The establishment of a parks department and the School Resource Officer (SRO) agreement in schools were some of the big-ticket items addressed at last week’s Town of Shawangunk Town Board meeting on Thursday night.

At the beginning of the meeting, the Chief of Police, Gerald Marlatt, shared the department’s monthly statistics, including arrest numbers and traffic stops. He also announced the $185,000 worth of funding the police department received from the Law Enforcement Technology Grant from the New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services.

Town Councilman Joe LoCicero is also helping to move forward with the Hazard Mitigation Plan. Ulster County has a plan that the Town of Shawangunk has not participated in for years. LoCicero is working to prepare the Town of Shawangunk’s update for the plan, which deals with how to respond to natural disasters and organize any necessary emergency responses within the community.

The board then discussed the wages provided for the SRO agreement with the Wallkill Central School District. The police officers in the SRO program obtained salary increases in their last contract which was settled in December. During the meeting, Marlatt questioned whether or not they should raise the rate at which the school district is charged for the SROs. In the end, the board voted to leave it the same as it was last year. Those rates, according to Ronk, are $80.51 per hour for a full time officer, $56.30 per hour for a part time officer in a state retirement system, and $47.10 per hour for a part time officer.
The board also discussed their intent to make Main Street — between Wallkill Avenue and Church Street — a one-way rstreet. There have been a consistent number of accidents when people try to exit onto Wallkill Avenue, as it can be hard to see. The resolution is still in progress and they said they hope to adopt it at their next meeting.

Conversations surrounding the implementation of a parks department have also been going on for a while now. The town is going through a parks revitalization this summer through a grant received from the county, Town of Shawangunk Supervisor Ken Ronk Jr. said, where a couple hundred thousand dollars of new playground equipment will be purchased.

“I just think it’s time that we start protecting our investment,”Ronk said. “Parks are one of the first things people look for when they come to a community to see if they want to live there.”
The needs of the parks have evolved over the years, Ronk said. Although the town has people whose responsibilities are to go to the parks to attend to the trash and other smaller tasks like that, bigger projects have now emerged that require a larger force behind them.

The board highlighted the potential to add a machine operator and a laborer for the Parks Department who would work together. The machine operator would be in charge of performing ditching, mowing and other heavy machinery related tasks, and the laborer would assist them with those duties.

“I think we are primed to do it, we are in a good position with what we have,” Town Councilman Alex Danon said. “I think it’s a good time for it because I do think we have some of the best parks in the county. They just need to be refreshed a little bit.”