An incident at a local gym was revealing of this political moment. Confronting a man who declined to vacate a piece of equipment he wasn’t using, a woman said: “You must be one of those people who voted for Trump.” Game on.
The DEP will $750 million to upgrade the water-supply infrastructure at the Ashokan Reservoir in northern Ulster County. My rough back-of-the-envelope guess is that the Ashokan Century Program will produce construction, technical and administrative jobs in the low hundreds for ten to 15 years — a significant but less than colossal contributor to local efforts in economic development.
With 200-300 people per day, not counting their families, downtown Gardiner will be like the Port Authority in New York City with people all over the sidewalk, people trying to get to the post office, which should not be where it is now, and the cars and trucks that come around the bend.
The town of Lloyd’s consideration of a request for police patrols on the Hudson Valley Rail Trail has sparked debate. The original request cited cyclists traveling at high speeds without giving sufficient notice to pedestrians. In the course of the conversation, cyclists have weighed in, complaining of pedestrians wearing headphones, lurching left and right on the trail, and bringing unleashed dogs (which violates a town ordinance).
Two years ago, Saugerties’ three incumbent county legislators ran without serious opposition. This year will be different.
Here’s my hypothesis. The suburban ring is providing New York City daily commuters mostly for jobs that require a physical presence. Workers in the exurban area beyond the suburban core, such as the mid-Hudson region, are more likely to have a more peripheral presence in Gotham: independent contractors, artists of various stripes, higher-skilled specialized technical or service workers, part-time or seasonal employees, etc.
Culturally, the Catskills are a bright mosaic of urban and rural mores and values. But scratch the surface and we have all the problems of rural Appalachia: addiction, poverty, a greying population, a general purposelessness that siphons the brightest of our young people out of our schools and our communities.
According to a recent survey, 57 percent of the 56,000 registered voters in the 19th congressional district who are not enrolled in any political party failed to vote. A huge voting block is up for grabs— if only the candidates can put together an attractive message to reach them.
I might have been confronted with sudden violence. Because not one member of law enforcement who saw a woman driving alone into the specific terrain of great danger warned me of it, without my having to ask. Because the search area that night was small — maybe 50 very rural households at most — and none of the dozens of police cars or milling officers were assigned to go house to house warning unsuspecting, isolated, vulnerable residents to “barricade yourself in.” Families did not know. If their doors were even locked, they would in all likelihood have opened them to a young couple.
An activist and representative of the congressman disagree about whether the Kingston district office was declared off-limits to constituents seeking to fill out comment cards each Friday.