Why the New Paltz Town Board should resign over police misconduct!
Concerned Parents of New Paltz called for the resignation of the five members of the New Paltz Town Board and Police Commission at their live streamed zoom meeting on June 18 titled “Community Town Hall on Policing.” Our reason for the resignation demand is the board’s historic failure to adequately address cases of police misconduct and in particular racial violence committed by New Paltz police officers that has laid bare a pattern of conduct that can clearly be identified in many cases as institutional racism.
The town board failed in every possible way when they had the opportunity, almost two years ago, to find justice in the racial police brutality case of Paul Echol’s. Between September 2018 to May 2019, Concerned Parents helped 22-year-old African-American Paul get public attention, support and legal representation for a jury trial to beat the false charges against him by a New Paltz police officer. The officer had brutalized Paul by punching him in the face while he was handcuffed behind his back and sitting in the back of a police cruiser with many other cops around. While Concerned Parents and the community demanded justice from the town board, they instead opted to protect the offending police officer and other officers who were standing several feet away from the brutalization of Paul. Most likely the board wanted to avoid a police union grievance and save costs that would have amounted to minor damages. The police officer now faces a personal lawsuit. The board buried a New Paltz independent Civilian Review Committee report that found use of excessive force by the officer against Paul. The board then disbanded the committee that still does not function today.
In the face of these failures, Concerned Parents fought the town board/police commission and police department every inch of the way. It was able with their investigation and attorney, Michael Sussman, and community support to finally find Paul innocent of trumped up charges by New Paltz police in an all-white jury trial in the New Paltz town court in May 2019.
Since the recent death of George Floyd on May 25, we now have a new day in New Paltz where we can proceed to reimagine structural changes for a new public safety system in our town and throughout and state. The mass protest in our local area, state, nation and the world resulted in Governor Executive Order 203, New York State Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative. This order requires the New Paltz Town Board to submit a report to the state government by April 1, 2021 indicating structural changes or lose local police funding. The report must outline how our policing will dramatically change and involve community stakeholder groups who are most affected by police interactions which means people of color in writing the report and in monitoring the police in some sort of new police commission.
While we await your resignation decision, we intend to lend support to a community effort to organize a self-selection process to elect community stakeholder members, particularly people of color, for a yet unnamed planning group ordered by the governor. This community stakeholder representation needs to be independent of political appointments and instead each stakeholder group should meet in a public caucus and through an act of self-determination select their representation. It is demanded that the current town board sanction this process and facilitate it in every possible way. There should also be a similar process to select new members for a new civilian police review committee/police commission.
Edgar Rodriguez
for Concerned Parents of New Paltz
and resident of New Paltz
Raise your voices in November
Once again, those who play God with the “Right to Life” — decreeing it a commandment over not only their own, but everyone else — are lording it over us, this time with the “Right to Death.” Goaded by Trump, they’re rushing back to pre-pandemic life, leaving face masks, physical distancing and the social contract in the dust, a dust that may very well turn to ashes — not only their own, but everyone else’s.
As His Sycophancy, Mike Pence smarmed about the recent rallies in Phoenix and Tulsa: “Freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble is enshrined in the Constitution, and even in a health crisis the American people don’t forfeit our constitutional rights. We’re creating settings where people can choose to participate in the political process.”
“It’s really important we recognize how important freedom and personal responsibility are to this entire equation, and allowing younger Americans to understand — particularly in the counties that are most impacted — the unique challenges that we’re facing, is important.”
As usual, the Trump-Pence party line is deviously tangled, but in attempting to unwind it, I realized that for many, “freedom and personal responsibility” are mutually exclusive. The “freedom” to repudiate masking and distancing regulations because one feels they infringe on his or her liberties is the very opposite of “personal responsibility” and puts us all at grave risk.
But then, his lemmings are just following their leader, who had “Do Not Sit Here, Please!” contractually-agreed-upon social-distancing stickers removed from seats before the Tulsa rally.
The pandemic will end and when it does, we’ll take to the streets, rip off our masks and embrace like mad. In the meantime, let’s keep each other safe, continue to unmask leaders who would conceal their ill intentions and put a vast distance between them and the rest of us in November.
