Hugh Reynolds: The beat goes on

“I have no plans. I just got here. Come back later.”

John Parete. (Photo: Dan Barton)

In that vein, I will not pick on county legislature Chairman John Parete for engineering a well-intended and well-publicized “Boiceville summit on healthcare” last week that turned out to be pretty much a bust.

I motored the 32 miles roundtrip from Kingston to Parete’s Boiceville Inn. There were about 15 people there, including four presenters. Parete was joined in the Inn’s murky back room by legislators Dave Donaldson from Kingston and Carl Belfiglio from Port Ewen. Twenty other legislators stayed home. Olive Supervisor Sylvia Rozzelle also dropped by.

“Yes, you could say I was disappointed,” Parete said. “But Dave and Carl said they planned similar informational meetings in their districts, so that’s a good thing.”

I took copious notes, but quite frankly did not understand half what the presenters were presenting. Questions from the elderly audience, which Parete said later ballooned to about 20, ranged from the concerned to the confused. In any event, the window on Affordable Healthcare Act enrollment closes at the end of this month and won’t reopen until November. Parete said his original meeting in mid-February, already way late, had been snowed out.

It wasn’t a total loss. Parete said six people made contact with presenters (“navigators”) whose job it is to guide them through the healthcare maze. And the cheese and crackers the host graciously put out assuaged pangs of hunger at the dinner-hour seminar.

“Pretty good cheese,” I said on the way out, trying to be positive. “Was it Velveeta?”

“No,” the host said. “It was cheddar. And thanks for coming.”

Memo to the chairman: The 100 days are up on or about April 10.

Gag orders

It’s now apparent Kingston Mayor Shayne Gallo wants nothing to do with the Common Council. As noted before, he’s ordered department heads not to talk to aldermen, a practice instituted locally five years ago when Hein issued a similar gag order. If elected officials are denied access to department heads, ordinary citizens, including some media, have little chance, either.

Gallo’s aversion to the aldermen was no more apparent than in this year’s St. Patrick’s parade, where city officials marched in a body, except for the mayor, who about 50 feet behind, walked alone. After a few blocks, parade watchers noticed Congressman Chris Gibson scoot around a float to join him.

Welcome to Paradise

Up until last week, I had no idea I was living in one of the “great retirement spots” in America. The online publication Great Retirement Spots, according to published reports, was not praising nationally renowned Woodstock, nor cool-small-town Saugerties, upscale Gardiner or academically invigorating New Paltz, but Kingston.

The survey spoke to the city’s unique waterfront, its regional theater, accessible hospitals, median home prices. It didn’t mention the Washington Avenue sinkhole, Appalachian-like median income, funky Broadway and environs, homeless, hungry people, crushing taxes, dysfunctional politics or a 22 percent decline in assessed value over the last four years (according to county officials.).

Of some note is that this happy news about Kingston wasn’t announced in a press release by the city mayor, who doesn’t announce much of anything these days, but by the county executive.

Now, I am sure that Hurley resident Hein is proud of the city where he works, but in politics there is no worse dis between one politician and another than for one to announce the other’s feel-good news. And I thought mini-Mike (the mayor) and the executive were such close allies.

In any event, the broad dissemination of news that Kingston (!) is one of the great retirement destinations can only be a plus.

Social disorder

A few weeks ago, local officials manned the ramparts in a failed effort to prevent the relocation of Ulster County’s Social Security office from Lake Katrine to Poughkeepsie. Even U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer weighed in. Bottom line, our local officials (including the esteemed senator) didn’t have the clout. The office is gone, leaving only a one-day-a-week county stopgap for maybe 90 days. The county executive pledges to keep up the fight. Better he should go pick on Cahill again.

A Social Security spokesman said the five staffers from Lake Katrine will be offered jobs in Poughkeepsie. Maybe the staffers and SSI recipients could hitch a ride.