Will Wal-Mart be good for Monticello?

By TOM RUE
MONTICELLO - Members of the Thompson and Monticello Joint Master Plan Committee (JMPC) shared a vision for a better of quality of life at the Monticello village board meeting on September 16. Quality of life is related to a community's appearance, they said.

How will construction of a proposed Wal-Mart superstore play into that plan? Plan priorities, according to planning board chair Ken Goldfarb, include preserving a canope of trees beside roads, appropriate private signage, attractive fences, landscaping, and aesthetic roads widths.

Concerns over a Wal-Mart store echoed the those in the joint master plan. The developer is likely to seek to clearcut and blacktop thousands of square yards to increase visibility from the highway, officials guessed.

A village water main runs directly beneath the center of the proposed 2000-car superstore parking lot, Panchyshyn said.

"We're saving our water and our sewage for our people. If we have casinos coming in here, we're going to need all the water we can get over there," asserted mayor James Kenny.

Wal-Mart could drill its own well or tie into the Kiamesha water sytem, avoiding any obligation to the village, Rosenberg said.

The JMPC has worked for two years on a grant from the Nature Conservancy aimed at the Neversink River Basin, James said, with assistance by planning consultant Tom Shepstone. With funds about to run out, JMPC chair Bill James and Goldfarb asked the village to vote on September 30 to remain an equal partner in continuing the committee's work.

They asked the village to approve $6,000 per year, for the next two years, to be matched by the Town of Thompson, for the planning process.

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