Polemic

Leading up to last night's Democratic caucus in New Paltz, I read so many polemics that I had to look the word it up make sure it really meant what I thought it did.  It did.  These attacks were lobbed at candidates I support, candidates I don't support, candidates I don't give a hoot about either way, and anyone perceived as having an opinion about anything, which could be inferred by as small an action as clicking a "like" button on Facebook.

This kind of communication accomplishes nothing of real value, of course.  In a community of this size, the people attacked regularly run into their attackers at My Market or Health-Carrot-Nutrition, making for awkward avoidance schemes.  Even if your candidates of choice win in an election, the wounds fester and lead to vengeance candidates being launched against them.

I am irritated to the point of ranting about this sort of thing, which any thoughtful person knows is a sure sign that I am as guilty as any of those there idiots.  It's irritating mostly because the people launching the attacks are desperate to shunt others into, well, "the other."  Two years ago some guy from Gardiner decided, based on my party registration alone, that I am a tool of planet-destroying evil, and still has no clue that I am a dirt-worshiping environmentalist who cares more about the environment than the majority of the present New Paltz Town Council.  He had to make me into the "other" because recognizing that people are complex makes polemics, and politics, harder.

What I'm waiting for is to be labeled part of the "Jason West cult" because I have, twice now, ripped into village board members known and unknown for nasty attacks.  Anyone who has mentioned the man's name around me in the last two years would quickly be disabused of that notion, or would be if their attack-mode brains could process more options than "yes" and "no."

I'm not the only target, and really I'm one of the least targets, but I'm an expert on me, so I'm the best example I have.  Of course, I spend less time pondering the impact of my words on others, so right now I'm going to rattle off a few thoughts that are decidedly not attacks.

• Tom Nyquist has busted his butt making the bird sanctuary a gem.  If you haven't visited, you should.
• I met Steve Auerbach for the first time last night.  He is thoughtful, well-spoken, and polite.
• Bill Mulcahy draws political cartoons better than anyone in New Paltz, and expresses his views brilliantly in that format.  The New Paltz Times should pay him to do so.
• If ever there is a serious threat to the environment, Susan Zimet is the kind of person I want in the trenches, because when there are battles and enemies and someone else calling the shots, no one can compare.
• Jason West's knowledge of history and law should be cherished for the treasure they are.
• Hector Rodriguez is an excellent parliamentarian.

Maybe we make out our neighbors to be pure evil because we feel bad voting against them otherwise, but we're grown-ups, and we live together.  Lying and polarizing is a short-term solution that makes for long-term problems.  Gossip and whisper campaigns are just as bad.  We need to recognize that all of our neighbors add something good to our community, and we need to be willing to look those neighbors in the eye and acknowledge when we don't agree.  

On Facebook, in the letters column, we are willing to speak our minds, but then we pretend that these aren't real life, and that those opinions we share have no impact.  They do.  If we would not say something to a person directly, we should not be typing it in a private email, or a public posting, or saying it to other people while clustered in the corner of our favorite wine bar.

New Paltz is a microcosm of this great nation of ours.  Let's try to remember that our community is filled with good, and that writing polemics is the very core of evil.

Loss of the town web site

The town of New Paltz web site.  Wow.

How many years ago was it revamped?  Not many.  It was created in Joomla, a hard-to-learn system that no town employee ever really mastered, and even before it was hacked it was woefully out of date.

Now there are plans to spend something like $6,500 to make a site in Drupal, another system that, like Joomla, can be made to do anything, unless the thing you want it to do is be easy to update without having to relearn a lot of complex steps every time.

I worked on a Drupal site, and because I was paid to do it, I learned how, but it was hard for the non-techie.  I was once talked into allowing my own page be written in Joomla when I really wanted WordPress, and it was so ridiculously complex that I mostly abandoned it because it took me over an hour to post anything.  Kind of like the state of the town's site -- no one had the time or patience to post content.

Our supervisor found a company that specializes in municipal web sites, and has agreed to spend that money, plus a handsome amount for annual maintenance.

Meanwhile, the supervisors of Rosendale (already complete) and Marbletown are using a company based in Bloomingburg that's charging about $2,500 to make a town site that has a near-zero learning curve when it comes to adding new content.  And no annual maintenance fees, just a modest hosting fee, which the town could elect to pay to someone else, but will have to pay regardless.

