A public forum at the Orpheum Thursday on plans to develop Winston Farm took a detour from outlining the project's approval process into questions of official transparency. The concerns were sparked by Town of Saugerties officials having requested the developers remove their draft generic environmental impact statement (DGEIS) from public view — after the document had initially been published on the developers' website last month.

Per state law, the DGEIS, a required part of the State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) process, “provides a means for agencies, public sponsors, and the public to systematically consider significant adverse environmental impacts, alternatives and mitigation. It facilitates the weighing of social, economic and environmental factors in the planning and decision-making process.”

The forum was the first in a series hosted by Upstate Films and community activists ShoutOut Saugerties, with Town Supervisor Fred Costello Jr. and Town Planner Adriana Beltrani as speakers and writer/filmmaker Jon Bowermaster moderating a question-and-answer period. Local interest was such that the room was packed and a crowd outside was turned away at the door.

The evening began with an introduction by Costello, including the history of prior development plans for the farm and, tellingly, a nostalgic tribute to “this almost mythical property” and its place in local memory: “For most of us the experience we had there was sleigh riding on Snyder's Hill.”

Skeptics question how well that “mythical” status will hold up if the developer's plans are realized. The DGEIS, as posted Aug. 15, runs 208 pages and considers a plan for up to 133 single-family homes, 115 townhouses and 800 condo/apartment units, as well as “a campground with 157 cabins and RV sites, 425,000 square feet of commercial retail space, a 150-room boutique hotel, a conference center with 300 hotel rooms, a 5,000-person amphitheater and 375,000 square feet of lab or light-industrial space.”

Those details were not the evening's focus or of Town Planner Beltrani's presentation. She confined herself to a description of the long and complicated approval process faced by the developers — or anyone attempting a development of similar scope — and the hoops to be jumped through for the many state and local agencies who will have a say in the matter. Beltrani's PowerPoint graphics resembled an especially fiendish Rube Goldberg contraption.

The “real meat of the matter,” as Beltrani put it, is the town's review of the developer's DGEIS in light of New York's Environmental Quality Review Act, which “sets forth the who, what, where, when and why of this whole process.” This “completeness review ... to ensure that the document is complete, thorough and accurate” is under way, she said, with 45 days to accomplish and present to the public.

In the meantime, Beltrani said, “We don't know if it's a complete document yet. We have pages of notes to compare against what was submitted, and it's not released for review, because if it's incomplete we send it back to the project sponsor to be fixed and that process can go back and forth quite a bit. So we really don't want to release it to the public, because we need you to save your time and energy on the review of the final document.”

The news of this confidential treatment of the DGEIS, whose public release by the developers caught town officials by surprise, Beltrani said, struck a nerve with skeptics in the audience and drew fire from several of them in the forum's Q-and-A period.

Daily Freeman reporter William J. Kemble's turn at the mic was especially contentious, becoming a back-and-forth with Beltrani about state law and how it pertains to public access to the DGEIS. Kemble referenced years of opinions but Beltrani held her ground, saying that legally speaking, “upon receipt of the DGEIS the completeness review does not have to be made public, so that is the process that we're in now. Because, again, if it's not a complete document, you don't want agencies reviewing something that does not contain the data that we are requiring it to contain.”

Another speaker pointed out that the DGEIS is subject to state Freedom of Information Law requests, rendering the confidentiality meaningless. Yet another proposed that the town release the documents with appropriate caveats about its “in process” nature.

If the confidential designation ever meant anything it likely won't much longer. “The town council agreed we weren't legally obligated to make [the DGEIS] public,” Costello said. “We asked [the developers] to take it down from their website.”

And now, after the public reaction to that decision?

“It's likely we're going to put it back out there,” he said. “That question spoiled a good dialogue this evening and I think we need a gesture of good will, good faith. The public is going to have ample opportunity to see what's involved.”