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Road reconstruction has been planned for decades
George may be gone, but it's not for good.
City contractors on Thursday (June 27) removed the George Washington bust from its island at Teller and Wolcott avenues in Beacon as they prepare to reconstruct the tricky intersection. The monument will be stored at the city's highway garage while the intersection is rebuilt as a "T" in the coming weeks to improve visibility and pedestrian and driver safety.
Once complete, the bronze monument will be installed with landscaping on the north side of Teller. The Daughters of the American Revolution placed it at the intersection in 1999 to mark the bicentennial of Washington's death.
The move is one of the first visible changes to come as part of a 14-month, $9 million project to rebuild Teller and Fishkill Avenue, as it's known north of Main Street. The nearly mile-long stretch from Teller and Wolcott to Fishkill and Blackburn Avenue, near Ron's Ice Cream, will be repaved, with sidewalks along the corridor to be rebuilt and widened to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Storm drains will be replaced. The traffic signal at Main Street will have a leading interval installed to give pedestrians time to enter the crosswalk before vehicles are given a green light. Lanes for turning onto Main will be improved for trucks negotiating the tight intersection.
A handful of parking spaces will be added on Fishkill Avenue between Main Street and Verplanck Avenue. Crosswalks will be rebuilt and "speed tables" - flat, raised traffic-calming devices - will be installed near Ron's Ice Cream, where vehicles coming from Main can have trouble seeing pedestrians.
The project is expected to be complete by August 2025.
The work was scheduled to begin in 2023, but contractors' bids were nearly twice as high as the $7 million the city had budgeted. However, the project actually dates back further than last year - much further.
City officials began cobbling together funding to repave the thoroughfare just after the turn of the century. In June 2001, the City Council approved spending $170,000 for design work on the Teller Avenue stretch. Later that year, the Fishkill Avenue segment was added.
It's difficult to trace the starts and stops since then, but by the economic downturn of 2008, the work had been put on a back burner. Mayor Lee Kyriacou, who served nine terms on the City Council, recalled "more than a couple of times being informed that we were working on it. It was always in the background."
City Administrator Chris White said that when he was hired at the end of 2020, the city still needed to acquire easements from about three dozen property owners for the ADA-compliant sidewalks. Anthony "Zep" Thomaselli, who retired as highway superintendent in 2017, stepped forward. "He knew a lot of people and worked with the right-of-way acquisition company to get the necessary paperwork and get things filed," White said.
By late 2022, with the rights-of-way secured, the city was primed to start work. But when the bids came in high, White shortened the project from the Town of Fishkill line to Blackburn. He also removed $1 million for granite curbs and secured $2 million in federal transportation aid through Dutchess County.
Reporter Jeff Simms drove the length of Fishkill and Teller Avenues from Blackburn Avenue to Wolcott to show the route of the $9 million in improvements planned in Beacon. (The video speed has been accelerated.)
With a budget of $9 million - and 95 percent of it coming from state and federal sources - the city put the project out to bid in the spring. This time the bids came in low, leaving White about $800,000 to "see how much more sidewalk I can buy" toward the Fishkill line.
The City Council had already authorized $1.2 million to replace a sewer line beneath Fishkill Avenue, and the city penciled $1 million into its capital pipeline to replace a century-old water line along the same stretch. The council is expected to vote on t...
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Fishkill officials pan housing proposal
As part of Gov. Kathy Hochul's quest to build 15,000 homes and apartments to address New York's housing crisis, the state on June 21 announced that Conifer Realty has been selected to redevelop the shuttered Downstate Correctional Facility just north of Beacon.
The Rochester-based company said it will convert the 80-acre former maximum-security prison in the Town of Fishkill over the next decade into a mixed-use campus with community space and up to 1,300 housing units.
Downstate, which opened in 1979, sits north of Interstate 84. It was among a half-dozen correctional facilities closed by the state in 2022 due to declining inmate populations. It is the first of those facilities with a redevelopment plan.
Conifer's project must be approved by Fishkill and the Empire State Development director. Town Supervisor Ozzy Albra, who on Wednesday (June 26) called the proposal a "bad deal for the taxpayers," said he will request that the Fishkill Town Board, rather than the Planning Board, be named the lead agency to review the project and requests for zoning changes. The site is currently zoned for one house per acre.
An Empire State Development representative said the request for proposals issued for the site will remain open until a contract with Conifer is finalized. The agency would not say how many proposals it received.
If the Conifer plan moves forward, the first phase of construction in January 2026 would include 375 housing units, with a minimum of 20 percent designated as "permanently affordable" for households earning less than 80 percent of the area's annual median income. (According to the most recent Census Bureau data, the AMI for a household in Dutchess County is $94,578.) The complex would include two-story duplexes and triplexes, with at least 25 percent having three bedrooms.
As much as $8 million in state grants could be available for the project.
Conifer, which has developed more than 21,000 affordable apartments in some 300 communities, said it will engage with local governments and the community to determine the housing plan for the next two phases. The first phase will be rentals but the company said it would consider selling units in the second and third phases of construction.
The state said the development would also feature a playground, a walking trail and common areas. The project advances recommendations of the Prison Redevelopment Commission, a 15-member panel created by Hochul in 2022 to consider repurposing closed prisons.
Other Prison Projects
A minority-owned partnership was awarded the right last year to turn the former Lincoln Correctional Facility in New York City into 105 affordable housing units plus arts and community space. The prison closed in 2019.
New York State last year issued a request for proposals to redevelop Bayview Correctional Facility in New York City, with an emphasis on housing.
Empire State Development has transferred the Livingston Correctional Facility in Groveland to the Livingston County Industrial Development Agency, advancing another recommendation from the Prison Redevelopment Commission's 2022 report.
The commission issued a report that year recommending that the state prioritize housing in its redevelopment efforts. It also recommended that the state launch a program to make grants available to developers and/or municipalities that acquire closed facilities, create a technical assistance fund to help with infrastructure acquisition and maintenance, and support outreach and consensus-building in impacted communities.
But Albra said on Wednesday that, if the Downstate project is built as proposed, it would overwhelm Fishkill. The development "would be bigger than the Village of Fishkill, which has its own government," he said.
Albra questioned how Routes 52 and 9D, which are often congested near the Fishkill/Beacon line, could handle an influx of residents living in 1,300 new apartments and homes, even if introduced over several...
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Beacon to vote Monday on $1.5 million settlement
Cold Spring and Philipstown this week approved a proposed $1.5 million settlement with a utility company that abandoned a contract to sell renewable electricity to residents and businesses. The Beacon City Council is expected to vote on the proposal on Monday (July 1).
The village and town boards each approved resolutions on Wednesday (June 26) authorizing the settlement with Columbia Utilities, which for two years has fought a lawsuit filed by 10 municipalities that jointly purchased fixed-cost energy under a community choice aggregation (CCA) program called Hudson Valley Community Power.
Among the CCA's other former members, the Town of Red Hook, the Village of New Paltz and the Town of New Paltz have approved the proposal. The City of Poughkeepsie and the towns of Clinton, Marbletown and Saugerties have not yet voted.
If approved by the state judge in Ulster County handling the lawsuit, Columbia Utilities would admit no wrongdoing but pay $1 million into a settlement fund by Aug. 1 and the balance in monthly $50,000 payments by June 1, 2025.