I believe our supervisor, and her predecessor, failed to engage in a test of "what is it like to change a page or add a new one?"  Web designers, specialists as they are, invariably underestimate the complexity because they do this stuff every day.  No one ever asks, for example, a deputy town clerk or clerical assistant in the building department to spend a day trying to update the thing -- these people tend to be involved in the layout and collection of the information, which is very important, but the ongoing work is even more so.

It's not my intent to use this as a way to trash the supervisor -- I think it's a grave error, but one that many people make because they do not understand the many layers of the process.  It's unfortunate that she decided to spend so much more money than our neighbors to get a site that will likely be too hard to use for most employees, but I really don't think it was vindictive on her part, or manipulative on the part of the developer.  But I do not expect the newest, overpriced version of the web site to do much better than its prior incarnation.

When it comes to sites which must be updated by busy people for whom complex computer skills are not the priority, it's best to keep things simple.  This site will surely look snazzy and may well be easy to navigate, but I predict that updating it will soon become lost knowledge, kept only by the developer, and we will not see very much in the way of current information.

Is it too late to find another option?

Edit:  according to the comment by user Josh, I reversed things.  The old site was written in Joomla, the new will be in Drupal; my original text switched the two.  I have corrected the error, which was caused by trying to keep track of two hard-to-use platforms with similar-sounding names.

No good idea goes unpunished

I first expressed support for unification in 2008 or thereabouts; I have always believed that simplifying our lives by having one less government to deal with made a tremendous amount of sense.

Of course, I wasn't factoring in the human element.

The egos and personalities which strut across the New Paltz stage make it damned near to impossible to come up with a solution that will work.  Much of the information put forth by the pro-unification factions is correct.  On the other hand, many of the concerns expressed by the keep-it-separate crowd are legitimate and should not be dismissed.  It's bloody hard to figure out what information to discuss when there are so many people pushing hidden agendas.

Does our mayor want to keep his job?  Of course!  He himself told me that the village is the largest entity he would be comfortable running, because he can "keep it all in my head," in his words.  He knows every drainage grate, he said to me, and couldn't imagine being an effective elected official on a scale where that's not possible.  So there's no question that Jason West is going to fight tooth and nail against consolidation.

But to suggest that West's information and arguments should be entirely discarded because he has an ulterior motive, or because he is arrogant and condescending, does not serve this community well.  Don't consider the source, just evaluate his rationale.

How about Susan Zimet?  She is unabashedly in support of a merger, and doesn't have any personal stake the way the rest of us do, because she doesn't even live here.  Succeeding in this drive will put a feather in her political cap and, in all likelihood, be used as evidence of her wonderfulness when she pursues higher office.  And pursue she shall:  Zimet has always been ambitious, and returned to town government more because the county legislature lost power in the charter government than out of a burning desire to clean house.

Does this make her positions on unification automatically worthless?  If you consider the source it does, but considering the source does not do justice to the information itself.  Like West, Zimet's talking points and actual data must be carefully looked at, whether you like her or not, whether you trust her or not.

There are other players, as well.  One group makes a logo to support a unified government, another group makes a parody, and suddenly people are talking about consulting attorneys over it.  That sort of talk is shameful, because involving attorneys in a neighborly disagreement squelches free speech.  Many of West's opponents (and Zimet's, to a lesser extent) have used the "fascist" label; the fact that the same people who call their opponents dictators seek to silence the opposition with litigation is sickening.

The fact that this process is inordinately complex makes me fear that no good will come of it.  If you want to ruin a good idea, create a committee to study it.  We created around ten committees, so I'm thinking we really wanted to make this idea unpalatable, or at least incomprehensible to anyone with a day job not dedicated to policy questions.

Unification should be simple.  In this iteration, it's been made anything but, and its supporters are trying to ram it through at breakneck speed without answering perfectly valid questions.  Unless something really big changes, and very soon, I think we would all be better off firing each and every one of our town and village board members and starting over once we've cleaned house.

Taking back our police

This year's graduation weekend seemed louder than most -- I was awakened around 4:30 in the morning by the sounds of partying, partying so widespread that I couldn't even pinpoint its location.  It's rare that I call in a noise complaint, but I didn't want to have to wait until past sunrise to get back to sleep, so I didn't see another option.  I heard the police arrive and start using their amplification system to get the attention of the revelers, and the effect was like throwing water on an oil fire -- the kids got louder every time the cops spoke.  It took awhile to settle them down.

