Deputy Mayor Melkorka Kjarval’s Monthly Reports
June, 11th, 2025
Red Hook Together meets every first Thursday of the month. This month's meeting took place at the Bard's Barringer House, on June 5th at noon. Various community groups & organizations shared out updates, and upcoming events. Of note was that this week, Dutchess County Family Services, which had secured a lease at the former Pet Country location in Rhinebeck, lost that lease due to the building’s owner relinquishing the property to their lender. DCFS is currently looking for a space (that they can build out) with 4,000 to 5,000 square feet and ample parking and infrastructure to support Red Hook Reads offices and community spaces. The Red Hook Central School District is hosting a conversation with author Lenore Skenazy on June 17th at 7pm in the High School auditorium. There was an exhibit at Verse, which closed June 8th in collaboration with the Middle School and Historic Red Hook entitled ‘It takes a Village’. The VFW Post 7765 is offering space to a regionally based Panda TV has recorded Audiologist, which has been a difficult service for Veterans to access locally. the Memorial Day Parade and service at Memorial park and will be posting it to the website soon. The town is celebrating 50 years of the Town Rec park commission, and their Summer Camp program ”Summer Play” registration opens on Saturday the 7th & 14th at Town Hall. Red Hook Rotary has raised over 8,000 in scholarships to go towards local students. The Fisher Center has a large lineup this summer of performances, and the Red Hook Education Foundation will be hosting their annual fundraiser at the SpiegelTent on Friday, June, 20th.
Village of Red Hook Human Relations / Indigenous History Project: we have met every first
Thursday of the month at 7 pm in the Village Hall conference room. June’s meeting was canceled since it conflicted with the Village Sewer Info session on June 5th. Linda Duval and I have scheduled a zoom meeting with Historian Heather Bruegel on June 17th to discuss progress on the Indigenous History project.
Town of Red Hook Comprehensive Plan:
The Town committee held an initial meeting on May 12th, where Patterns for progress did an introductory presentation and committee members and liaisons introduced themselves to the group. The committee will be meeting Monthly from 7:30pm to 9pm on the fourth Tuesday, although there was no monthly meeting during the month of May.
Village of Red Hook Communications:
The Village’s has switched the website to our currently obtained .gov domain. You can now enter redhookvillage.gov to visit the Village website.
At the request of our interim building clerk we updated the Village’s Building Dept website with a temporary Building dept hours notice - as well as publishing a News flash” that shared the temporary hours.
The Mayor and I met with our Civic Plus Account Manager Mark Beezly and our Client Success Manager Kelsey Kueffer on May 21st, over Zoom to review the specifics of what a Premium
website redesign may entail and what potential ‘add-ons’ may be applicable to our situation. Each add-on customization requires requesting a dedicated quote (and they often come at a substantial cost) - so we have been following up about what items we can accomplish within the standard redesign levels.
On June 4th we met with the same Civic Plus representatives to do a “Module Audit” meeting where Kelsey walked the Mayor and I through each of the modules we are currently using as well as the modules we may want to use in the future. For clarity “modules” is the Civic Plus term used to describe each back-end tool that takes dynamic content, which can be populated onto different pages, through widgets and page templates. Examples of this would be Calendar, Agenda Center, or the Staff Directory. Each of these allow us to add and edit the information through a specific module interface designed for that subject matter, which then can be displayed throughout the site in various layouts as allowed by the template design. There were several widgets we had not used in the past, such as “activities” and “opinion poll” & “blog” that we are discussing if they can serve existing departments and initiatives moving forward.
I have requested a quote for the replacement banner “Red Hook Welcomes Bard Students!” which will be 25’ long and 2’ to be displayed alongside Route 9 in front of the Village Kiosk.
Village and Zoning Review: Nothing new to report.
Planning/Zoning,
See attached Reports.
Building Department; See attached Reports.