Tom Cherwin
Saugerties
43-13-3
I woke up this Monday morning thinking about the family coming up for the 4th of July weekend. I thought about fireworks and family barbecues. I remembered how fortunate that we live in a country that is based on law and order and a unified spirit of our people. No country offers more opportunity to anyone regardless of race, color or creed uniformly offered to all. We have come a long way since our founding fathers and our government has continued to mold our laws to continually improve based on the will of the people.
With my morning coffee and the TV news, the first thing I hear is a report for this past weekend, that in Chicago, there were 43 people shot, 13 people being killed, and three children murdered. With these sorts of numbers, why are we trying to defund the police department? With these sorts of numbers, where is Black Lives Matters? With these sorts of numbers, where is Rev. Al Sharpton? With these sorts of numbers, why is it a two-minute report in a news cycle consumed with COVID-19 and President Donald Trump? With these sorts of numbers, where are the peaceful protests? It was a tragic event that George Floyd was murdered by a bad actor wearing a police uniform and his life should never have been snuffed out. But what about the 13 people killed and the three children murdered? Are their lives any less important than George Floyd’s life?
We are in the least prejudiced country in the world. I am a 72-year-old white man who spent many years working for emergency service in New York City. I worked in a predominately minority area in the Bronx and most of my co-workers were minorities. At no point in my life have I met anyone of any color who I did not enjoy a mutual respect.
For those three children killed, their blood is the same color as mine and my heart goes out to the families of these children whose passing will be a passing blip in the media. May they truly rest in peace and may someday their families lose their grief and be blessed with memories prior to the weekend.
Happy Fourth of July???
Jim Dougherty
Shady
A swimming hole runs through it
Imagine a walk through a sun-dappled glade. To your left, the bucolic sights and sounds of a forest stream. You have been here time and again, in different seasons: winter’s snowy mantle, the first vivid greens of spring, the delighted shouts of summer bathers, the russet colors and crisp air of fall. But, now you can only imagine. A series of newly erected ‘No Trespassing’ signs bar the way.
The glade and its swimming hole are now ‘off limits’.
So let’s imagine once again. This time a bird’s eye view of this creek and its path through Woodstock just a few summers ago. Up by the Millstream, guests and locals are enjoying the refreshing water. Slightly downstream, someone is sitting in a lawn chair in the creek reading a novel. But the real action lies ahead. Big Deep is brimming. Farther down, Little Deep is full of water bathers, sunbathers and brave souls shouldering the waterfalls strong percussion on their heads.
But now you can only imagine. It’s all ‘off limits’ this summer. And the influx of unruly outsiders is commonly blamed. Yet, the creek still flows. Not just through property lines, but through the dells and hollows of memory. How many generations of visitors enjoyed these waters, weaving their experiences into the fabric of the town, its stories and its reputation? How many were viewed as ‘other’: immigrants, utopians, bohemians, free-thinkers, artists, revelers? How often were they felt to be a nuisance, from the Byrdcliffe’s turpentine rags left in fields, to The Maverick with their strange festivities?
And what of the simple joys? How many children splashing? How many lovers caressing? How many strumming guitars and beating drums echoing in the glade? The signs stand mute, guarding us from ourselves, it seems. And the creek that runs through the center of the town, and its creative and social history, must feel for the footfalls that do not sound, look in vain for the artists who would capture its beauty, and listen closely, hoping for the raucous din and hum of its Summer crowds.
But, now, you can only imagine.
Mark Foley
Bearsville
Act to end the effects of institutional racism
I, like the hundreds of thousands of people protesting, was outraged by the callous murder of George Floyd and the pattern of continuing violence his murder represents. We all have borne witness that his death has unveiled and highlighted systemic failures of policing policy and procedures that are directly responsible for alarmingly disproportional rates of police intervention in communities of color and for a long string of abuses perpetuated against people of color. Unfortunately, the moral obligation to stop this brutality had historically been ignored by every level of government and empowered by the voting public, the majority of whom are white-privileged.
All municipalities with local police forces are now required by a recent State Executive order to explore institutional racism that necessarily is inherent in the brutality we have seen locally and nationally. As the publicly-elected governing town board conferred with the responsibility of establishing and monitoring public agreements with the police, town boards and the supporting electorate should now support the efforts of leaders of the current protest movement such as those espoused in BlackLivesMatters.org and Campaignzero.org. To not do so in and of itself would be an act of institutional racism and an act of white privilege.
