The funeral last week for a moderate Republican official may be the last time for a while that the Columbia County GOP all come together in the same room on a cordial basis. With incumbent sheriff David Harrison not running for reëlection, the upcoming September 10th primary between Capt. David Bartlett and State Police investigator Mazzacano has the potential to get nasty, and already has divided the party ranks.
State campaign finance records tell the story of which prominent Republicans and businesses are lining up on which side.
The Republican caucus endorsed Bartlett, and donations to their man largely coming from Harrison loyalists and other Republicans generally seen as allied with former State Assembly Minority Leader and lobbyist John Faso:
Valerie Bertram, former Stuyvesant Supervisor—$80
Gail Dicosmo, Assistant to the Board of Supervisors — $100
Gary Graziano, Hudson Police Commissioner—$130
Kathy Harter, Deputy Elections Commissioner—$100
John Faso, Lobbyist and Former Assemblyman — $100
Bartlett has also garnered corporate support from a hodgepodge of politically--connected businesses and political groups, including engineers Morris Associates ($250), Valley Oil ($40), Lebanon Valley Auto Racing ($1,000), Harrison for Sheriff ($250) and the Law Enforcement Officers’ Union ($200). Couturier North America, which landed the old bakery building on Route 9 in Livingston with the blessing of County development officials, also donated $100 to Bartlett.
Donations to Mazzacano, meanwhile, largely stem from another faction mainly associated with Richard Koskey’s semi-secret barn confab of conservative insiders:
Bill Better, former County Attorney—$250
Roy Brown, Germantown Supervisor—$50
Don Kline, former Election Commissioner & Supervisor—$40
Rev. Ronald Grant, Shiloh Baptist Church—$25
Holly Tanner, County Clerk—$50
Kippy Weigelt, Claverack Supervisor candidate—$30
Dick Koskey, Accountant—$50
Corporate donations to Mazzacano include schoolbus operator Ben Funk, Inc. ($75) and mobile home builders John Alvarez & Sons ($125).
New Lebananon Supervisor Mike Benson is said to have hosted a fundraiser for Bartlett attended by GOP chair Greg Fingar, from whom no donations appear in the State database.
Interestingly, Hudson Alderman and Taghkanic resident Cappy Pierro crossed party lines to donate to Mazzacano—passing over fellow Democrat Mike Winnie, who is running for Sheriff from the other side of the aisle. Chatham Deputy Chief Mark Leggett dropped out of the early running, and is said to now back Winnie rather than his former GOP rivals. Democrat Ancram Supervisor Art Bassin donated to Bartlett, rather than Winnie.
The campaigns thus far appear obsessed with sign wars, with pockets of the county featuring alternating Bartlett/Mazzacano lawns. Generally, one tends to see signs for popular judge Jonathan Nichols alongside Bartlett’s. But Mazzacano is clearly winning the who-has-the-most-gigantic-signs-with-huge-photos-of-the-candidate’s-face battle.
If the campaign follows the usual pattern, as we get closer to primary day on the 10th, expect to see a lot more aggressive (and in some cases ghostwritten) letters-to-the-editor. Most will likely feature bland encomiums to their preferred candidate, but a few will contain more personal insinuations of financial or professional impropriety.
Since Bartlett has secured the Conservative and Independence lines, a Mazzacano win in the Republican primary would raise the prospect of a three-way race in November, giving Winnie (whose past campaigns have fallen short) a much stronger chance of prevailing.
As far as law enforcement issues go, it is not clear from the candidates’ statements so far that there are any significant policy differences. The primary seems to be more about personal loyalties and turf.
Delahanty recapped their talk in a longish letter to Flood on Tuesday, reproduced in full below. (As of press time, he had not received any acknowledgment or reply.) Delahanty’s account reveals a number of statements which raise eyebrows—either due to what Flood said, or what he claimed not to know. According to the letter, the County’s top development official believes that:
Delahanty’s letter notes that Flood sounded unsure or unconcerned about the following topics related to the County-owned airport;
Another surprising note from the letter: While shepherding the economic and planning efforts of of Columbia County, Flood does not actually live within the County itself.
While thanking Flood for his time, Delahanty concludes that the County development office needs to provide more public information, make more prudent use of tax dollars, consider citizen concerns seriously, and take an approach which is more “innovative, outside the box and constructive.” The full text of his letter follows.