Up to 20 percent of the payout could be used for legal expenses, plus additional funds for administrative fees and taxes. The balance would be distributed in equal amounts to customers who were enrolled in the program as of July 18, 2022.
Customers would be able to opt out of the settlement; if more than 10 percent choose that option, Columbia can withdraw. That would negate a compromise forged during a daylong mediation in April involving the parties, Central Hudson and the state Public Service Commission.
After that session, the municipalities concluded that a settlement would be "fair, reasonable, adequate and in the best interests" of the CCA customers, according to settlement documents.
Columbia Utilities had agreed in 2021 to a three-year contract to supply the 10 municipalities with electricity from renewable sources at 6.6 cents per kilowatt-hour for residents and 7.1 cents for small businesses. Residents and businesses were automatically enrolled but could opt out and continue receiving electricity from Central Hudson.
According to program administrator Joule Assets, the 24,000 customers who stayed with Hudson Valley Community Power saved about $7 million before the deal with Columbia Utilities fell apart (including $941,380 in Philipstown, $216,050 in Cold Spring and $651,800 in Beacon) and prevented the release of 25,560 metric tons of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
In February 2022, while CCA customers were paying a fixed rate of 6.6 cents per kilowatt-hour, Central Hudson's variable rate rose to more than 20 cents because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its effect on energy markets.
That same month, according to the lawsuit, Columbia Utilities began telling Joule and the municipalities that it couldn't fulfill the contract, blaming Central Hudson's ongoing problems with its billing system.
What Do I Pay?
In Cold Spring, the CCA's default fixed rate for residents and small businesses through June 2025 in Cold Spring is 12.24 cents per kilowatt-hour for 100 percent renewable energy.
In Philipstown and Nelsonville, the default fixed rate is 11.24 cents for 50 percent renewable energy.
The standard fixed CCA rate is 9.87 cents. The variable rate charged by Central Hudson, which continues to handle billing, delivery and repairs, was 7.58 cents on June 12 and has averaged 8.3 cents over the past year. It hit 12 cents in March.
Customers can opt out of the CCA or change their rate by calling Hudson Valley Community Power at 845-859-9099 on weekdays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
In April 2022, the company notified the Public Service Commission that it intended to transfer CCA customers back to Central Hudson, spurring the lawsuit. Although a judge temporarily barred Columbia Utilities from transferring customers, it happened anyway when the New York Independent System Operator banned the company from the energy ma...
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The first time I opened the fridge at Cornell University's Hudson Valley Research Laboratory, it was full of stink bugs.
This was a feature, not a bug (sorry). It was 2018, and the researchers were studying ways to control the burgeoning invasive brown marmorated stink bugs, which were stored in dozens of round, clear containers. Some held stink bugs, and some held stink bugs and samurai wasps, which parasitize stink-bug eggs.
Earlier this month, I returned to the lab in Highland and again opened the fridge. The stink bugs were gone. In their place were mesh containers with Ailanthus altissima plants (tree of heaven) and black beetles with white spots. The beetles would become the large, colorful spotted lanternfly that people are encouraged to squash.
"We want to know what the best conditions are for growing the insects," said entomologist Andres Antolinez. "Once we master that, we'll start testing" how to destroy them.
Controlling spotted lanternflies is a relatively new field of study. In Asia, parasitoid wasps, like samurai wasps and stink bugs, keep the population in check. Although praying mantises and assassin bugs will eat lanternflies, the insects have no natural predators in the U.S.
The spotted lanternfly showed up in Pennsylvania 10 years ago in a shipment of ornamental garden rocks. It feeds by sucking sap from plants and smooth-barked trees. The forest managers I spoke with when the bugs invaded New York were terrified that they would devastate our maples and black walnuts.
The good news is that our forests can withstand lanternfly damage. Grape vines, however, are less resistant, which threatens the Hudson Valley wine industry. "You can lose 80 percent of your crop," said Antolinez. "That's a lot of money."
Lanternflies also like apples; the bugs secrete a sweet substance called honeydew that can turn into sooty mold, ruining the fruit. Antolinez worries that U-pickers might be turned off by swarms of enormous, winged insects spreading goo.
Pesticides are an option, but they are expensive and attack beneficial insects. So the Cornell lab has been experimenting with low-tech solutions in its acres of grape and apple plantings.
Stepping outside, Antolinez showed me a contraption attached to tree of heaven near the parking lot: a plastic jar and net. I joked that the jar looked like the tubs that hold peanut butter-filled pretzel nuggets. "That's exactly what they are," he said. "You can buy a trap like this for $33. We make them ourselves for $7." Antolinez said the traps catch hundreds of lanternflies a week.
There's another peanut butter connection. Tree of heaven is the lanternfly's favorite food and, like the bug itself, it's an invasive. Gardeners are encouraged to dig it up, but the plant resembles native black walnuts and sumacs. To make sure it's tree of heaven, Antolinez suggests crushing a leaf. If it reeks of rotten peanut butter, it's tree of heaven.
One way to use tree of heaven against lanternflies is to plant a perimeter around a field of grape vines and only spray the tree of heaven with pesticides. But that can be risky, because tree of heaven spreads fast. Antolinez showed me another way: traps similar to the plastic-jar contraption, mounted on poles, with a mesh bag filled with diced tree of heaven trunks. Lanternflies are drawn to the pole, which is covered in sticky tape.
A plastic cone over the tape minimizes the amount of other instincts or birds who might get ensnared.
Antolinez said the spotted lanternfly population has exploded this year in Orange and Rockland counties and, although it seems to be lagging in Dutchess and Putnam, he believes the pest is hiding out in the deeply forested sections of the Highlands. Still, he's optimistic it can be controlled.
"We can't go back," he said. "It's here to stay. But we can learn how to adapt."
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Compost reduces greenhouse gases
When people trash their leftover salad, chicken bones, uneaten Brussels sprouts and other remnants of evening dinner, they likely don't see themselves contributing to climate change. But they are, and the reason is basic.
Each year, 120 billion pounds of food are discarded in the U.S. According to the Harvard University School of Public Health, 95 percent goes to landfills. When that waste decomposes, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas that scientists say accounts for 30 percent of the increase in global temperatures.
Earlier this month, the Village of Cold Spring joined the Town of Philipstown's fledgling food scrap program, becoming another of more than 700 communities nationwide that operate them, reaching 12 percent of U.S. households.
The Philipstown program, which began in 2022 as a project of its Climate Smart Task Force, is now collecting 1,000 pounds of household scraps each week, the equivalent of 26 tons per year.
Karen Ertl, a member of Philipstown's Food Scrap Advisory Committee, said it researched programs across the country before selecting the Town of Scarsdale in Westchester County as a model. Michelle Sterling, a leader in the Scarsdale program, said it has composted more than 3 million pounds of scraps since 2017 and helped at least 50 other communities start programs.
"The reception from residents in every place we've helped has been overwhelmingly positive," Sterling said. "People are so happy to have a municipally run program that allows them to recycle."
Food scraps collected in Philipstown are processed at Sustainable Materials Management in Cortlandt Manor, which handles waste for more than 30 municipalities and produces 1,000 cubic yards of compost yearly.