Consequently, the following should immediately occur [in New Paltz]:
1. Contact state police, county sheriff and SUNY police to work with the town on developing a plan to consolidate, restructure and refocus policing efforts to eliminate the town police department. Through county and state taxes, we pay for the personal safety and protection of property to the county and the state, so we should receive our fair share of those policing resources.
2. Redirect budget priorities to emphasize social welfare security needs of the community (i.e. reduce police budgets and fund community security and wellness projects).
3. Establish an independent Town Commission on Equity in Policing (TCEP) via a self-selection process charged with the developing policies and procedures consistent with community policing tenets and town board policies.
4. Share the current contractual agreement between the town and the New Paltz Police Department.
5. Share the nature of “use of force data” collected and town police department summary reports.
6. Make public body camera footage available.
7. End the use of military-grade equipment in town policing.
8. Push to ensure that police report every instance in which they stop someone who they suspect of a crime; they must also include that person’s race, gender and ethnicity.
9. Establish personal monetary liability for a police officer if they are found guilty of violating an individual’s civil rights.
I am a relatively light-skinned Puerto Rican, who has personally benefitted from and harmed by the effects of institutional racism. I send this letter because it is my moral responsibility to act to end the effects of institutional racism irrespective of how the benefits and harms may balance. Consequently, I ask that you simply do the same.
Maggie Veve
New Paltz
The time for discussion
I have never had complaints about our police force, Quite the contrary. From my experience, they are an important and helpful part of the community.
But it certainly would be desirable if the community has a bigger and better input and understanding into what our police force does and what we require it to do for us. I watched the New Paltz town board meeting about the police on Thursday, June 18. It was an interesting and a bit distressing revelation to hear so many young white people talking about their unsettling encounters with the officers. Those encounters showed that the police do not necessarily “discriminate” solely against racial minorities.
Policing in one form or another goes back to the ancient era. They were established to enforce law and order of the land and local community, to prevent crimes and disorder, and to protect citizens and properties. In one form or another, they are needed!
Every little boy wants to be a policeman or a fireman: I suppose those representatives signal to the child that they too want to be helpful heroes. I believe that becoming a police officer is a “helping” profession. I don’t think that those entering the force do so in order to be “nasty” to individuals they don’t like. I believe they serve because they want to help and make us safer.
But it may also be the case that some officers may get inured and even form a prejudice after having dealt with a few too many bad apples in the community and they themselves turn into bad apples, which can be found in any stratum of society. Further, I think and hope that most people are not born racist (even if historically every race has its own racist and prejudicial attitudes), but some may become racist, misogynistic and prejudiced, most often under the influence of their peers and also from unpleasant experiences.
I do not believe that the national cries for defunding the police are the right approach to punishing the police and making us safer. Together with the community, the police force serves. They ought to reconsider its mission, its authority, its structure, its responsibilities, its duties.
Last but not least, together with the community they serve, the police must strive to thoroughly vet all applicants and trainees to make sure that only the most upright and moral individuals join their ranks. Also, let’s also consider establishing an auxiliary police, usually a volunteer group, just like our firemen!
The time is ripe for many discussions and changes. This process ought to be done together by the force and the community which funds them.
Misha Harnick
New Paltz
Oleske raises issues
In the June 10 issue of Hudson Valley One, there was an article regarding the resignation of the Village of New Paltz planning board chair John Oleske. The issues raised in Mr. Oleske’s resignation statement, which was nine pages long, were touched on in this article, and I wish to clarify a particular issue, which I have concerns with — the veracity of the legal advice given to the village.
For several years, I served on the village Zoning Board of Appeals and observed numerous instances where the legal opinions given to the board were contrary to the law. I believe that these troublesome opinions led the ZBA and the planning board to take improper governmental actions, of which I had informed mayor Rogers at the time. Below are some specific examples of problematic opinions, which were given to the village ZBA.
At the August 8, 2017, ZBA meeting, when the board was considering a variance application for a commercial building downtown, one board member, concerned with the size of the project, suggested limiting the square footage. NY Village Law specifically authorizes the ZBA to place conditions and restrictions on a project. However, the village’s attorney at the meeting, responded, “I haven’t seen that restriction here [in the code], and you wouldn’t be able to sort of invent one.”
This attempt to arbitrarily limit the authority of the ZBA was in direct opposition to state law.
