The executive will not be happy to see Terry Bernardo back for another term. She’s a bear for research, with a talent for connecting policy decisions to campaign contributions, motive to action. And while she doesn’t make much headway, she will challenge the executive on major issues. They really don’t like that in the inner sanctum.
Here and there
Will former assemblyman John Guerin, grousing over the trouncing Republican candidates other than Congressman Chris Gibson took in Ulster County, soon make a political comeback? Ulster GOP Chairman Roger Rascoe says he doesn’t know. “Haven’t heard anything about that,” he told me. Guerin, an outspoken assemblyman for two terms in the 1990s, was coy, neither denying nor confirming an interest in Rascoe’s job.
In any event, his timing is off. Committee members elected Rascoe to another two-year term last September. The chairman says he’s actively working on plans to back Republican candidates for county clerk, family court judge and county comptroller next year and that “everybody” (including pisser-in-the-tent Guerin) is welcome.
Clerk Nina Postupack is up for a third four-year term. Family Court Judge Marianne Mizel seeks 10 more years on the bench. County Comptroller Elliott Auerbach, running for the third time in five years, will soon announce for a four-year term. (In one of those quirks of the over-engineered 2006 county charter, the comptroller ran for a two-year term in 2008 and a three-year term in 2010. The office will carry a four-year term going forward.)
While relations between the county executive and city government run from tenuous to tepid, it’s unlikely the Hein-designed juggernaut called “The Sophie Finn Project” is going to be waylaid by neighborhood concerns over traffic, stormwater runoff and infrastructure issues. The plan is to convert the soon-to-be-abandoned elementary school into a campus for Ulster County Community College. Only very short co-eds need apply, since the current water fountains are only two feet off the floor.
That the fat’s in the fire was made clear by Mayor Shayne Gallo at a meeting with Sophie Finn neighborhood residents at City Hall recently. The upside, in terms of economic development and tax benefits, are huge, Hizzoner told worried residents, their issues addressable.
The mayor, who seems to linger longer than he should over real or imagined slights — County Executive Hein’s failure to notify him of this plan before announcing it last summer being real enough — is prepared to work with the administration to advance this project. If long-standing neighborhood issues can be addressed, all the better. But this time the “stop sign” so familiar to Kingstonians will not prevail.
State vote down
The AP reports that voting for president in New York was down by some 1.5 million compared to 2008. Half a wow to that. Hurricane Sandy no doubt played a part in suppressing the metropolitan vote. I’d also surmise that the notion that our votes don’t really count with New York solidly and seemingly forever in the Democratic column may have affected turnout. So why vote? The tally may have slightly tarnished the president’s popular vote “mandate,” however. Were things normal in New York, circa 2008, the national plurality would have approached 5 million.
Finally, condolences to the St. John family of Kingston on the death of Kent St. John, 57, on Thanksgiving Day. Kent, a travel writer, was the son of the late banker and prominent Kingston business figure Jack St. John. Given that both men were history buffs, it is a small irony the father died the same day as Lincoln, April 15, and the son on the 49th anniversary of JFK’s assassination.
