The Walden Village board, after mulling over the decision for the past few meetings, passed a local law that prevents double parking on East Avenue during the village’s July 16 meeting, ensuring safer driving for residents and first responders in case an emergency arises. The board’s decision on residency requirements, meanwhile, was shelved for the next meeting due to mixed opinions from the mayor and trustees regarding the definition of a resident.

First, the board resumed discussion for a local law that would expand the residency requirements for certain village positions, including the police chief, to all of Orange County. Trustee Becky Pearson, while in favor of expanding the chief’s residency, felt that the verbiage in the law did not discern the difference between a legal address and a residency. She explained that a legal address defines a resident’s permanent home, while a residency could be a temporary place where someone lives, such as a vacation home. She requested Village Attorney David Donovan to add a stronger definition to his draft.

“I looked this up today, and this is the difference between legal address and residence: domicile legal residence refers to the same place the state considers your permanent home,” Pearson said. “On the other hand, your residence is simply where you’re living at a particular time. I would like to add part of that to our definition.”

Since Trustee Liz Kyle was absent, the law’s vote was split down the middle. Trustees Ralph Garrison Jr., Bill Taylor, and Kristie Hall voted in favor of the law and felt that the draft’s definition of a resident was strong enough without needing any further distinction. Mayor John Ramos, Trustee Chris Batson, and Pearson voted against the law; Pearson and Batson wanted a better definition of resident in the draft, while Ramos simply did not want to expand the residency beyond the village.

“I think that if it is slightly subjective to this group, then when others are elected, it may be slightly subjective to that group. We should expand upon it so it’s ironclad,” Batson said, adding that the board may need to amend other laws to include the distinction between a resident and residency.

“I firmly believe that your employment is based on the geographical area of your employment, where you work. When I was working for the state, my job was within the confines of the state of New York. If I were to take a position in Albany, I would have to live within 50 miles of the big headquarters,” Ramos said. “I don’t think we’re sliding the caliber of the people that we have here in the Village of Walden.”

After the vote failed, Donovan asserted that he would revise the law to include a section defining both a resident and residency and present the new draft at the next meeting.

Next, the board considered prohibiting parking on the east side of East Avenue, between East Main Street and Sherman Avenue, based on safety concerns for emergency vehicles. Since the last meeting, both the village’s fire department and EMS send email responses to the board stating that the double parking could prove problematic for first responders during emergency situations, as their vehicles may not fit between the cars.

The board was initially hesitant on the decision and discussed whether or not prohibiting the East Avenue’s double parking would do more harm than good to the street’s residents. Kristie Hall felt that, based on her interactions with them last month, those residents were more concerned about speeding and truck traffic than the parking.

“There wasn’t very many people at that meeting, and those who were there were more concerned about the speed going down the road,” Hall said. “The issue of parking really wasn’t an issue for those residents that were there, aside from one or two.”

Batson questioned if their decision would be hypocritical of previous rulings, as the board permitted double parking on other streets with similar situations. And while he did not disagree with the fire department or EMS, he wished their responses were more concrete.

“My issue is with the quality of the assessment of the emergency services. To me, they were speculative,” Batson said. “I’m not going to disagree with them because they are experts but the emails were not as decisive as I thought they would be. Things like ‘may’ or ‘perhaps.’”

Pearson was torn with the decision, as she understood the safety concerns but felt bad for taking away parking from residents.

“All the streets in Walden are the same way. I get emergency vehicles and everything else, but I fought not to take parking away on Walnut Street because there was not enough parking for people,” Pearson said.

Garrison and Taylor asserted that the board needs to act proactively in this situation and prioritize the safety of residents and first responders, otherwise it may regret vetoing the law later if an accident does occur.

“The goal has always been to create a safe thoroughfare from 52 to Sherman,” Taylor said.” I would hate the litmus test to be an emergency situation that couldn’t be responded to and we had the opportunity to create that safe thoroughfare.”

“I think we’re overlooking the fact that two emergency services in this town said that it could cause an issue of getting up down the street with an emergency vehicle,” Garrison said. “We need to move past the fact of which residents were complaining about speeding and parking and look at the fact that now it has become a safety issue that we need to address.”

At the end of the discussion, the board passed the law with a 4-1 vote, with Hall voting no and Ramos choosing to abstain.