To the Woodstock Town Board 

Woodstock is a town at a crossroads. At this moment, the wider world is in a housing and environmental crisis and so is our small town. In 2018, there was a community advised Comprehensive Plan adopted by our town government. It laid out the roadmap to the future of this town. Unfortunately, our town building and zoning codes and local laws are not at pace with the protections required to realize the vision of the Comprehensive Plan. 
 
Today there is no project more concerning due to this lack of protections then the sale of the Lasher Funeral Home property. Lasher's, as we all know, is 4.7 acres of mixed used property in the center of our hamlet. Most concerning is the approximately 2-2.5 acres of wild open space to the back of the property, extending into the Orchard Lane North-Library Lane neighborhood. This plot of land is on every environmental map of the county of Ulster. According to the Hudsonia Habitat plan on the town website, it consists of: upland hardwood forest, upland meadow, wet meadow, and hardwood shrub swamp. The biologists that wrote that plan consider all open meadow an ecological priority. 
 
In addition to the environmental concerns are the social concerns of the town. Does Woodstock need another 20 hotel rooms? Does the town plan to be exclusively a tourist town or can a more equitable balance be achieved between local and tourist? No one is denying the positive economic benefit of tourist dollars but at what point does it become "too much of a good thing"? Already our small town is feeling the negative impacts of excessive transient residents, from the fact that it's nearly impossible to go out to a restaurant in season without a long wait to the lack of affordable housing to the closure of all our in-town swimming holes. Both people and environment are being negatively impacted in myriad ways.  

Woodstock's tag line is "The Most Famous Small Town in America" (arguably in the world). This tag line says it all. YES, we do as a town need to accept that we’re globally renowned and a draw to folks looking to experience the arts and culture and natural beauty that made this town famous. BUT the tag line also says "small town." And this part of the statement is also important and valid. How do we stay both famous and small? 
 
We do so by good governing. By up-to-date zoning and building and housing regulations. Presently our all of our codes are out of date and were last updated in the 1980s. They are not valid for today's issues. 
 
We the below, lovers of Woodstock, both famous and ordinary citizens, call on our town government to: 
• Hasten the writing and implementation of the unanimously passed Building Moratorium. 
• Get started on rewriting our town code to meet the needs of Woodstock residents FIRST and commercial developers second. 
• Enact laws that protect even privately held open spaces within the hamlet from further or any development of buildings on it. 
• In terms of Lasher's, we ask that NO variances for non-conforming use be granted to ANY development project by any purchaser unless there is public support.

Clearly the town is in process of creating new laws to help guide Woodstock into the future. We request that a slow and measured approach, guided by what rules are on the books with NO variances or rule bending, be applied by the Planning, Zoning and Building Departments to ALL and ANY commercial development project until such a time as the new guidelines are complete. 

Specifically we the undersigned are asking that the Town of Woodstock government do everything in their power to protect the environmental and social integrity of the Lasher property and not act against the will of the broader community to placate the desires of the few.