TPW endorses: county legislature

No one seems to have a clear idea what goes on in county government, which is something I can only blame our current legislators for.  Now that we are switching to single-member districts, the new representatives will, I hope, start feeling like they are accountable to their constituents.

District 20

includes the village and those areas that you always thought should be part of the village:  I'm running in this district, so I won't spend a lot of time telling you why you should vote for TPW.  In fact, I said it best in the New Paltz Times, so go ahead and read it there.  It's time for a change, and I'm the change we need.  'Nuff said.

District 17

includes all the rest of New Paltz and a smidgen of Esopus.  We have three choices there:

1. Les Kalmus, an Esopus resident who owned an IT business for many years.  Les has classic Republican values (don't spend what you don't have, privatizing always makes things better) and a low-key demeanor.  I don't expect Les to grab the spotlight for political gain.  Nobody hates him.  He's doing this to try to make a difference.
2. Steve Greenfield, New Paltz resident and former school board member.  Steve is an excellent researcher with an inflammatory style.  He came out firing both barrels against Susan Zimet before she left this race, and then took her WFP line when she did.  I've crossed swords with Steve, even on issues where we agree.  Steve is a polarizing force who always backs up his positions with facts.
3. Ken Wishnick, the replacement for Zimet on the Democratic line.  Ken has a lot of experience with planning and administration which could be put to good use on the county level.  He also has expressed questionable judgment in the past; when he was on the Town Council he helped write the job description for Town Planner, and then resigned to apply for the job he created.

I can't support Ken for the same reason I can't support Jean Gallucci - he doesn't see a problem with how he handled that issue, and I fear that other morally grey matters will trouble him in the future.  Despite the fact that when we disagree it's explosive, I like Steve and his ideas; I just wish that "explosive" wasn't such a common part of his equation.  I know that I won't agree with Les on some issues, such as whether we really know enough to decide Golden Hill's fate, but I can tell that he is someone who can work in a diverse group without it getting personal.

I believe that both Steve and Les will work hard, and that I could work with either of them, so for a tie-breaker I look to the town itself.  We have seen how bad things get when our supervisor and mayor hate each other; do we want legislators that can work with our community?  I do, and I am really not sure if Susan Zimet dislikes Steve Greenfield or Hector Rodriguez more - the evidence of disharmony with both men runs rampant through the news and letters pages.  With collaboration as the tiebreaker, I am recommending a vote for Les Kalmus in District 17.

Gadfly throws his hat in the ring

The political insiders are talking about it, so I should as well.  Last Thursday I accepted the Republican nomination for County Legislature in the new District 20, which is comprised of the Village of New Paltz (election districts 1, 4, and 9) and the adjacent Cherry Hill area (election district 8).

I was asked to step up after lamenting the lack of choice in local elections, and I thought hard about it before choosing to accept.  I won't say I thought long and hard, because I was asked a week ago Monday, but I didn't agree without thinking it through thoroughly.

Since I entered this race quite late compared to the other candidates, and since I'm not the lifelong political operative typical of these campaigns, I have a lot to learn about the process and about how people in this district feel about their county government.  This blog is a testament to my values and my progressive beliefs, which I will apply tirelessly to the job.

I understand that some people don't want to vote for a Republican in this day and age, believing that anyone with that label will blindly follow the GOP in lockstep.  There was a similar belief about Roman Catholics voting the Pope's conscience until about 60 years ago.  My early supporters include members of the Democratic, Green, Working Families, Republican, and Independence parties, and my heart is warmed by their encouragement.

Please like my Facebook page below to keep in touch as I build my campaign's infrastructure.  By tradition, we Gadflies may announce our candidacy here, but we don't use this blog as a campaign platform.


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Reintroductions are in order

There's been a decent amount of introductions around here lately, and it's made me realize that I never actually said much about myself in my first post here.  The first thing I notice when reading it is that I was wrong; the link to Brittany Turner's column still exists.  The second thing I notice is that the column, in retrospect, looks like the first step towards Brittany's ill-fated run for Town Council, the one that led to any number of accusations that she "stole the election" from one of the candidates by allowing the other one to win.

But I digress - this isn't about Brittany.  Or the stomach-lurching world of political intrigue, either.

So in the interest of people understanding a bit about what makes each gadfly here tick, here's a little bit about what makes this gadfly tick.

To put me in the pigeonhole which is all anyone really cares about, I consider myself a geocon. I like the idea behind the term crunchy con, but honestly it reduces the philosophy to a sound bite that sounds like a criminal snack.  I'm conservative in that I recognize the value in conserving things that can't easily be replaced, like non-human life, real human love, and the money we all work hard to earn.

