Town government lacks transparency
This letter is in response to Greg Chorvas’ Nov. 27 letter regarding Glasco Mini Park overages. Regarding the project, I received the following response from a town budget official: “The Glasco Mini Park project was a capital projects fund activity. Upon completion and determination that the design and engineering costs would not be covered by the grant, these costs were charged to the general fund as an interfund transfer to the capital projects fund.” Thank you Mr. Chorvas for clarifying the project was only $163,000 over budget. Whether the monies used to cover the overages are taxpayer funds can be debated another time.
Mr. Chorvas listed a dizzying array of Recreation Committee and Town Board meetings and votes — none of which can be found on the town website. If the Recreation Committee is making decisions that impact our community, shouldn’t its meeting minutes be available for our review? Mr. Chorvas mentioned the town’s Recreation Trust Fund. Shouldn’t information about this fund be posted on the town website as well? I believe taxpayers should be given the resources necessary to provide oversight over our town government — which is clearly not happening in Saugerties.
Recently, the Empire Center, “an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank based in Albany,” ranked New York municipal websites based on “10 informational categories, assigning point totals based on the availability of basic information and the ease of navigation.” The town of Saugerties website received an F grade (www.empirecenter.org/publications/2014localgovreportcard/).
The Town Board has invested considerable time, effort and money into upgrading the town website with little results. I respectfully request the Town Board to provide an update on its plan — if there is one — to give Saugerties taxpayers a website that will promote government efficiency and transparency.
Joe Roberti Jr.
Saugerties
Opinion column: Bottling plant an environmental issue for Saugerties
I fully agree with Beth Murphy, (Dec. 4 Saugerties Times) that Saugerties needs to protect its interest in the Esopus River by having “involved agency” status or some other significant position in the state environmental review of the proposed Niagara project. I also agree that the environmental impact of wastewater from the plant is the most obvious and immediate danger posed by the project.
However I think she is wrong to dismiss the truck traffic issue. Even if about the same number of trucks use our roads as when the IBM plant was in the town of Ulster, the Niagara trucks, carrying water, will be extraordinarily heavy. Moreover, Niagara is applying for tax-exempt status in order to insure that it will not have to contribute to the upkeep of the roads it will be using. For both reasons, the traffic and infrastructure burden of this project threatens to be greater than that created by IBM and must be considered.
Further, while Beth Murphy is correct that in the current review process Saugerties has no power to address the enormously important issue of whether public water should be handed over to private corporations for private profit, everyone in Saugerties should be thinking about it. Niagara is a California company that is coming after New York State’s water because California’s water is used up. Although drought has played a great role in California’s troubles, the greater role has been played by that state’s failure to include potential droughts, as well as all other factors, in its calculations of how much water it could afford to have withdrawn from its water table and water recharge areas. Have we in New York calculated how much water we have, how often droughts occur, what our current needs are, what our future needs are likely to be? We had better do it right now.
Naomi Rothberg
Saugerties
What does it really mean to “address these concerns”? The science is in about plastic manufacturing, and what will be discharged into the water. Endocrine disruptors, absolutely. We know this. Will “addressing these concerns” mean writing reports in fancy binders and then going ahead with polluting the air with benzene and water with endocrine disruptors? (Well, these concerns were addressed after all.) The only way to “address the concern” about polluting the Lower Esopus would be to not pollute it, really. Also, as cool as 3D printing sounds, did the columnist mean we should build a recycling plant here? Because that process is even more toxic. Most plastics recycling is shipped overseas to countries that are willing to create environmental wastelands. I think the best way to “address this concern” is to drink tap water.
–Ida Hakkila, via Saugertiesx.com
What about shipping 1,000,000+ gallons of water a day out of our ecosystem? That might affect Saugerties in ways you can’t imagine.
–Colleen Connors, via Saugertiesx.com
Plastic is made from petroleum, they are toxic. Taking our public water for private profit is criminal. Water to cool the plastic is tainted and going back into the Hudson River where other communities drink from. There is not enough water to do this. If [the columnist] or [Ulster Supervisor James Quigley] did their homework [they] would see that there is more water in the Northeast only because of deluges and then droughts. There are fewer storms but much bigger ones. That is not consistent with a million gallons a day. The plant will be built on a floodplane where millions of pellets could get into the Esopus. Then the worst is they want taxpayers to pay for their building yet pay no taxes for 10 years. A recycling plant for bottles that will be sold in Boston and NYC? These jobs are minimum wage and possibly carcinogenic because of the exhaust bottling plants emit. We need a Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods not a resource grabbing, environmental degrading, toxic factory.