Michael Fiumara, a compost operations specialist at the firm, said municipalities pay about $60 per ton to dispose of the scraps. The average fee at landfills in the Northeast is $84.44 per ton, according to a 2023 survey by the Environmental Research & Education Foundation.
Fiumara said the composting process includes mixing tree debris with the scraps and forcing air into the pile.
"Temperatures quickly rise to 160 to 170 degrees inside the pile, killing all weed seeds and pathogens," he said. "Over the next 30 days, temperatures slowly decrease as the bacteria and microorganisms break down the food." After another 30 days, the composted material is ready to be screened.
Fiumara said anaerobic conditions in landfills cause decomposing food to create methane, but Sustainable Materials Management's process of forcing air into compost piles maintains an aerobic environment.
"When food scraps decompose aerobically, they produce carbon dioxide, water and heat, which is much better for the environment," he said.
The environmental benefits of spreading compost in gardens, lawns and fields include improved soil structure and health, increased moisture and nutrient retention and carbon sequestration, he said.
Sustainable Materials Management sells its compost to landscaping companies, garden centers and the public. Towns also purchase it, often giving it back to residents as a thank-you for participating.
How to Recycle Food Scraps
Residents of Philipstown, including Cold Spring and Nelsonville, can join the program by registering at Town Hall at 238 Main St. and purchasing a $20 starter kit (checks only) that includes a countertop pail, storage/transport bin and compostable bags.
In Cold Spring, scraps can be dropped off from 8 a.m. to sunset on Tuesdays at a collection bin on Kemble Avenue between The Boulevard and the West Point Foundry Preserve. Scraps can also be left at the Philipstown Recycling Center on Lane Gate Road on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. or on Saturdays at the Cold Spring Farmers Market at Boscobel.
All manner of food scraps can be composted, including fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, dairy, bread, rice, pasta, raw and cooked food, bones and seafood shells as well as cut flowers, napkins, paper t...
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Says lawsuit over parking could force building sale
A year after filing a lawsuit against the City of Beacon over access to a city-owned parking lot, the leadership of St. Andrew & St. Luke Episcopal Church said it is weighing the sale of its 124-year-old South Avenue building.
The Episcopal Diocese of New York, which owns the property, could sell if the lawsuit "drags on further, or if there's a poor resolution that doesn't provide us with access as we've had in the past," said the Rev. John Williams, the rector at St. Andrew, on Wednesday (June 19).
The church and the city have been deadlocked in court since June 2023, when the city erected a fence around a gravel lot behind the church to store equipment and materials for the construction of the new Beacon fire station next door.
Within days, the church filed a lawsuit in Dutchess County court arguing that the city could not restrict parishioners' access to the lot because of a 1987 agreement between the church and the volunteer Lewis Tompkins Hose Co., the former owner of the lot, guaranteeing that both could use it.
The city, which purchased the lot and opened it for public parking in 2020, leased adjacent land to create a temporary, 22-space lot and also designated spaces on South Avenue and at City Hall for the church. But the two sides continued to spar.
In February, the church asked Judge Thomas Davis for a summary judgment, or to decide the dispute without a trial or witness testimony. The city was expected to oppose the motion, but Davis granted Beacon's attorneys three extensions because both sides indicated they were working toward a settlement. Last week, Davis gave the city what he said would be its final 45-day extension.
On June 11, Robert Zitt, representing the city, told Davis "the parties remain close to a resolution," but David Chen, for St. Andrew, said negotiations had broken down over the amount the city would pay St. Andrew to terminate the 1987 agreement.
Chen also said that, "in broad strokes," the sides had discussed St. Andrew withdrawing its suit "in exchange for consideration including [Beacon's] assistance in obtaining whatever zoning and building permits are necessary" to facilitate the sale of the 15 South Ave. property and renovation of the church's 850 Wolcott Ave. campus. The church moved its Sunday services to the latter in April.
The Rev. Williams said Wednesday that the church needs to extend the Wolcott Avenue sanctuary to install restrooms and upgrade the heating and cooling systems. It also would need to construct a building to move the food pantry, Narcotics Anonymous meetings and special events out of South Avenue.
Chen told the judge that he asked the city attorneys in April to draft language "for the building permits needed for all this work" and for "the special permitting needed for residential development" of the South Avenue property.
"We understand that the city may not be able to approve permits that haven't been formally applied for," he wrote. "But we want to get a sense of what kind of commitment we can reasonably expect in exchange for dismissing the suit."
Chen said a Beacon attorney told him in May that the city "can't agree to preapprove a project" and that negotiations broke down soon after. He asked the judge to deny the city's most recent request for an extension.
That elicited a response from Zitt, who said the church had inappropriately divulged details of the settlement talks. Chen's letter "not only dismisses the legitimate reasons for the extension request with a tone that could be deemed unprofessional but also violates the confidentiality typically afforded to settlement negotiations," Zitt wrote.
The city requested another extension because settlement talks had just broken down a day earlier, he said.
As part of the $14.7 million fire station project, the disputed lot is being paved and striped for 52 parking spaces, including ones compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and will be outfitted ...
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Portion of settlement will be customer credits
New York State on Thursday (June 20) approved a $62.59 million settlement with Central Hudson over billing problems that plagued the utility.
The Public Service Commission said Central Hudson shareholders, not customers, will be required to pay the $35 million it cost to fix the billing system and $6.3 million to move to regular monthly meter readings. In addition, shareholders will pay $4 million to ratepayers in allocations made by the PSC.
The settlement will end the state investigation into billing system failures. Central Hudson will pay another $2 million if it does not implement monthly meter reading for the vast majority of customers by Oct. 31. The utility had asked for a February 2026 deadline.
The settlement followed a 123-page report issued by an independent monitor, which proposed that the utility end its practice of making bimonthly estimates. It found that Central Hudson had resolved its most critical billing issues. The PSC noted that in April, complaints to the agency about Central Hudson had fallen 88 percent from a year before.
Central Hudson has 309,000 electric and 84,000 natural gas customers in the Mid-Hudson region.
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Beacon artist, known for portraits, changes direction
After three decades in the art world, Coulter Young is shifting gears and changing course.
But he's also looking back. The Beacon resident will host a reception from 3 to 5 p.m. on Saturday (June 22) at H-Art Gallery in Peekskill for his latest show, Coulter D. Young IV, 30 Year Retrospective Buffalo-Peekskill-Beacon.
A series of 75 reproductions displayed on a wall, including images of plein air paintings from the early years, reflects the trajectory of his life in art. The vast majority present impressionistic portraits of famous folks, mostly musicians.
Three new ones depict scenes from The Bone God, a graphic novel set in a fantastical Hudson Valley location. "I'm aiming to retire from the portraits," says Young, the art teacher at the Garrison School.
The Bone God crystallized after Allyn Peterson, who heads a Beacon firm called Rylomi that specializes in "psychic landscapes," sent an open call for illustrators. Young, the early bird, responded first.
Now, he's dealing with guidelines and deadlines. "The whole thing, from the concept to the collaboration to having an end date is all new, but it's fun," he says.