At the October 10, 2017, ZBA meeting, this attorney, more than two hours into the meeting and apparently losing patience with the board’s deliberations, stated, “This board also is here not to deny variances. This is a Board of Zoning Appeals, whose major role is to consider granting variances…” The attorney’s pro-approval bias runs counter to the opinion of the NY Department of State. Unfortunately, the board’s chair picked up this bias and stated during a meeting, “…that’s generally what the board is for, to create exceptions…”
The ZBA, under appropriate circumstances, is empowered to grant people variances (exceptions) to the requirements of the law. Understandably, this is a power, which could be easily abused, and case law contains many examples, where the NY Court of Appeals has reversed ZBA approvals because the board exceeded its authority in granting them.
A few years back, this same attorney had written a booklet, something of a handbook, for members of planning and zoning boards. This booklet is very informative regarding the responsibilities of board members, but the attorney’s opinions are not consistently in accordance with this booklet.
At the May 8, 2018 ZBA meeting, the attorney’s young associate was advising the ZBA. In the course of the meeting, she expressed opinions encouraging the board to ignore the restrictions of the law, while considering the application before them. In so doing, she contradicted the law, the opinion of the state Court of Appeals and even her senior associate’s published booklet.
Mr. Oleske’s statement raises a number of issues which merit serious consideration, including the quality of the village’s legal advice. However, the members New Paltz village bard have reacted to Mr. Oleske’s concerns with a knee-jerk denial rather than responsible consideration and investigation.
Terry Dungan
New Paltz
Keep the faith
I’ve lost faith in movies, but not in popcorn.
Sparrow
Phoenicia
Missing Woodstock Times
A word or two about the possible and likely ending (from what I’ve heard) of the printing of Woodstock Times.
Geddy had a vision of a local paper which would carry the news and observations of small-town life in and around the colony of the arts from Mt. Tremper to Shandaken, back to Saugerties and beyond.
At that time, over 40 years ago, Saugerties was a long-distance phone call away.
The paper featured profiles of many residents, new arrivals in town, local openings and events from pancake breakfasts to Village Green beautification programs — always including cantankerous opinions.
It’s not that these will not be a part of Hudson Valley One — it’s just that like the trees along the road across the reservoir it will be streamlined and the original growth mowed over. Thanks, Bruce Ackerman, for the caricature covers, Swami Salami in his meditative pose, and especially Brian Hollander for his stewardship of the paper and for his gifted prose. We will find new forms as the publisher contends with corporate demands and costs. Even Spectrum News has stopped belonging to the Hudson Valley and now features programming from the five boroughs of New York City.
Maybe we will get to know more about our Gardiner neighbors and the politics of New Paltz, but I am keeping my last copy of Woodstock Times. It might be a collector’s item.
Dorothy Sernaker
Woodstock
Something is afoot
From Hudson Valley One: “The opening of hotels is a bit of a sore spot with Woodstock town supervisor Bill McKenna, who recently implored governor Andrew Cuomo to stop or limit short-term rentals often listed on sites like Airbnb.” Yet McKenna is leading the charge in having the town board consider a Memorandum of Understanding that would allow Selina, an international hotel and resort operator, to open and operate on a limited basis, without going through the normal permit process. Do you know why? I don’t.
Howard Harris
Woodstock
Trying to change history
By taking down the portraits of former speakers of the House who joined the Confederacy, Nancy Pelosi has now become a character in George Orwell’s 1984 whose job it was to remove any mention or photos of anyone who the party declared a non-person. This was a way the Party and Big Brother controlled and rewrote history.
Rather than trying to cover up history, we should teach it and learn from the mistakes. What’s scary about what she is doing is she’s attempting to repeat history where a small number of slaveholders ruled their states and started a war to maintain it. Now Nancy wants to control what history we’re allowed to know. Anyone associated with slavery should become a non-person and instead we should know their history, warts and all.
Why stop with Washington and Jefferson? how about Woodrow Wilson, who was a racist? FDR, who illegally interred Japanese Americans? Lyndon Johnson, who was a segregationist when he was a congressman and only changed to enhance his chances to become president? And then there was JFK who was a misogynist.
When we’re done, the only perfect people will remain which means we’ll have no history.
