Events law must take residents into account

Dear Editor: According to the June 30 article “Marbletown to review proposed rules for weddings, other special events,” town Supervisor Richard Parete said “it was important to have a law because there is a history of properties being used as a rural setting for special events.”

Yes, there is precedent. But there is an essential difference between a rural landowner holding an occasional wedding for a daughter or friend and creating new commercial venues for hosting events multiple times in each warm-weather month.

Why is the town trying to significantly alter the range of permissible uses in its rural residential zones?

What assumptions are driving this?

Is it assumed the nuisance effect on people living nearby can be excused as the price of development? Marbletown homeowners have purchased homes in residential zones believing that intrusive commercial venues will not be located nearby. It would be a violation of their trust to do so.

Is it assumed that such development is the best way to preserve scenic farmland? If so, the town should provide convincing evidence.

We may, indeed, need a law governing such events. If that law limited the number of events to one or two per year per landowner, the community would have far fewer objections. That would be more in keeping with precedent.

But the draft law seems to have been written largely to address the interests of a few developers.

Might we also assume that any such law should be adopted only by referendum? Stuart Leigh Stone Ridge