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Chatham has active races for mayor and 2 board seats

In News, News - Columbia, The Columbia Paper
March 12, 2011
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CHATHAM -Village of Chatham voters will elect a mayor and two trustees Tuesday March 15, with polls open from noon to 9 p.m. at the Tracy Memorial.

Three candidates are seeking the two seats on the Village Board: incumbent Leal Locke, running on her own Action Party line and incumbent Patrick Wemitt, running on The Village People’s Party line, and Joanne DelRossi, running on the Chatham United line. The two candidates with the highest vote totals will serve two-year terms on the board.

Incumbent Mayor Paul Boehme is running for reelection on the Village People’s Party line. He faces Tom Curran is running on the Chatham United line.

Observers say this year’s election in Chatham is more hotly – and more bitterly — contested than any contest in recent years.

The Columbia Paper has profiled all the candidates in the race concluding with Mayor Boehme this week. But because those profiles began back in January when Mr. Curran and Ms. DelRossi announced their campaigns, we follow up this week with summary profiles of candidates other than Mr. Boehme and statements by each. The profile story of Mr. Boehme appears on Page 9.

Tom Curran (Chatham United)

Born and raised in Columbia County, Mr. Curran, who is seeking his first term as mayor, owns his a machining and engraving business on Main Street in Chatham. Mr. Curran also sat on the Comprehensive Plan Committee in the late 1990s. More recently he has organized workshop meetings about the village’s Comprehensive Plan and financial planning at the Tracy Memorial.

“The thought of running for office never occurred to me until we were faced with a potential 12% tax increase in 2010. After attending many Village Board meetings over the last year, in order to feel listened to, or to make any change, I realized I would have to run for mayor. If elected, I will work to the best of my abilities, using my skills and compassion, to better serve your Village as mayor.

As mayor, I will work toward attracting new businesses to the area, and to using our resources carefully to support the businesses we already have. I will be open and receptive to any proposals that would bring people to Chatham, in support of our retail core and the arts. As a founder of Chatham Public Arts, I was heartened by the success of our first annual Public Sculpture Show along Hudson Avenue. Events such as the Columbia Film Festival and Arts Walk are already making Chatham a destination. I will be open to suggestions from the business and arts communities with the goal of bringing more people to our wonderful village.”

Lael Locke (Action Party)

Ms. Locke moved to the Village of Chatham in 1976. She has one daughter, Jennifer Lawrence, who is a graduate of Chatham High School and owns an exercise studio in the village. Ms. Locke was elected to the Village Board in 1997 after serving for three years as a community appointee to Chatham’s Comprehensive Plan Committee. She was also one of the founders of the Chatham Business Alliance and spearheaded the CBA’s 1995 drive to plant trees along Main Street.

She works part-time as a community planner with the New York Planning Federation, a statewide non-profit that helps educate planning boards and zoning boards of appeal. Her responsibilities on the Chatham Village Board include serving as Commissioner to the Fire Department and as liaison between the Village Board, the Planning Board and the ZBA.

“I believe that local officials must answer to the people who elected them, and that there needs to be an open and ongoing dialogue between government and the community it serves. As a board member, I have encouraged new ideas, listened to people’s concerns and tried to make informed and impartial decisions. I am running for reelection on my own line — the Action Party (Row B) — so that I may continue to express my views independently, as I have done in the past. Please remember that you vote for two trustee seats in this election– regardless of whom you support for mayor, I ask for your vote as a village trustee.”

Joanne DelRossi (Chatham United)

Ms. DelRossi moved to Columbia County in 1981 and has liven in the village more than 20 years. She has been a member of the management team at Coarc for the past 16 years. Ms. DelRossi served as co-chairperson of the village Zoning Board of Appeals. She also served as an active member of the Village of Chatham Master Planning Committee. For the past nine years, she has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Leadership Columbia County program of the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce, and has served on the board of Columbia County Habitat for Humanity.

