What is Highlands: Together We Decide?
Devastated by flooding in 2023, the Town of Highlands is embarking on a full-year campaign to imagine and build real resilience. Residents are taking leadership to understand vulnerabilities to flooding, storms and other disasters, and to identify ways of organizing to keep each other safe. Supported by Sustainable Hudson Valley, the community has been accepted into a grant and training program of Partners for Climate Action Hudson Valley. Called Funding Futures, the program supports a project we are calling “Highlands: Together We Decide”. Volunteers like ourselves will be facilitating broad and deep community conversations that will help residents prioritize goals for protecting our local environment. We are reaching out to every resident — in multiple languages and through multiple channels including interactive meetings, a survey and more. That is because our community will be stronger if all voices are heard and no one is left behind. We need your help to do so.
We will be collecting people's thoughts, stories and opinions about Fort Montgomery, the Village of Highland Falls and our future. We encourage everyone to think about their neighborhoods, our shared environment and natural surroundings, our streets and our children, and what is most important for us all to thrive now and in the future. Launched in September of 2025, the project now holds regular planning meetings - open to the community. We are studying the landscape and learning how to design systems to make the next flood less dangerous while creating features that will make our public lands more useful every day.
What do You Think About the Town of Highlands? Take our survey:
We are looking for small group meetings where we can share our community stories and explain more about this project. We’d love to come to your church, club, party, etc.
Contact us at highland.togetherwedecide@gmail.com
Facebook Page: Highlands: Together We Decide
Our Team:
Olga Kuchar Anderson is currently Chair of the Town of Highlands Citizens Environmental Advisory Committee which she founded in 2019. The Committee focuses its work primarily on New York State’s Clean Energy and Climate Smart Community initiatives on behalf of the municipality. Olga is manager of the Community Garden at Holy Innocents in Highland Falls, a member of the Friends of the Highland Falls Library, and sits on the Board of Directors at Sustainable Hudson Valley. She is a recent recipient of the Evelyn Drew Memorial Democratic Service Award for her environmental work.
Mrs Sallie Dorsch has worked over 25 years in the Special Needs and Emotionally Disturbed Youth fields. She founded the Town of Highlands United Youth group; is the supervisor for Sacred Heart Church’s Food Pantry and Vice-President of the Town of Highlands Chamber of Commerce. Sallie was the Lead Chair on the Town of Highlands Emergency Disaster Preparedness Committee after our town suffered major flooding, nicknamed “the thousand year flood” on July 9th, 2023 and has remained active in emergency planning ever since.
Erica Affronti is currently a senior at SUNY New Paltz majoring in English and Digital Media Production. She is dedicated to crafting narratives through the art of writing as well as video and audio production. Erica is also a member of the Town of Highlands Citizens Environmental Advisory Committee, primarily focusing on helping with photos and social media posts.
Melissa Everett, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of Sustainable Hudson Valley. She is an outreach and communications strategist working at the intersection of climate action, green industry and community development. Since 2004, she has helped to build a movement of local innovators who are reducing their communities’ carbon footprints and building the market for clean energy industries. Her accomplishments with SHV include convening eight influential regional summits and conferences and bringing the Solarize model for community education and solar group purchasing to the Hudson Valley on a three-year funding award from NYSERDA.
