Reevaluating recycling

I haven't talked nearly as much about the New Paltz Recycling Center as I should have.  Hidden behind the highway garage on Clearwater Road, it's so unknown that Google Maps confused it with the BMX track.

Recycling in New Paltz has had a tumultuous history.  When it was part of the highway department, it was never all that clear how much money it was making or losing, or exactly how many deer carcasses town employees dumped around back.  After it was split off and the Hudson Valley Materials Exchange signed a lease, it didn't get much better, because HVME paid little or nothing and again, it wasn't clear how much the place was making or losing.  Now HVME is gone, and the trailers of stuff belong to the town and are sold by the "ReUse Center."

The center makes most of its money by selling bulk scrap metal and other recyclable materials.  The retail aspect could continue to grow, but I think the way the town collects recycling is bass-ackwards.

Town residents shouldn't pay for a permit, and shouldn't pay to dispose of anything that the center can sell for money.  It's insulting to charge me money to drop off something that you can resell.  Make the permit to recycle free, and charge for garbage, period.  The town of Rochester has a free permit, and they keep it free because supervisor Carl Chipman doesn't want his recession-plagued residents to start dumping garbage on the roads.  You can market the free permit and encourage more people to drop off those cash cows.  It's even been suggested to me that the town could invest in a bottle machine, or some other method, that would allow the often-idle employees to collect more money by retrieving deposit bottles.

The center makes money, and even if it didn't, it improves the quality of life in the town by keeping crap off of our roads.  Let's drop the barriers to recycling and increase how much this underutilized service can make.

Recycling roads

A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to go down Plains Road with Highway Superintendent Mike Nielson, so I could see what a recycled road looks like.

Plains Road was the first one in New Paltz which was resurfaced by a process that allows for the reuse of the existing asphalt on-site.  Reusing materials is nothing new, but typically the road gets ground up and carted away for reprocessing, and ends up on another road elsewhere in the county.  This equipment allows it to be ground down, picked up, melted, and mixed with some new material right there; then it's laid back down and rolled.

Here's Mike, annoyed that I have a camera but explaining how the whole shebang works:

There are limits to this technology.

• Because of the length of the train, short roads and dead-ends can't be resurfaced like this.
• If there are deep cracks in the road bed, a full replacement will be needed anyway.  Anything that needs to be ground down more than five or six inches can't be replaced this way.
• The process leaves the road pebbly, and it still needs to be sealed, which isn't the case with traditional road replacement.
• Nielson hasn't tested it to see if the results can stand up to our highest-wear roads, like Horsenden. (The fact that we send our truck traffic along that narrow, windy road is another problem entirely.)

I haven't looked at a full cost-benefit analysis, but the benefits to the residents are pretty clear:  a two-week process, including curing, took six hours to complete.  It's also pretty cool to watch:

Making campaign promises is easy.  Fulfilling them, not so much.

Who am I voting for?

This year's village elections are so interesting that it seems like half the letters in this week's paper were from out of town.  It's not an easy choice, and I haven't actually made it yet, because I don't like closing my mind off to the possibilities.  Voting is an art perfected by procrastination - you never know what may change someone's mind.

I like to ask questions which are unorthodox, because they provide a lot of insight.  Like whether or not you'd be willing to wear a top hat if elected mayor, or whether you support a village militia.  Questions like that tell me a lot about how a candidate views the job, or views the village.  I know that I've only got one vote, but we all know how important one vote is in the Village of New Paltz, don't we?

I know that the clever voters are only voting for one four-year trustee spot, because they don't want their votes to counteract each other.  I can't tell you which pairs of candidates would cause that to happen, but there are plenty of people closer to the pulse of the voters than I.

More and more I am finding that I trust candidates who have lived in New Paltz for more than twenty minutes (that's Dener minutes, each one equals a year).  I don't care if the candidate's family hauled stones for Jean Hasbrouck, though; just because you're related to history doesn't mean that you have any knowledge or appreciation of it.

My bias towards age is in part fueled by two subpar trustees which we've elected in the past ten years.  We've also had plenty of terrible trustees and mayors who were much older, so I don't completely trust my gut on this one.  At least one young candidate strikes me as being completely unaware about village concerns and issues.  Another seems quite the opposite.

I'd like to see the residency requirements monitored and enforced more aggressively.  There's no reason for rumor or expectation of trustees not living in the village; we need a rule that can be tracked and verified so the situation can be dealt with.  I'd like to add to that an attendance requirement.  I don't care if the village board meets twice a year or 200, but trustees should be attendance for the vast majority of the time.