The characters assigned to Young so far - the Water Knight, Fire King and Wood Queen - are rendered in a technique distinct from past portraits. "I'm looking for my own separate style," he says. "I'm not a comic book or graphic novel person, but I'm studying them. The intention is to develop a whole new look."
"Fire King"
"Water Knight"
"The Wood Queen"
He also shifted mediums - from oil on canvas to acrylic on wood - and added touches of pen and ink.
About 20 years ago, with his portrait series, Young also altered his process by ditching pastel crayons on paper and switching to oil paint on wood or canvas. An element shared between his former and most recent styles include creating drip marks by flicking drops of turpentine from a brush onto the surface.
His 30-year milestone, along with the show's namesake locations, dates from Young's first serious pastel on cardboard featuring Rob Derhak, frontman for the jam-band moe.
The two met at SUNY Buffalo, where Young studied art. He also designed the cover for the band's 1994 album, Headseed, which shows a figure in overalls sprouting a flower instead of a cranium.
For a decade, Young had a studio to Peekskill and lived in Wappingers Falls. After hearing that Dia planned to move into Beacon, he bought a house in 2003.
The Derhak portrait kickstarted a series of 125 profiles with vivid colors that pop as if backlit. In this phase, he piled on the paint and used clashing hues. Bob Marley's face, for instance, is clayish-red on one side, soft yellow on the other and split by a blue blotch that stretches from his forehead down beyond the nose.
Similar to Monet's churches and landscapes, many portraits, like the Marley, Marilyn, Jerry Garcia and Louis Armstrong, cohere when a viewer steps back.
After entering the world of graphic artists, Young says he was surprised to discover a robust underground arts movement in Beacon.
"I've lived here for 20 years but met so many artists, writers and musicians I've never seen before," he says. "It's shocking."
H-Art Gallery, at 1 S. Division St., in Peekskill, is open from noon to 3 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Call 914-788-2038.
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Indian Point returns funds and revises contract
Members of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission were on hand at the June 13 meeting of a board overseeing the decommissioning of the Indian Point nuclear power plant south of Philipstown to explain how they monitor the funds being used by the New Jersey company doing the work.
They also delved into the reasons why the NRC recently cited Holtec International for two violations, including improper use of the decommissioning trust fund.
For decades, ratepayers who received energy from Indian Point had a fee tacked onto their bills that went into the trust fund in anticipation of the plant's eventual shutdown. When Holtec began closing the plant in 2021, the fund contained $2.1 billion. As of March, there was $1.8 billion left, and Holtec says it is staying within budget.
However, the fund can only be used for activities related to closing the plant and reducing its radioactivity. According to the NRC, Holtec spent $63,000 on donations to a high school fashion show, a community parade, local baseball and softball teams and a charity golf event. The NRC said Holtec has repaid the money with interest.
The NRC questioned two other expenditures but determined they were legitimate: fees paid to the Department of Energy and for lobbyists in Albany to explain to legislators what was going on at the plant. The NRC did not know if Holtec was spending trust-fund money to lobby against a bill to prevent the company from discharging radioactive wastewater into the Hudson River. Holtec is suing New York State over the bill, which became law in August 2023.
Emiljana Ulaj, a Westchester County lawmaker who sits on the oversight board, said that when Holtec was asked how the company was funding the lawsuit, it wouldn't respond. The NRC said that Holtec hasn't yet indicated in its accounting reports that it is using the money that way, so the agency has not ruled whether the expenses would be allowed.
The NRC also cited Holtec for language in its termination agreements that the agency determined could be interpreted as preventing former employees from talking to the agency about safety violations. "Any radiological worker has to be free to come to the NRC to report a safety concern. There can be no blockage, no inhibition to that," said Paul Krohn of the NRC.
A Holtec representative said the language was meant to protect intellectual property, not silence whistleblowers, but that the agreement has been revised.
When asked if previous agreements might have discouraged workers from reporting violations, Krohn said that, during his site visits, employees "don't hesitate to walk up to us when they see the NRC hat and provide us information. If that were slipping, we would pick it up."
In 2023 and the first half of 2024, Indian Point workers made 15 complaints. The NRC told The Current it could not comment on specifics but that only one allegation has been substantiated. It said that, across the country, the most common complaint is of "a work environment in which employees are fearful of raising safety concerns for fear of losing their jobs and/or disciplinary actions."
A recent report by the NRC noted that the number of allegations nationally from nuclear workers "has been trending down for many years, but the trend slowed in 2020 and reversed in 2021. Furthermore, the numbers stayed high and increased in 2023 to levels not seen since 2018."
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Superfund law approved, but others don't get to floor
Environmentalists and lawmakers began the final week of New York's legislative session with optimism, as several key pieces of climate legislation moved through the Senate and Assembly.
Then, on June 5, Gov. Kathy Hochul surprised everyone by announcing that she was "indefinitely pausing" New York City's plan to charge drivers for entering Manhattan below 60th Street, which was to begin at the end of June.
The congestion-pricing plan had been expected to raise $1 billion a year for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, revenue that would help the agency obtain a $15 billion bond for upgrades, including on Metro-North's Hudson Line, which serves the Highlands.
The announcement and its effect on the MTA's budget upended negotiations on two climate-related bills, according to Richard Schrader, director of New York government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council. New York is attempting to reach ambitious goals set in 2019 by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which says that, among other benchmarks, at least 70 percent of New York's energy must come from renewable sources by 2030.
"We're behind the eight ball," said Schrader. "I don't think it's fatal. But, man, we have to move quickly."
Not everyone was on board with congestion pricing. New Jersey sued to stop it, and Rep. Mike Lawler and Rep. Pat Ryan, whose districts include Philipstown and Beacon, respectively, are against it. But as recently as last month, the governor endorsed it. Last week, Hochul changed course, saying she feared the plan would weigh on New York City's economy.
Steven Higashide, a Beacon resident who is director of the clean transportation program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, believes "blowing a $15 billion hole in the MTA capital program will have a much larger impact on New York's ability to recover from the pandemic. This could mean higher fares if the MTA has to borrow more money for basic repairs. It's hardly a win for the Hudson Valley."
For passenger vehicles, the congestion-pricing toll was set at $15 during the day and $3.75 at night, with discounts for lower-income drivers, disabled commuters and those who pay tunnel tolls. According to an analysis by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, it would have affected only 2 percent of Putnam County commuters and 1.1 percent in Dutchess.
The state has already spent $500 million to install cameras and hire staff, money that can't be recouped, said Neal Zuckerman, a Philipstown resident who represents Putnam County on the MTA board and is chair of its finance committee.
The MTA had planned to spend billions of dollars on upgrades such as emissions-free electric buses, making more subway stations accessible to riders with disabilities, improving the pumping system to combat subway flooding and improving signals to reduce delays.
Zuckerman said that finding funds to provide basic services is now the priority. "We can never re-enter the era that we were in the '70s," he said. "We're all focused on figuring out how we can make the MTA fiscally sustainable."
Schrader noted that it's unclear if the governor's order, made at a news conference, is binding. "We don't see anything in terms of a legal brief or any type of a memo of understanding," he said.
Nevertheless, advocates believe Hochul's announcement killed the momentum for two climate bills, the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act and the New York Home Energy Affordable Transition Act (NY HEAT), by forcing legislators to focus on the MTA budget gap.
