The Town of Plattekill is hoping that its new “Music in the Park” series will draw large crowds at Thomas Felten Park throughout the month of July.

At the July 7 Plattekill town board meeting, Councilman Dean DePew said the inaugural show on July 6 featuring the Jim Decker Band drew around 80 people despite inclement weather.

“Obviously because of the rain a lot of people didn’t know if we were going to have it or not,” DePew said. “Overall, I think it was very well received and I think it was a great time.”

DePew said he believes with better weather the Tuesday night shows will be well attended for the rest of July.

“It’s a great way to get together with your neighbors and friends and other people throughout the town and get to know everybody,” DePew said. “I’d like to get the whole town out. The more the merrier.”

There will be three more “Music in the Park” shows in July. All shows are held on Tuesdays from 7 to 9 p.m. and there is no charge to attend.

On July 13, the Hillbilly Parade will perform, followed by the Latin band Cuboricua on July 20 and illusionist Ryan Dutcher on July 27.

In other board news, two workshop meetings on the town’s proposed community center at Thomas Felten Park were scheduled for Aug. 11 and 25 at 7 p.m. at the town hall. At the workshops, the board and the town’s park expansion committee will meet to go over plans for the community center.

“We’re basically going to come up with our desires for the community center,” DePew said of the workshops. “How large the building will be. What will be in the building. If we want offices. Our hopes are to have some sort of partitions where we can take the large room and actually split it into three smaller rooms so community organizations and the community can utilize those rooms for different things at the same time.”

DePew said there has been talk of having a covered stage outside and a stage inside the building. He said there has also been discussion of making it a green building with solar energy.

“We have a very large community that is spread out,” DePew said. “It’s nice to have something that is centrally located.”

Councilman Darryl Matthews said it’s important to get public input before building the community center. Town residents completed a survey several years ago and the workshops will be another opportunity for the public to offer suggestions.
“Without knowing what they want, you might be giving the community something they may not come to,” Matthews said. “You want the community to tell us what they want. We work for them.”

Matthews said building a new community center was among the top three things the public wanted in the town in the immediate future, according to the survey.

“I know people are going to use this,” Matthews said of the proposed community center. “Even the pavilion we have at the park now is rented pretty much the whole season this year. It’s one of the first times it’s been rented that many times. It shows a community center is going to thrive in this area because people love using the park. If we combine it with the community center, it’s only going to make it (the park) better.”

Matthews said he’s hopeful that the project can move forward after being delayed by the pandemic.

“As fast as we can get the grants and as fast as we can get things rolling,” Matthews replied when asked about a timeline for construction. “But working with government, it’s as fast as we can make them go. And that’s not always an easy thing.”

The board tabled action on whether to grant town workers and the police credit for a retroactive day off for the newly created federal holiday Juneteenth until negotiating the specific terms of the holiday with the unions. The day was recognized as a federal holiday when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law on June 17, 2021.

Since Juneteenth was celebrated on Saturday, June 19, the town hall remained closed and no holiday time off was given to town employees.

Councilman Larry Farrelly noted that several towns had declined to add Juneteenth as a holiday for 2021.

“They’re making it effective for the employees for next year (2022),” Farrelly said.

The board also tabled action after receiving a letter from a firm requesting that the town issue a notice of non-compliance with Cablevision since the cable company had repeatedly failed to reply to correspondence regarding completion of an audit report of the town’s franchise agreement.

“I think this is something we need to have a more defined approach on before we make a decision,” DePew said.