Commissioner Kenneth Flood
Columbia County Planning/Economic Development
401 State Street
Hudson, NY 12534August 20, 2013
By emailKen:
I wish to thank you for taking the time out of your day to speak to me on Wednesday the 14th of August. I wish to recap our comments, especially on the Columbia County Airport and to build upon them and hope that what we all want in Columbia County can be accomplished.
As mentioned, I first bought property in Austerlitz in 1978, somewhat based upon research I did of an ancestor during the Revolutionary War and whose records indicate he was in Claverack as well as the Mohawk Valley.
This county with its natural and historical beauty and growing economic vitality is thus important to me.
We discussed a number of issues from the strength and vitality of so-called 2nd home owners who I believe are probably the biggest economic boom this county has experienced in the last 100 years, to the excess number of boards, county and town departments and the limited population and thus tax base.
We also discussed that over the last 10 to 20 years the county and towns have spent millions on the purchase of closed schools, numerous Public Works buildings, tax abatements for firms that ultimately left and some who remain, to the moving of dirt around the Industrial Park. All this money comes from a limited population that is being strained each year.
We discussed the increase of restaurants in Hudson and Chatham and you mentioned “they don't provide good jobs except for the owners.” I disagreed, as they not only provide good work for many people either as their principal or second job, but also the owners have bought and renovated buildings. These purchases continue to provide work for numerous trades, increasing the buying locally from farmers, improving the tax base and bringing customers that may stay, use the B&Bs and buy product in the retail stores. It appears you dismiss the positive impact which was also highlighted in August 14th article in the Food Section of the New York Times.
I was also dismayed that you thought our local paper did not always present issues correctly, if so, then you need to better communicate your Department’ s views and activity.
But the main point of my call was and is the ill-conceived purchase of land from a viable 9-hole golf course for the expansion of the Columbia County Airport. You mentioned that Mr. Nero had turned the offer down and that the county would only be spending $25K on legal fees. But when asked if you thought he would litigate you did not have an opinion.
I am saddened that as the Economic Development Officer of the County that you cannot offer an informed opinion to the Supervisors and the public of what possible outcomes may happen. Given Mr. Nero's stated issues and positions, I can see him winning a substantial price increase to purchase the land, as he will need to spend substantial money renovating a viable Golf Course. Where the money will come from when he wins, seemed not to be an issue with you.
We discussed the number of flights in and out of the airport and you did not seem to have that information and when pressed you said the numbers of recorded flights could be found on the Internet. When discussing what planes use the airport and how, you did not seem to have that information. You did not know of the airport in Egremont, MA, that gives flying lessons and uses Columbia as a practice “touch and go,” because the Town of Egremont does allow such use. You thought that was great as someone might buy a house in Columbia County. I hope you mentioned that in jest.
I was also surprised that you did not know the financials of the airport and its operator. If we are not the stewards of responsible economic development and spending, who is? Before we effectively give money to a business we should know the financials. No bank would give money without a full accounting of the Income, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow of the business that was going to most benefit from a loan or grant.
You indicated that Richmor may leave and the possible loss of 35 jobs because it might not be profitable for them to remain if the airport was not expanded. You mentioned Richmor recently bought a jet and is keeping it in the Schenectady area. But you could not tell me the type, what it may have cost and why it is in Schenectady, but you think keeping it there is a reason to spend a million plus dollars because Richmor may leave. Let me indicate to you, that a business would not remain in Columbia County if it was not making money. In fact you have mentioned it brings $20M of economic vitality to the county, so I assume they make money as it is.
You mentioned that the added land was needed for safety, but it is currently operating safely and you could not explain which planes and money would be lost to the County if the airport was not expanded. You mentioned one reason for the land was to keep deer out of the facility, I may suggest Richmor close the 9H entrance for example.
We also discussed why the County did not assess each landing some dollar amount; you thought it was an interesting point. At least the County could see a tangible benefit.
I can go on and on in reference to our call, but my perception is a perceived lack of knowledge that your office seems to have of the impact of the expansion of the Airport. I hope my perception is incorrect.
But we also discussed the subject of the possible NYSEG power lines will have on Ghent. I was interested in the fact that you stated you live near power lines, although not in the County and we all need power, implying it will not have a negative impact on property values, etc. But in fact, as you mentioned, you bought your home after the lines were installed, thus not negatively impacting the value of your home. You also mentioned that internet lines are visible – I hope again that is in jest, as cable lines do not run on high tension lines.
We need to have thinking that is innovative, outside the box and constructive. I don’t get the sense that is the vision of the Economic Development office.
