Rhinebeck Democrats Web Site

No. 15, July 2006

An informed voter is the best guardian of democracy.

Welcome to The Rhinebeck Demogram, an email newsletter bringing you information and commentary about current issues, candidates, and events. Published by the Rhinebeck Democratic Committee (RDC) for all the people of our community.

Our email address is demogram@rhinebeckdemocrats.org As always, we welcome comments, questions, suggestions and corrections.

IN THIS ISSUE

BRIEFS
--- An Inconvenient Truth
--- Fight the Right
--- Rhinecliff Online
--- The Goo-Goos Are Gathering
--- Sustaining Activism, part two

On June 24, friends and family gathered in the Founder's Hall of the Astor Home for Children to remember and honor Madeleine Post. Described by friend John Honey as "one of the most civically disposed persons ever to live in Rhinebeck," Madeleine moved here with her second husband in 1970 and throughout the following 36 years helped lead Rhinebeck in its sometimes awkward transition from an agricultural community into a more urban and outward-looking township.

Madeleine almost single-handedly enabled the location in Rhinebeck of Daytop, the residential drug facility which was viewed suspiciously, even fearfully, by town residents. She didn't stop there, but continued to work on the acceptance of the facility, promoting connections between the town and Daytop which today mean that it is valued by all as a positive community institution.

She was a founding member and a president of Hudson River Heritage, which has assisted enormously in the preservation of historically significant estates such as Rhinebeck's Wilderstein.

She also supported the arts with enthusiasm, co-founding the Center for the Performing Arts at Rhinebeck. Her dedication to the goals of the Astor Home for Children was of long duration; she served on the board and made the Home a focus of her interest and efforts during her later years.

In addition to being an active supporter and leader of our local Democratic Party, Madeleine went the next step and ran for local office, in order to provide our voters with a choice and to stimulate interest in the democratic process and the needs of the citizenry. Town Council Member Linda Souers writes, "She certainly was there for me when I first campaigned for Town Board. She was truly a great inspiration for many people, but I think mostly for other women in this community who aspire to tackle social problems and find meaningful solutions through individual action."

Above all, she cared for and about people. Madeleine's daughter Michelle von Koch put it this way, "She wanted to be glue. She wanted to connect people."

Friend Janeth Thoron captures Madeleine's particular attributes when she writes, "She set the bar higher than anyone I know when it came to public service, not afraid to be totally honest, yet all the while encouraging me with patience and affection to join her path."

According to its website, the Mirbeau Inn and Spa "is located in the storybook village of Skaneateles in central New York State's Finger Lakes Wine Country . . . " Thirty-two guest units, a spa with 14 treatment rooms, a gift shop, a boutique, and a fine dining restaurant are located on 12 acres of "forested parkland."

The owner-developers want to bring this concept to Rhinebeck. Accordingly they have purchased a 3.27-acre parcel within the village which abuts the Parisi property on West Market Street and curves around behind the Beekman Arms property, the P.O., M&T Bank, the Kane building and the American Legion building. The address cited in the site plan is 46 West Market Street and 6467 Mill Street.

Plans for these three-plus acres include an 80-unit hotel, a spa with 15 treatment rooms, a boutique, a fine dining restaurant seating 60, and a coffee shop for casual meals and snacks. Conference space for 150 has also been mentioned but had not been worked into the plan as of the most recent presentation. The developers have estimated that 120 employees would be required to provide the services necessary over a 24-hour period.

To accommodate all this activity, 180 or more parking spaces will be provided, situated under the hotel and outside the buildings. It is unclear how many, if any, of these spaces will be available to the general public -- a significant issue since the public will be losing spaces currently located behind the M&T Bank and it appears that the Astor House staff will have to sacrifice the space behind the American Legion building which they currently use.

However, impact on traffic rather than parking should prove to be the central issue. A road which sounds like a service entrance from West Market Street into the complex is planned, but the principal access/egress will be a 23' wide road just south of the M&T Bank, connecting Route 9 to the new development. This means that vehicles will be crossing Route 9 traffic when entering the complex from the south and when exiting it and turning north. What effect will this have on the already worrisome traffic 'hot spot' on Route 9 between the American Legion park and the hospital?

To date, the proposed square footage of the inn facility has not been announced. A second design rendering was presented at a May 17 meeting of the village planning board, where response was cool. Someone in the room described the building portrayed as "second empire."

What's next? Due to the unprecedented size and scope of this project, the village trustees have contracted the services of Greenplan, the professional planners who have been working for three years with the town's Comprehensive Plan Committee. Under local law, the cost of this support and guidance must be paid by the applicant, not the village.

It's important to note that the Mirbeau proposal will not be addressed by the town's Comprehensive Plan, currently under review by the Rhinebeck Town Board. Villagers, as well as town residents, who are concerned about the scale of this project cannot look to any protections against inappropriate development which the town plan may provide once it is adopted.