–Bill Dubilier, via Saugertiesx.com
A good article since it has created so many responses. Most have pointed out the potential environmental problems of a bottling plant and the consequences of tapping our water supply during a period of dramatic climate change. However, there is also an economic development side to the story. The bottling plant promises 140 relatively low paying jobs when at full capacity, The water use would be about the same as that utilized in the past by IBM. However, IBM Kingston employed thousands of workers with wages high enough to support a middle class family. IBM families, paid their taxes and contributed their share to the economy within the Hudson Valley. Unlike the bottling plant, IBM didn’t receive the tremendous local and state tax breaks being offered to the bottling plant. The bottling plant would be a relatively tax free zone for a decade or more for the owners and the workers. We would be subsidizing that plant. In the end, IBM tragically left us. If the history of companies in our area receiving generous tax breaks, with some falling short of their promised job creation projections shows us anything, it is that they, like Niagara, might in the end leave us figuratively and literally, high and dry. This project simply on economic issues alone is not worth supporting.
–Michael Harkavy, via Saugertiesx.com
For the record
In my last letter, there was a misplacement of words which portrayed an incorrect relationship between reimbursement rates of area hospitals. It should have stated that Kingston area hospitals and the St. Peters Hospital in Poughkeepsie receive 25 percent lower reimbursement rates from Medicaid and Medicare for all medical procedures than Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck and Vassar Brothers in Poughkeepsie.
In addition, the paraphrasing of my comments regarding the suspended policy of asking for personal identification at the Ulster County Department of Social Services within Donna Greco’s personal opinion column was inaccurate. When Ms. Greco asked me about my personal opinion regarding the identification checks at DSS, I told her the following: “With the Office of the Aging having been merged into the same building as DSS in order to save the (Ulster County) taxpayers money, with the cold weather impending, it is problematic when long lines develop because of identification checks, as elderly people end up waiting out in the cold.” I did not offer an opinion as to whether I thought the process of identification checks was good or bad policy. As a member of the Health and Human Services Committee, I belong to one of the two committees that have been assigned the direct responsibility of drafting a specific policy for the county’s police department to follow regarding identification checks at all county buildings. At a joint committee meeting between the Health and Human Services Committee and the Laws and Rules Committee, we met with Sheriff Paul Van Blarcum who explained the policy to us. In a private conversation with Sheriff Van Blarcum, I told him that I was not in law enforcement, and that I was not going to tell him how to do his job, but that I had some concerns about elderly people waiting out in the cold to have their IDs checked in order to gain entrance into the building for services at the Office of the Aging. The Sheriff informed me that a separate entrance could be established to correct this problem. During this meeting, the legal staff of the county informed us that there was a strong likelihood of impending legal action against the county if this policy of checking IDs continued. Such legal endeavors would cost the taxpayers of Ulster County hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the next decade, the cost of impending repairs on dilapidated highways and bridges will easily exceed $10 million. With this in mind, the taxpayers of Ulster County cannot afford the costs associated with defending the county against a lawsuit.
As a member of the two committees assigned the task of crafting a policy regarding identification checks at county buildings, I would appreciate feedback and opinions from my constituents on this issue.
I would also urge my constituents to call Congressman Gibson and Senators Schumer and Gillibrand in order to assist Kingston Hospital in the receipt of higher reimbursement rates from Medicaid/Medicare.
Chris Allen
Ulster County Legislature
Opinion column: Reinstate DSS warrant checks
Donna Greco did a wonderful job demonizing people in need or anyone walking into the DSS offices in Ulster County. These warrant checks were not necessary for the safety of the social workers. There are officers and a metal detector at the door along with other safety measures throughout the building. If the county wants to keep criminals off the streets then that is where they should look for them. If the county does not want possible law-breakers receiving services then let the social workers interviewing ask for a warrant check if there is a need for one. This is a simple case of profiling, not racial but income profiling. Most people walking into the door of DSS are the working poor, and Ulster County has a lot more of them then criminals. –Chris Giordano, via Saugertiesx.com
The problem is the law itself. If police have to enforce laws that are bullying and petty, that prey on the poor and minorities (yes, racist), then we have no choice but to disrespect the law and it’s enforcement. The opinion of the writer is misguided.
–Barton Friedman
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