I request you and your office provide information publicly of all the questions that have been asked on the Airport issues and on other ongoing business so the public can be informed. I suggest that the Development office more actively continue to help other smaller businesses and push the providers of the Internet to expand access throughout the county. The money whether from the Federal Government or taxpayers of Columbia County needs to be used prudently.
We are here for future generations and not to bankrupt current taxpayers with added burdens. I trust you will further consider the negative impact this land purchase will have both locally and regionally.
Respectively,
Kevin Delahanty
Ghent, NY.
[email protected]From your office’s web site: “Since 1967 Richmor Aviation, Inc. has operated out of the Columbia County Airport. Business in the country has been good for us. Low overhead compared to our competitors in New York City. Great resource for our work force. Excellent place to reside and raise a family.”
Is TCI attorney Bill Better ignorant of basic zoning law and environmental precepts? Or is he just counting on his audience to be clueless?
It’s hard to tell, here on the one-year anniversary of the company’s devastating fire and explosions in Ghent... at least, based on Better’s carping and tendentious letter this week to the Columbia County Emergency Management Council, or EMC.
This site obtained a full copy of Better’s letter on Wednesday; it can be downloaded in full via this link.
As first reported here, the EMC issued a memorandum in late June recommending new steps be taken to prevent further disasters like the one at TCI at the start of last August. The day-long fire forced thousands of County residents indoors, and put countless firefighters at risk.
In response to a well-founded critique that the company failed to seek required permits, TCI’s legal flack blusters that “the Town requires no such approvals and there is no office or official prepared to issue them... No Town or County codes exist with respect to PCBs.”
Unfortunately, Better’s argument just doesn’t pass the legal laugh test. And to understand why does not require a law degree.
There are two basic types of local zoning codes in New York: Restrictive or Permissive. Restrictive zoning only allows those activities which are specifically identified as permitted uses. Any other uses not specifically spelled out in the code are not allowed. Permissive zoning is the reverse: Any uses not specifically prohibited are allowed.
Almost all towns in our region—including Ghent—opt for restrictive zoning, for a one very obvious reason: Because it’s impossible to anticipate every single cockamamie idea that some human or corporation might propose.
Thus when Better fails to find anything in the Ghent code mentioning the dechlorination of PCBs, that absence ought to have told him that it is unpermitted. Instead, TCI’s attorney plays (or acts) dumb, as if not understanding the fundamental premise of restrictive zoning.
The only way for such an unusual use to be allowed as-of-right within a restrictive zoning code would be to argue that it’s a “customary accessory use” to some other permitted activity. For example, you can have a swingset in your backyard even if your local code does not mention swingsets, because everyone agrees swingsets are customarily found on residential properties.
But no reasonable person would say that bringing in an outside contractor to heat PCBs in a trailer and dose them with explosive sodium is customary to a commercial or manufacturing business in Ghent. In any case, even Better does not even try to advance such an absurd argument. (NOTE: It also has been argued in Ghent that the mere act of bringing in a second company to the TCI building in itself should have triggered a permitting request.)
Next, Better struggles to argue that TCI’s catastrophic explosions, which leveled their facility to the ground, were “nothing more than a fire.” As such, he feels the EMC was “wrong to describe the fire as an ‘environmental incident’.”
What this lawyer characterizes as a mere “fire” prompted County emergency management officials to tell all residents within a 15-mile radius to stay indoors all day, and required a response from virtually every fire company within that same radius.
More to the point: Does Better really believe that it’s environmentally safe and legal to dispose of PCBs in a gigantic, uncontrolled bonfire punctuated by multiple explosions?
If that were the case, TCI would be in a different business: burning PCBs in huge ad hoc bonfires. After all, why bother trying to dechlorinate PCBs, or to dilute them in mineral oil, if it were environmentally safe to just torch them? There is no question that TCI’s facility contained large quantities of PCBs; the estimated amounts onsite at the time of the fire are spelled out in the company’s own engineering report.
In an attempt to minimize his client’s negligent management , Better falls back on a favorite weasel word of apologists for polluters: “measurable.” His letter argues that no “measurable contamination” was found in the surrounding air, soil or water. Once again, neither the facts nor common sense are on Better’s side. In point of fact, even the limited testing by EPA and DEC did find “measurable traces” of PCBs near the former plant site, including at least one hotspot.
And of course, if PCBs have disappeared in a fire, it’s likely they were dispersed widely, or volatilized into something else. But notoriously, those agencies did not take the promised step of reassuring the public by testing for dioxins and furans, into which PCBs often transform when incinerated.
The shameless sophistry of Better’s “environmental” argument is also on display in the statement that “less than 5% of the material on site the night of the fire involved PCBs.”