“I made the decision to run for election because I love the village and its strong sense of community.  In a time of limited financial resources and already high property taxes, I want to work to assure that the village is fiscally sustainable going into the future. Over this past year, I have attended most of the Village Board’s regular monthly meetings and am troubled by the manner in which the mayor and the Village Board conduct the village’s business, particularly the budget process, with their unwillingness to be forthcoming with concise, factual information. Certainly, village residents and taxpayers are entitled to the truth. If elected, I plan to conduct monthly workshop meetings at which residents and taxpayers can be heard and have a say in their governance and will update the village’s website to include meeting agendas, minutes and other important notices.

“At last year’s budget meetings, where taxpayer protests resulted in decreasing the mayor’s tax increase of 12% down to 4%, I suggested that the Village Board change their budgeting process by holding open meetings with the village departments along with open workshops for taxpayers. I have called for the village budget to be publicly reviewed line-by-line to identify savings and efficiencies to assure that taxpayer dollars are being spent prudently. In addition, I stand behind the belief that public safety includes police, fire and EMT services. We need to work towards a village budget that assures the viability of all.”

Patrick Wemitt (Village People’s Party)

Patrick Wemitt was born and raised in Chatham. He has served on the village board for 12 years, most of that time as the Police Department commissioner. Mr. Wemitt was a teacher at the Taconic Hills School District for 20 years and is now high school principal in the Catskill School District. He is volunteer firefighter and has coached many local sports teams.

“I believe the current Village Board and Mayor Boehme have been responsible stewards to the Village of Chatham. We may not always agree on every issue, nor should we be expected to, but decisions made are informed decisions based on community input and doing what is best for the health and vitality of the village as well its people. One thing that makes our village attractive is a community oriented local police force. As the current police commissioner, when you go to the ballot box on March 15 and cast your vote, remember, when considering the cost of public safety; cost should not be the issue; the safety of every child, woman and man should be the issue. The current trustees and Mayor Boehme would like your support on March 15, please exercise your right to vote.”

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Clean Air Coalition seeks answers on clearcutting project

In News, News - Ravena, The Ravena News Herald
March 20, 2023
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By Melanie Lekocevic

Capital Region Independent Media

The clearcutting of nearly 30 acres of trees on Bronk Road was the focus of a community meeting Saturday hosted by the Clean Air Coalition. Melanie Lekocevic/Capital Region Independent Media

COEYMANS — The environmental group Clean Air Coalition is seeking answers on the clearcutting project that removed nearly 30 acres of trees from a plot of land on Bronk Road and Route 144.

The group held a meeting at the RCS Community Library on Saturday to discuss the project and other concerns over industrialization and future land uses in the area.

The land at 47 Bronk Road is owned by Carver Laraway, who also owns the Port of Coeymans. Laraway received the necessary permits to conduct the project and the land is privately owned, Carver Companies representatives said at the March meeting of the Coeymans Town Council.

Sydney Kane, marketing and public relations manager for the company, said at the meeting that representatives from the company planned to attend the Clean Air Coalition’s original March 14 meeting to address community concerns. That meeting was canceled due to a snowstorm. No representatives from Carver Companies attended Saturday’s meeting.

The only elected official attending the meeting was Deputy Mayor Nancy Warner.

Local resident Hans Warnstadt, whose mother has owned a home near the site since the late 1960s, appeared in a video expressing his concerns about the clearcutting, and attended the meeting in person as well.

Warnstadt said in the video that felled trees were piled up about 50 feet high in the wake of the clearcutting.

“It’s a sad thing, seeing all those living things that now are dead,” he said in the video.

Local residents were not alerted ahead of time that the project was coming, he said.  The trees were removed up to the edge of his mother’s property line.

“The woods that have surrounded the house all that time have been taken down,” Warnstadt said. “We didn’t know it was happening and we don’t know why it is happening. I can’t get information from the town. In a matter of a couple of days, acres of woods have been chopped down to nothing.”