John Habersberger
New Paltz
Pandemic reflection
As of late in the stillness of my home, I find a stillness within myself. Going “somewhere” has been the GPS for most of my life. Although I have lived in the same small town the majority of my 72 years, my mind has not, nor has my soul.
The hummingbird that has come to the feeder brings joy that I would not have felt a few months ago. The bird song around the house was once background static and not the heartfelt cry of love. Or stay away, there’s a hawk. Or please come back to the nest and feed me.
Our car sits like an old rundown tractor that stopped in the middle of a field and has not moved for years. No longer does it carry me to destinations of distraction. What is within sight outside my windows and doors is what the world has wanted me to smell, see and touch.
The love in my home has begun following the same patterns as the basil and tomato plants we’ve planted. Roots are pushing deeper, promises of blossoms are being made. Storms are daily being forecasted, and the wires leading into our house crackle with warnings of change, fears of clashing political egos, and hurricanes and tornados, showing their largest teeth.
I go down into the basement to make a walking stick, or fix a broken door latch, or feed my imagination by pounding on a sculpture of two ravens in love.
The lessons of what can be found in the darkness have been offered to me all my life. Only as of late either my age or the pandemic slowed me enough to flip back through the pages of my life to read the places I have underlined. Chapters of recovering from going to war, navigating a divorce, healing from a brain tumor, major surgery on my heart. All have had the aftereffects of unearthing love, truth, wisdom and exposing the value of my internal world, being the only place I can influence how I truly live.
Is there weather inside my self? Yes, clouds carry rain and grief, earthquakes have shaken my bones.
But the weatherman is me, and I cannot forecast what is to happen. I can influence the aftermath of these events that shook and rattled my being. I now know that after the storms new life can grow, the sun will shine, I still hear promise in the voices of the winds. I decide if I am to clean up the fallen limbs and sweep the path back into my self, I get to express gratefulness of having survived again.
Larry Winters
New Paltz
Equality in a repressive society
Trying to get Americans to understand what it is like for Palestinians living in a racist police state should be getting easier now that we see how black people are treated in America. Black communities have been underserved and over policed for more than a century, condemning their children and grandchildren to grow up as second-class citizens.
This is the same caste system that Palestinians have faced since the State of Israel occupied all of the Holy Land. Palestinians get substandard schools, underfunded medical facilities and job discrimination. Moreover, they are continually targeted by the police for extrajudicial killings in the streets and in their homes.
They live a life of perpetual bondage to fear and depravation. Their children are arrested, beaten and made to confess to crimes that they didn’t commit. Each time a Palestinian child leaves the house, there is a possibility that he or she won’t be coming back.
Black Americans and Palestinians have both watched as corrupt and loathsome national leaders have targeted them for political advantage. Both peoples have at times rebelled, demanding equal rights and equality in a repressive society that offers little of either.
One day we will rise up together and overthrow these corrupt and racist leaders in Israel and the United States. We will march in the streets, as brothers and sisters, to reclaim our democracy for we the people. Until that day, we will organize for our final victory over the racist demagogues who seek to divide us.
Fred Nagel
Rhinebeck
America snoring
Gobsmacked, Oh no, I hear America … America snoring! We’ll have a fireside chat ’bout our country’s lunacy ’n’ embrace the mantra “Oh, say, can you see ….” While acrobatically pledging allegiance to everything but what’s important to thee. Speaking truth to power, I gotta lay in this bed made for the brave and the so-called free – Why? ’Cause America is (fill in your favorite expletive) snoring … I hear, yes I hear America snoring, snoring. America’s asleep…
End the madness and bring the monster down, a shared societal explosion needs to tear down the walls of systemic racial bias and humanistic corrosion…
Witnesses; carrying street signs of ironies, and an audaciousness of urgency with slogans, social commentary and the most piercing and affecting revelations. Injustice is the same as freedom for many when racism pervades daily American social and cultural life, rendering many of its citizens political invisibleness coupled with physical harm and despair because of the powers that be.
You’d think that America would have learned over the last 20 years that trying to fight a native population like BLM on their home soil doesn’t go well. It is time for truth and equal justice for all individuals in the USA. Enough of this constant strategy of divide and conqueror…
Is it better to be apart (at a distance from the main body) than be (a) part? A national community must join in unity and unf@*ck America in Twenty-twenty!
Neil Jarmel
West Hurley
Care to recycle?
If we don’t care how we do it, soon we won’t have that option.