Once again, TCI’s lawyer seems to expect his readers to be unfamiliar with the rudiments of chemistry and combustion. With a highly-toxic substances, 5% is a very large amount. Saying that “only” 5% of the material burned involved PCBs is like a bartender reassuring a customer that only 5% of his martini contains arsenic.
Meanwhile, Better conveniently ignores that TCI’s disaster—its second fire of 2012—sent up a thick, dark plume observed for many miles around. The vast size of that plume meant that nearly all of its building materials and contents, including those PCBs, were distributed as soot or gases over a large area—making it unlikely that high concentrations would be found in any one spot. But this does not make unplanned, accidental incineration safe or legal.
Industrial polluters often try to escape responsibility by spreading their effluvia over a large area (typically, from a tall stack) making it difficult to definitively finger them for the spread of pollutants. But we know that PCBs were improperly burned in their unintended infermo. And as any Environmental Sciences 101 student knows, dilution is not a solution to pollution.
Better also works himself up into high dudgeon in protesting the supposed lack of “courtesy” extended to his clients by the EMC. It was not a secret that the EMC was studying ways to address future potential disasters, based on the TCI fire; indeed, Better showed up unannounced at a February EMC meeting to make his case, taking the added hostile step of bringing along a stenographer, as if the meeting were a court proceeding.
Better’s feigned ignorance of the EMC’s workings, and show of being offended by its lack of deference, perhaps is a reflection of how the attorney is used to being treated with kid gloves by the County. (Better is a former County attorney, who stepped down after three female employees filed sexual harassment lawsuits against him.)
The minutes of the Columbia County Economic Development Council (EDC) suggest how Better normally expects his clients to be mollycoddled. Himself a board member of the EDC, but frequently absent from its meetings, Better did show up for the February 26th, 2013 meeting—at which TCI boss Brian Hemlock made a presentation. Hemlock was personally introduced by EDC Chair David Crawford, whose engineering firm Crawford & Associates works and advocates for... TCI. Hemlock “asked the board for their support for the company by attending meetings” about the company’s plan. Of course, none of the many residents concerned with the fallout from TCI or its plans to rebuild were invited.
Better even goes so far as to downplay the extreme risk to which Columbia County firefighters were exposed a year ago on the night of August 1st-2nd, saying that “no firefighter was injured in the fire.” Leaving aside the possibility that firefighters may have been exposed to various toxic emissions at the site, the fact that TCI just barely missed an even worse disaster should not reassure anyone.
As Churchtown firefighter and 1st Lieutenant Nathan Chess wrote in a widely-circulated letter, “We were only minutes away from bagpipes and flag-draped coffins.” But apparently Better thinks that the risk posed to the County’s first responders was acceptable, because they retreated from the explosions just in the nick of time.
As one TCI neighbor commented after reading Better’s letter: “How and why does Bill Better think he is the authority on what regulations would be onerous or unnecessary for the safety of Columbia County? The gall of this guy is shocking.”
In the months following its August 2012 inferno, embattled PCB (mis-)handler TCI of NY made two $1,000 political donations, according to public records made available online by The New York State Board of Elections.
The first grand went to the County Republicans on September 5th, 2012, about a month after the fire. The second “large” was given to the County Conservatives in December.
A search of the Board’s electronic records turns up no other political donations by TCI for at least 10 years previous—suggesting a correlation between the fire and the sudden generosity.
An image of the records search appears below. (Local politics is all about the Clevelands, apparently.)
There appears to be a whole lot more to the story (reported by The Gossips of Rivertown and The Register-Star) of former Mayor Rick Scalera spurning the nomination of the the Hudson Democratic Committee, which he once chaired. Two well-informed Democratic sources offer and confirm the following nuggets, though at this point readers may want to view the following as credible rumor:
(1) Faced with criticism from several aldermen for continuing to support Scalera for 5th Ward
Supervisor, even as he embarrassed the Democrats, newly-minted Hudson City Democratic Committee (HCDC) chair Aaron Enfield reportedly resigned yesterday morning.
(2) Enfield’s name was on the Committee to Fill Vacancies for the now-emptied Democratic petitions for 5th Ward Supervisor. But if he refuses to help choose a replacement candidate, that would mean the other two members—said to be Sarah Sterling and Debby Mayer—would have to agree on a substitute, otherwise the Dems will have no 5th Ward Supervisor candidate. NOTE: The Register article claims that the three have already “decided against nominating anyone,” despite Scalera’s repudiation of his party.