I suppose I could have called the university police instead, but experience tells me that they would have kept me on the phone longer (I wasn't asked my name or specific address, just where the noise was), and they would have been less helpful.  It's not that the men and women who work on that force are less professional, they just have zero obligation to respond to me, because they don't work for me. The town police do work for town residents, and the difference is striking.

Try this experiment, like I did a couple of years ago:  identify an intersection that is patrolled by both town and SUNY police, and try to submit a FOIL request for data about arrests and traffic stops nearby.  When I attempted this, the town police accepted my request, told me it could take up to seven days to process, and had my detailed report in less than two.  Over at SUNY, I spent fifteen minutes on the phone with a sergeant who interrogated me about what I wanted the data for, tried to talk me out of it, and wouldn't even give up the identity of the information officer for the college.  I was so aggravated that I submitted a written complaint about the SUNY officer, and a written compliment about the dispatcher to processed my request for the town.

The difference, of course, is that the town police has a citizen police commission, and five elected officials, overseeing it.  SUNY cops have . . . some kind of structure, which goes up the line to the chancellor or the state police, but with no input from the community.  Which might be fine, if they didn't patrol beyond the borders of the campus.

But the officers want to widen their jurisdiction even more, and statewide their union is holding communities hostage until the state legislature acts.  Here in New Paltz, they are no longer helping out with parade detail, although apparently they will still be handing out speeding tickets off-campus.  I imagine that's a money-maker for their department, while parades are not.

New Paltz Supervisor Susan Zimet is proud that she helped get the SUNY peace officers police powers some years ago.  I think it was a terrible idea.  We have a police force, entirely within the heart of our community, over which we have no control or oversight.  I'm sure the situation is the same for many campuses around the state.  I think it's time we lobby the state to change that.

Colleges don't need police, they need peace officers.  Some municipalities need police, particularly ones with colleges, and those campuses should be paying the town or village (or state, when no local force exists) to provide police protection of their grounds.  This would require a significant increase in our local police force, but it would be paid for by the college, and its existing officers could be folded into our present force.

SUNY New Paltz is a huge benefit to our community, but it comes at a price.  They don't pay taxes.  They don't have to ask for permission when they want to build.  They don't have to participate in the community, and under the past president, the one who mused that the residents of a prison town don't expect to use those facilities so why should we expect access to the college, that participation was muted.  That participation varies by administration, and that's a bigger problem.  The problem of the police is simpler to understand: we should have local control, and towns and villages with their own departments should be lobbying together to take that control back.

Dirty politics

Land is, by definition, dirty, and it's generally accepted that money doesn't mix easily with politics. So when there's a suspicion of shady land dealings by elected officials, it's fair to call it "dirty politics."

The scenario:  New Paltz Town Supervisor Susan Zimet and council member Kevin Barry had a meeting with schools superintendent Maria Rice, to discuss how the district could solve its facilities problems by expanding the high school campus.  I'm told that Rice claims that Zimet and Barry initiated the meeting, but that they disagree and claim it was Rice's idea.

The problem:  Barry owns a tract of land adjacent to the high school property, and could stand to gain if the district took his suggestion, and also decided that buying his land was the best way to do so.  Barry did disclose being a part owner of the parcel on this town financial disclosure form, and has voluntarily agreed not to sell it while in office.

The analysis:  I've been reviewing information about the underlying state ethics rules, and it seems pretty clear that Barry has created an "appearance of impropriety," which means that it looks like he's up to something.  Obviously, his promise not to sell while in office simply means he could resign if he got a good enough offer.  Or transfer his interest in a way that wouldn't legally be considered a sale, but would still allow him to profit.

But despite there being an appearance of impropriety, I don't believe that there's been an ethics violation.  Since an appearance of impropriety exists, Barry should recuse himself on this issue.  But it's not a town issue, so it will never come up.  In fact, even if Barry were actively trying to convince the district to buy his land, I don't think it would be an ethics violation, because his personal interest (selling the land) does not in any way conflict with his public interest (the residents and taxpayers of the town), at least not in the direct ways that the law requires.

