Thank you, Carol. I would like to thank Carol for inviting
us today. Carol has been a great inspiration for us and our group.
She has offered so much valuable information and guidance. We
just can’t thank her enough.
I am going to start out by telling you our story. Then I am going
to give you a closing statement. I am going to just bring out
some of the information I have gathered today from other speakers,
because every speaker who has spoken today has brought out valuable
information, and I just want to collaborate some of this information
together in a common goal.
My name is Joe Havranek. My wife and I, my wife Kelly and I are
founders of the Rondout Landowners Alliance. We reside in Rosendale,
New York, located in the Rondout Valley. If anybody doesn’t
know where that is, it is about 150 miles north of New York City
in the Mid-Hudson Valley. We live on the Rondout Creek, which
is a tributary to the Hudson River. We are excited about today’s
“National Property Rights Conference,” and I kind of
changed that name around a little bit because I heard that before,
today. I see a lot of people from all around the country. This
is the New York Property Rights Conference, but I just want to
throw a little twist in there because it is excellent to see people
from all over with a common goal, and that is property rights.
Property rights is the core reason that our group, the Rondout
Landowners Alliance, was formed. The landowners that lived along
the Rondout Creek and the abandoned Delaware and Hudson Canal
were faced with a clear and present danger. The properties were
slated for a joint town project. The Town of Marbletown and the
Town of Rosendale proposed the Rondout Creek Access Trail Project.
During its inception and its early stages of planning, it was
kept quiet. The landowners were not contacted nor invited to the
planning meetings. We found out later that those meetings were
deemed strategy meetings. The true intent of the project was clear
after the Towns applied for a joint grant from the Hudson River
Valley Greenway. We then made FOIL requests to the New York State
Greenway, the Town of Rosendale, and the Town of Marbletown. We
reviewed the documents received from the FOIL requests. FOIL.
I’m sure everyone knows, is the Freedom of Information Law,
and would be federally, FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act.
When we got the FOILs back, they opened our eyes clearly to what
the Towns’ intents were. The documents we obtained through
FOILs included correspondence from Greenway, the towns, from the
grant writers, the special interest groups, the landscape architects;
and included contracts, scope of work documents, maps, miscellaneous
facsimiles, e-mails. It really opened our eyes and, to say the
least, it scared us.
The project was in the works for a year before its true intent
was revealed to the landowners. In reality, the proposed Rondout
Creek Trail Access Project would be a linear trail linking the
two towns, and running along the Rondout Creek following the abandoned
D & H Canal or sections of the D & H Canal. It would have
multiple creek access points for swimming, fishing, and boating.
It would also make linkages to different places in the two towns
including the Ulster County Community College, Marbletown Community
Center, the Rosendale Rec Center, and the Williams Lake Resort.
The trail then would continue to Kingston, New York, following
sections of the abandoned D & H Canal.
What we had found out was that the project was going to be a full-scale
project. It included our small section of town which made up three
and a half or four miles, but in actuality they wanted to re-enact
the D & H Canal, which was the Delaware and Hudson Canal —
108 miles of canalway from the Delaware River all the way to Kingston,
New York. They already have sections of that, which are open to
the public. There are piecemeal sections that are open to the
public, and the majority of it is not. They are trying to gain
these pieces in between to make this one linear trail.
There was one major ingredient missing from the proposal. It
was the land. That’s one of our biggest concerns here tonight.
It is the land, — and how we love our land and how we protect
our land. Well, they didn’t have the land. Most of all, the
land needed to make this a reality was privately owned by approximately
a hundred landowners.
My wife and I made up packets of information from the documents
that were received from the FOIL requests. We distributed those
packets along the creek corridor, just placing them on doorsteps,
knocking on doors, and handing them to people. When you first
tell them about a project, people are very skeptical. People don’t
want to get involved unless it’s on their front yard. I was
the same way. I was a very quiet individual, was not an activist
at all; now am called many things, not just an activist. We have
been called “obstructionists” and that is probably putting
it mildly. We took those packets of information and distributed
them through the community, through people’s properties that
we thought would be targeted. Actually we knew they would be targeted,
because we knew the intent of the project after the FOILs. My
wife then went around and she went to local meetings, such as
the fire companies. We have a lot of fire companies in our area
and she talked to the fire companies and said, this is what’s
going on in our town. Went to the senior citizens’ meetings,
went to the veterans’ meetings, and basically made a lot
of noise. Today, I heard the gal, Dana Berliner from Washington,
D.C., say that activism is the key to this, and it really is,
and it really was what made us successful.
We distributed our packets of information to many landowners along the Rondout Creek corridor. The secret was out of the bag and the RLA quickly formed. The RLA is our acronym for the Rondout Landowners Alliance. We attended town board meetings. We questioned the Town’s decision to embark in such a project without the landowners’ consent. We questioned the possible use of eminent domain because they didn’t have the land. Most people we knew were going to say no. So how would they get this property? Would it be through the use of eminent domain? That’s a real ugly word and, when you use that word, people are compelled to listen. Whether or not it’s in their front yard or not, when people hear eminent domain, they relate it to themselves. Well, I don’t want my property taken for such a trail. Maybe it’s not a trail today. Maybe it is for private interests tomorrow. So that word “eminent domain” sparked a lot of controversy in our town.
We were again labeled as obstructionists and troublemakers
and so on and so forth, but whether they were going to use eminent
domain to secure the easements for the project was the key question.
