PINE BUSH – No one can remember when there wasn't a school bus business in Pine Bush. Like all our towns, there has to be a school bus business to bus the kids to school. This is the basis of rural education districts.

In the Town of Crawford, however, current zoning does not allow for bus businesses. In addition, the current bus business does not have a site plan simply because when it began, site plans weren't required and, somehow or other, one was never produced before now.

More than that, the First Student bus business on Pine Bush Properties land, behind the Valley Supreme shopping center, has depended on using a patch of ground that turns out to have been filled-in wetlands.

No longer. In September 2011 the town building inspector cited a violation for that use. Without it, and without the use of the current site, the prospect arises that there might not be school buses around to serve the Pine Bush School District. Or, like some other districts, the district would have to run its own buses.

Genean DeJong, who manages the First Student buses in Pine Bush, says, "We need 140 buses and they all take kids to Pine Bush schools. We have 70 big buses and 70 small van buses. We keep 100 buses on the site in Pine Bush, and 40 buses parked down at Circleville Middle and Elementary schools."

The bus company, represented by John Tarolli of Norton, Mercurio, Tarolli and Marshall Surveyors and Engineers, has been working with the Crawford planning board for some time to try and come up with a site plan. On May 22, they were back and Tarolli presented a short history of bus businesses and zoning in Crawford.

Crawford's zoning, he said, began in 1959. Ten years later site plans were required for all uses other than one to two family homes. In 1972, Mr. Black, who owns the current bus storage property, applied to build a garage. In 1983, Norton, Mercurio, Tarolli surveyed the property. Then, in 2004, the town removed "public garages" from its zoning.

"After 2004 you couldn't start a bus business in the Town of Crawford," Tarolli said at the recent planning board meeting. Before then, around 2000, First Student had expanded to the rear area to park vehicles without site plan approval.

And now, the Zoning Board of Appeals has upheld the building inspector's violation.

"That part of the property cannot be used for anything," Tarolli said.

When board members asked him if he had considered applying to the ZBA for a variance, he said he had thought it unlikely that such a variance would be granted.

The planning board then asked if the bus business could make do with 80 buses on the site. Clearly, that doesn't work, since 140 are required for the job.

Pine Bush without buses?

"Without the buses, the students will have to walk to school, or be driven by their parents," someone said at the meeting. Which could mean several thousand more cars on the roads of Crawford and the towns of Wallkill, Shawangunk and Mamakating every morning and afternoon.

"Well, we could do 'park outs'— that is where the drivers take the vehicle home at the end of the day and park it there," noted DeJong. "But I expect there'd be complaints about that."

How about moving the business to a nearby town?

"I've looked all over the Town of Wallkill, with no luck," DeJong replied. "We did look at a site on Route 17K, but it was partly in Wallkill and partly in Crawford, so that wouldn't work."

Shawangunk? Wawarsing? Mamakating?

"I haven't looked in Shawangunk yet. They already have a bus garage in the hamlet of Wallkill; I don't know if they'd welcome another one," she went on. "Wawarsing is out — it would be too dangerous in winter weather to be going over the mountain on Route 52. Mamakating is too far. We can't really be even ten miles away from our schools. The 'dead head' fuel costs would be too much. We are only paid for the fuel used between homes and school, not for fuel to get to the area... At some point you'd have to ask whether it was even worth it to stay in the business."

Town supervisor Charles Carnes was later asked about the problem.

"I'm aware of it, and we could revisit the zoning, but they have to come into compliance with the deal we had a few years ago," he said. "I spoke with Mr. Black last week; he was not aware of the issues and he said he could get back to me, but so far that hasn't happened."

After a pause, Carnes continued.

"I would like them to come in and talk to me. Let's sit down and work through these issues," he said. "They should come into compliance on our agreements, and they should do this very quickly. I'm sure then we would look at the business park and industrial zoning and consider a change."