There are a lot of reasons to be concerned about Barry's behavior in this case, but so far as I can tell he's done his homework, and hasn't done anything wrong in the law's eyes.  As I like to say, and all attorneys know, if you want to be able to wriggle out of something, make sure to put it in writing.

So, it comes to this

It's never a surprise when a new executive accuses her predecessor of screwing up -- Terry Dungan trashed Jason West, Toni Hokanson pointed the finger at Don Wilen, and so on -- so the accusations supervisor Zimet is leveling against her predecessor will only be noticed by those few who have an ax to grind against one or the other of these two women (or, in a few special cases, individuals who can't stand either of them).

Whether or not Hokanson did wrong, most ordinary citizens won't care much; outside of the wine-sipping political pundit class, people in New Paltz spend more time living in the present than obsessing over minutiae. And that's a shame, because it means someone is getting away with something.

It could be Hokanson, Zimet, or both. The way the budget never got to a public hearing is unconscionable, and at the time the blame game was between the supervisor and the rest of the town council. Either incompetence by the lame duck or political aggrandizement by the council members who were sticking around probably contributed.

Of course, Zimet is a savvy politician and knows that she needs to get ahead of a story or she'll be blamed for the town's financial woes. Is she exaggerating when she talks about what a pickle the town is in?

Truth is a funny thing. Towards the end of the article linked above is an account of two town employees damaging the roof of the police headquarters, and the town paying the landlord for the damage. Hokanson said the employees went up there on their own, and that building owner C2G (her employer, now and then) was paid $2,500. Zimet claims her predecessor ordered the town employees onto the roof, and that the payment for damage was $14,000.

So who were the employees? I'd like to just ask them if they went up there on their own or not. And can we see the check written to C2G, please? It's either going to be for one amount or another, right? Unless the artificially complex financial system of our town government precludes simply writing a check, of course.

To do: FOIL the above information to see what's what. Truth shouldn't be that tough to sort out. If it is, we've got a problem, Houston.

A view from the table

My second Republican caucus I got to sit at the table - and what a view it was!  Politics never gets boring in New Paltz.  I went in believing that my remarks as a candidate would be the most memorable part of the night to me, but the place really heated up, and it wasn't because the room was packed.

Although outnumbered by the Democrats in the room, the Republicans were mostly hesitant not to vote for one of their own.  Randall Leverette and Ray Lunati got the nod for Town Council over Jean Gallucci and Kevin Barry, both former Republicans who switched registration to Democrat because that's how non-thinking voters in this town usually vote.

The nomination of Peter Cordovano for supervisor came as a surprise to many, although more than one person told me that they believed it was orchestrated some time ago.  I thought Peter looked genuinely surprised, but the theory was that his nomination was made to protect Toni Hokanson.  Peter would win because Republicans prefer GOP candidates, and then after he declined the committee to fill vacancies would appoint Toni to the line.

I don't buy it.  Why?  Because if Peter is that convincing an actor (he really seemed stunned), he would not have waffled when he was asked if running and serving would have an impact on his law practice.  That waffling was honest, and I'm sure it cost him at least the one vote he fell short.  If this had been rehearsed, he would have acted shocked, then recover, and speak with confidence when he accepted instead of saying, "I think I'll do it."

It may well be that Peter would have decided running on short notice was foolhardy, and that the committee (of which he was a member, as well as chairman of the caucus, before his nomination) would have selected Toni.  Maybe Diane Lucchesi even had that in mind, although she said she nominated him out of a desire for a Republican candidate for the job.  But I don't believe he was in on it.

Politics?  Sure.  Conspiracy?  Bah!

Democrats fire their engines

The race for town supervisor is starting to shape up for registered Democrats in New Paltz.  Mid-Hudson News reports that the New Paltz Democratic caucus will take place August 23.  In the past it's been held at the high school, so I'm guessing they'll try for that location again.

Once again, the local Democratic party committee is apparently opting not to back the party member who is already in office.  In the spirit of "what's old is what's new," they will be supporting former supervisor and current county legislator Susan Zimet for the job over incumbent Toni Hokanson.

I don't know who else will be trying to get the party nod, but here's a tip:  be prepared to bring a couple hundred of your registered Democratic friends to secure any nomination from the party.  You can be sure that both Zimet and Hokanson will.