At the Chamber of Commerce forum I came to realize that village politics do not have to be dominated by people with engaging public speaking skills.  This is a small town, so if we choose, we can elect someone who is shy, or suffers from stage fright, or whose reflective personality doesn't lend itself to quick, off-the-cuff answers.  We also don't have to vote for one person because it will improve the chances of someone else being elected.  No, we can actually choose to vote for the people that will put the best foot of New Paltz forward.

Sorry I don't have any endorsements, or even decisions, quite yet.  Elections are just too important to rush.

Pushing the push-up agenda

If you've ever had the opportunity to spend time with me in town, you probably know that one of the main reasons I walk around outside is to do push-ups.  I participate in a very unusual physical fitness program, and after explaining the details to Police Chief Joseph Snyder, I think it's time for the story to be told.

Personal Integrity, Growth, and Strength
The program is called Push-ups for Personal Integrity, Growth, and Strength, and its basic tenet is simple:  when a police officer passes you on the street, drop and do ten.  The police vehicle or officer serves as a visual cue that it's exercise time, making it easier to remember; in fact, officers and civilians alike enjoy pointing out a passing police vehicle to me so I don't miss out.

However, this program is filled with nuance and depth that makes it a more successful exercise regimen than I have ever tried before.  Let's dissect the name:

• Push-ups:  Not everyone's favorite exercise, but it can be done just about anywhere.  I've known people to try crunches for cops and leg lifts for law enforcement officers, but push-ups seem to have sticking power.
• Personal:  This program is completely adaptable to the individual.  I originally decided to do only five per officer on weekends because I figured I would not be able to keep up; five departments have jurisdiction in New Paltz and weekends in a college town are always high energy.  I've dropped that rule, though, and added a few more for myself, such as doing an extra two if the vehicle has its lights on or if the officer is wearing a hat.  (Right now I'm considering actually doing one less if they're wearing a baseball-style hat, because I think they're unprofessional looking).
• Integrity:  If you start this program, you will be visible and accountable to continue.  However, no one can tell me what my criteria are but me, and it's my job to maintain my own integrity.  I've had officers tell me it's too hot to do push-ups, and others who tell me to do more; I maintain my own code regardless. The integrity portion of the program is the only thing that got me through my first four-cop push-up mini-marathon.
• Growth:  An officer on foot patrol commented on how I noticed police cars on the street before he did; my perceptiveness is definitely sharpened. I've built rapport with several more members of the force.  My understanding of police work, appreciation of how they're perceived, and even my attitude about the Bill of Rights have grown and matured since I have been actively doing push-ups in this way.
• Strength:  Physically, since April of this year I have gone from a guy who was shaking on push-up number seven to someone who often does more than a hundred a day.  Because I get a visual reminder to exercise, I'm more successful than I ever was with morning yoga, a daily jog, or any other program.

Different people, different views

Different people who follow the program have different reasons, which is another facet of the "personal" aspect.

The fact that it can be shortened to "Push-ups for PIGS" is funny to many (civilian and officer alike), while putting a positive spin to the word.  ("Cop" was considered negative by some until the 1970s, but is now neutral at worst.)  Chief Snyder loves the "personal integrity" aspect, saying, "We'd have a lot less crime in this country if more people had personal integrity."

Justin Holmes, who coined the acronym based on an acquaintance's phrase and helped popularize the program on lower Main Street, believes it sends a multi-layered message.  "If there is civil unrest, we're here to help.  If there is abuse by our government, we're here to resist," he explained to Chief Snyder and myself.  He and his partner Amanda Catherine Stauble started using the police as a visual cue after they registered for karate classes.  "We had to find a way to keep doing push-ups all week, or the ones in class would have killed us," Holmes recalls.

Not everyone sees the program in a favorable light.  I've had people tell me, "Police don't deserve push-ups."  I tell them the same thing I've told a number of officers:  it's not for them, it's for me.  When I do it it's a gesture of respect, but not one of deference.

There are also officers who aren't thrilled; I occasionally get a stony glare among the many smiles and waves I get from passing police (one University Police car gave me a short chirp of the siren the other night).  Most take it as good fun, and I hope that the small number who don't will warm to the idea once they learn more about it.

That being said, most people are very receptive.  I make friends with civilians and police officers alike by doing push-ups for personal integrity, growth, and strength.  Everyone is happy to point out that a bicycle officer just scooted by when my back was turned, or remind me if I owe an extra two for the hat he was wearing. A state trooper parked his car to get out and talk with a group of us one night, after driving around the block three times to see if we really would do a new set each time.  (Actually most of us wouldn't do more just because the officer went around the block, but it was fun so we made an exception.)  A Town officer I had never met before stopped to chat because he liked my form. It makes "community policing" a very real goal.

