A deal to sell a former Cub Scout camp to the Saratoga County Town of Milton is not dead yet. WAMC’s Southern Adirondack Bureau Chief Lucas Willard reports the town board took action last night to purchase the camp for a park, but there’s a catch.
The Town of Milton had been working out a deal with Boy Scouts of America’s Twin Rivers Council to purchase the now-closed Camp Boyhaven for $1 million. Half of the money would come from the town, the other half from an anonymous donor.
But when the anonymous donor walked away from the deal last week, Twin Rivers Council announced it would begin considering other offers for the 300-acre camp.
So on Tuesday night, the Milton town board — in attempt to salvage the deal — voted to put up its $500,000 if another entity could come up with the rest.
Town Supervisor Scott Ostrander…
“See, when the anonymous donor backed out, he backed out with Twin Rivers, which opened up us being short $500,000. So now we need to get another entity with $500,000 to go to Twin Rivers and make that donation to Twin Rivers,” said Ostrander.
A new closing date has been set for May 11th. A special town board meeting has been set for next Monday.
Town council member Benny Zlotnick is hopeful that the town can partner with someone or something else to come up with the rest of the money.
“I think we’re going to be fine. There are two separate entities that have stepped up and are going to be talking to our attorneys and the supervisor hopefully starting tomorrow morning and if they can hammer the details out over the weekend at our special meeting Monday night we should be good to go,” said Zlotnick.
Land conservation organization Saratoga PLAN, partnering with the Friends of the Kayaderosseras, announced over the weekend that it would begin taking pledges from anyone looking to support the purchase.
Town planning board chair Larry Woolbright, who has been working to secure the purchase for the past several months, said as of Tuesday evening, in about 48 hours, PLAN had secured about $97,000 in pledges from 231 individuals.
“I’m relieved that we’re not dead in the water at this point. Because I thought we were for a while last week,” said Woolbright.
Another local resident, Frank Rossi Jr., created an online fundraiser for the purchase after the deal appeared to have collapsed last week.
As of Wednesday morning, Rossi’s gofundme page had raised $1,400. Rossi acknowledged the two efforts are different in approach and was skeptical of the amount of actual money that would be raised through the pledges received by PLAN. But he applauded their efforts.
“And whatever we can do to pool money from people that want to give it toward this to help save taxpayers’ money is always appreciated,” said Rossi. “I just think that first-things-first we have to ameliorate the different approaches that are being taken here because the town needs to know how much money it has in its hands when they go to a table with Twin Rivers Council, whether or not this $500,000 resolution is accepted by Twin Rivers or not.”
A representative from Twin Rivers Council did not attend the Tuesday night meeting. A closing date has been set for May 11th at 1 p.m.