The nonprofit Beyond Plastics has been lobbying for the Packaging Reduction Act, which would require packaging to be reusable or recyclable and exclude 15 chemicals, including polyvinyl chloride (PVC), PFAS, formaldehyde and mercury. Companies that use packaging that can't be recycled would be responsible for disposal costs.
"It's about the polluters taking responsibility for their plastic po...
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Continues through Thursday as temperatures soar
The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for Putnam and Dutchess counties that goes into effect at noon today (June 18) and continues through 8 p.m. Thursday.
The heat index is expected to reach 95 to 100 degrees during the afternoon and early evening each day. The service said an advisory is issued "when the combination of heat and humidity is expected to make it feel like it is 95 to 99 degrees for two or more consecutive days, or 100 to 104 degrees for any length of time."
In the Highlands, the Desmond-Fish library in Garrison, the Butterfield Library in Cold Spring and the Howland library in Beacon are designated cooling centers. See their sites for hours. The Haldane school district announced it would dismiss classes early on Thursday because of the heat.
National Weather Service Heat Risk
CDC Heat & Health Tracker
Tweets by NWSNewYorkNY
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Child care shortages weigh on parents, providers
Kelly Hines' criteria during her long job search were simple: If an employer required even one day a week in the office, she didn't apply.
For over a year, one frustrating search stifled another for the Beacon resident, a freelance graphic designer and art director. She and her husband struggled to find affordable care for their 2-year-old daughter, floundering in a limbo faced by many families needing child care.
"We're too wealthy to get any help but too poor to afford care," said Hines.
Denise Giannasca also faces a challenging search.
Six years ago, she opened Stepping Stones Childcare and Development in Philipstown. On April 29, Stepping Stones broke ground on an expansion that will create room for additional children.
With a waiting list of three dozen families, Giannasca said the challenge isn't demand but finding qualified employees in a field where the average hourly pay is $16.92, according to the state. "We can't pay what people are really worth," said Giannasca, who just posted four job openings for teachers.
Wage and benefits support for workers and the expansion of financial assistance for parents are two key recommendations in an April report from the state Department of Labor and the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), which regulates programs operating more than three hours a day and administers subsidies to qualified families.
In Putnam County, weekly costs for full-day child care range from $245 to $327 and, in Dutchess, from $230 to $343, according to the Child Care Council of Dutchess and Putnam, based in Poughkeepsie. The rates are higher for infants and can be "almost like paying for a mortgage," said Adeline Arvidson, a counselor for the organization.
The Child Care Council assists providers and parents, offering classes on topics such as first aid, recordkeeping and active-shooter training, and guiding families through the process of finding care and financial aid for children up to age 12.
"Any family you talk to, whether it's a single parent or a two-parent household with two incomes, child care is a burden financially," Arvidson said.
Providers are also burdened. Despite $2 billion in federal pandemic aid earmarked in New York for child care programs, Dutchess lost 76 programs between 2020 and 2023, and Putnam County, 19, according to the Child Care Council. "There's been a few new ones, but not enough to compensate for the difference," said Arvidson.
Nearly half of the programs that closed in Putnam between 2020 and 2023 have not been replaced. In Dutchess, it's more than a third.
A shortage existed before the pandemic, according to a March report by Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress. It found that the roster of licensed providers fell by 33 percent in Dutchess and 34 percent in Putnam between 2007 and 2023. Beacon had four fewer providers than the 19 from 2007, according to the report, which provided municipal-level data for the region's 13 cities.
There would be a need even if all the programs in Dutchess and Putnam operated at the capacity allowed by their licenses - Putnam would have one slot for every 2.5 children under age 6 and Dutchess would have one slot for every 3.1 children, with the gaps widening for older children.
But without enough teachers to meet minimum staffing requirements, some programs are struggling to reach capacity and most have a waiting list, said Arvidson. That shortage is partly why the Child Care Assistance Program has millions in unspent subsidies for care, according to the new state report.
Dutchess spent less than half its allocation of subsidies in 2022 and Putnam less than 20 percent, according to Pattern for Progress, which said problems with marketing, ease of use and other areas have hampered the program's reach.
"Some providers are telling me it's a little bit better than last year," said Arvidson. "But they're still struggling to get to their licensed capacity because they can't increase the num...
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Superintendent says changes possible in the fall
The Beacon City School District is considering changes to its policy on student cellphone usage, a thorny subject that many schools have wrestled with.
Superintendent Matt Landahl said on Wednesday (June 12) that changes could be implemented in the fall to "strengthen our policy" but provided no details. Landahl said he plans to update the community this summer.
The district's existing policy, adopted in 2021, says that phones are allowed during "non-instructional time" if students follow the district's code of conduct and the acceptable use policy. According to the code, teachers and administrators can confiscate phones if students are violating the policy.
However, several parents asked the school board in April for more restrictions. One parent, Hana Ramat, a psychotherapist whose son will enter Rombout Middle School in the fall, said this week that she hopes the district will require students to turn in their phones while at school.
Echoing comments made in recent years by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Ramat said there's an "epidemic of mental illness" among children and teens. Research, she said, suggests that smartphones, which were introduced about 20 years ago, have been a major factor.
"Especially with young girls, the research is very clear and the impacts are severe," Ramat said, citing eating disorders, depression, anxiety and body dysmorphia as conditions all potentially exacerbated by online culture. "The social media algorithms lead you down these roads, and it's very disturbing how fast it goes," she said.
Ramat said she and her husband don't plan to give their son a smartphone until his mid-teen years. In the interim, they're considering a phone without internet access or a device like an Apple Watch that he can use for basic communications.
Other schools in the region, both public and private, have adopted or are close to instituting no-phone policies.
Haldane High School last year introduced "No-Cell Motels" - repurposed shoe organizers in which students place their phones during class. One school year into the policy, "there are fewer distractions and the bathroom breaks are much shorter," said Tom Virgadamo, the president of the Haldane teachers' union.
The private Manitou School in Philipstown and Hudson Hills Academy in Beacon have also banned phones in class. The Kingston school board is considering a proposal requiring middle school and high school students to leave their phones in locked bags, while the Newburgh school board agreed last fall to a deal with Yondr, a company that manufactures locking phone pouches.
Something like a Yondr pouch in Beacon would free teachers of the burden of policing for phones while instructing, Ramat said. It would also restore face-to-face time, or "the precious childhood time of connecting and building relationships," during lunch, recess and in the hall, she said.
John Drew, a Beacon resident who is a digital media professor at Adelphi University in Long Island, also spoke to the school board in April. He said Wednesday that, even at the college level, many students believe they need access to their phones at all times. "It almost makes it sad to be a teacher, because the devices are more powerful than any teaching strategy I can come up with," he said.
Drew empathizes with his daughter, who will also enter Rombout in the fall, because so many of her friends have phones. "It's impossible for her to not want to have the access that her friends have" to social media and the internet, he said.
While a 2020 survey by the National Center for Education Statistics showed that more than 75 percent of schools nationwide have banned cellphones except for academic use, Sarah Jaafar, a Beacon High School junior who is a student adviser to the school board, offered counterpoints during the April meeting.
If the district implements further restrictions, it should start with younger students, "so when students go into the hig...