There's something very special about living in a town where you remember the police officer's first name.  Thanks to my push-ups, I know that New Paltz is that town.

Doesn't New Paltz just love poison ivy?

Poison ivy is considered a noxious weed in the eyes of the law, and village code specifically demands that property owners get rid of it.  Most noxious weeds are aggressive invasive species, but this nasty stuff is a long-term local.  The plant is only somewhat shade tolerant, and naturally exists as a ground cover in wooded areas or along the edges of forested tracts.  Unfortunately, the poison ivy in New Paltz has found its niche in difficult-to-reach places or those that exist in some sort of legal limbo.

I've known more than one hard-core organic environmentalist who reaches for the Roundup when faced with Toxicodendron radicans.  This plant's defense mechanism makes me certain that the Universe has some kind of plan, and it's a plan that includes a touch of sadism.  It can take several days to develop a poison ivy rash, and it spreads from the most sensitive areas which touched the plant to the least over a period of time.  The worse cases can lead to painful, oozing blisters; the fluid they weep does not spread the rash but it looks and feels horrible.

The urushiol which causes the reaction is not actually on the surface of the plant, but it's so fragile that it can be damaged without much effort.  Fur and feathers serve as protection for the animals that pass through patches of the plant, but the chemical is lying in wait for a hairless human to pet that friendly dog or cat.  In fact, the urushiol can remain active for a year or more on the dead plant, so steering clear of the hairy vines is a good idea year-round.

The plant loves real estate development, because it thrives in disturbed areas.  It grows as a ground cover, climbs up trees and utility poles, and can even become a freestanding bush.  It can tolerate near-drought conditions, but is also fine living on a flood plain or in brackish water.  The berries are popular with birds and other animals, and can germinate just fine after passing through the digestive tract.  It's really well-adapted to surviving here, and in fact has become more prolific since the Huguenots' arrival here.

Repeated exposure to urushiol is likely to chip away at the immunity of anyone lucky enough to have it. Identifying poison ivy can be tricky, because not only does that plant have different forms, the leaves aren't always the familiar almond shape.

In New Paltz, poison ivy grows in places far and wide.  Most residents make a sincere effort to get rid of the stuff, at least when it's close to the sidewalks.  Many people don't want to use chemicals on it, and they don't provide a guarantee that you'll get it all.  On residential property it's very fond of hosta patches, under bushes growing on retaining walls, and anywhere the homeowner may not notice it or would have a difficult time reaching the stuff.

Just as deer seem to know when hunting season has begun, poison ivy almost deliberately grows in areas that exist in some kind of legal limbo.  I've been watching a two-story plant thrive on a utility pole until some well-meaning individual cut through the two-inch thick main vine, and then return as a healthy bush.  Central Hudson owns the pole, but I'm told it's not entirely clear who is responsible for the plant's removal.  Growing in the middle of an intersection on the pedestrian island is also a very clever idea:  who owns that land?  Do they even know about the noxious weed on their land?

Some of the most healthy poison ivy exists in public spaces such as Sojourner Truth Park and along less-traveled paths on campus; our beloved Wallkill Valley Rail Trail provides the perfect environment for flourishing poison ivy.  I don't know if the village and college have any legal requirement to remove this plant, but I know that it's a Herculean task that we probably aren't paying them enough to do.

The only solution I've seen to the New Paltz poison ivy dilemma was suggested by Jason West:  send in the goats.  It's safer than chemicals or hand-pulling, and more effective than either.  I've heard several suggestions about where to obtain these goats for free or for money, and even contacted one of the farmers, but I haven't confirmed that anyone is enterprising enough to hire out their goats.  If there is, I sure think New Paltz could keep them busy.

What's next, rubber bullets?

I don't like tasers and I don't believe they have any business in New Paltz.  I told Toni Hokanson that I think approving the use of even one of these devices by our police is her Hurricane Katrina - and that her vote may have been different if she weren't coming off an unopposed election.

I volunteered to be tased to prove a point - that our police and government officials wouldn't use this device on an ordinary citizen in a demonstration for liability reasons, any more than they would demonstrate how to stop someone with a gun.  I've had friends in the law enforcement community, and other trained in a variety of martial arts, demonstrate any number of disabling techniques on me safely, but guns and tasers can't be demonstrated safely.  My offer was ignored because the Town Council understands that they couldn't have agreed without making community taser opposition more visible.

