T IMES
WALLKILL VALLEY
Vol. 35, No 16 3 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2017
3
ONE DOLLAR
Musical Overcoming
wildflowers injury
Page 12
Page 39
www .W allkill V alley T imes . net
Bus company readies Maybrook plans Crawford’s
By TED REMSNYDER
When the Wallkill and Valley Central
school districts decided to ink a joint
five-year transportation contract with
the Long Island-based East End Bus
Lines company in January, one major
unresolved issue was the eventual
destination of a local bus yard to satisfy
the terms of the deal. After weeks of
speculation, the company’s plans are now
clear, as East End owner John Mensch
and company representatives appeared
before the Maybrook Planning Board on
April 13 in hopes of establishing a bus
depot at the former OSRAM Sylvania
light bulbs manufacturing plant on 201
Charles St.
East End considered facilities in
Montgomery and Wallkill before zeroing
in on the 56,000- square-foot Maybrook
site. As a stipulation of the bus contract,
the company is supposed to be fully
operational by July 1 and East End has
already put in a bid to purchase the
Charles Street building. As part of the bus
deal, the company must set up a terminal
that can reach all district schools within
30 minutes. The five-month time period
between the completion of the bus
contract and the July deadline to be ready
to transport students meant the company
had to find an existing bus yard instead of
building their own.
The company initially contacted
previous contract holder First Student
about potentially taking over their
facility on Route 208 in Wallkill, but the
Continued on page 4
Easter baskets are ready!
Rachel Coleman
Youngsters anxiously await the start of Wallkill’s Easter Egg Hunt, Saturday, on the grounds of the Wallkill Library. More photos on pages 20-21.
solar system
Proposed new law
draws more interest
By JESSICA COHEN
The new solar law in the Town of
Crawford has attracted a second solar
system applicant that would, like the
first, provide enough energy at a discount
to power 300 to 500 homes. As the first
application, from Borrego Solar, moves
ahead with the town planning board,
Daniel Compitello, zoning and outreach
manager for Cypress Creek Renewables,
based in Santa Monica, California,
introduced their application at the
planning board meeting last week. Both
companies lease private land for solar
systems that feed solar energy into the
electric grid to be sold to local customers
at discount rates.
“This is our number two application.
It’s a steep learning curve,” Rory Holmes,
planning board vice chairman, told
Compitello.
As the planning board considered
the Borrego application, ambiguities
in the law’s wording on how much tree
clearing would be allowed became a
troublesome issue. A clarified rewording
of that clause is yet to be approved. So the
Borrego application will be considered
with an interpretation agreed on with
the Crawford Zoning Board of Appeals
last week, allowing 50% of the trees on
a solar system site to be cleared. Since
Cypress Creek made an application under
the current law, they will likely also be
subject to that law, though the site is not
wooded.
Cypress Creek has plans to lease 23
Continued on page 4
SERVING CRAWFORD, GARDINER, MAYBROOK, MONTGOMERY, PINE BUSH, SHAWANGUNK, WALDEN AND WALLKILL