(3) Sterling reportedly sent an irate message to several fellow Democrats, denouncing any notion of finding another Democrat to run against Scalera. The 1st Ward Supervisor also is said to have threatened to file some sort of “ethics complaint” against certain aldermen for attempting to “intimidate” the Democratic Committee. (If true, Sterling may want to consider the maxim that politics ain’t beanbag—and that trying to criminalize political speech is not only difficult, but a perilously slippery slope.)
(4) While spurning his own party’s nomination, Scalera may not get the Republican line that he now intends to run on, due to a reported petitioning error. This could leave no candidates on either of the two major party lines for 5th Ward Super, unless someone files Opportunity to Ballot (OTB) petitions in the next few days. OTB petitions would create a write-in primary in either party (or both) in September. Scalera does, however, appear to have the Conservative and Independence party lines sewn up, so he would be on the ballot—just not as a Democrat or Republican.
(5) Democratic Alderman Nick Haddad has been trying to locate former Hudson police chief Ellis Richardson to encourage him to have his name written in for 5th Ward Supervisor. Note that when OTBs are filed, anyone could then have their name volunteered by voters.
(6) On the Mayoral front, Democratic candidate Victor Mendolia reportedly would not have secured the HCDC nomination if even one Committee member had changed his or her vote. Had Enfield stepped off the committee before that vote, the Dems might not have nominated anyone for Mayor.
(7) Several prominent local Democrats have reached out to 1st Ward resident Robert (Bob) Mechling to serve as acting HCDC chair, but he has declined the role, at least for the present... Getting someone to fill the role now may prove difficult, since even before this latest mess, any new chair is going to need a high tolerance for mopping up other people’s puddles.
Indeed, there is still time for anyone to file paperwork to force a write-in primary for any office in the City.
If anyone has further information to add, or disputes the source’s reports, feel free to email this site at [email protected] ...
Winner of the 2010 Crystal Apple Award from the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce just months after opening, Local Ocean recently lost its sweet PILOT (Payment In Lieu of Tax) deal with Columbia County.
Welcomed with great fanfare and largesse by local development agencies, and much-celebrated in the regional press, Local Ocean has been bedeviled by two patent lawsuits—and laggard in making payments to the County.
Local Ocean’s meteoric rise and fall from official favor is not a unique path. The tight-knit and often insular County development elite has a history of patting itself on the back, awarding its own most favored projects before they even get off the ground.
Beaten out by Local Ocean, another 2010 Crystal Apple nominee was the rebranded and renovated Historic Blue Stores Restaurant and Bar—reopened under new management just prior to their nomination, then went under again. (Today, it is back open under yet another set of managers, Darren and Tara Buffa, and appears likely to survive.) Passed over that year were the Columbia-Greene Dialysis Center, Catamount Adventure Park, Taconic Farms, and the BeLo3rd business coalition.
A longer look at the Crystal Apple award-winners over its history is instructive.
Among all award winners listed on the Chamber’s site from 1992-2013, more than one in five (20.5%) are out of business or have retrenched locally. For example, Kaz, Inc. won the award in 2002 and shared the award with Stageworks again in 2005. Dunn Builders, the Crystal Apple winner in 2004, closed its downtown Hudson location after a rash of employee thefts, then had its huge Greenport operation swallowed up by Herrington’s. The Old Chatham Sheepherding Inn (1996) closed, though farm operations continue.
A little less than another one in five (18%) have become mired in controversy, fallen out of favor with officialdom, or just fallen into disrepair—such as the once-vibrant St. Charles Hotel, which won the 1997 Crystal Apple but after several management changes no longer features a public restaurant or bar. Its private meeting room and large public event space, once highly-popular gathering spots, today are seldom used.
That renders nearly 40% of the 1992-2013 award winners either defunct, disappeared, or discredited.
This year’s award-winner, the Columbia Land Conservancy, tarnished its image last year by its coy, behind-the-scenes enabling of the City of Hudson’s heavyhanded seizure of the century-old Furgary Boat Club—using a black-suited SWAT team toting machine guns to subdue three older, sleeping men in their ancestral cabins.
Meanwhile, roughly two-in-five awards (38%) have been given to large, established companies and businesses which are closely embedded in the County development establishment, such as Herrington’s, Kaz or Columbia Memorial Hospital. The Chamber’s Board includes Paul Colarusso, whose company A. Colarusso & Sons was the 2009 winner. Other awardees have had seats or representatives over the years on many of the same boards (HDC, CEDC, local and County IDAs, the Chamber itself) which arrange corporate tax breaks, grants and other incentives. Such coziness—bordering on conflict-of-interest—makes the awarding of the Crystal Apple that much less prestigious.
