Counterpoint
Residents rose in defense of the Ethics Board. Nancy Schauffler, who has filed an Article 78 lawsuit challenging the Cucina expansion that the ethics complaint charged Magarelli and McKenna with favoring, stated that it “just doesn’t look good” for a Town Board to rewrite a law that two of its members were found to have violated.
Alluding to McKenna’s appearance before the Planning Board, Schauffler, reading from a prepared statement, said, “A town official is a public figure. When a public official speaks in public, he carries the weight of his office. The President of the United States can’t say, for example, ‘Russia or Israel should do thus and such, but that’s just my personal opinion.’ There would be major policy implications.”
Schauffler concluded: “For a law to say that a public official can say what he wants before any town agency as long as he claims it is his ‘personal opinion’ is bullshit. And that’s my personal opinion.”
Joe Nicholson, a lawyer, warned the board that the proposed amendment of the Appearances section of the ethic law would create a “legal fiction” and lead to uncertainty. “I suggest that the Town Board review the purpose of the ethics law, which is to promote public confidence (in town officials) and the integrity of the agency. This amendment does the opposite.”
Lorin Rose, who is a member of the Planning Board and a candidate for town supervisor in the upcoming fall election, said that he originally believed that McKenna’s appearance at the Planning Board meeting would be justifiable if the councilman had announced that he was attending in his capacity as a private citizen and not as a town official. “When you take an oath to represent the entire town, you surrender some of your rights,” said Rose.
Rose lamented that the public hearing had devolved from a discussion about changes to the law to a “beating up” of the Ethics Board. If Wenk believed that the ethics panel’s members should be dismissed, the councilman should “man up” and propose that action, said Rose. In response, Wenk recommended that Rose review the relevant portions of the ethics statute before alleging that any beatings had occurred.
The public hearing was recessed. It will resume at a future date, to be determined by the supervisor.
Other items on the meeting’s agenda included the following.
Carbon neutrality. In a presentation to the board, local resident, inventor, and businessman David Stein announced that, thanks to the community’s support of a tree-planting program, Woodstock has — temporarily and indirectly — attained the “carbon neutral” status that the town set as a ten-year goal in a 2007 initiative. By depositing donations totaling $190 in Give Trees (a slogan devised by Stein) collection jars around town, approximately 120 Woodstockers have funded the planting of 1,357 trees in tropical farming villages in India. The trees will remove 615 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — the equivalent, according to Stein, of a year’s worth of emissions by the local town government. A Maryland-based nonprofit organization, Trees for the Future, will receive the donations from Woodstock and plant the trees in the town’s name. Stein, a retired architect who invented a popular bubble-making toy for children, spearheaded the local campaign, with the support of the Woodstock Environmental Commission.
In his presentation Stein observed that reforestation is the only proven way to combat harmful climate change by removing carbon emissions from the atmosphere. “We are kind of hiring Trees for the Future to help solve a global problem by, in a way, outsourcing the problem to India,” he said in an August 14 interview. Somewhat paradoxically, a locality like Woodstock, along with the rest of the world, benefits from trees that are planted in faraway tropical places. “When we are talking about the atmosphere, we have to think globally and act locally at the same time,” said Stein, who described reforestation as both affordable and shovel ready. For more information about the tree-planting program, visit CarbonNeutralWoodstock on Facebook and the website TreesForTheFuture.org.
Public access TV. Randi Steele and other producers of local public access television programming protested Time Warner Cable’s recent switch to a digital transmission format, which left some Woodstock cable subscribers unable to view Channel 23 at its standard setting without a digital adapter. Time Warner Cable (TWC) implemented the change on July 23 — in violation of Public Service Commission regulations, according to Steele. As the town’s representative in its franchise agreement with TWC, said Steele, the Town Board has the jurisdiction and the fiduciary responsibility to demand that the cable company restore systemwide access to Channel 23 within 48 hours; the company’s failure to comply would render the franchise agreement null and void. Wilber told Steele that he would be happy to write such a letter, although he doubted it would have much effect, since a previous letter failed to prevent the digital changeover on July 23. The supervisor urged any Woodstock residents who are unable to access Channel 23 to contact him.
