CRARYVILLE—Following a public meeting this evening, Wednesday, April 1, the Taconic Hills School District is scheduled to adopt a budget proposal for the 2009-10 school year that reduces the district tax levy.
Wednesday morning the legislature in Albany was still rushing to approve a state budget agreed to by the governor and legislative leaders, and the delay has left local school districts stuck between a rock and a hard place. Concerned about the state’s huge deficit and widespread economic hardship, Taconic Hills district officials made major cuts in their proposal, offering voters a stripped down budget with a tax levy decrease of 1.91%. Even if voters were to reject the proposal next month, contractual obligations would not permit much in the way of further spending cuts, officials said.
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COPAKE—The outcry has intensified against the recent state Department of Agriculture and Markets opinion that waste hauler Salvatore Cascino’s activity at his 300-acre property qualifies as a type of farming.
Mr. Cascino owns a Bronx-based waste-hauling business and has a 12-year history of violating town, state and federal laws on his Copake Valley Farm along the east side of Route 22. Witnesses recently testified under oath that they observed large trucks repeatedly dumping construction debris and what appeared to be trash on Mr. Cascino’s property in Copake.
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CHATHAM—The outcome of the special election for Congress in the 20th District is too close to call even after all polls in the 10-county district reported, according to Albany area TV stations.
Preliminary results showed Democrat Scott Murphy leading Republican James Tedisco by 59 votes, 77,344 to 77, 285, but there are reportedly more than 9,000 absentee ballots that must still be counted, and the deadline for receiving those ballots has not yet expired. Ballots from military personnel serving overseas do not have to arrive at local boards of elections for two weeks.
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CHATHAM—The Village Board is one step closer to creating a “poop scoop” law.
At a public hearing Thursday, March 26, trustees discussed the wording of the law. The sticking point concerns whether the measure should require dog owners walking their pets in the village to remove their pets’ waste rather than allow owners to dispose of it in village garbage cans.
Trustee Paul Chapman said he didn’t want the village public works department employees having to deal with waste. But also said he and DPW workers would rather have the waste in public garbage cans than on the lawns of public spaces, where crews can hit it while mowing the grass.
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HUDSON—The tone was contentious in state Supreme Court this week as Salvatore Cascino’s defense attorney, Dennis Schlenker, questioned his own witness, a former Copake Planning Board chairman. The witness did not appear to offer Mr. Cascino’s case much help, but instead supported the accounts of other eyewitnesses, who have observed large quantities of trash and other refuse being dumped on Mr. Cascino’s land in Copake.
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