Most laughable and conflicted of all, though, is the original Crystal Apple, awarded to The Columbia County Board of Supervisors for its “development” of Commerce Park. Considered a boondoggle from its very inception, Commerce Park took years to find tenants, and two decades later still is sparsely populated. With the Chamber of that era almost entirely controlled by political interests, today’s equivalent of the ’92 Crystal Apple Award would be like this site awarding itself a blue ribbon for Best Columbia County news source.
Smaller local businesses—such as the Kline’s multigenerational, family-owned Traditions, or the longest-running merchant on Warren Street, Arenskjold Antiques, here since the 1980s, or the rock-solid folks at Jimmy’s Auto Body in Livingston—rarely seem get invited to the Crystal ball.
This is not to say that the Award committee never finds its mark. 2003 winner FACE Stockholm continues to manufacture and maintain a storefront locally, even as it continues to thrive and expand internationally. Camphill Ghent, the 2012 winner, does spectacular work with its residents. The likeable director David Colby, who was brought over from the Berkshires several years ago, has cleared out cobwebs and freshened up the fusty, good-old-boy atmosphere which once pervaded the Chamber’s offices.
But these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Perhaps the trophy should be recast as a giant wooden acorn, and renamed The Blind Squirrel Award.
With news of a proposed six-figure purchase of additional land for the Columbia County airport, the question arises: How much actual use does the airport get?
Flight data from the FAA suggests at least one answer: Not nearly so much as officials would have us believe.
Take a look at the numbers. A decade ago, the Columbia County Board of Supervisors commissioned a long-range plan for the County airport in Ghent, in part to satisfy FAA safety and other concerns.
That 2003 report included the above chart, indicating that the airport handled some 37,000 flights per year. By 2020, the airport was anticipated to be handling 52,000 flights per year, or 1,000 per week.
Meanwhile, the 2009 Town of Ghent Comprehensive Plan stated as a fact that “at present, the volume is about 50,000.” The Town also projected that the airport could handle volume as high as a whopping 230,000 transits.
So how much use does the airport really get? Other evidence suggests it is nothing even close to 50,000 flights.
Data obtained via the aviation site FlightAware shows that in the full year between December 2011 and December 2012, only 1,586 takeoffs and landings were recorded. FlightAware says it gets these numbers directly from the FAA itself.
Not 50,000. Not even 37,000. Less than 1,600.
A more detailed breakdown follows below.
“My impression is that activity at the airport has gone down significantly since the 2008 recession,” said one experienced pilot who has used the County runways for many years.
Now, not every flight into and out of a County airport gets reported to the FAA. The numbers above do not appear to include many flight school trips, which can involve a lot of repeated takeoffs and landings. Under Visual Flight Rules (“VFRs”), during good weather and high visibility some other flights are not necessarily required to file a flight plan, either.
Yet even if you triple the FlightAware numbers—adding 1,600 training flights and 1,600 VFR flights—you still wind up with total yearly activity of less than 5,000 trips in and out. That’s only about 10% of what is stated in the Ghent Comp Plan and the County’s projected master plan numbers.
In other words, 90% less that the official line.
Indeed, both basic math and interviews with neighbors suggest that there is nothing like 50,000 flights per year out of the County airport. As the comparison chart below shows, 50,000 compute to just under 140 per day... And given that Richmor Aviation made a handshake deal with neighbors about 25 years ago to limit flights to the hours between 7 am–11 pm, that would mean roughly 9 takeoffs or landings per hour, or one every 6-7 minutes.
Anyone who has driven along that section of 9H, or lived in that area, or visited friends there, knows that planes are a rarity, not something which occurs every 6 minutes. Just sit in a car in the Kozel’s parking lot, and you can verify that doesn’t happen. Or, surf over to FlightAware’s live dashboard, and see for yourself how few arrivals and departures are scheduled on a moment-to-moment basis.
Moreover, small airport use tends to be heavier in warmer months, so the average in summertime would likely be more like every 3-4 minutes, if the County and Ghent numbers were in fact real.
Using the same basic math, the projected maximum capacity of 230,000 flights cited in Ghent’s Comp Plan seems as ridiculous as it would be dangerous: 230,000 transits per year would mean almost 20,000 per month, 4,500 per week, over 600 per day, and 25 per hour around the clock including the wee hours of the night. Limiting activity to the 16-hour community noise abatement deal, there would be a plane zipping in or out every 90 seconds or so.
