Democrats appeared poised to maintain their single-vote majority in the Ulster County Legislature after a count of absentee ballots failed to upend election night results.
Former county legislator Chris Allen, who is facing a misdemeanor charge of criminal trespass, appeared in village court Monday evening and asked for a public defender in the case.
Despite a 21-vote margin win by former legislature chairman John Parete over incumbent Democrat Kathy Nolan, Ulster County Democrats appeared poised to maintain their single-vote majority in the Ulster County Legislature after a count of absentee ballots failed to upend election night results.
When the Shandaken Short-Term Rental (STR) Committee met on November 11, they discussed such issues as how to define STRs in the town code and what measures might be included in a new law requiring STR owners to obtain a license for operation.
The subject heated up when the town’s Commission for Civic Design presented a plan for enhancing the look of Woodstock’s streetscape by better enforcing the town’s sign laws, and looking into creating new policies and ordinances that would lend local signs a less chaotic feel. The building department meanwhile started working to limit the number of illegal sandwich board signs being used in the business core.
In a 10-page ruling, Judge Richard Mott annulled the Ulster County Ethics Board’s finding that by voting twice on matters connected to the county’s contract with the CSEA — which affected his wife, a county employee — County Legislator Joe Maloney violated ethics laws.
Village of New Paltz trustees won’t be eliminating the local law limiting lawns to three inches.
The county’s proposed campaign finance reform law, which would allow candidates for countywide office or county legislature to tap into a $75,000 fund per year in county money for their campaigns prompted more than a dozen speakers, over half of whom were in opposition and emphatic about their positions, and about 50 onlookers at the county legislature’s public hearing on the proposed law on Tuesday, Nov. 12.
Key members of the Common Council have expressed support for an activist group’s push for major changes to the makeup, training and operations of the city’s police commission. But the City Charter — and ongoing contract talks with the Kingston PBA, the union representing the city’s cops — could complicate the effort.
He’s smart and articulate, with a sheen of Silicon Valley nerdiness. Yang thinks that America’s biggest problem – and a major motivating factor for blue-collar workers is the loss of jobs to automation: the subject of his book The War on Normal People. And his prescription to solve that problem is a concept that economists call Universal Basic Income. He has lifelong ties to the Hudson Valley. He spent his early childhood, when his father was working for General Electric, in Niskayuna, and his middle and high school years in Somers after his father went to work for IBM.