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The Highlands doesn't have the terrain or conditions for the type of disaster that killed 101 people last year on the island of Maui in Hawaii. But that doesn't mean there are no risks, especially if simultaneous fires forced a mass exodus.
Native Americans used sophisticated tools and strategies to shape the landscape. One of the most important was fire. Indigenous peoples set fires to open land for planting and to clear crinkly underbrush that alerted game to a hunter's presence. Burning the land returned nutrients to the soil and encouraged growth that deer, turkey and quail depended on for food.
Archaeologist Lucianne Lavin has uncovered evidence of controlled burns near Albany around the year 1000 A.D. They were almost certainly used in the Highlands, as well. "Such a fire is a spectacular sight when one sails on the rivers at night while the forest is ablaze on both banks," wrote Adriaen van der Donck, an important leader in New Netherlands in the 1640s.
In the past few decades, controlled burns, or prescribed fires, have become a common part of preventing wildfires such as a 1988 blaze that consumed nearly 800,000 acres in Yellowstone National Park. The argument is now widely accepted that more than a century of rigorous fire suppression has created the conditions for even worse fires to break out and spread.
Erica Smithwick, director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State University, who specializes in eastern U.S. wildfires, has studied the issue of controlled burns and worked with land managers, hunters and conservationists to put intentional fire back on the radar in Pennsylvania.
While the practice faced some resistance, she notes that managers in the Pine Barrens region of New Jersey have been conducting controlled burns for years. As part of her pitch, she points out that controlled burns reduce tick populations.
There are two problems with controlled burns, however. The first is capacity, because it takes training. New York State does some training at the Albany Pine Bush Preserve, in Minnewaska State Park and on Long Island, but not enough for fire agencies around the state to adopt the practice.
Evan Thompson, the manager of the Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve, believes it would be difficult to introduce controlled burns in the park's rugged landscape, which spans some 25,000 acres on both sides of Route 9. "You can't burn everything from Garrison to Fahnestock," he says.
Still, Joseph Pries, the state Department of Environmental Conservation fire ranger for Dutchess and Putnam counties, says the agency is ready to draw up plans for controlled burns for any agency or manager who wants them.
The second limitation is public acceptance. Many people, thoroughly indoctrinated by decades of Smokey Bear commercials, remain skeptical of the idea that starting a fire can stop a fire.
Liability is key: If a controlled burn gets out of control and destroys property (which has happened), who pays the bill? Anticipating this, in 2009, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a law protecting public agencies and non-governmental organizations that employ trained burned bosses from lawsuits over damage.
Because there are so many homes along the perimeter of the Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve, Thompson worries about a controlled burn that escapes its handlers. "It could have disastrous consequences," he says.
The same thing that could make a wildfire in the Highlands so destructive - the encroachment of homes into the woods - is what makes using controlled burns to mitigate the risk so difficult.
According to Smithwick, many places lack a forest management plan to sort through the intricate web of entangled species and conflicting demands that make up forest ecology.
Lauren Martin, a park steward at the Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve, agrees. "Forest management is a constant give-and-take," she says. Dead trees can fuel intense fires but also shelter wildlife and would be expensive to re...
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Lawmakers, advocates call for suicide barriers
Lorraine Lein brought her grief and anger, and an urn with her son's ashes.
She replayed June 30, 2023, for members of the New York State Bridge Authority (NYSBA) board: driving her son, Jake Simmons, 17 years old and distraught over problems with his girlfriend, to Bear Mountain State Park for a mood-elevating hike; Jake fleeing after they arrived; police cars speeding to the Bear Mountain Bridge; Lein begging an officer blocking her path to grant access to where Jake had jumped.
"A policeman standing next to me said, 'Let her see' and I saw him floating in the water," Lein told the board Feb. 15. "I fell to my knees, screaming: 'No, Jake! What did you do? What did you do?' "
Simmons' leap to his death is the kind of act that Lein and an increasingly frustrated chorus of surviving families and Hudson Valley lawmakers want to prevent on the Bear Mountain and Newburgh-Beacon bridges, and the three other spans that NYSBA oversees: the Kingston-Rhinecliff, Mid-Hudson and Rip Van Winkle bridges.
For years, NYSBA has been pressed to install suicide-deterrent fencing on those bridges. But the independent agency, which is funded primarily through tolls, has instead prioritized training employees working at the spans and relying on cameras and call boxes for emergencies.
On Tuesday (June 4), the state Senate passed legislation authored by Sen. Pete Harckham requiring that NYSBA install "climb-deterrent" fencing on its five bridges. Passage by the state Assembly and enactment by Gov. Kathy Hochul are needed for the legislation, which would take effect in three years, to become law.
Five days earlier, Harckham, whose district includes eastern Putnam County, described NYSBA's bridges as a "magnet for those looking to end their lives" in a letter signed by him and other state legislators, including Dana Levenberg, whose Assembly district includes Philipstown. Levenberg is also a co-sponsor of the legislation.
More than 100 people have used the spans to kill themselves since 2007, and there have been an additional 43 attempts that were interrupted, said Harckham.
Recent fatalities include a 49-year-old Beekman woman who jumped from the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge on Nov. 14, her birthday, and a 49-year-old New Jersey man who leaped from the Bear Mountain Bridge on Jan. 11. A man who died after jumping from the Bear Mountain Bridge on May 17 was among four suicide attempts and two fatalities on NYSBA bridges last month, said Harckham.
Those attempts "attest to a heartbreaking problem," he said. "We have given the New York State Bridge Authority ample opportunity to address this issue on its own, but we simply can't wait any longer."
Editor's Notebook: Surviving Bear Mountain
A consultant hired to study fencing on NYSBA's bridges told the agency's board in April 2022 that costs for the five spans would range from $10.5 million for chain-link barriers to $45.5 million for mesh, $63 million for horizontal wire and $85 million for picket fencing.
The NYSBA operates entirely on tolls collected at its bridges. In May 2023, the agency implemented the last phase of a four-year incremental increase in fees to pay for capital projects such as the $95 million re-decking of the north span of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, completed in 2022.
NYSBA said in a statement on Tuesday that it is "actively evaluating deterrent fencing options" and has issued, for the Bear Mountain Bridge, a request for proposals for a re-decking design that includes "an evaluation of suicide-deterrent fencing." The project has been accelerated by a year, said NYSBA.
"NYSBA is committed to zero fatalities in our bridges," said the agency. "Our staff works tirelessly to protect all of our patrons, working hand-in-glove with our partners and local first responders to keep New Yorkers safe."
Several employees received recognition during the board's May 22 meeting for recognizing and assisting someone in distress on the Newburgh-Beacon Bridg...
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Howland Center fundraises for portico, and beyond, to honor Northcutt
Shortly after moving to Beacon in 2007, Thomas de Villiers, the vice president of the Howland Cultural Center's board of directors, recalls meeting Florence Northcutt, the center's longtime champion, who died last month at 97.
De Villiers was sitting on a bench, reading a book, near his Main Street apartment when Northcutt, then 80 and president of the Howland board, parked nearby. "She had her dog, Major, who she took everywhere," de Villiers said. "She invited me to come inside. I said, 'I will, a little later.' "
A couple of hours later, after an appointment, de Villiers walked into the ornate brick building at 477 Main St., which in 1973 became the first structure in Beacon to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. There, he found Northcutt on a step ladder, patching the walls of the performance room.
