Following a “discouraging” turnout for its first special meeting to discuss the proposed community center on Aug. 11, the Town of Plattekill Board decided to seek additional input with a community-wide survey.

Other than five of the six members on the town’s Park Expansion Committee, there were only a couple more people in attendance for the fact-finding session to determine the size and scope of the proposed center at the Thomas Felten Park.

“I appreciate the public that’s here, but I really wish that we had this room filled to capacity and there was a lot of interest,” Councilman Dean DePew said.

Supervisor Joseph Croce agreed he’d like to see more public input to assist the board in its construction plans.

“We hear a lot from our residents about what they’re interested in whatever, and yet it’s somewhat discouraging because you don’t get this groundswell of input from our residents,” Croce said. “I don’t think we’re going to change that, so I think that just intensifies the importance of what we’re trying to do and that we need to do it in as timely a fashion as possible.”

Park Expansion Committee member Becky Dawes insisted there is a lot of community interest in the project, even though few people turned out to speak at the first workshop session. She said there is a lot of discussion about the proposed community center on social media.

“It’s a different generation and we need to accept it and meet them where they’re at,” Dawes said. “With this Facebook page, people are talking. They’re getting involved. They’re voicing their opinions more so than I’ve ever seen. I don’t know why they’re not here. I can tell you for me as a very busy business owner and mother, it is so hard to be here. Sometimes I try, but I just can’t.”

The board accepted the committee’s offer to come up with a list of questions for the survey. Once the board approves the questions, the survey would be distributed to town residents.

Councilman Darryl Matthews, who represented the board on the Park Expansion Committee, felt the survey would get the project moving.

“We want to hear back from the people about the community center and what they want within it,” Matthews said. “And how they want to use it.”

Matthews said a previous town survey concluded that residents listed building a community center as one of the top three things they’d like to have in the Town of Plattekill.

Other members of the Park Expansion Committee who attended the first workshop meeting besides Matthews and Dawes were Patty Brooks, Dwight Dougherty and Pearl “Sis” Morse.

Matthews said the Aug. 11 meeting was “one little step in the process” of getting the proposed community center back on track following delays largely due to the COVID-19 project.

“Because of COVID, we kind of fell off the radar and didn’t have (committee) meetings mainly because there were no grants available at the time when COVID first hit because New York State shut down,” he said.

DePew said members of both the Plattekill Town Board and the Park Expansion Committee recently met with Village of Maybrook officials to discuss its community center. DePew said he’s also trying to set up meetings with other neighboring communities to garner information about their community centers.

Croce said engineers for a new community center in the Village of Walden had estimated the cost to be $935,000.

Although DePew championed the construction of a community center with a maximum capacity of 300, fellow Councilman Larry Farrelly wasn’t sure that it needed to be that big.

“How did we arrive at 300 people?” Farrelly asked DePew. “When we use Bob’s Garage even at election time, I don’t know if we’ve even had 150, 175 at the max.”

In an interview after the meeting, Croce said he thought progress was made in the first workshop session.

“I knew that we weren’t going to make all the decisions that need to be made,” he said. “But I think everybody has a clearer idea of what decisions we have to make. I think the idea of doing another Survey Monkey was a great idea.”

Croce, though, said he believes a new Town Hall should also be part of the current plan for a new community center.

“I will always say that I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that we need a new community center, but we also need a new Town Hall,” he said. “If we can incorporate those two together or at least the planning part of it, I think it would be very beneficial.”

Croce said the project would almost certainly need grants to help finance it.

“I think it’s our responsibility as town officials to financially support what we say we want to do,” Croce said. “But obviously, this is something that would increase taxes so much that I don’t think that’s feasible.”

The next step for the board is to meet with Mike Maphis of the Ulster County Purchasing Department to go over details of a Request for Proposal for the community center. DePew was given the go ahead to contact Maphis to see if he was available to attend the Aug. 25 meeting at the Town Hall.