Delaware County Newscast

July 10, 2026: Roxbury rentals, Downsville bridge delay, and more

Andrew Kantor

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 3:00

This week we’ve got Roxbury wrestling with regulating rentals (it’s harder than it looks). Downsville’s bridge is still closed, Franklin residents share their unanimous opinion, and more....

 

Past episodes and more: https://delconewscast.com

Remember: Keep up with (real) local news!

Written and produced in Sidney, NY, by Andrew Kantor.

= = =

Past episodes and info: https://delconewscast.com

Remember: Keep up with (real) local news!

Written and produced in Sidney, NY, by Andrew Kantor.

SPEAKER_00

This is the Delaware County Newscast with some of the latest interesting news from around the county. I'm Andrew Cantor. Roxbury officials are looking to adopt a law to regulate short-term rentals. They want all those Airbnbs to be registered with the town and meet fire and safety requirements. The town board members say they don't want to prohibit short-term rentals, just get a better handle on how many of them there are in town. Right now their guesses range from 100 to 400 units, uh, but that sounds like a bit of a stretch for a town of only about 2,300 people. You would think the Delaware County Planning Board would sign off on the idea, but not quite. The Planning Board asks the important question: who's going to do the inspections? See, the problem is that if you suddenly require these new inspections, you need code enforcement officers to do the inspecting and all the paperwork. So the town, now it needs to think really hard about whether it's got the staff to enforce any new law. Should Franklin impose a one-year moratorium on big data centers? The town council asked, and residents weighed in. They were 100% in favor of a moratorium to give officials time to get answers to questions about water use, noise, and of course how much higher electricity rates might climb and how often the town would lose power. And thus, the town council went and passed that one-year moratorium on data centers and cryptocurrency mining. Folks in Downsville are annoyed that their historic covered bridge is still closed. They vented this frustration at the Colchester Town Council meeting, but town officials could only say, hmm, it's up to the county. The bridge has been closed since May, and residents say that downtown businesses are being hurt because people can't get to the business district, at least not as easily. So what does the county have to say? Oh, engineers have found significant structural damage to the bridge, making it absolutely unsafe for vehicles. Right now the county is looking at maybe a hundred grand just for a temporary fix, and up to three million bucks for a proper repair. So right now it looks like the crossing will be closed for at least several months and longer for a proper repair job. Until then, people will need to take Route 206, half a mile to the east. Finally, over in Unadilla, residents opened a time capsule that had been buried since the bicentennial in 1976. Although it did not contain the desiccated remains of the village mayor, it did have a pretty big collection of mementos and memorabilia that will be reunited with the families that contributed them. A new time capsule is already in the works, with elementary school students already appointed to a committee to oversee the opening in 2076 by our robot overlords. And there you have it some of the most interesting news to come out of Delaware County this week. You can find us at DelcoNewscast.com. I'm Andrew Cantor. See you next week.