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Deputy Mayor Melkorka Kjarval's Monthly Reports — August 2025

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Deputy Mayor Melkorka Kjarval’s Monthly Reports

August, 11th, 2025

Red Hook Together meets every first Thursday of the month. Red Hook Together met on Thursday, September 4th, at 12pm/noon at the Red Hook VFW. The group was introduced to the new Bard CCE facilitator, Jacqui Cook. Groups shared updates; such as Historic Red Hook is working on an Interpretive Plan this year, Rebuilding Together Hudson Valley has funding to do home repairs for qualifying homeowners in Upper Dutches (there is a deadline at the end of September, so please contact visit rthudsonvalley.org for more information). The Community Center is selling tickets for its annual fundraiser gala, the VFW has quite a few community events such as Trunk or Treat Halloween, a Christmas giveaway and two Student essay contests. The Red Hook Central Schools announced progress on their capital improvement projects.

Jacqui will be working on a digital survey to plan out upcoming topics of focus for this year's meetings. If there are any topics you feel that these sessions should address on behalf of the Village and/or our constituents feel free to email me directly at mkjarval@redhookvillage.gov so that I can propose them.

Town of Red Hook Comprehensive Plan: The Town committee meets monthly from 7:30pm to 9pm on the fourth Tuesday at Town Hall.

The Town of Red Hook Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee met on Tuesday, August 26th. In attendance were the committee members and Committee chair Julia Solomon. Also present were consultants Eric Pierson from Patterns for Progress and Tiffany Zezula who is the Deputy Director for the Land Use Law Center at Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University.

The August meeting was focused on upcoming community outreach. The Town will be at Hardscrabble Day, engaging with the public as well as promoting the upcoming Comprehensive Plan Public Workshop, which will be on Tuesday, October 21st, from 7:00-9:00pm at the High School Cafeteria . The public is encouraged to pre-register and attend to participate in this process which seeks to determine what issues should be addressed in the plan. Consultants from both Patterns for Progress and Pace Land Use Law Center will help facilitate breakout group sessions with community members.

Village and Zoning Review: There have been no meetings held since my last report. In the meantime, edits from previous discussions have been incorporated into the working draft law and The Mayor and I are hoping to schedule an information / discussion session to share the latest version of the draft law.

The goal of the information session will be to explain the law's intent and the ways in which the zoning changes attempt to do that. If you are interested in these proposed changes please attend

the session, this will be one of the final informal conversations before we move into the formal public hearing format.

Links to the 2/26/25 draft of the Gateway North law, are available in the March 13th special workshop agenda: redhookvillage.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_03132025-662.

Planning/Zoning & Building Department:

See attached Reports.

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Deputy Mayor Melkorka Kjarval’s Monthly Reports July, 14th, 2025 **Red Hook Together** meets every first Thursday of the month. As is customary there was no official meeting for the month of July. Bard CCE did host a gathering to celebrate Sarah DeVeer who is moving away and who in her absence will be leaving a vacant board seat on the Red Hook Public Library Board. Also of note is that the Red Hook Area Chamber Director, Agatha Bacelar is stepping down due to her relocating out of the Red Hook Area for the foreseeable future. Both these departures will be noticed as Sarah and Agatha have been visible contributors to community-wide efforts over the past years. ## **Village of Red Hook Indigenous History Project:** No update at this time. ## **Town of Red Hook Comprehensive Plan:** The Town met on June 24th, and discussed their community engagement plan. Committee members were tasked with suggesting persons and or groups to partner with for outreach and/or interviews. The committee meets monthly from 7:30pm to 9pm on the fourth Tuesday at Town Hall. ## **Village of Red Hook Communications:** In order to comply with a new NY State law, the Village website and all Village emails use a .gov domain: redhookvillage.gov. Please update your email address books as well as website links. I have informed our Civic Plus Account Manager Mark Beezly that we will be working the next few months to update the content and organization of the Village website ahead of committing to a redesign package. The redesign package would update the ‘look’ of the site. However the redesign process requires us to have a finalized main menu, as well as updated content to facilitate the design team working efficiently on creating an attractive template or ‘skin’ of the site. The last iteration of a content reorganization was done in 2021, and that effort was focused on improving transparency by increasing the amount of information made available digitally. During that effort a lot of content was added, and there was an effort to promote ‘services’ & ‘stay informed’ by adding tabs in the main menu. Four years later, we will be reorganizing the main menu to be more intuitive by moving individual ‘services’ within the ‘departments’ tab and adding a ‘Contact’ & ‘Living Here’ menu to better facilitate common inquiries. If there are any website features, or information that you would like to see on the website please reach out by email at mkjarval@redhookvillage.gov. Also if you have any digital photographs, digital reproductions of work depicting the Village and/or video footage of the Village that you would like to contribute to the website we are looking to feature images of the Village throughout the site. Attribution to the content creator will be included with any media the Village publishes. The “Red Hook Welcomes Bard Students!” Banner has arrived and is slated to be displayed during the last two weeks of August. **Village and Zoning Review:** There was a meeting held on June 17th, 2025. In attendance was the Mayor, myself, representatives from RUPCO, the Village’s Planning Attorney Victoria Polidoro, Esq., from Rodenhausen, Chale & Polidoro, LLP & Bonnie Franson from Nelson + Pope, which is the firm who was hired to write the proposed “Gateway North” law. We discussed the challenges set for a developer to propose a project without a confirmed project schedule for the sewer expansion. We also spent time reviewing parts of the draft law which apply to the Cookingham parcel slated for housing development. There was some discussion around the setback requirements from Route 9 being clarified to still maintain a proportionally correct relationship to the existing buildings around the North Gateway while realistically accommodating a multi-unit building with parking located in the rear south of the existing barn. Links to the existing 2/26/25 drafts of the Gateway North law, are linked in the March 13th special workshop agenda: redhookvillage.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_03132025-662. ## **Planning/Zoning,** See attached Reports. ## **Building Department;** See attached Reports.

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