You may have seen a peculiar sign driving around the Hurleyville area in Sullivan County. But as Jackson Wang explains, it's a simple message from residents aiming to protect their neighborhood.
HURLEYVILLE, N.Y. -- It's hard to miss the dozens of "What The Hill" signs driving around the Hurleyville area littered on front lawns, businesses and roadsides.
“We posted these signs trying to alert the public to what’s going on in their neighborhood,” Roger Betters said.
Betters is part of the Columbia Hill Neighborhood Alliance, and he's one of the people behind the campaign.
“We’ve decided to become proactive rather than wait and respond to the developers, we’re trying to get ahead of the curve,” Betters said.
About a month ago, the Neighborhood Alliance put the signs up to bring attention to the potential for a large development in the area. The group says they want to inform residents what kind of impact high-density growth could have on their water, roads and the wildlife.
“If you add another 500 units, another couple thousand people, two cars to a household, another thousand cars coming -- and going is not going to be good,” Betters said.
The alliance said a developer based in New Jersey is testing the area for potentially 520 housing units.
While some may say this would help from an economic growth point of view, the Columbia Hill Neighborhood Alliance believes this would change their way of life.
“This is essentially a pretty rural area and a development of that size would really change the composition of the whole area,” Betters said.
To move the campaign along, the group is hosting an event Sunday as a chance for residents to learn about these issues and the history of the area.
“We’re not against development. There’s such a thing as positive development as long as our focus is on reasonable, sustainable development of appropriate scale,” Betters said.