The Mirbeau proposal is now in the hands of the Village of Rhinebeck Planning Board and that is the body that will be making the final decisions. At the Board's June 6 meeting a formal application was submitted by the developers and the Planning Board accepted 'lead agency' status in the SEQRA (State Environmental Quality Review Act) process, which is designed to avoid or limit possible negative impacts on the environment from proposed actions or projects.

The importance of the public's role in the processing of this proposal cannot be overemphasized. All planning board meetings are open to the public and public testimony will be welcomed whenever hearing time for this project is scheduled. It's important to realize that planning board members must have reasons other than personal preference or taste in order to block or mitigate a plan. The public's experience, knowledge, opinions, and observations will be key in helping the board to determine the impact of this project on the community.

How can critics of the Mirbeau proposal contribute to the process? At this stage it's most important for the public to inform itself. Some of the areas that may or should be considered in the SEQRA process include: traffic; noise; solid waste production; potential for drainage problems; impairment of historical, achitectural or aesthetic resources in the existing community character; change in the use or intensity of use of land; etc.

A particularly important issue for Rhinebeck vis-a-vis this proposal is the possibility of "conflict with a community's current plans or goals as officially approved or adopted." The village may not be protected by the proposed town comprehensive plan but it has its own master plan, which includes language on appropriate commercial activities, community character, etc. All concerned villagers (and town residents) should become familiar with this important tool.

--- The Village Planning Board meets twice monthly. To find out which upcoming meetings will include information about, or discussion of, the Mirbeau Spa proposal, call Karen MacFarlane (876-1922) at the Zoning and Planning office.

--- Claim a copy of the brochure "A Citizen's Guide to SEQR" from the planning board office, upstairs in the village office building.

--- For further information about the SEQR process and its application here in Rhinebeck, visit <www.dec.state.ny.us>

--- The "Village of Rhinebeck Master Plan" (1993) is available from the planning board office for $5.00. Or the plan can be consulted in the office during business hours. Call ahead (876- 1922).

--- To be included on a secure ad hoc email mailing list dedicated solely to disseminating information about developments in the Mirbeau process, email Tess McKellen at <tmac1337@aol.com>

Hopes for an automatically open Democratic primary in September when voters go to the polls, ostensibly to nominate the candidates of their choice, have been dashed, at least when it comes to statewide offices.

The New York Democratic Party's convention, held in late May, pushed through Eliot Spitzer as the party's choice for its gubernatorial candidate and Andrew Cuomo as its choice for Attorney General. This means that other qualified aspirants -- Tom Suozzi (Nassau County Executive) for Governor and Mark Green (former New York City Public Advocate), Denise O'Donnell (former federal prosecutor from Buffalo), Charlie King (housing activist from Rockland County), and Sean Patrick Maloney (Manhattan lawyer and former aide of President Clinton) -- all viable candidates for Attorney General -- are frozen out of the process and excluded from the primary ballot unless they collect at least 15,000 signatures from registered Democrats, not a small thing to accomplish.

In addition to the time and effort which must be devoted to the petitioning effort, it calls upon resources which are better left in reserve for the general election should one get the nod from Democratic voters in the primary.

It comes down to this. Who should choose the candidates, the delegates to the party convention or the Democratic voters themselves? With this issue in mind the Rhinebeck Democratic County Committee members, who carry petitions each June to secure places on the primary ballot for local and statewide candidates, have carried one this year for Mark Green, a highly qualified candidate whom we feel will stay the course and appear on the primary ballot in opposition to Andrew Cuomo.

PLAN TO VOTE IN THE PRIMARY ELECTIONS ON SEPTEMBER 12. If you need to register or reregister, your registration form should be completed and sent to the Dutchess County Board of Elections (47 Cannon St., Poughkeepsie NY 12601), postmarked no later than August 18. You may hand deliver your registration to the Board by the same date. Registration forms are available at both the village and town offices and at the Rhinebeck Farmers' Market (Sunday, 10 am to 2 pm).

Absentee ballots are a two-stage process. Application forms should be completed and returned to the board, postmarked by September 5. The ballot itself must be completed and returned, postmarked by the 11th. Application forms are available at the venues indicated above.

For additional information, call the Dutchess County Board of Elections at 845-486-2473.

"Remember clearly that for the public to have faith in the government, they first have to have faith in the process that elected the government."

"There is probably no other phase of public administration in the United States which is so badly managed as the conduct of elections."

----- Joseph P. Harris, a reformist political scientist in his report to the Brookings Institution in 1930.