Both Towns soon passed resolutions not to use eminent domain for
this purpose. To us, that was huge. We all know that the resolutions
could be rescinded at any time, but at least we got some movement
from the Towns to recognize our concerns or our rights. If anything
else, it is a flagging mechanism for us now. If the Towns want
to embark on eminent domain and that resolution is rescinded,
we’ll know, and we are going to have people at those meetings
forever now. It is going to happen. I am going to go to every
town meeting unless I am sick, you know, so we’ll know if
it’s been rescinded, and if it’s rescinded, then we’ll
make our move, and we’ll that there are problems. So that
was something that was big for us.
Our next concern was that another government agency might step
in and finish the project. As we continued our research on the
Rondout Creek and the D & H Canal corridor, we found our fears
to be legitimate. In fact, what we found is that the corridor
had been targeted for the past 35 years for trails and recreational
use. We discovered that similar plans that replicated the Rondout
Creek Access Trail Project were proposed by past town administrations,
the Ulster County Planning Board, the New York State Department
of Transportation, the National Park Service, the D & H Canal
Society, and the New York Parks and Conservation Association.
And that list goes on and on and on. I am not going to bore you
with all the names because a lot of them have already been mentioned
today. There is a whole list of special interest groups that have
been targeting this area for 35 years. They come up with similar
projects. They got kicked out for similar reasons.
Our group organized, conducting monthly meetings. At our meetings we offered information to the public, we had guest speakers such as attorneys, insurance agents, pro-property rights individuals, and local politicians. We could then paint a clear picture to the public.
We showed a huge risk of liability to the landowners. If someone
were to get hurt on their property, they would be responsible,
even if there was a public easement through it. The General Obligations
Laws did not cover them, in effect, if someone was hurt or if
someone was drowned, because this trail, again, followed the creek.
We showed the possible drop of homeowner’s insurance, the
decrease in property value, loss of property rights, and overall
loss of quality of life that would be associated with the project.
The landowners then could make an educated decision about granting
an easement through their property.
I heard a couple of people talk tonight about educating their
people and educating your community. When these projects come
out and they presented them, they only give you the fluff. They
only give you the good stuff. They tell you about how much money
it’s going to bring to your community. They tell you about
all the fun stuff. When you hear about trails and you hear about
all this, see this, and save the environment, it sounds good on
paper and it looks good. People get excited about it, but they
don’t tell you about the negative impacts and the risks that
the property owner is going to be facing. Educate the community
so the community can make some decisions as well.
Another proactive measure we took was a town-wide sign campaign,
and this drove our town politicians wild. We distributed a hundred
lawn signs protesting the Rondout Creek Access Trail. Sounds corny,
but it worked. We were coming up on an election year. People took
positions. Different parties took positions, and, again, we were
labeled many things that I won’t repeat today, but the sign
campaign was very effective.
We got the media involved as soon as we could and as much as
possible. This included the local newspapers, the radio, local
television networks. We published informational letters and mailed
them to over a hundred people along the targeted corridor. We
conducted a landowner’s survey, polling landowners along
the creek corridor. The results were overwhelmingly not in favor
of the project. Approximately 95 percent would not allow public
easements on their property. We conducted a town-wide petition
opposing the project. We were able to get 350 signatures in less
than month. We wrote letters to both the Town and the New York
State DOT making our position very clear. With all of that, again,
it goes back to activism and getting the information out to the
public, so the public can see it for what it really is.
We will remain vigilant. We will continue to attend town board
meetings, continue to write letters, continue our FOIL requests
until this matter is put to rest. The biggest advantage that we
have now is that we are organized. We have strength in numbers,
and we all know numbers talk.
With that I want to just talk about some of the things that some
of the other speakers said today, and then I am going to wrap
it up.
Don Parmeter said a couple of things that struck me — and
I want to use your stuff in the future, Don. “Control the
land and you control the people.” I see a lot of terminology
used. Our town is underway going through its new master plan,
or comprehensive plan, and a lot of our neighboring town are involved
in this same project, their master plan or comprehensive plan.
When you look at their agenda, their agenda isn’t about infrastructure.
It’s about protect and seize. It blows my mind. Don’t
care about roads. Don’t care about sewer lines. Don’t
care about water. It’s in there, but it’s at the bottom
of the list. They care about protect and seize. When I put that
out, I say that equals control and regulate.
There are a lot of buzz words that are out in the marketplace
or out in the community right now, and they are being used by
city planners and special interest groups. I’ll give you
some of the buzz words. I’m not going to go into the interpretation
of them, because I don’t know what the interpretations of
them are because they can be used for whatever their agenda is.
But if you see these buzz words in your master plan or if you
see your planners or your town officials start to use these buzz
words, you better start to wake up in your community. And I am
going to give you some of the buzz words:
Those are some of the buzz words. What they equal or what they
could equal is controlling the landowners.
Dana Berliner made it very clear. The key is activism. That’s
where the key is to stop eminent domain or stop this control or
stop this regulation. You have to get involved and you have to
wake your community up. Don Parmeter used “Control the battlefield.”
This is very new for me. I have been, believe it or not, a very
quiet person. My family was very politically involved, but I was
not. But this hit me hard and it hit me on my home front, so now
it has become a battle for me, and the way that we’ve been
successful is we that have been controlling the battlefield.
My philosophy on that, and I’ll leave you with this, is:
“The best defense is a good offense.” You need to be
offensive, and commonly what I have heard from today, just because
I am new at this game, is we have been defensive. But I think
we need to be offensive and we need to go out there and be offensive.
I’ll leave you with that. Thank you.
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