Yesterday, at the Hurley transfer station it was distressing to see the contents of the Glass Only dumpster, a jumble of plastic and cans mixed with bottles and jars.
In the one for Plastic and Cans there were bottles, too, carelessly chucked in together. If that keeps happening, very soon we won’t have any recycling facilities there any more. What pains me is another example of how we — yes, we privileged whites — can be so arrogantly thoughtless and complicit in the state of the world.
Jude Asphar
Woodstock
Defend the police
It is emotionally supporting to know that just dialing 911 will bring my wife and me help, ready to fight for us if necessary.
Defunding the police is the single dumbest idea I have heard of in my life.
Police protect us. They stop drunk drivers, speeders and break-up fights in bars.
We are a nation of about 330 million people, and in Chicago 500 black men have been killed in the past year — three by cops, 497 by bad guys.
We’ll never understand those four cops in Minnesota killing George Floyd. Why did Lee Harvey Oswald kill JFK?
We’re human, we’re weird. Violence is never the answer. Ninety-nine percent of police officers protect and serve. Do not defund peace.
Paul Nathe
New Paltz
When you’re Woke
“Woke” is a slang term that has eased into the mainstream from some varieties of a dialect called African-American Vernacular English (sometimes called AAVE). From this view, awake is often rendered as woke, as in, “I was sleeping, but now I’m woke.” Woke is increasingly used as a byword for social awareness. Those who consider themselves Woke people believe that those who aren’t Woke are hindering the battle against injustice and that only Woke people can define injustice and determine the proper way to end it. The following song parody is a commentary on the present-day state of “Wokeness” in America from someone who considers himself Woke, but from a different perspective.
When you’re Woke (to the tune of the Doors’ “When you’re Strange”)
Woke is the word liberals use often
when you’re a liberal being “Woke’s good”
Woke people don’t…know…they are sleeping
they’re stuck in a nightmare of relative truths
(Bridge)
When you’re Woke
A Spartacus moment’s not rare
When you’re Woke
you think only Woke people care
When you’re Woke
When you’re Woke
When you’re Woke
People are Woke when…they…fight injustice
but injustice can…never be…color-blind
reason and logic they are unwanted
good is called evil when you are Woke
(Bridge)
When you’re Woke
Biden seems thoughtful and bright
When you’re Woke
a racist can only be white
When you’re Woke
When you’re Woke
When you’re Woke
So many people living in Woke land
Too many people living a lie
Woke people imagine…no Hell below us
Above us they think…there’s only sky
(Bridge)
When you’re Woke
you think that you’re…always right
When you’re Woke
a racist can only be white
When you’re Woke
When you’re Woke
When you’re Wo-oke…
(Bridge)
When you’re Woke
all gods must answer to man
When your Woke
a “true” god is your biggest fan
When you’re Woke
When you’re Woke
When you’re Wo-oke…
George Civile
Gardiner
Fact versus opinion
Fact: Joe Biden has clinched the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. He will be running against the incumbent president, Donald Trump. Of the two men, Biden is much more experienced for that high office than Donald Trump. Trump, compared to the previous 44 presidents, has had no experience whatsoever on local, state or national levels, either on legislative, judicial or executive branches of state or national government.
In addition, Trump has had no military experience, whereas 15 presidents had military service and political experience: Washington, Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Pierce, Lincoln, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, B. Harrison, McKinley, T. Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Nixon and G.H.W. Bush. There were three presidents who had no previous political experience but military only: Zachary Taylor, Ulysses Grant and Dwight Eisenhower. The other 26 presidents had a wide range of political experience before assuming this office.
Opinion: Based on experience alone, Trump has no business in the Oval Office. He has never served or represented his country in the categories listed above. He was placed in this office by an electorate that responded to his bombastic, carnival barker, ‘rah, rah’ attitude which appealed to the raw basic prejudices and hatreds underlying the veneer of civilized people. And here he is, our illustrious president, who has upset generations of established protocols for one purpose and one purpose alone: the dismantling of the federal bureaucracy and insertion of his ‘people’ into his scheme of what a government should be, i.e., a ‘dictatorship’.
