Nancy Blaker Weber
Doug Foster will be an excellent addition to the Village Board. With his extensive background in planning, fresh perspective and enthusiasm for Nyack he will be a great asset to the Village.
Jen White has worked tirelessly on behalf of both the Parks Conservancy and the Parks Commission for years. Her work ethic and dedication to the Village is truly amazing. She has great ideas and the Village will definitely benefit from her involvement with Village policy.
Nancy Blaker Weber
Priorities: Anonymous
1. Lack of downtown vision and center
2. Need for a village manager
3. Better parking management
4. Munimeters-why?
Priorities: Anonymous
1. Government and merchants working together for common goals
2. Cohesiveness between reidents and merchants-on one path for the good of community
3. A healthy business community leads to a happy, strong village
4. Goal for Nyack to be a destination
5. Gate to Arts&Culture
Priorities: Anonymous
1. Crumbling Infrastructure
2. Signage
3. Vision
Priorities: Joe Truensa
1. Infrastructure (true capital planning)
2. Maintaining RS/healthy business district (not necessarily the same issue)
3. Nyack Government-management of village employees
3.a. employees given direction/clear objectives regarding performance
3.b. stronger management/hands on direction of dept. heads re: budget
4. Implementation of budgetary controls
4.i.e. purchase orders for over budget expenditures
Priorities: Chris Carroll
1. Crime
2. Gang activity
3. Planning
4. After hours shenanigans (when bars close)
5. Empty storefronts
Priorities: Liz Carroll
1. Empty storefronts
2. Park space–NOT parking, parks!
3. No market in town
4. Support plans for Riverspace
5. Violent crime
Priorities: Peter Klose
- Improving the downtown including business opportunities, parking and upscale residential/mixed use
- Improving the waterfront including Memorial Park and Marina
- Riverspace
Rethinking Village Board Meetings
By Doug Foster
The Village should restructure the way it holds meetings. Currently it is too easy to slip into a mode where very small decisions take too much of board members valuable time (and the public who attend the meetings), and HUGE decisions never get on the agenda or if they do, they are rushed. In the end, the Village Board spends all its time tending to the trees in front of its face and forgets about managing the forest.
Thursday’s meeting, which included two critical resolutions (2009/10 budget, “superblock” redevelopment) was a painful example where more time was spent on a single event in Memorial Park than on moving ahead with Nyack’s biggest redevelopment initiative since urban renewal. For the first hour the Board had a lengthy and incredibly detailed conversation about two events and a proposal that the downtown businesses would pay for parking three hours on Fridays for two months (doing the math, that’s 24 hours in total).
The Board discussed what should be staff level discussions and decisions, such as insurance and if a project needs to go to the Architectural Review Board. The Village has a Building Commissioner. It is his job to make ministerial decisions like that. And, for the record, putting covers over the Munimeters 8 times for three hours is most definitely a “temporary” sign, so should not be subjected to the ARB. It wastes a lot of peoples time (which is money) and adds to the perception that its hard to get anything done in Nyack.
I suggest the following way to restructure the meetings so that the Board can actually spend time planning and managing:
