Two engineers from Barton & Loguidice, with the aid of a slide show, gave the crowd at July’s town board meeting a tour of the major sidewalk construction project coming to North Street.

By itself, the project is a significant piece of the town’s goal of connecting downtown Pine Bush to recreation centers, schools, businesses and government offices on the periphery of the hamlet, but it also serves as another asset in the town pursuit of an NYForward grant to make all of the hamlet walkable.

Construction of the sidewalk, now a year into the planning stage, is tentatively scheduled to begin in June 2026 and wrap up by the following September. When complete, it will allow pedestrians to walk from downtown all the way to the pavilion in Castle Park, a major recreation area at the northern end of the town. Heavily used baseball diamonds, pickleball and basketball courts, soccer fields, a walking track and children’s playground equipment are among the facilities there.

Engineers Chris Gannett and Dan Rourke described the job as its bright yellow path advanced slide by slide on the screen until it reached the park. The sidewalk will be made of concrete, measure five feet in width and run along the south side of the street until the intersection of Gross Street when it crosses to the north side. Curbing, drainage, crosswalks and striping are all part of the plan.

The project is budgeted for $3.5 million. The town has been approved for a $2.8 million grant through the federal Transportation Alternatives Program and administered by the state Department of Transportation. The town is responsible for covering the rest of the cost.

The North Street sidewalk is one of three big ones that have secured grant money. A sidewalk improvement and extension project has been completed on Route 302, and the town has received two grants to help pay for sidewalk reconstruction and extension projects along Route 52 (Main Street) from the intersection of Railroad Avenue eastward all the way to Boniface Drive.

The NYForward grant — the town will ask for $4.5 million when the state opens up the application period later this year — would go a long way toward helping the town achieve its vision.

Joan Miller, the community services director for senior programs, said: “Our vision is to create a strong, vibrant, inviting and walkable downtown area that expresses its diversity, history and culture through a clean, clear intelligent sidewalk system.”

Members of the committee working on the application have previously emphasized its importance to the health and well-being of community members. The town will pitch the program as complementing projects either already completed or planned with a healthy lifestyle in mind. An expansion of the Crawford Walking Trail to include a nature trail and hiking is in the works, a walking trail for seniors with age-appropriated exercise equipment is nearly finished and upgrades to the second town park on Lybolt Road in Bullville are planned. Discussions involving Orange County Legislator Rob Sassi have begun about the feasibility of building an indoor sports complex that could get a boost from private investors.

All of these things strengthen the NYForward application, said Daniel McCann, the town’s director of safety and security.

More cred for cops

Police Chief Dominick Blasko announced that the Crawford Police Department has been awarded a “certification of accreditation” from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.

The voluntary program is designed to “improve an agency’s effectiveness, efficiency and professionalism, promote training and foster public confidence in law enforcement.”

In April, a team of the state Law Enforcement Accreditation Program reviewed “the department’s compliance with 110 standards through 197 interviews with police officers and civilian employees,” along with independent observations of the department’s operations, a tour of the station and a review of hundreds of files.

Just 167 of the state’s 500 plus police agencies have been so accredited, according to Blasko.

He said the department has long met the requirements for the award, but the application is lengthy and time-consuming and the department hadn’t undertaken the job before now.

Food trucks welcome in town

The town board passed a local law that permits food trucks to operate in town. The law, which runs four full pages, lists a slew of regulations that food trucks must abide. When in town, the trucks may not operate within 500 feet of the closest point of any building in which a business serves food similar to the truck.

Prior to the new law, food trucks had only been permitted as part of a larger public event such as the annual Harvest Festival, UFO Festival and Shinefest music festival.

Note to food truck vendors: be very quiet. The law prohibits vendors from crying out or making loud noises for the purpose of selling food.

Food truck revenue across the country hit $2.2 billion in 2023, according to industry reports. Crawford began looking into allowing the business when the new owner of Stonehenge Farm Market was prevented from parking a truck to sell BBQ on his property.

Cover for Cars

The board awarded the contract for constructing a pole barn to safely shelter police and other town vehicles from the weather.

Seldom Rest Construction of Pine Bush got the job with a bid of $108,000. The only other company to submit a bid was Pioneer Pole Buildings, Inc., of Schuylkill Haven, Pa. PPB bid $172,381.

The building will be located behind an office building next to town hall. The town bought the building, which sat on 1.4 acres, and then subdivided the property. The town kept six-tenths of an acre for the barn. The rest of the land remains with the office building which the town has put up for sale at $800,000.

The new barn will be 30 feet wide, 104 feet long and 10.4 feet high.