Accurate numbers sought for Rudd Pond rescue mission

NORTH EAST — The push to keep the Taconic State Park at Rudd Pond open continues to move forward, Millerton Mayor John Scutieri reported after an initial meeting with a select group of local municipal leaders and business owners.

The state’s Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation recently released a list of state parks and historic sites proposed to be closed or offer reduced services in order to close budget gaps this year. The list is in response to Gov. David Paterson’s executive budget proposal, and the Taconic State Park at Rudd Pond, as a result, is currently set to close.

The municipalities of Millerton, North East and Amenia have come out in favor of finding a way to keep the park open. It’s possible that when the state’s budget is finally adopted, the financial restraints that would necessitate closing Rudd Pond will no longer be an issue. It’s also possible that through lobbying local representatives the state office could be convinced that Rudd Pond would be a financially profitable park.

However, the state’s Web site for the Taconic State Park - Rudd Pond Area currently states that the park will not be open for camping for the 2010 season, suggesting that the closures may not be up for much discussion.

If that is the case, more drastic measures would be needed to keep the park at Rudd Pond open. The meeting last week, coordinated by Scutieri, established that progress is being made, but more concrete numbers will need to be confirmed before a course of action can be taken.

The mayor said that two main avenues are emerging. The first would be that Millerton and North East work out a partnership with the state where New York continues to own the park but the municipalities assist in running it.

The second would be if the state didn’t want a partnership, the municipalities would try to take over ownership of the park from the state. That scenario isn’t that implausible, as it happened once before in the 1970s, when North East turned a tidy profit on the park for a summer before the state reclaimed ownership.

One thing everyone was in agreement over is that the attendance and revenue numbers the state had provided didn’t seem to make sense. In the Millerton News’ initial article about the possible closure of Rudd Pond, state spokesman Dan Keefe reported that park attendance in 2009 was about 17,000 and that the park brought in about $15,000 in revenue.

“We’ve been coming up with ideas to work with the state to help increase revenue,� Scutieri explained. “We’re all in agreement that we really feel like the park is being mismanaged. If the attendance record is what they claim, then there’s a problem with the revenue. We need better accounting numbers from the state.�

“It’s hard to discern what part of [the state’s figures] may or may not be accurate,� North East town Supervisor Dave Sherman said. “But the numbers did not necessarily add up.�

Additional meetings have been scheduled with the hope that state officials would attend. A public meeting, to be scheduled when more concrete information about the area’s options is made available, will be tentatively held by the end of the month, Sherman said.

Business owners and municipal leaders alike are realizing the value of keeping Rudd Pond open, Scutieri said, including Amenia, which would possibly be interested in using it as part of its summer recreation program.

“I’m positive about the energy,� the mayor said. “Everybody was constantly nodding their heads yes, and it’s a good feeling to see such a good mix of people working together in this direction.