Through a variety of lively debates I've explored this issue with people in law enforcement, who generally support their use because it minimizes danger to the officers.  I'm all for keeping our cops alive and well - they keep graffiti off my house, muggers away from my person and generally exist to make sure we treat each other with some level of respect, even if we don't want to that day.

What concerns me was confirmed in the Phillies taser attack - a rowdy fan was running around the field and got tased for being an idiot.  In the past, this type of fan has been wrestled to the ground and arrested.  According to the story, "the Police Department's internal affairs unit would open an investigation to determine if the firing 'was proper use of the equipment.'"

Good for them - because it wasn't.  The only reason a taser was used in this case is because the cop had one.  No indication that the officer would have been in danger, just an indication that it was just too difficult to chase after the punk.  The taser, once equipped, is a very easy piece of technology to use.

I'm amazed that we spend so much time debating relatively minor issues like who's smoking where and how noisy they are when doing it, while blithely letting our police get armed with a device that has been documented in its use for torture and can also be fatal.  Those college kids who are so noisy will be quieter if they're twitching on the ground, I'm sure; likewise the middle schoolers will think twice about sneaking a taste of a hookah if they know what the consequences may be.  I'm not saying that any of our individual officers are likely to use this device in an intentionally harmful way, but in the heat of the moment it sure is an easy solution to reach for.

Police Chief Snyder is proud of his new black-and-white police cruisers, because of the "old time" feel they have.  They evoke feelings of community policing, which he claims to support.  I'm not sure how well tasers fit in with friendly officered fellows who put a scare into troublemakers and make sure runaways make it home safely, but they definitely fit with our police force's paramilitary-style uniforms and AR-15 rifles.

I guess it depends on what kind of community you think you're policing.  If you believe that New Paltz is not a community that needs tasing, join the Facebook group or just stand up and say something.

A little-known but serious pest problem in New Paltz

Now that the weather's starting to get nice again, I'm starting to notice a pattern over the years, and it's not one that I care for.

The flowers are pushing up from the thawing ground, and soon temperatures in the 80s will push forth green on every stem and surface.  Perhaps before the buds are really visible, I'm sure to get a knock on my door from some kid who wants to mow my lawn.  If I agree, there will be more offers to help with manual labor.  Trimming and removing shrubs, planting shrubs, washing the house and the cars, raking leaves, shoveling snow . . .

So what's the problem?  Kids just multiply, and with them come problems.  If you let a couple linger in your yard, pretty soon they're joined by friends, all of them playing music, smoking when you're not looking and flicking the butts in your bushes, sweating and swearing and generally clogging up the works.

I know that not everybody in New Paltz has a problem with teen infestation, but we sure do.  At first we thought it was a holdover from when the house was rented to college kids, but we soon realized that this was different - college kids don't offer to work, for one thing.  I spoke with the folks at the New Paltz Youth Program, Prevention Connections, and Family of New Paltz, but all I've gotten is a sad shake of the head and a shoulder shrug.  I was pretty desperate when I finally contacted the DEC, but that's where I finally found some help.

According to Mark Christiansenhausen, coordinator of suburban primate ecology, most teens in this area started out living with a family in New Paltz, and may still return to that nesting area for feeding.  Mostly they're migratory and avoid adults, but my house is a special case.  Apparently the choice of paints, combined with the old beams just under the soffits, creates an odor that's very similar to that of fried chicken, pizza, soda, and cupcakes.  Until the degassing of the paint is complete (probably another ten years because of the lead content), kids are just going to keep turning up in our yard and make excuses to hang around.  The fact that the yard slopes towards the house doesn't help matters, either.

However, Christiansenhausen did offer a ray of hope, funded by Federal dollars.  This coming Tuesday he and a team of DEC ecologists are coming to the house and hanging an effigy teen on the roof.  It's hoped that the smell of rotting kid corpse will make the bizarre combination which creates junk-food smells a fair bit less attractive.  By winter, when the effigy will be completely dessicated, all we'll have to do is fumigate the garage and we might be rid of this strange pest problem once and for all.

I voted no once, too

I'm not always as supportive of capital projects as I was of the Middle School renovation. I was part of a large majority of people that opposed a massive expansion in the district of my youth. Curious?

The district I attended was much larger than this one, having three elementary and two secondary schools, with three of the five buildings occupying adjacent land. (My best friend's middle and high schools were actually physically connected by a corridor, and our experiences completely discounted in my mind the argument that it wouldn't be safe to build a Middle School next to the New Paltz High School, but I see a lot less danger in the world for kids today than many parents do anyway.) Student populations rise and fall, and when I was quite young they decided to close the smallest elementary school and lease the building to BOCES.

