Writer’s Notebook: My original plan was straightforward: examine the pesticide load that a commercial vineyard in the Northeast would impose on 509 Bashford Road and the surrounding area, a parcel perched on a steep hill next to a DEC-designated wetland, and ask what an agriculturally zoned property can actually get away with in terms of tasting rooms, weddings, and live bands. I also wanted to explore what happened just a mile from the Columbia County border on Jefferson Hill Road in Rensselaer County, where residents are already living through a strikingly similar situation after the Sanford farm transformed into S and S Brewery.Those stories are still here. But events at last week’s Chatham Town Board meeting blew the scope wide open. What Supervisor Collins disclosed about his own conduct at the county level, and his use of official email to assert that agricultural zoning would not strip the Town of its authority, turned a story about land use into something far more troubling. This article is now about the details that residents of Chatham need to understand: how a small-government apparatus of back-scratching, procedural shortcuts, and selective silence produced a decision that may be legally indefensible. Understanding How the Columbia County Board of Supervisors WorksThe Columbia County Board of Supervisors (CCBS) is not a body of separately elected county officials. Each seat belongs to whoever holds an elected position in one of the county’s towns, along with representatives from the City of Hudson’s elected leadership. Nobody runs for a board seat on the County Board of Supervisors. They inherit the role. And crucially, not every vote carries the same weight. Each member’s vote is weighted by population. Like Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. The supervisors from larger towns aren’t just participants in county decisions. They’re gatekeepers.
Why the county is involved and what they decided are two horns on the same bull. First, the Town of Chatham cannot create an Agricultural District: the legal mechanism does not exist; it is a NY State designation generated and recommended by the county. While the Town can issue a variance for “accessory use,” that’s a minor accommodation compared to inclusion in a NYS Agricultural District, which comes loaded with sweeping state-backed protections. Weddings, live music, festivals, crop spraying, all of it becomes permissible under the ag umbrella. That’s why the county’s decision to include a property in an Agricultural District is not a bureaucratic formality. It’s a seismic shift in what a landowner can do and what neighbors have to live with.In January 2026, the CCBS voted to include 509 Bashford Road, located in the Town of Chatham, in Agricultural District 10. It is now awaiting approval from the NYS Department of Agriculture. The state has 30 days to sign off on the property’s inclusion from the date of submission. It may have also included the Williams property on Richmond Road. It’s difficult to know for certain, because the county posted only a vague notice that an application had been filed for properties in District 10.The second reason is that the Williams applied to have their property to be included as agricultural quietly in October while most of the residents opposed to the project assumed it was a town issue, not just because there was a continuing legal battle in front of the Town’s Zoning Board of Appeals; Supervisor Collins had represented officially that the town would retain jurisdiction. This is not a small detail. Those who knew were told the change was meaningless.
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