When the project was discussed at the March meeting of the town council, elected officials said the land is private property and the owner is allowed to remove trees, so there was little the town could do.

But Warnstadt worries about future impacts of the removal of so many trees.

“We are concerned that A, water runoff — if you start putting fill there, it’s going to raise the height of the property, and the snow melt and water from storms will run off and go in every direction,” he said. “We are worried that being lower than that point, water will settle, if not flood the area after major rainstorms. We are also worried that if you put some type of soil that has contaminants in it, will that water settle into the ground and get into the water table, as everyone in this area has wells?”

Resident Ashley Redfield, who lives next door to 47 Bronk Road, bought her home in 2017 and is concerned about what she termed a lack of transparency in the process.

“We are residents being directly affected by the clearcutting at 47 Bronk (Road),” Redfield said. “I have spoken to my neighbors, who are also directly impacted, and one thing that we all agree on is that none of us were informed of the clearcutting. No effort was ever made to inform us that this would be happening. It just began one day in the middle of January and it hasn’t stopped yet.”

Redfield said some in the community are saying a private land owner can do what they want with their property, but that there are still concerns for residents who live nearby.

“This is a residential area and we are residents and we live in these homes,” Redfield said. “Carver Laraway is a known land developer who owns the Port of Coeymans and this property just so happens to exist right next to known locations that he is going to be using for his port expansion. So do I feel like it is his personal responsibility as a huge industry owner in our community to inform residents and homeowners that there will be a huge land development undertaking? A clearcutting of up to 27.7 acres of forest behind our homes? I think that the answer to that is ‘yes.’”

Redfield also expressed concerns over future impacts of the trees’ removal.

“There are a lot of questions surrounding what happened here with the clearcutting and we are all wondering how this is going to affect us in the long run,” Redfield said. “When you remove that amount of trees, it can create potential drainage issues because those trees would normally cause the run-off to not pool in specific areas and now I’m wondering if this is going to cause flooding on the properties of myself or my neighbors? We don’t know.”

At the March meeting of the town council, Kane and Robert Rosenberger, the company’s environmental health and safety manager, said the state Department of Environmental Conservation granted its approval for the clearcutting project and that all necessary permits had been granted.

“All the necessary approvals were in place to proceed with the work,” Rosenberger said. “Carver was granted all necessary stormwater and work permits from New York State DEC for the work occurring onsite.”

But residents continue to question the long-term impacts of the clearcutting, as well as how property values will be impacted in the future.

“Working in secret only provokes more questions and the more I have dug around to find answers, the more worried I have become,” Redfield said.

Barbara Heinzen, from the Clean Air Coalition, said the organization recently met with officials from the DEC and the environmental group Riverkeeper to discuss their concerns.

“We said we have things we need from you and we are very distressed about what we are seeing, and the Bronk Road clearcutting only kicked us into life,” Heinzen said. “Frankly, a lot of us feel let down. We feel they haven’t been paying sufficient attention to the kind of risks we are running with the industrialization we’re seeing along Route 144 and the Hudson River.”

The group asked the DEC to put a pause on planned expansion of the Port of Coeymans and for a cumulative impact study to look at how industrialization has impacted the area as a whole over time.

“What has happened over the past 10 or 15 years is one little permit at a time is granted and each little permit, they say, won’t cause much trouble,” Heinzen said. “But when you add up all the permits together, you have a lot of trouble, so we want them to look at the cumulative impact of all those little permits.”

A petition demanding the DEC perform a cumulative impact assessment of industrialization in the area has been signed by 1,247 people, Heinzen said.

Ravena News-Herald

The Ravena News-Herald is a weekly newspaper reporting on the news in the Ravena, Coeymans and New Baltimore communities of beautiful upstate New York.

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Greene County’s independent newspaper. Featuring local news, letters to the editor, upcoming events, police blotter, columns from local writers and more.

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