In the 1960s Governor Nelson Rockefeller with the support of the New York State Assembly and Senate and Federal Infrastructure money built and constructed Route 84 from Pennsylvania to Connecticut through Orange and Dutchess Counties. Its interconnections with the then recently built and opened New York State Thru-way and Route 17 in Orange County made Orange County industrial shipping sites near Route 84 in both counties very viable and big job producers. Companies wanted to be along Route 84 to save money when shipping goods to markets throughout the east coasts.

There are some sites along Route 84, which are gold mines, and like gold mines, they cannot be found everywhere. The Route 84 gold mine sites are not replaceable.

The proposed Amazon site is huge. It is 190 acres, which is 190 football or soccer fields. In 15 years when it is fully taxable it will help reduce the property taxes of the residents of the host community. High land taxes are a reason that senior citizens are leaving the state, and in most cases moving south. It will also provide 800 jobs with an average annual salary of $32,156. The reason young people are leaving the state is a lack of jobs. Amazon may help solve both of these problems.

At question is the PILOT (Payment in lieu of taxes). Amazon has similar facilities along the New Jersey turnpike. I learned this by googling it. If the Town of Montgomery (where this Amazon plant will be located) officials need more comparative PILOT data, they can contact these New Jersey towns.

The Montgomery PILOT does not ask for Amazon to pay property taxes for the first five years Amazon is at the site, but the town will have to be providing services starting in year one, and in my estimation, Amazon should immediately pay 10% of the town taxes that it will be paying by adding this to the pilot. In New Jersey there was a question about school taxes so maybe Montgomery should be asking them also.

The local newspapers said the Amazon story was the most read story they ran, and I feel that it was about the 800 jobs and not the PILOT. I totally support Amazon coming to Orange County and my reason is the jobs.

Parker and Dewey ran for President
Andrew Yang of New Paltz is a current candidate for the Democratic nomination to run for President as a Democrat, but besides Franklin Roosevelt, not the first local candidate to run for President. In 1948 New York State Governor Thomas Dewey of Pawling, NY. was the Republican candidate for President against Harry Truman and lost. In 1904 the Democrat candidate for President was Judge Alton Parker of Esopus. He lost to Teddy Roosevelt.

A century before him, George Clinton of Kingston, the 26-year Governor of New York, was the vice president for both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Aaron Burr was the vice president during Jefferson’s first term, and after Burr in a duel killed Alexander Hamilton, Clinton became the vice president. Clinton is buried in the yard in front of the Kingston Dutch Reformed Church. The Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge was renamed the Clinton Bridge after George Clinton. His nephew, Dewitt Clinton, was also the governor of New York State, and built the Erie Canal.

Alton Parker was on the board of New Paltz College for 41 years.

New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller was the vice president for President Gerald Ford.

Food for thought for Vincent Ferro
Vincent Ferro wrote a letter to the Southern Ulster Times that the rush of women to the Democratic Party must be a mistake on their part because the Democratic Party, according to Mr. Ferro, is the party of abortion. I question Mr. Ferro’s use of reproductive rights as he has no children. He can’t walk the walk.

Michael Bloomberg in his Presidential bid has zeroed in on the main reason women have become Democrats: healthcare and health insurance. Donald Trump and the Republicans want to take away Obamacare (Affordable Care Act) from families and people with pre-existing conditions. Women (mothers) want to protect their families and their children’s health and they are voting Democrat to do that.

But there is more. Trump has been charged 19 times with sexual assault. And on one occasion he laughed about grabbing a woman’s genitals. Also he has mocked women who have been sexually assaulted. After he did that women began fleeing to the Democratic Party. According to Morning Joe if only women voted in the 2020 election Trump would lose 60 percent to 36 percent.

Statistics from the City of Poughkeepsie and its school district tells the same story in a different way. Its students may be among the poorest in the state as 83 percent of them are economically disadvantaged. This may explain that in 2017 52 percent of all pregnancies in the City of Poughkeepsie ended in an abortion. The biggest reason a woman has an abortion is that they cannot afford to have a child.

Mr. Ferro can do something to assure the Poughkeepsie numbers do not get worse. Trump has been making cuts in Food Stamps. The biggest recipients of Food Stamps are children. If poor Poughkeepsie parents do not have the Food Stamps to feed their babies, they may choose to have less of them or have more abortions. Mr. Ferro can lead the effort to defeat Trump in Marlborough and elect a liberal Democratic President, who will immediately change the Food Stamp regulations to feed the babies and cause poor women then to have fewer abortions.

After all, life does not begin at conception and end at birth.

Joe Martorana was an outstanding town supervisor
Joseph Martorana, who went from being the Supervisor of the Town of Plattekill, to serving as the Deputy Secretary of New York State, and the Deputy Director of New York State Division of Veterans Affair, died on Dec. 13. He was 98 years old.

He moved from Ulster County Board of Supervisors to the positions with the state. As the Plattekill Supervisor he was active in the 1960s and 1970s in modernizing the town. He was outstanding, which was the reason he was hired by a Democratic State governor and rehired year after year because of the fine job he was doing and did.

Nevada’s largest solar farm in USA
The largest solar farm in American is closing in on getting the approvals to be built, It is the Gemini Solar Farm in Nevada, and will replace two coal plants. It will be able to produce 690 megawatts of electricity.

In terms of electricity it is bigger than Roseton or Danskammer. I feel that it will have solar panels on 11,000 acres of land, which is about half as much acres as are in each the towns of Lloyd and New Paltz.

In addition to the 690 megawatts, it will produce380 megawatts for battery storage for the electricity that the panels produce when there is sun light.

New Paltz has grown
New Paltz was founded in 1678 by 12 Huguenot families. The family names are Crispell, Deyo, DuBois, Freer, Hasbrouck, and LeFevre. When they made the trek from Kingston to what became the village of New Paltz, they chose for their homes a glacial moraine, which overlooked the Wallkill River. The glacial moraine was important, because they could hand dig the foundations, later to be their basements of their homes on Huguenot Street. The Hasbrouck house at the north end of Huguenot Street, has a basement that tells the story of the house. The basement may have been dug and added to over a ten year period. The first Hasbrouck family over 300 years ago, dug a one room basement, and lived there the first year they were at the house. A year or two later, the male owner, dug a second basement room. Eventually a first floor with a roof was built. Children would follow.

Sometimes a lot of children. One couple had twenty. What was a couple going to do on a cold night, with out a light? Some wives died and the husband remarried and continued to have children.

Helen Hasbrouck was born in 1885, Her grandfather Josiah Hasbrouck and her father, Bruyn Hasbrouck served on the board of New Paltz College. Bruyn served on it from 1936 to 1938 when he died. In 1943, during the great war, Helen Hasbrouck was named to the board of the college, and served until her death in 1962.

Another Huguenot family had three successive family members on the college board starting in 1885: LeFevre. First there was Jacob LeFevre, followed by A.P. LeFevre, and then Congressman Jay LeFevre.