In New Paltz this generally allies me with environmentalists and puts me at odds with social liberals, because I make it my priority to speak for those without a voice (like trees, animals, and children) and figure the rest (of humanity) gets more help than it deserves from our government.  I'm more than happy to spend tax dollars on programs to help these disadvantaged groups.

There are social institutions which have no value and should not be conserved, like any that are clearly making life harder for a section of the population for no good reason (by enslaving them, denying them the right to vote or marry, or some other clear violation of good sense).  Outside of such glaring cases, I believe that human beings have the right to make choices to govern their lives, even if their choices are poor.

Of late I've been interested in how authority works in our community, be it the many police departments, the school district, or the various bodies writing laws that are intended to alter our behavior in one way or another.  Unlike environmental issues and political discourse, it's an area that fails to get much attention.

My rules of engagement are to be civil even when exposed to a viewpoint I find offensive, to keep an open mind to the probability that I'm wrong, and to learn from it when I am.

"NO" on the Library

I respect my fellow Gadfly's opinions, but on this matter we must differ. Here's the letter I wrote to the New Paltz Times explaining why:

I'm an avid reader and I spent a good chunk of my childhood trolling my local library for new books. The librarians all knew my name and were happy to suggest titles I might like. My parents voted "yes" for the library's budget every year when it came up, as we lived in a community that had a library which taxed the residents directly and submitted its annual budget to the voters for consideration. And yet, when a kindly supporter of Elting called me to ask my intentions on the upcoming vote, I was on the fence. I've done more reading on the subject and reached a difficult conclusion.

I support funding Elting Memorial Library. I think we can afford to give them more money than we do now. But Proposition 414 is not the way to do it.

This proposition asks, "Shall the annual contribution of the Town of New Paltz provided in its budget for the Elting Memorial Library, a free association library, located at New Paltz, New York, be increased by one-hundred fifty-one thousand ($151,000.00) dollars annually to three hundred twenty-one thousand ($321,0000.00) dollars annually?" Unlike the mechanism that our library (and all town departments and other outside agencies) presently use, this would not be revisited every year. The library would get that same $321,000 every year unless and until a new proposition was passed by the voters to change it. We would no longer have the ability to ask our library's Board of Directors how they've been spending our money, which is a standard to which we hold our fire and police departments, the ambulance corps which is contracted to rush us to the hospital, our schools and the good people that keep our roads paved and free of obstructions.

I'm prepared to swallow a bigger chunk of library funding in my taxes, but I don't expect the increase to be quite as high as Prop 414 is asking -- mostly because I don't expect our Town Council to support such an increase in an election year. It's not very fair to the library to stake its fate on the political climate, but it's also not very fair to suggest that we should accept an "opt out" tax increase (since we would have to "opt out" by passing another proposition) when every other level of government as some sort of "opt in" mechanism in the form of an annual budget that is either approved by voters or by duly-elected representatives of those voters.

If the Board of Directors of the library feels that the town government is unwilling to share its expenses fairly, I respectfully suggest exploring the option of establishing a library district. Then the library would have the right to bring its case directly to the people -- and every year, the people would have the right to say "no."

Meet the Gadflies

New Paltz Gadfly isn't intended to be a solo operation - anyone who fits the requirements is permitted to throw their two cents in! Here's a list of contributors to the blog:

Terence P Ward is a freelance writer who has been slowly revising his personal history, and expects to have been born in New Paltz by 2015. Right now he's claiming to have lived here for twenty years. His user picture reflects a time when he had short hair, something he misses more and more as he tries to create a donation for Locks of Love.

KT Tobin Flusser is Chair of the Save the Middle School and is a close watcher of the New Paltz Board of Education. She is on the steering committee for New Paltz GreenWorks and has more initials than anyone else in New Paltz. KT is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at SUNY Albany, her dissertation topic is women in politics in Ulster County.

The New Paltz Gadfly seeks to be a blog that brings in views from a number of different New Paltz perspectives. Among those that have been invited to participate but have not yet done so are Butch Dener, Rachel Lagodka, Ira Margolis, and Mike Cerasaro.

Want to be a gadfly? It's easier than you think to do! There are a few simple rules you have to agree to follow:

1. You must live in New Paltz.
2. Your posts must relate to New Paltz.
3. You have to post under your real name. We're all neighbors here, and the New Paltz Gadfly isn't a forum for anonymous personal attacks. Take responsibility for your words.
4. The administrator reserves the right to delete posts that are out of bounds of good taste, which will like involve excessive profanity, unadulterated hate speech, and flat-out libel.
   

Think you fit the bill? Then get yourself a blogger account and slap a comment onto this post. You'll be up and complaining in no time.