Bensen taking over town’s top spot

In News, News - Greenville, The Greenville Pioneer
November 8, 2023
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By Melanie Lekocevic

Capital Region Independent Media

Voters headed to the polls Nov. 7 and elected a new town supervisor in Greenville in an uncontested race. Courtesy of Pexels

GREENVILLE —Town Councilman John Bensen will be Greenville’s new town supervisor beginning Jan. 1.

Bensen takes over the town’s top spot from longtime town supervisor Paul Macko, who is moving into the position of town councilman.

Bensen ran unopposed for the supervisor’s seat and received 97.9% of the vote in the Nov. 7 election. Macko ran for one of the two open seats on the town board and was easily elected. He is joined by incumbent Town Councilman William VonAtzingen, who was re-elected. Both were unopposed on the ballot.

Also winning re-election in uncontested races were incumbents Town Clerk Jessica Lewis and Highway Superintendent Michael Dudley.

All candidates in this year’s election are Republicans.

Macko has been supervisor for the past 14 years, but due to personal obligations he felt it was time to take a step back and let Bensen take over the supervisor’s post. Serving as town councilman will also enable Macko to stay involved in town governance and see some of the ongoing projects he started come to fruition.

“I am a primary caregiver for my 94-year-old mom and it has been occupying more and more of my time,” Macko said prior to the election. “This is a way for me to still be involved and make sure some of the projects and undertakings that we are working on get completed.”

Bensen said the town is going in the right direction and he doesn’t anticipate making any major changes in the near future.

“We have so much going on right now that I would probably want to continue with what we’ve got,” Bensen said.

He is also planning on naming Macko deputy town supervisor at the town council’s organizational meeting in January.

CAIRO

There were several contested races in the town of Cairo. All election results were unofficial at press time and some absentee ballots remained to be counted, but the Greene County Board of Elections released preliminary unofficial results.

Republican Town Supervisor Jason Watts saw a challenge from Democratic candidate Timothy Hilgendorff. At press time Watts had received 717 votes, or 44.23%, with Hilgendorff receiving 649 votes, or 40.04%.

Three candidates were on the ballot for the two open seats on the town council. Republicans Debra Bogins and Timothy Murphy are the projected winners with 979 and 1,032 votes, respectively. Democrat Anna Schmidt received 598 votes.

Incumbent Town Clerk Kayla McAlister, a Republican, received 1,120 votes, and Republican Arthur Evans III was re-elected highway superintendent with 1,227 votes. Republican Tanja Sirago was re-elected town justice. Incumbent Tax Collector Susan Hilgendorff was re-elected to another term as well. All four were unopposed incumbents.

DURHAM

There were no contested races in the town of Durham.

Town Supervisor Shawn Marriott was re-elected to another term with 308 votes, and incumbent town council members Joan Breslin and Scott Hulbert were re-elected with 300 and 294 votes, respectively. All three are Republicans and incumbents.

Town Justice Raymond Kennedy, also a Republican, was re-elected with 313 votes.

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Greenville Rescue Squad calls up 22% in 2021

In News, News - Greenville, The Greenville Pioneer
January 19, 2022
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By Melanie Lekocevic

Capital Region Independent Media

Greenville Rescue Squad calls were up 22% in 2021 compared to the previous year. File photo

GREENVILLE — Calls to the Greenville Rescue Squad in 2021 were up 22% compared to the previous year.

Greenville Rescue Squad Chief of Operations Matthew Marlow reported the year-end figure to the Greenville Town Council at its Jan. 17 meeting.

In 2021, the squad responded to 552 calls, an increase of 120 calls over 2020, when the agency took 432 calls for assistance.

The reasons for the uptick are more complex than what you might expect with the COVID-19 pandemic heading into its third year.

The increase in calls and other challenges are due to hospital capacity and staffing, rising mutual aid requests and a surge in 911 calls after an early pandemic lull.

“We are backfilling Coxsackie (mutual aid) because Coxsackie is backfilling Catskill, who is working in Cairo and everywhere else,” Marlow told the board. “The biggest contributing factor is hospitals. They have cut staff and have started to surge in their own right.”

Ambulance crews have been forced to wait at hospitals as staff tries to keep up with demand, or travel to other hospitals further away, Marlow said.

“We are finding our wait times are extending longer and longer, so we are going to other places, where we normally wouldn’t,” Marlow said. “So our mutual aid has gone up simply because there are no ambulances to answer calls.”

The trajectory of the COVID pandemic, and how it has impacted health care, is another factor the squad has had to contend with over the past year, Marlow said.

“Comparing numbers to last year is hard,” he said. “We all expected that we would see a massive surge as soon as COVID hit, but we didn’t. What we saw was a lot of the usual complaints disappeared for a few months and we weren’t taking the stomach aches and the stubbed toes — we were only taking the very, very sick.”

With people eschewing ambulance trips to the hospital in the early days of the pandemic in 2020, that changed a few months later and the number of calls began to creep upwards.

“After the first few months of COVID wore off and we really hit that fatigue point, the numbers rose so not only were we taking care of COVID numbers, but we were going back to stubbed toes, slip falls — those little things that had kept people out of the hospital for a number of months, they all came back,” Marlow said. “So now what we are seeing is all of the old call volume, plus COVID on top of that.”

Town Councilman Travis Richards asked about the impact of mutual aid calls from other ambulance companies.

“So the calls aren’t really coming from here, they are coming from other municipalities?” Richards asked.

Local calls have been up as well, Marlow responded.

“Even in our own district, we have had an increased call volume,” Marlow said. “We have seen an increase of approximately 40 to 50 calls just in this district that add on to the mutual aid on top of that.”

Hospital workers, union protest CMH wages

In News, News - Columbia, The Columbia Paper
September 14, 2022
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State Senator Michelle Hinchey (D-46) spoke at a gathering last week in Hudson on the call by union members for higher wages at Columbia Memorial Health. Photo by Lance Wheeler

HUDSON—Protesters gathered in Hudson’s 7th Park Thursday afternoon, September 1 calling for higher wages for registered nurses and other healthcare workers at Columbia Memorial Health. The workers are members of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. Among those supporting the hospital’s workforce was state Senator Michelle Hinchey (D-46). The union is also pressing CMH to fill what they say are 350 open positions.

But hospital CEO and President Jay Cahalan said in a written statement before the gathering that the hospital “for many months has been voluntarily raising wages considerably for numerous positions where the shortages are most critical.” He also said that CMH wages “are competitive in the current market for many job titles.”

Mr. Cahalan attributed much of the financial strain on CMH to the impact of the pandemic and to federal reimbursements for the federal Medicaid and Medicare programs, which account for approximately 75% of CMH income. Many of those reimbursements do not cover the cost of that care, he said. (more…)

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