Some or all candidates for the Town of New Paltz’s Police Commission didn’t hand in their homework on time and have been given an extension. Since not everyone sent in the written responses to a list of questions, Supervisor Neil Bettez pushed off a discussion of the candidates to allow everyone to complete the process.
Stana Weisburd, a member of the Village Board, wants those elected to the Town Board to know that they should hurry up with all of the reformations to the Town’s police department. Weisburd spoke during the Police Commission portion of the May 19 Town Council meeting and, in keeping with established practice, some council members broke with tradition by responding to comments made by a member of the public.
Weisburd complained that the efforts to recruit Police Commission applicants from minority communities has fallen upon Esi Lewis, the Town Council member with the darkest skin color. Additionally, Weisburd opined that it’s taking too long to adopt the recommendations made by the Police Reinvention Commission, of which Lewis was a member prior to running for this elected position. Finally, Weisburd criticized the response to one of those recommendations, to have a wide assortment of elected officials and public employees take the “Undoing Racism” course, including individuals in the School District and Village government.
Since shortly after a report was issued detailing recommendations that might be taken to improve policing and race relations, each Police Commission meeting has included time to discuss one or two of those recommendations. Several have been adopted, such as recording race information for all traffic stops, while others — like sending cadets to the academy in Dutchess County for training rather than the one on this side of the river — have been rejected during these open discussions.
When council members wish to engage in a back-and-forth dialogue with someone who has spoken during the public comment period, it’s usually preceded by the phrase, “I don’t want to get into a back-and-forth.” Julie Seyfert-Lillis was the first to use that or similar words during the May 19 meeting, before telling Weisburd not to assume that Lewis was alone in those recruitment efforts. In response, Weisburd suggested that the efforts of the other elected officials may be limited to speaking only to white people.
The decision about the “Undoing Racism” recommendation was to have a limited number of Town employees and officials take the course and evaluate its value, Weisburd reminded members of the council. The discussions at the time touched upon the inability of Town officials to compel School District or Village personnel to do anything, and finding a way to pay for all employees to take this course, which was estimated during a January, 2021 Town Council meeting to run about $42,000. When speaking about this at the May 19 meeting, Weisburd expressed doubts that council members would be qualified to evaluate the effectiveness of the course, and added that they hadn’t even taken it yet anyway.
“Has the Village Board taken it yet?” Bettez asked.
“I’m working on that,” said Weisburd.
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