Well, don’t spend that $135 — coming maybe in 2016 — “tax relief” all in one place, sucker. You’ll need it for the increase on your bill to compensate for the exemptions for the big boys, or a reassessment, or what you will pay under the so-called cap that isn’t really a cap on your bill no matter what the schlock merchants claim.
So tell me, even absent an abject apology, you’re really going to vote for that guy/gal again? Really?
Fifty shades of dumb.
Gioia Shebar, Gardiner
All risk, no reward
For three years, without their permission, Kingstonians have been surrounded by large quantities of explosive crude oil moving through their neighborhoods. The hundreds of train tanker cars (with deafening whistles) and Hudson River barges could soon be accompanied by two oil pipelines next to the Thruway. On Thursday, July 9, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at a forum at City Hall, Riverkeeper and friends will lead a discussion of the realities of crude oil transport through Kingston and what we can do.
Increasingly frequent trains arrive with each black tanker car containing 30,000 gallons of the same notoriously volatile North Dakota Bakken crude oil which inspired railroad men to choose the nickname “Bomb Trains.” The oil is explosive because removing the volatile compounds from the oil in North Dakota would cut into oil industry profits. Congress is compliant as is Governor Cuomo. Therefore Kingston is at risk of a derailment and massive fireball as at Lac Megantic, Quebec (47 dead in one of many crude oil explosions in the last few years). Drive down West O’Reilly Street and listen to the groans the trains make while moving hundreds of oil cars weekly through curves less than a mile from Benedictine Hospital. Check out tanker cars crossing the old Rondout railroad bridge with jaunty pleasure boats beneath.
The two oil pipelines Pilgrim Pipeline LLC wants to put along the state Thruway are another unacceptable risk. Pipelines leak. The broken California pipeline which turned the ocean black in May was corroded to a thickness of one-fourth of an inch, but its owner declared it sound only days before the devastating spill. No government agency intervened.
As for danger to the river, a crude oil tanker grounded itself on the Hudson near Athens in 2012 splitting its hull open. Luckily it had a second hull, mandated by the federal response to the Exxon Valdez disaster. Transport of crude oil through neighborhoods and on our river should be stopped before Kingston suffers a disaster to waters, homes and lives. Congress is poised to allow export of Bakken crude oil. It is all risk and no reward for Kingston.
Joan Walker-Wasylyk, Woodstock