VOTING MACHINES:
What We Don't Know Will Hurt Us
===============================

The following list, entitled "18 Amazing Facts About Voting in America," is circulating via email. A copy came into our mailbox earlier this week. The person who initiated this circulation is not identified, but the content itself is described as "Based on a list compiled by Angry Girl
(http://nightweed.com/usavotefacts.html)."

Two to five websites are cited as sources for each statement. Some of the sites listed are commondreams.org., wikipedia.org, americanfreepress.net, cbsnews.com, motherjones.com, nytimes.com, blackboxvoting.org, and businessweek.com. Go to the Angry Girl site provided above for her complete documentation. It's no longer possible to track all of the 18 statements back to the source cited because the material is no longer posted on the site or the URL is unavailable. But at least eight of the statements do not appear to be subject to interpretation or contradiction. If only four of the 18 are unassailable, voters have cause for much concern.

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator in a surprise upset, with votes counted by ES&S machines.

6. Chuck Hagel, long connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S before the Senate Ethics Committee.

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's choices for vice-presidential candidates.

8. Kenneth Blackwell co-chaired George W. Bush's Ohio election campaign. As Ohio secretary of state, he worked to suppress the Democratic vote.

9. None of the international election observors were allowed into the polls in Ohio.

10. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes, making it impossible to verify that the vote coming out of the machine is the one put in by the voter.

11. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

12. Exit polls are usually excellent predictors of election results. Reputable analyses could not find an explanation for the discrepancy between exit polls and results of the 2004 presidential election.

13. A Diebold subsidiary employed five convicted felons as senior managers and developers. These people helped write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.

14. Jeff Dean, senior programmer on Diebold's central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree.

15. Jeff Dean served jail time for planting 'back doors' in his clients' accounting software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of two years.

16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claim that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it.

17. All - not some - but all of the voting machine errors
detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.

18. Serious voting anomalies in Florida - again, all favoring Bush - have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.

It's a good time to take stock of achievements and work still to be done in the Dutchess County Legislature.

For ten years I have pushed for more open and accessible legislature meetings. Finally, this year, meeting times have been changed from 4:00 pm to evening hours, so that our working citizens can attend. Environment is now getting some well deserved attention; the county has committed to doubling its purchase of hybrid vehicles and the county legislature unanimously endorsed the Community Preservation Act. In June resolutions were passed, overwhelmingly, urging Congress to increase funding for our county veterans' health care and to drop penalties for our seniors if they sign up late for Medicare Part D. For several years now I've been pushing our County Legislature to establish a committee to determine what a truly fair system of taxation in our county would look like -- this is finally happening this month.

I'm proud that I set these initatives into motion and followed through until favorable action was finally taken. I will continue to press, as I have for the last five years, for our County Legislature to enact a law requiring (not merely encouraging) the testing of wells for volatile organic chemicals whenever properties change hands.

I'm still working hard on other issues that you've heard me speak about repeatedly. Thirteen other New York counties require neighbor notification before pesticide application. This has been on my agenda for years; it's an uphill battle against vested interests but I won't give up. Open space protection is at the top of my list, and is favored by a majority of New Yorkers. Reinstating a tax on Wall Street transactions -- at even half of what it was when the tax ended in 1981 -- would enable the state to start funding this and related needs.

Some new initiatives I've become involved with include the extension of domestic partner benefits to Dutchess County employees, following the good example of Rhinebeck Township.

Laws already in place need enforcement and oversight. For example, I continue to press for full observance of our county's recycling law.

This is some of what's been going on. There's lots more. Feel free to contact me at 876-2488 or at my email <joeltyner@earthlink.net> with any questions or comments. You can also tune in to the ongoing exchange of ideas on radio (Sunday nights from 9 pm to midnight on WVKR, 91.3 FM) and participate by calling 845-437-7178.

As of this writing, former Vice President Al Gore's movie sounding the alarm about global warming is beginning its sixth week at the Upstate Cinema -- a record run at our local theatre. The companion book of the same title is the top New York Times paperback nonfiction best seller after three weeks on the list.

Visit the supporting website at <www.climatecrisis.net> and click on "Take Action" to evaluate your personal impact on global warming and to learn how you can reduce that impact significantly by changing your ways. Some of the measures recommended to save energy and reduce emissions are familiar; others may surprise you. For instance, most of us are unaware that agriculture is responsible for about one-fifth of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. The simple act of eating less red meat (a good idea for many reasons) means that less cattle will mean less methane (the second most significant greenhouse gas), which they exhale with every breath.

The website BuyBlue (www.buyblue.org) is promoting the newest title from the authors of "50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth," a best seller in paperback since 1989. "50 Simple Things You Can Do to Fight the Right" (EarthWorks Press, 2006, $9.95) provides detailed information about what anyone can do, every day, to defend democracy. Categories include: Take Back the Language, Adopt a Candidate, Stand up for Science, and Protect Our Elections. BuyBlue suggests that you buy the book online at Powell's Books or Barnes & Noble, both blue companies (that support democratic principles).

