Later on I learned through the grapevine that County Exec Mike Hein was none too pleased with the Rodriguez speech. Was it the call for legislative ascendancy (heard almost every year in every leader’s speech, but seldom pursued), the call for a long-term solution to Ulster County’s solid-waste issues (carted off to the Resource Recovery Agency), making policy on take-home vehicles (another hot-stove issue), or blowing the whistle, however inadvertently, on the Hein plan to resolve this self-created sales tax issue?
Roaming through a long shopping list, Rodriquez may have stumbled on almost the exact end-game plan Hein was at that point (March 15) cooking up behind closed doors with Kingston Mayor Steve Noble. There is of course no way the über-secretive county administration would have shared any of those plans with blabber-mouth legislators.
So, was it just blind-squirrel luck on the part of the minority leader? Maybe, but it did convey the sense of the legislature that pre-emptive raids on the town and city budgets were off the table for quite a while.
Behind closed doors, Hein has been reluctantly pulled to that point of view. But that Rodriguez had put it in writing and then some before this particular horse was officially trotted out of the barn was a big deal. Good for him.
Hail, Tyler!
Call me a hometown rube, but I just can’t get over the fact that Tyler Lydon, a kid who graduated from Stissing Mountain High School in Pine Plains (class size, about 100), is playing valuable minutes in the NCAA tournament with Syracuse University.
Pine Plains, even by northeast Dutchess County standards, is hee-haw country. And scoring 1,123 points in a high-school career hardly has scouts drooling. Most local high schools can claim at least one player in that category.
But Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim saw something in the 6-8, 205-pound forward, listed at 87th in college prospect rankings when he graduated. “We saw him as a top-30,” Boeheim told the Associated Press.
The coach’s faith in Lydon paid off with a pair of foul shots in the final seconds to edge 11th-ranked Gonzaga in the regionals. As Syracuse made the Final Four with an upset win over Virginia Sunday night, Lydon — who had a solid stat line of 11 points, eight boards and five blocked shots — will have at least one more chance to shine on one of the country’s biggest basketball stages. Syracuse will take on tournament-faves North Carolina this Sunday night.
Join the family! 