If such official numbers were at all accurate, living near the County airport could begin to resemble life near LaGuardia.
The question of how much the airport is really used becomes all the more relevant now that the County has voted to a approve a $629,000 offer to the owners of Meadowgreens to expand the airport and bring it more into FAA compliance. (Few were there to witness the vote, in part because the local paper of record, The Register-Star, published the wrong date for the meeting.)
Given how out-of-sync the County’s planning numbers appear to be with reality, this could pose a problem with FAA funders. When the County submits this $629,000 expansion plan to the Feds for approval, it will be interesting to see what numbers it claims.
It hasn’t been reported in the local press yet, but on Wednesday the Greenport Town Board unanimously passed a resolution expressing its opposition to the payment-in-lieu-of-tax plan for Premier Brands.
The PILOT proposal under consideration by the Columbia County Industrial Development Agency would allow Premier to avoid paying its full share of taxes over the next 10 years. The Westchester-based company intends to site a warehousing operation in the now empty Wal-Mart space on Fairview Avenue, in the Price Chopper plaza.
Notably, the attorney representing Premier is Bill Better, the former Columbia County attorney who stepped down after three female County employees filed sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits against him in 1997. One of those suits alleged that that “Better forced her to contribute to the local GOP, and was sexually harassed and stalked by him,” and was settled for $120,000. Another similar suit was reportedly settled for $210,000. Better denied the charges, with his attorney characterizing the suits in the Times-Union as “a stick-up.”
Better is also currently representing PCB processors TCI of NY before the Ghent Planning Board, and was retained last year by the Stuyvesant Town Board at a $250-per-hour rate to address lawsuits related to Will Pflaum’s dog boarding business.
With relatively few residents scattered across a large area, Columbia County denizens have struggled for years to obtain even basic internet connectivity. Just retrieving email and watching YouTube, let alone streaming an HD movie at a decent resolution, can be deeply frustrating—and also costly.
The population density in Columbia is just 99 people per square mile. As you head southward, that number climbs steadily, with 371 per square mile in Dutchess, 431 in Putnam, and 2,193 in Westchester. This low density means that many fall into the dreaded “last mile” category, in which houses at the far end of a road or more than three miles from a telephone switching stationcan get neither cable modems nor DSL service.
But that is finally changing, though in baby steps that leave this area far behind metropolitan regions.
For the layperson, 3 Mbps is the bare minimum necessary to stream a movie in any decent resolution, without it looking all blurry and blocky—pixillated, designers would say. If you have a big TV or a projector, or have multiple people online in your household (whether on a smartphone, a tablet, a Roku, or just surfing the web) you probably need twice that just to cover normal usage. A power user or large household may want 10-15 Mbps or better.
Several new options have emerged of late for rural broadband customers that bring parts of the County into that territory, at least on paper:
(1) FAIRPOINT. Though it’s not yet reflected on their website, Fairpoint Communications says it has bumped up its top download speeds for both business and residential accounts from 3 Mbps (megabytes per second) to 15 Mbps. A web designer in Chatham reports that she recently upgraded her business account with Fairpoint, and is now getting just over 15 Mbps. The price structure, according to a rep I spoke with, remains the same as before, but with far higher download speeds. Fairpoint services mainly customers in central, northern and eastern parts of the County.
(2) HUGHESNET. For those out of range of cable and DSL, satellite internet provider HughesNet is now advertising its Gen4 service, promising download speeds comparable to Fairpoint’s, up to 15 Mbps. However, since this is delivered via satellite, service can be intermittent. But far more troubling than weather outages is HughesNet’s continued insistence on a “cap” on how much bandwidth customers use to prevent overloading their satellites.
Such caps can greatly diminish the value of higher speeds. HughesNet’s most expensive “power” plan costs $99 per month, and promises a monthly total of 40 GB (gigabytes) of data. If you exceed that limit, your download speeds will be slowed to a crawl, unless you buy expensive “restore tokens.”
Worse, the fine print shows that the 40 GB number is misleading, as half of that allowance can only be used between 2 am and 8 am. So unless you spend most of your time on the internet during the wee hours of the night or early morning, you are really only getting 20 GB. If 20 GB still sounds like a lot, consider that may mean at most 4-8 hours of video streaming at a high resolution per month, setting aside some bandwidth for your other internet usage.
Unless you are a weekender who would only be using the web for a small portion of each month, or someone who only uses the internet for basic news and email, that cap makes the new 15 Mbps Hughes offering pretty useless; it just means you’re going to burn through your small allowance that much more quickly.