After that lease expired they had a different situation on their hands: the high school was jam-packed! The Board of Ed, knowing that it's tough to float a bond, came up with an innovative solution. They would sell the old elementary school to a condo developer to finance the two extra wings they needed for the high school. The project wouldn't have cost that much in dollars, but it would have added 70-80 homes to a community that was simultaneously losing a lot of potential classroom capacity. It went down in flames.

So yes, I understand that there are two sides to every school finance vote, and in this case the side I didn't support won. Frankly, the way our system is designed it's easier to be on the winning side when you're voting no. But what's done is done, and let's move on. The school district's press release said it best:

While we are obviously disappointed in the defeat of the referendum, we will waste no time in setting the outcome aside in order to work towards finding another solution to address our Middle School’s needs. Throughout the entire multi-year planning and discussion about this referendum, people on both sides of the issue were in agreement that there were severe issues at the Middle School that needed to be dealt with. That fact gives us common ground to work on, and we will gather there--on that common ground--to push ahead and seek a solution that the majority of the community can support. We must waste no time in moving forward in order to get our Middle School out of the horrible state of deterioration it faces and ensure that further, more costly issues are not created. The longer we wait, the more will be needed and the costlier the solution will be.

There's a time for fighting and there's a time for fixing. We need to fix things now. New Paltz is a community with such a diverse set of well-considered ideas that sometimes, particularly in a place like this blog where we can hide behind our keyboards, things get pretty heated. But this isn't just an internet forum - we are neighbors and, for the most part, we all like living here.

Shall we shelve the rhetoric and work towards finding a way to say yes? The problems at the school aren't going away and no one has said they want to stop educating our kids. How about we step outside, take a breath of fresh air, and have a cup of coffee with someone that didn't agree so we can find that common ground? I hear The Bakery is a great place for a lively debate.

Let's shed some light on our ongoing developments

The Village's Environmental Conservation Commission has come up with a novel way to legally gain access to sites under development: make one of them an acting building inspector. It's an idea that reminds me of Terry Dungan's brief stint as acting meter maid parking enforcement officer, with one big difference: it would work.

I think that most of what Terry does comes from good intentions, but suffers from a classic case of don'tknowhowtoshowmyworkitis, which is all too common among teachers. In fact, it's the teacher's "shoemaker's children" syndrome.

But here's the rationale behind the EnCC request: Village Code provides a section about acting building inspectors, which reads:

§ 86-4. Acting Building Inspector.

In the absence of the Building Inspector, or in the case of his inability to act for any reason, the Mayor shall have the power, with the consent of the Board of Trustees to designate a person to act on his behalf and to exercise all of the powers conferred upon him by this chapter.

The rationale behind appointing an EnCC member is thus: the Village is in need of a Building Inspector II, for which there is budgeted $44,986.50. At least three people have been interviewed, and none have been hired. By appointing a member of the EnCC to act as a building inspector, the Village would be able to take a significant chunk of work away from the understaffed building department, allowing Kathy Moniz to focus on other equally important areas. The EnCC already has an interest in enforcing all of the requirements agreed to in the site plan by the developer, and building inspector status would require that individual to do what members of the EnCC are rarely allowed to do: inspect active construction sites for violations.

EnCC members have been granted only very limited access to these types of sites, because there isn't any way to legally require landowners or developers to agree to inspections to make sure that all the mitigations which were agreed to are also adhered to. The building inspector does get to inspect these sites.

The code provides for such an appointment in the case of the building inspector's "inability to act for any reason," and I can see two very obvious reasons why one of the two building inspectors in the Village's budget may not be able to act. For one of them, he or she has not yet been hired, and so is unable to act. For the other, Kathy Moniz, she's trying to do the job of two people. She's absolutely going to have to make very hard decisions about priortizing her work. She can never, ever be two places at once. Through no fault of her own, I am certain that there are times when Kathy Moniz is simply unable to act.

Removing site inspections from Kathy's plate would permit her to focus on things that are more likely to imperil people's lives, like overcrowded rentals and gas leaks in restaurants. I like the idea of her being able to do more of that stuff, if it comes up. Whichever EnCC member is selected and trained for the position, they would already start out with amply knowledge about the environmental aspects of site development. It's obvious that the budgeted $44,986.50 isn't enough to attract the right candidate, and that number isn't going to change soon. Set aside that money to sweeten the pot when you post the job next year, and let a dedicated EnCC member do what he or she wants to do anyway in the meantime.

If anyone knows when this is going to be on the agenda for the Village Board, I would definitely speak at the public hearing in support of this idea, if it comes to that.