And no better example of this is his appointment of Samuel M. Saul, as commissioner of Social Security. Saul, a women’s clothing magnate, made his reputation and fortune in this endeavor. Needless to say, he has and had no experience in Social Security. His biggest threat to this program is on two fronts: 1) he is answerable only to Donald Trump, 2) he belongs to an organization in Manhattan that does like this program (my opinion is this institute, organization is comprised of millionaires and billionaires, Republican, who would like nothing better than to butcher this program of Social Security. (I have not been able to ascertain any background of this institute.)
The two reasons are enough to strike fear in the hearts of people 65 to 95 years of age. Saul is the proverbial ‘fox in the hen house;’ for those of you who have ever lived on a farm and witnessed what a fox can do, you can only imagine.
The only protection seniors, which includes yours truly at age 81, have is to vote for Joe Biden; as seniors drawing benefits, forget your conservative, Republican, independent affiliations and concentrate on what you have and what you can stand to lose with this man and Donald Trump working together. Biden is an experienced politician who will leave our benefits alone. After all, it was FDR’s Democratic administration who passed the Social Security Act of 1935, not the Republicans!
And even if both chambers of Congress go Democratic, Saul is still accountable to Donald Trump and you can believe he will go after these benefits; NCPSSM informed me that there is a 15-20% cut in senior’s monthly benefits if the 2021 budget is passed. This budget has to pass Congress and if Congress is Democratic, there will be negotiations; I don’t for a second believe the Democrats will bargain away or reduce senior benefits; so, this is a brake. But they will find other ways to butcher this program.
Robert LaPolt
New Paltz
Defund the police
It’s time to defund the police. The resources that keep people safe and healthy are continuously defunded and it’s time to take the dollars set aside for law enforcement and put them into our communities. That means reinvesting funding into social services, like access to mental health professionals and addiction specialists to handle crises police are not trained for. It means protecting our right to vote by funding election protections and building the infrastructure to expand voting by mail. Finally, it means investing in taking care of our loved ones, whether that’s expanding access to affordable childcare or eldercare.
I call on our community and our elected leaders to join the movement to ensure safety for our communities.
Daniel O’Brien
Milton
Woodstock Library bond vote
The Woodstock Library board recently voted to keep on schedule and have the bond vote for a new library on November 3, 2020, the same day as the general election for president. We are well aware of the risks of having the bond vote in the year of the pandemic. No one can predict what our lives will be like in November. But the risks of delaying the vote seemed greater.
We feel compassion for those suffering economically, not to mention physically, from the vast disruption. We live and work here too. Only homeowners pay property tax, not renters, and the library tax is the smallest slice of the pie. Second homeowners comprise 60 percent of Woodstock taxpayers and account for 70 percent of town tax revenue (since their homes are mostly of higher assessments), so those who live here year-round are going to get a beautiful functional 21st-century library for not that much financial investment. We feel the amount of tax increase will not be significant, and we are proposing a zero-increase tax levy in our operational budget for the second year in a row.
The fact is that the current library building is totally unsuited for the new normal. Small, cramped spaces do not allow for social distancing. There are two to three staff who sit inside a tiny office behind the circulation desk. They can no longer occupy that space at the same time.
The public computers which are a lifeline for so many residents are not safely spaced. The air quality is already poor quality. There is only one bathroom. And of course, our second floor is not accessible for those who can’t manage stairs.
The new library will have open flexible spaces, advanced air filtration systems and our architect is already revising plans to make sure areas like public computers are configured to allow for current and likely future social distancing needs. Our planning committee is also revising our plan of service to make sure our future offerings are in sync with the changing needs of the population.
Many years of planning and much financial investment from private donors has brought us so close. Everyone has battle fatigue from the library wars, and both sides feel a public vote would settle the matter once and for all. When the bond passes, it will allow us to fundraise much more successfully — there are generous donors who are waiting to make sure this is really happening, that the new library will actually be built, before committing. We can pay down the bond much quicker and borrow less once this happens.
The longer we wait, the more it will cost. If we end up in a recession or depression, costs may be lower, and the economic stimulus of a major construction project in town will provide jobs and an infusion of money into the town. Interest rates are at an all time low, so this is an ideal time to borrow for the greater public good.
Governor Cuomo has asked us to reimagine. The new library will be the catalyst for our communal reimagining of life in Woodstock. People out of work or students who can’t afford college will need us more than ever. The new library will be a source of inspiration, pride and support.
Dorothea Marcus
President, Woodstock Library
Woodstock
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