I was a HughesNet satellite customer for more than 5 years, and found the service maddening. The data caps (then daily, instead of monthly) often made it difficult to do more than rudimentary stuff online. And their customer service was truly atrocious: ignorance, incompetence and outright dishonesty characterized the typical dealings with Hughes reps. Unless there has been some major change in the culture of this company, I would exercise extreme caution before signing up for these Gen4 services, as promising as they initially sound.
NOTE: The satellite provider WildBlue is basically a repackaging of the same services as Hughes, just with slightly different pricing and bandwidth offerings. The same caveats apply, though I don’t have the same direct (bad) experience with their customer service.
(3) HOTSPOTS. Wireless companies like AT&T, Sprint and Verizon are now aggressively marketing mobile hotspots (with goofy names like “Mi-Fi”) which can provide broadband-like internet to homes over cellular networks. Some of these deliver fairly decent download speeds, depending on your location; the Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE promises downloads in the 5-12 Mbps range.
Various friends in places like Claverack report being satisfied with these services, with the caveat that they are not much into internet video. And currently, there are few places in the County were you can get better than 3G coverage. Depending on the model and plan purchased, you may be able to carry that service around with you if you commute or travel a lot, which is an added bonus.
However, as with satellite internet providers, the devil is in the details. These services can be pricey, and typically have strict bandwidth limits. The highest-level Verizon plan, for example, costs $110 per month with a limit of 20GB of usage. After that, you have to start buying gigabytes of data à la carte at exorbitant rates, or wait until your next billing cycle rolls around. Cell-based services seem to be advancing more rapidly than cable and DSL due to the huge number of people with smartphones; so in a couple of years, the idea of being tethered to a line for internet may seem ridiculous. For now, however, this option requires many compromises.
(4) GTEL. Gtel based in Germantown promises DSL speeds up to 10 Mbps for qualifying business customers, but with lots of asterisks and caveats attached.
(5) MHCABLE. Lastly, Mid-Hudson Cable now claims it can offer business customers speeds as high as a truly whopping 50 Mbps, while their advertised residential cable modem plan top out at an unremarkable 5 Mbps. However, Mid-Hudson still does not reach many parts of the County, primarily servicing the 12534 zip code on this side of the river.
This site was first to report back in 2011 the head-scratching news that MHCable had sent back a much-hyped multimillion-dollar Federal grant to help provide broadband services to “last mile” customers in rural areas of Columbia County.
This meant that customers in less-accessible areas were quoted up-front prices of $1,000-$3,000 for the privilege of then paying MHC for monthly service. Among the reasons cited by Mid-Hudson president James Reynolds for sending back the money for which his company had applied was the belated recognition that it would require MHC to pay its workers prevailing wage on any Federally-funded work.
Others complain that MHC services do not necessarily deliver promised speeds. Mark Orton of Hudson, for example, ran extensive speed tests back when he was still an MHC customer, eventually switching to DSL in order to gain more stable, reliable service that could handle his videoconferencing and other needs.
Considering that Columbia County is now home to many people used to far better internet connectivity, and also an unusual number of so-called telecommuters and self-employed people who work at home, one would think that local leadership would make internet access more of a priority. The County will propose to spend $1 million primarily to benefit a single company operating the Ghent airport, even as many residents can’t get a decent signal through their Apple Airport.
And while it seems that rural broadband conferences are held on a regular basis (and with a lot of press hoopla for any politicians who pay lip service to the idea), progress remains slow. Greene County political blogger Thomas Pletcher called the last such symposium there “a sham.”
In many towns in the area, cable and internet contracts are renewed with little or know actual negotiation or haggling, with the widespread perception in certain municipalities that the well-connected management of such companies have more clout than local taxpayers.
UPDATE: Several people have emailed with questions about NYAir, another relative newcomer here (though basically an arm of Mid-Hudson Cable). I wrote about NYAir back in March at this link. This is not really a broadband service at this point, as you can’t reliable get more than 2 Mbps down, and speeds tend to hover closer to 1 Mbps.
One of their techs told me last summer that the company was planning to upgrade from a 900MHz broadcaster to a faster WiMax system sometime “in the next year,” which could mean closer to true broadband speeds, depending on what they install and how far one is from a tower. Note that NYAir is “backhauling” from these towers (such as the one on Blue Hill in Livingston) to MHCable, which seems to result in major slowdowns in service during primetime hours as thousands of their cable and internet customers tune in.