On May 22, 2006, the Rhinebeck Town Board established the Rhinecliff Advisory Council, to ensure that the interests of the hamlet will be well represented. A website has been established at <www.rhinecliff.org> which will include current traffic conditions, documents pertaining to the hamlet, Rhinecliff history, and possible discussion topics. To suggest content for the website, email <info@rhinecliff.org>

According to political commentator Alan Chartock (The Daily Freeman, 5/14/06) the time is right for reform of Albany's redistricting practices. Michael Gianaris, a young Democratic assemblyman from Queens, has introduced legislation very similar to successful strategies adopted in other states whereby district lines are drawn by panels of retired judges. Gianaris' leader, Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), isn't saying no, the good government organizations (Goo-Goos), like Common Cause and The League of Women Voters, are increasing their pressure, and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer considers this issue one of primary importance in his campaign.

The last issue of The Demogram contained a wake up call which expressed appreciation for the activism of the 2005 town elections, but also recognized the difficulty in sustaining that interest and involvement year round, every year, which is necessary if the 1700-plus registered Democrats in Rhinebeck are to be a force.

The Demogram article announced that the Rhinebeck Democratic Committee (RDC) was calling a special meeting for a Saturday morning in mid-May to address these concerns. Twenty Democrats attended this meeting and brainstormed ideas for several hours, with the goal of creating an issue-oriented membership organization that would incorporate the current functions of the RDC. Recently a subcommittee of seven met and designed a proposal for a new organizational structure. The next step will be the presentation of this proposal to the original group of 20 on Saturday morning, July 22, at Town Hall. If you have questions, or wish to become involved in the process at this point, contact RDC Co-Chair Warren Smith at 876-5707 or 876- 0885.

The information below is subject to change, so please call or email the contact provided for confirmation. All events listed are open to the public.

July 10, Monday --- TOWN BOARD Business Meeting. 6:45 pm at Town
Hall (876-3409).

July 18, Tuesday --- VILLAGE PLANNING BOARD meets, 7 pm at Village Hall (876-1922). The Mirbeau Spa proposal is on the agenda.

July 19, Wednesday --- 'AN EVENING WITH ANN LEWIS," an opportunity to hear from one of the most powerful women in Democratic politics today. Co-sponsored by the Dutchess Democratic Women's Caucus (DDWC). Call 845-876-6581 for more information.

July 22, Saturday --- RESTRUCTURING THE RHINEBECK DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE (RDC), 9 am at Town Hall. A draft proposal for reorganization will be presented and discussed. (876-5707, 876- 0885)

July 24, Monday --- TOWN BOARD Workshop, 6:45 pm at Town Hall (876-3409). The establishment of standing committees dedicated to senior citizens and to the arts and culture will be discussed.

August 1, Tuesday --- VILLAGE PLANNING BOARD is scheduled to meet, but may not, due to vacation schedules. Call 876-1922 for confirmation.

August 14, Monday --- TOWN BOARD Business Meeting, 6:45 pm at Town Hall (876-3409).

August 15, Tuesday --- VILLAGE PLANNING BOARD meets, 7:30pm at Village Hall (876-1922).

August 18, Friday --- Deadline for Registration to Vote in the SEPTEMBER 12 PRIMARY ELECTIONS. Call Dutchess County Board of Elections for information (845-486-2473).

August 28, Monday --- TOWN BOARD Workshop, 6:45 pm at Town Hall (876-3409). The tentative topic is review and discussion of reforms and initiatives undertaken by the board since January 3.

September 5, Tuesday --- VILLAGE PLANNING BOARD meets, 7:30 pm at Village Hall (876-1922).

September 11, Monday --- TOWN BOARD Business Meeting, 6:45 pm at Town Hall (876-3409).

September 12, Tuesday --- VILLAGE BOARD Meeting, 7 pm at Village Hall (876-7015).

September 12, Tuesday --- PRIMARY ELECTIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL OFFICES. Call Dutchess County Board of Elections for information, 845-486-2473.

September 19, Tuesday --- VILLAGE PLANNING BOARD meets, 7:30 pm at Village Hall (876-1922).

September 25, Monday --- TOWN BOARD Workshop, 6:45 pm at Town Hall (876-3409). Topic not yet determined.

October 6-7, Friday & Saturday --- WOMEN'S VOICES PILOT WORKSHOP, sponsored by the Dutchess Democratic Women's Caucus (DDWC) and designed to help potential candidates with message formation and voice development. For more information call 845-876-6581 or email <clarebrandt@ddwc.org>

Our snail mail address is The Rhinebeck Demogram, c/o McKellen, 22 Violet Place, Rhinebeck 12572.

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