ROTHBURY — The Rothbury village council appointed new resident Juan Cano to the planning commission during its regular meeting Tuesday.
The vote to appoint Cano was 5-0; Jim Fekken and Denise Kurdziel were absent from the meeting. Cano replaces Chris Orcaz, who moved out of the village. Cano said he recently moved to the village with his fiancee and is looking forward to serving.
Most of the meeting revolved around continued discussion of Greenlawn Mobile Home Park. Planning commission chair Mike Harris said as far as he's been able to tell, the park's owner, Kurt Hofstra, has stopped doing the maintenance the village requested after briefly expressing a desire to work with the village earlier this year. No action was taken, but all on the council appeared frustrated with the issues at the park, which include multiple abandoned trailers and others, Harris said, that are damaged to the point of being uninhabitable.
The council gave a 5-0 approval to a new wristband policy regarding Electric Forest. The new policy states that the council will hold an annual vote at a meeting prior to the festival to allocate any passes distributed to the village for oversight purposes. The passes - the amount was not specified - cannot be transferred to others and must be used by either village staff or elected officials designated by the council.
In other Electric Forest notes, clerk Deb Murphy said the village has received the mass gathering fees from the festival for 2025. She noted that the total - over $252,000 - was a decline from last year, meaning attendance at the festival was down.
Police chief Ethan Walker requested the council provide figures for how much it would cost to replace the mobile data terminals in the two village police vehicles and to purchase new desktop computers. Both replacements have already been budgeted for and are necessary, Walker said, because of Microsoft's move away from providing support for older operating systems.