"She said, 'I need some help,' and I became a volunteer," de Villiers said. "She did that with just about everybody."
That room was renamed Northcutt Hall in 2022. For the past year, de Villiers and the other officers - secretary Craig Wolf, treasurer Hannah Brooks and president Theresa Kraft - have overseen a campaign to raise $150,000 to restore the Howland's deteriorated portico and central facade (the front doors and everything above them).
The 152-year-old building's need for repairs is never-ending, but the portico project dates to 2020, when the board discussed painting the wooden support columns. As they looked closer, they discovered rot. In other spots, aging brick needed repair, and the foundation was no longer sufficient to support the portico.
So they launched Pennies for a Portico, named after a penny drive undertaken 26 years earlier by Beacon school children to help rebuild the slate roof. That effort, engineered by Northcutt, raised nearly $10,000. Students from Glenham Elementary raised $3,000 on their own.
This time around, as hoped, coffee cans filled with bills and coins began to appear on the center's stoop. Board members found envelopes with cash left anonymously with the mail. Someone even left a 2-gallon orange Home Depot bucket filled with coins.
Big checks came in, too. On May 20, the Beacon City Council agreed to renew a $50,000 community facilities grant that was awarded to the center in 2021 for facade improvements but had been deferred while it secured additional funding. The Howland also recently received $50,000 from the New York State Council on the Arts for the project.
After accounting for revenue from a gala held last month at the Roundhouse, the board met its goal. The fundraising, however, continues, to cover the cost of materials and construction driven higher by inflation and "for the unseen that we'll uncover" when the project begins, Kraft said.
The organization is working with architect Jeff Wilkinson and contractor Tom Clemmens, who specialize in historic preservation. Reconstruction is expected to begin this year and will include reinstalling scrollwork that fell from the roof's gables decades ago "and hasn't ever been seen by anyone alive," Wolf said.
Board members said that seeing the project through to completion, and continuing to save for future rehab work, is a fitting way to honor Northcutt, who spent 38 years - including 21 as board president - promoting art, music, theater and all things cultural at the center.
The building was acquired in 1978, two years after its first and only other occupant, the Howland Circulating Library, moved to 313 Main St. and became the Howland Public Library. A year after the acquisition, programming began under the Howland Cultural Center banner.
The change in ownership happened "at a poor time in a poor town," Wolf said, but when Northcutt moved to Beacon in 1984, while still working as a speech therapist in Westchester County, she labored tirelessly to integrate the new center into the community.
"She was very good at pulling people in and selling the c...
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Not so fast, says festival
Many Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival fans raised a tempest when they realized that the lineup for its 37th season has no plays written solely by the Bard.
Davis McCallum, the artistic director of the Philipstown-based festival, concedes that even his mother expressed reservations about the schedule. "She likes the straight Shakespeare, but his influence infuses all of these plays," he says.
The 2024 productions include By the Queen (which incorporates dialogue from Richard III and Henry VI), Medea: Re-Versed and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. All three shows begin in previews next week; the latter two are world premieres.
"We love these plays and have a high degree of confidence that audiences will love them, too," says McCallum. In 2010, the festival produced A Bomb-itty of Errors, a rapped adaptation of A Comedy of Errors that went over well, he says.
"Shakespeare wasn't 'the Bard' in his time," he says. "People had to support him or else none of his work would have survived. We went for it this summer because these plays are great and we're committed to developing the next generation of fantastic writers. This is my 10th year here and we've never been more excited about a season."
(To be fair, HVSF brought a 90-minute version of Much Ado About Nothing to local schools in March and April and the company will present a reading on Aug. 17 of A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Orlando Pabotoy, which it intends to produce in 2025.)
By the Queen is written by Whitney White, a 2024 Tony Award nominee for her direction of Jaja's African Hair Braiding. White recasts the queen in question, Margaret, who "ages through her appearances" in Richard III and all three parts of Henry VI, says director Shana Cooper. "Of the three plays [being produced], this is the punk rock one."
At least half the dialogue is by Shakespeare, says Cooper, and three actors portray Margaret at various stages of her life. "It's like his greatest hits molded into a radical and inventive interpretation," she says.
The play premiered in Providence, Rhode Island. "I went up there and I've never seen anything like it," says McCallum. "It's a killer piece of theater."
Under the HVSF tent, it will feature Luis Quintero, Jacob Ming-Trent, Travis Raeburn, Malika Samuel, Stephen Michael Spencer, Sarin Monae West and Nance Williamson.
Another potential standout, Medea: Re-Versed, adapts the 2,500-year-old Greek saga of a woman scorned, though she perpetrates some horrible things to earn the wrath. Quintero, 30, in his fifth year as an HVSF cast member, wrote the inventive script and musical score.
Director Nathan Winkelstein co-conceived the project, which lashes the audience with creative wordplay and improbable rhymes that illuminate the work's inherent conflicts.
The chorus members will rap, sing and speak as they prowl the stage, casting imploring gazes and menacing glances. Though they engage in a sophisticated call-and-response, the proceedings appear to unfold with spontaneity, like a freestyle lyrical battle.
The actors are accompanied by a band with minimalist guitar riffs from Siena D'Addario, furious bass lines by Melissa Mahoney and Mark Martin's looped beatbox parts assembled on the fly.
After the run in Philipstown, the proceedings move to off-Broadway in Manhattan.
For its third production, HVSF commissioned The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, adapted by Heidi Armbruster from a 1926 Agatha Christie novella. Directed by HVSF veteran Ryan Quinn, it stars Mahoney, Raeburn, Samuel and Williamson, along with Sean McNall and Kurt Rhoads.
"Heidi tells the story in such a fluid and filmic way that is so right for us," McCallum says. "The main question is: Will you figure out the murderer before the inspector and his apprentice?" Fourth-wall-busting soliloquies convey deep thoughts, "so people have to turn on their gray cells to keep up."
The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is located at 2015 Route 9 in Philipstown. Tickets are $10 to ...
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One of the most memorable stories I have read in The New Yorker was published in 2003. It was called "Jumpers." The author, Tad Friend, interviewed people who had survived plunges off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Ken Baldwin was 28 and depressed. He said: "I still see my hands coming off the railing. I instantly realized that everything in my life that I'd thought was unfixable was totally fixable - except for having just jumped."
Kevin Hines was 19. His first thought was, "What the hell did I just do? I don't want to die." He later told The New York Times: "I know that almost everyone else who's gone off that bridge, they had that exact same thought at that moment. All of a sudden, they didn't want to die, but it was too late. Somehow I made it; they didn't; and now I feel it's my responsibility to speak for them."
I wondered if anyone had survived a fall from the Bear Mountain Bridge and found two: a 20-year-old West Point cadet in 2005 and a 16-year-old girl from Mohegan Lake in 2014.
I also found two who survived the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge: a 20-year-old man in 1998 and another man in 2022 who was rescued by a police officer on a jet ski.
I wanted to ask them if they had thoughts similar to Hines' but only the cadet was identified. He did not reply to an email, which is understandable.
