WAWARSING – Beyond what was discussed and approved at the special Thursday night planning board meeting, questions regarding the circumstances surrounding the special meeting itself have arisen. The planning board may not have made the public and news media aware of the meeting in full accordance with the New York State Open Meetings Law.

The special meeting was requested by applicant Renee Weisz, the operator of Camp Yeshiva Meor Hatalmud — which seeks to lease space at the Four Seasons Bungalow Colony on Geiger Road this summer — at the regular planning board meeting on May 26, after the board reviewed Weisz's revised sketch plan and deemed that "it wasn't complete enough for the Planning Board." (For more detailed information regarding Weisz's application, please see the accompanying article on page 1.) The special June 18 meeting was then scheduled for 6 p.m. at town hall's second-floor courtroom, costing the applicants a fee of $300. The meeting continued until around 8:30 p.m., having been interrupted and then relocated to the Supervisor Ed Jennings's office at 7 p.m. when the regular town council meeting needed to be held in the second-floor courtroom.

The New York State Open Meetings Law states, "Public notice of the time and place of a meeting scheduled at least one week prior thereto shall be given to the news media and shall be conspicuously posted in one or more designated public locations at least seventy-two hours before such meeting." The meeting was advertised in the Times Herald Record's June 2 issue, but the Shawangunk Journal, Wawarsing's official paper of record, was notified by a concerned resident of the meeting's occurrence a mere 45 minutes before it was scheduled to take place. Furthermore, according to Town Clerk Jane Eck, the meeting was never posted on the official notice board in the town clerk's office, the town's "designated public location" for all public municipal meetings.

"There's no particular obligation to provide notice to the official newspaper. The obligation, as I see it, is to be reasonable and to provide notice to the news-media outlet that's likely to make contact with the people who would be interested in attending," said Bob Freeman, the executive director of the Department of State's Committee on Open Government.

"The law simply says one or more designated conspicuous public locations. And to my mind, 'designated' means that there must be a place where notice will always be posted so that people know where to look…If they failed to do so [to post the meeting on the board], then it seems that they failed, at the very least, to fully comply with the Open Meetings Law."

Indeed, it was abundantly clear during the meeting itself that Chairman Lonstein was less than happy to have a member of the media present at the meeting. The most obvious example came towards the meeting's end, when the board was going to discuss a member's concern with issuing conditional permit approvals, such as the one that was approved that night.

Lonstein said that the media was to leave, until he was reminded that such would only be required after the board voted to enter under a condition of attorney-client privacy with the board's attorney, who, that night, was Phil Cataldi, filling in as he was for regular planning board attorney Marylou Christiana. Just before the vote was passed, Lonstein enthusiastically waved goodbye as media representatives exited the supervisor's office.