The proposed Machaneh Trust summer camp at Weiner Road and Synagogue Road returned for its fifth visit to the planning board. The process has been a demonstration of how expensive it can be to make an application if the details aren't hammered out.

Previously, Jeff Kaplan had come as the camp representative, but this time Ira Kalter of the law firm Kalter, Kaplan, Zeiger and Forman appeared instead. He pointed out that this was the fifth consecutive visit for Machaneh Trust to the planning board and requested a public hearing as soon as possible so that the applicants could hear from the public.

Town planner Jonathan Lockman responded that it had taken three of those meetings for the applicants to accept that the original plan would not work. For the first three iterations of this project, the town said there was too much development on a small part of the 42-acre property along with too much encroachment on a wetlands buffer adjacent to the protected West Branch Beer Kill creek.

Last time, the fourth go-round between town and camp, planning board chair Don Schmalzle said that they were making a “real effort” but said more questions still needed answering before they could move to a public hearing.

This week, after Tyler Sweet, Environmental Engineer for Sterling Engineering, gave a brief presentation on the state of the project application, the board asked some of those questions.

Schmalzle wanted to see where firefighting water would be stored. Sweet explained that several tanks for that purpose are dotted across the plan. A new storage tank is also planned for potable water.

An issue with labelling and numbering in the plans brought comment from Planner Jonathan Lockman. He observed that errors in those details, such as the wrong dates on a plan, can earn immediate rejection from the County Planning Board. Sweet promised that all the dates and numbers would be checked and corrected where necessary.

Viktor Markowitz, board member, brought things back to a long-standing question about just how many people will be present at the camp. This is important because of the parking requirements.

The maximum population will be 741. They will be there for the summer months only, July and August. And as proprietor of the camp Israel Neiman reiterated, only 230 of these would be old enough to drive a car and only a quarter of them own one. Neiman was adamant that no more than 60 vehicles will ever be present at the new camp. The children, all of whom come from Brooklyn, will arrive and depart in buses.

This is a crucial issue for the planning board, which has a nightmare prospect in mind – fear of lots of cars being parked along the very narrow Synagogue and Weiner roads during those summer months when there are buses added to daily traffic.

Board member Paul Lonstein sought further reassurance from Sweet that this possibility is being taken seriously. He asked for some “banked” parking spaces, placed in an area that will not be covered in asphalt thus keeping the impervious surface to a minimum. There will be 116 parking spaces total, which the applicants believe will be far more than will ever be filled with vehicles.

Lockman said that “banked” parking would still need to be factored in for the stormwater calculations.

That left a minor encroachment of 714 square feet into the protected buffer zone of the wetlands. To deal with this the board approved a waiver on the buffer zone, removing 25 feet of the 100-foot buffer normally applied on one building.

Kalter got his wish and a public hearing is now set for December 17. Before that, the plan will go to the Ulster County Planning Board for their December 4 meeting. Approval of the parking application aspect of the plan was withheld until after a public hearing.