The fact is, scientists have researched whether bridge barriers save lives, and the conclusion is that they can be effective. An argument leveled against them, besides the cost, is that people intent on killing themselves will find another way.
But mental health professionals believe that bridges and firearms (which 25,000 people use to kill themselves annually) empower impulsive decisions, and that if the person encounters an obstacle, the cloud often passes. One study in the 1970s tracked people who had been prevented from jumping from the Golden Gate; it found that just 10 percent went on to kill themselves.
Pleas Grow for Bridge Fencing
In other words, "90 percent got past it," Richard Seiden, who conducted the study, told The New York Times. "They were having an acute temporary crisis, they passed through it and, coming out the other side, they got on with their lives.
"At the risk of stating the obvious," he added, "people who attempt suicide aren't thinking clearly. They might have a Plan A, but there's no Plan B. They get fixated. They don't say, 'Well, I can't jump, so now I'm going to go shoot myself.' And that fixation extends to whatever method they've chosen.
They decide they're going to jump off a particular spot on a particular bridge, or maybe they decide that when they get there, but if they discover the bridge is closed for renovations or the railing is higher than they thought, most of them don't look around for another place to do it. They just retreat."
Another researcher, Dr. David Rosen, interviewed 10 people who had survived bridge jumps. "What was immediately apparent," he told The Times, "was that none of them had truly wanted to die. They had wanted their inner pain to stop. They wanted some measure of relief, and this was the only answer they could find. They were in spiritual agony, and they sought a physical solution."
Like anyone who suffers from depression, I know how despair can fuel thoughts of a quick escape. For that reason, like many people in my boat, I will never own a firearm. As for a bridge, Kevin Hines jumped and returned with a message: He made a huge mistake. But he got a second chance.
In distress? The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24 hours a day by calling or texting 988.
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Registration parity fuels hopes for more offices
Randall Mulkins ticks a lot of boxes: U.S. Army veteran, president of the Patterson Fire Department, third-generation resident of the Town of Patterson.
Mulkins, 29, is also a Democrat and the party's candidate for the Putnam County Legislature seat held by Ginny Nacerino, who cannot run because of term limits. She has represented District 4, which includes most of Patterson, since 2012.
"He's a phenomenal candidate who has a lot of support in town from Republicans and Democrats because he grew up there," said Jennifer Colamonico, chair of the Putnam County Democratic Committee.
If he wins a three-year term in November, Mulkins will relieve Nancy Montgomery, who represents Philipstown and part of Putnam Valley, of being the sole Democrat on the nine-member Legislature.
A win "helps Democrats everywhere in Putnam" because it "shifts the conversation" in the Legislature, said Colamonico. "Nancy could get a second on a motion," she said. "Having a second would allow a debate, a discussion."
Mulkins would also hand the party its first major victory under the Purple Putnam Project - a five-year campaign launched by the Democratic Committee to win county offices currently dominated by Republicans.
The campaign's name reflects the relative parity in major-party registration in Putnam County. Republicans have an edge of just 1,612 active voters, a gap that is nearly half of what it was in 2019.
Colamonico said her priority is "to build a structure, to build resources and to build camaraderie and focus at the county level" after years in which the county committee deferred to the towns "and just didn't have great results with that."
Fielding competitive candidates is a must, said Colamonico, who became county chair in February 2023 after years leading Carmel's Democratic Committee. "We need to be thinking countywide, particularly for some of these races, and then empower the towns to build off that movement," she said.
"We've had a struggle to field candidates the last couple of races," she added. "Letting [County Executive Kevin] Byrne go uncontested [in 2022] was a colossal mistake."
According to Colamonico, Putnam is defined by "chunks" of Democrats and Republicans. One of those chunks is District 1, which Montgomery has represented since defeating Republican incumbent Barbara Scuccimarra in 2018. (Montgomery defeated Scuccimarra again in 2021.)
Philipstown is heavily Democratic, mirroring the significant registration advantage Republicans have in Carmel. But active-voter registration tilts Democratic in Putnam Valley and in Kent, giving outsized importance to the Conservative Party, whose members generally vote for Republicans, and unaffiliated voters, who skew conservative, said Colamonico.
Sam Oliveri0, a one-time Republican, ran as a Democrat when he won in 1996 the District 2 seat representing most of Putnam Valley. For 18 years, Oliverio stood as the Democrats' lone representative on the Legislature before he ran unsuccessfully for county executive in 2014.
His successor in District 2, William Gouldman, narrowly defeated Democrat Maggie Ploener in 2023. Gouldman won by 342 votes in a race in wihch just 34 percent of Putnam Valley's 2,744 active Democrat voters turned out.
In the same election, Democrat Kathy Kahng fell 197 votes short against Republican incumbent Toni Addonizio in District 3, which includes most of Kent. With 46 more Democrats casting ballots than Republicans, Addonizio owed her victory to the 243 votes from Conservative Party members.
In 2021, against Democratic challenger Stacy Dumont, Nacerino won 60 percent of the vote in District 4. While Mulkins will have the Democratic line in November, the Republican candidate will be either former county attorney Jennifer Bumgarner or accountant Laura Russo, based on a June 25 primary.
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Raises $347,000 to surpass emergency fundraising goal
A month ago, Clearwater was on the brink of financial insolvency, with employees being furloughed and the future of the storied environmental organization in doubt.
But on Tuesday (June 4), the Beacon-based nonprofit announced it had surpassed its emergency fundraising goal of $250,000 by $97,000 and counting.
"The response proves that we're critically important to our community and to the Hudson Valley," said David Toman, the group's executive director. "Now we need to steward this goodwill and take it forward into the future."
While financial difficulties are not new for the 55-year organization, the most recent shortfall was unprecedented. When Toman spoke to The Current last month, he attributed the deficit to factors such as the pandemic, years of decreased bookings for educational field trips aboard the historic sloop after the 2007 financial crisis, and several costly rainouts and cancellations of the Great Hudson River Revival fundraising concert.
The problems were compounded by Clearwater falling behind over four years on annual voluntary third-party audits, which led to the group briefly losing its nonprofit status and becoming ineligible for grants.
Although many in Clearwater felt that the group was turning things around because of increased bookings for the sloop, a new strategic plan and executive director was needed. Toman, who was chief financial officer for the Mohonk Preserve, was hired two years ago for his financial acumen and brought the group's financial reporting back up to speed. The gap in grant funding meant it could no longer afford to pay staff or chart a course forward without immediate outside help.
Toman said that gifts, small and large, poured in, including a $25,000 matching grant. Alerted by news stories, two foundations made first-time, $25,000 gifts and promised to continue support. "We struck a chord with a lot of people who want to make sure that Clearwater is here for the long haul," he said.
With the staff back on the payroll, Toman is assembling specialists to plan. The priority will be finding ways to diversify the revenue stream, particularly during the slow periods of late summer (when schools and camps are out of session and not booking sails) and the winter (when the sloop is docked in Kingston for annual repairs).
What won't change is the focus on environmental education and bringing the public out on the river to help them imagine a cleaner and more accessible Hudson. "We know there are environmental leaders in government and nonprofit organizations who are protecting the river right now who got their start from Clearwater," Toman said. "This is only the beginning."
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