Dear Tom Lyons,


I just read the final master plan for Minnewaska state park. With the great
regret (and no surprise) I see that rock climbing is still prohibited in
Minnewaska state park (with exception of a small area at Peterskill). Some
vague words about "identifying areas suitable for rock climbing" present in
the plan, change nothing. For dozens of years, Minnewaska state park
authorities have been ignoring numerous requests of rock climbers. We live
here, we vote, we pay taxes. In fact, your salary comes out of my state tax.
Still you ignore me and thousands of other climbers. At the same time, a
private non-profit foundation - Mohonk - has been successfully running a
huge rock climbing area without any legal or environmental problems. Unlike
Minnewaska state park, they are not subsidized out of state budget but they
care about us. You don't.

And it's not state vs private land issues. State authorities operating
Catskills and Adirondacks areas have no problems with rock climbing.
However, OPRHP parks instituted the biggest ban on rock climbing in United
States. For years we fought you but we could do nothing against you.

Who are you, Tom Lyons? What do you do? How do you work? How do you think?
How can you ignore us, people who pay your bills? You bought your car with
my taxes, you bought your house with my taxes. Every day you buy food with
money that comes out of my pocket. Your generous pension will be funded out
of my taxes. And yet I do not exist in your eyes. How can you justify
ignoring me and ignoring tens of thousands of other New York state residents
and tax payers.

You thrive on banning things, Tom Lyons. You banned rock climbing (outside
of Peterskill). You banned ice climbing. You severely regulate swimming. You
don't even allow hikers to step off a three meter wide road (when they walk
next to Minnewaska lake). And all your regulations are carefully upholded by
an army of rangers, paid out of my pocket.

Tom Lyons, you complain about Minnewaska state park's budgetary issues and
yet you hire numerous rangers to enforce all the regulations, build more
buildings, more parking lots and more roads in the park - clearly it's
necessary to protect the environment and save money. I was intelligent
enough to obtain a PhD degree from MIT in chemistry. I am not intelligent
enough to understand the logic behind your actions.


Martin Luther King had a big soul and he had a big dream. Unlike him, I have
a small soul and I have a small dream. I just wish to be able to climb and
swim and hike and camp. I wish my taxes supported the Mohonk foundation and
not Minnewaska state park.



Regards,

Boris Itin, Ph.D.