Historically, homebuilding has always been a staple of the economy of the Town of East Fishkill. Accessible to the Taconic Parkway, Route 84, several intra-state highways, and Metro North Rail Stations, the Town of East Fishkill is uniquely located in its proximity to Westchester County and New York City. In the nineteen nineties, low mortgage rates, low gas prices, and a desire to move out of the metropolitan area made East Fishkill a desirable community in which to live. This fact was not lost on corporate builders, Toll Brothers, WCI Communities, and (towards the end of the “bubble”) Lennar; and, as generations of farmers passed on, many farms became developed. Some that come to mind are: Mulford Farm – Toll Brothers, R. Hickman Farm – Toll Brothers, L. Hickman Farm – Jbar / Toll Brothers, Moore Farm – WCI Communities, Kelly Farm – Toll Brothers, Barret Farm – O’ Donnell Developers. The change to our area since that time is significant.
How we were formed
After this Town Board took office on January 1, 2006, our first order of business was to adopt a building moratorium to allow us time to adopt regulations protecting wetlands under 12.4 acres, address construction on steep slopes, and modify our lot-count formula. These simple laws drew a lot of resistance from developers. It was a few months later, at our September 2007 Town Board Workshop meeting, that the Town Board and I were discussing various town issues. At one point the conversation turned to open space preservation initiatives and Councilwoman Walker mentioned that in a town in Florida the residents were assessed a thirty-dollar annual fee for open space preservation. That conversation on open space lasted only a few minutes, as we decided to look into it further. Now, this was a workshop that was not greatly attended and it was before we were televised, as we are now. From that short conversation and small public exposure, over the next few weeks I received over 170 letters urging the Town Board to adopt initiatives to protect open space. After advertising for volunteers on our Municipal Channel 22 and performing interviews, the Town of East Fishkill Open Space Preservation was appointed on March 12, 2007.
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