation Fund Advisory Board (CPFAB), the group tasked with targeting and vetting open space purchases, which revealed the CPFAB has no interest in St. Gabe’s.

The CPFAB is funded by a 2 percent tax on real estate transfers that goes to the town to purchase open space to preserve.

Minutes from the February 25 meeting of the CPFAB  in an executive, or members only, session stated that they “unanimously agreed to remove St. Gabe’s from the priority list.”

Peter Vielbig, chairman of the CPFAB, has maintained that St. Gabe’s is developed property with five buildings and a 1,000 foot  bulkhead that either has to be removed or maintained. And using the so-called “2 percent” money to maintain structures defeats the point of open space preservation.

At Tuesday’s work session, Mr. Dougherty said the CPFAB’s “priority list” was a “kitchen sink” list, with numerous properties on it and St. Gabe’s should be put back on it.

He called for a Town Board resolution to achieve that goal.

But Mr. Dougherty wasn’t finished. He noted that in August 2010 the Town Board passed a resolution giving the CPFAB the “leadership role in preserving St. Gabriel’s.”

The resolution notes that the property has  “prospective open space as well as a number of buildings and improvements …”

Mr. Dougherty asked for another resolution to take back the leadership role in acquiring St. Gabe’s to the town.

He also noted that the CPFAB is more interested “in pruning than acquiring open space.”

After the meeting, Mr. Vielbig, speaking about the proposed resolutions,  pointed out that his group was an advisory board and the Town Board “can do whatever they want.”

He was pleased that the issue of St. Gabe’s was receiving more discussion. “It’s good it’s coming to the fore … I think it’s very healthy for the town,” Mr. Vielbig said.

As for the supervisor’s remark about pruning, Mr. Vielbig said that was unfair. He noted that even though the Community Preservation Fund had taken in about $1 million in the last couple of cycles, it was $2 million in debt it had borrowed to acquire property.

“It’s manageable, planned  debt,” Mr. Vielbig said. “We’re all confident it can be handled. While we’re in this hiatus time, it’s a good time to look at properties we’ve acquired and how we can improve them and keep them healthy. It may be true we’re pruning, but we’re not more interested in pruning than acquiring.”