It was 55 years ago and I was starting to report town and school board meetings for our family newspaper, which only supported Republicans. My parents did not know that in the 1964 Presidential election I voted for the Democrat Lyndon Johnson.

It was a time of turmoil for the towns. There was big news in Marlboro, when the people of the town elected its first Democratic supervisor since the civil war with the election of John Quimby. And in Lloyd the Democrats had finally taken control of the town board.

In the 1964 election I can only remember voting for LBJ. At the town board meetings I learned that there were board members of both parties, who worked hard, and others who hardly worked. Watching Lloyd Town Justice Lewis DiStasi, a Democrat, I endorsed him. He was hard working. The town’s other town justice was possibly the laziest town justice and town board member I would ever see. He was a Republican.

Soon Town of Lloyd had Democrat Tom Shay as its supervisor and Democrat Mike Canosa as Marlboro’s supervisor. Later I supported both of them. In the 1965 town election, Tom Shay’s Republican opponent, Phil Schunk, voted for Tom. Tom served two terms, and Mike, 10 terms. They both did a lot of heavy lifting. Both had five person boards but only three members of Tom’s board, Al Lester and Lew DiStasi, worked to get answers to the problems facing the Town of Lloyd. His successor, Republican Louis Foscaldi, had the same problem.

Mike Canosa sometimes had hard working board members, and some times he did not. He read all the incoming mail including in 1977 that President Jimmy Carter was funding applications for water district improvements. In that year only Marlboro in the Hudson Valley got a federal Carter grant. It was to build a town wide water district in Marlboro.

Mike also played a big role in the creation of the Cluett Schantz Memorial Park.

I watched a lot of hard working supervisors in Marlboro in addition to Mike Canosa accomplish a lot, including Richard Gerentine, Tom Coupart and Al Lanzetta. Their political affiliation was definitely secondary to their work ethic.

Lloyd had a lot of outstanding supervisors, including Jon Decker, Bob Shepard, Ray Costantino, and Paul Hansut, as well as councilmen. Ones who come to mind are the late Bob Hansut, Joe Crimi, and David Murphy. Murphy cleaned up all of the junk car sites in the town, and Crimi played a huge role in the development of the town’s zoning ordinance and getting the grant to build a new secondary sewerage treatment plant. The paperwork he completed was over six feet high. He did it all.

Highland may have had the best water and sewer superintendent in the state with John Jankiewicz.

Both towns had some excellent deputy supervisors. Ken Herman of Marlboro and Tom Shay who did a comeback as the deputy supervisor of Lloydf.

Herman was brilliant on interest rates. One of the deals he managed saved the Marlboro taxpayers over $1 million. I wish Ken were alive now so I could complain to him about the United States’ $22 trillion deficit.

Tom Shay was a conservative Democrat. He introduced the practice in Lloyd to each month call the local bank’s to see which one was paying the highest interest rate. He would move the town’s money across the street to make the town an extra $4,000 in interest. At the end of the fiscal year Lloyd often had a surprise $50,000 balance in its bank account.

Lloyd Highway Superintendent Frank Lombardi checked monthly on the price of various sizes of crushed stone. He watched the pennies, and the dollars took care of themselves.

Another outstanding Lloyd Highway Superintendent was Peter Anella, the father of Dr. Louis Anella, a professor at the University of Oklahoma.

Marlboro had such excellent highway superintendents as Gale Appler and Rocky Carofano. one is a Democrat and the other a Republican. It was the person and not the party, which was important.

Lloyd has had many excellent and knowledgeable town justices, but Gary Palmer was special. Before he took office Lloyd was losing a young man a year in a car accident on Route 299. After he was elected the word got out among the kids that Gary Palmer had a bad attitude. A young speeder would show up in court with his parents, and Judge Palmer would say “I do not want your parents’ money. He wanted a pound of flesh. Often on a Sunday afternoon he would have a speeder picking up all of the trash on Route 299, and there to watch the young man was Judge Palmer. In his years as a town justice he never lost a kid to speeding. I always enjoyed endorsing Gary Palmer for reelection. He left Lloyd to become a state judge.

Ashokan Reservoir is in the sky
During the recent weekend where the temperature for three days was 99, 99, and 100 degrees, because of the extreme heat there was extreme evaporation from reservoirs including the Ashokan. You can look up in the sky and see these big white clouds that looked like mountains, when in reality that was the Ashokan Reservoir over your head.

A cold wave came in Monday and the rain followed. There were ample warnings that a flood might follow, and suddenly the Ashokan was in Highland and Marlboro. If these rains were intense, what the Hudson Valley and the world can expect in future will be far more violent as there will be weekends where the average temperature will be 105 degrees, and the heat wave will last longer than three days so it will have a lot more rain to dump on the valley and possibly create the worst flood that has ever been seen in Highland and Marlboro. A worse scenario is if the valley has a repeat of a Hurricane Irene, except there would be more water to smash into our tiny villages.

Already the New York State Legislature and Governor Andrew Cuomo are moving on the issue, and it would be fair to ask your Congressman, Senators Chuck Schumer (914-734-1532) and Kirsten Gillibrand, and President Donald Trump what are they going to do. Only Trump will disappoint you, as he has plans to make the flooding far worse. And he might veto every policy plan that the house and the senate come up with.

Today these storms and hurricanes are deficit busters. Then can run up FEMA bills of up to $300 billion in a year so far and cause the deficit to roar through a trillion deficit for a year as you see tidal flood of red ink.

Half a million hurt with “go back” comment
The New York Times got 4,800 written responses to their story from people, who as kids were told to go back to where they had come from. All of these people were hurt from the experience. There is a ratio of for every letter which was written are 100 more readers, who, too, were hurt. This means 480,000 people felt pain to go back, and will vote against Trump.
And not all of these people were Democrats.

Ulster County continues to trend Democrat

According to Ulster County Democrat Election Commissioner Ashley Dittus reported that the county in the first six months of the year continued to trend Democrat by more than a two to one ratio. Ms. Dittus said, “We’ve processed 1,254 enrollment change requests since January 1, 2019 - of those 45% have changed to Democrat, 18% have changed to Republican, 21% have changed to not be in a party. I don’t have data on what their party enrollment is currently.”

Likely the big reason for this is women are leaving the Republican Party. Big issues are health insurance for their families, and Republican attempts to take away women’s reproductive rights..

Call Chuck Schumer
I Just called Chuck Schumer’s office 914-734-1532 to rescind the tax deduction, which was slashed to $10,000 on the amount of the deduction they are entitled to on the property taxes they pay on their homes. A lot of homeowners pay more than $10,000 in property taxes on their homes. New York State School taxes are the highest in the nation. I also asked him to rescind the Trump tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires as we are facing a trillion dollar a year deficit.

I call the Senator’s office three times a year. He has received a lot of calls about the property tax deduction and almost none about the millionaires and billionaires. The renewal of the debt ceiling is coming up in late August, which now with a Democrat controlled house gives the Democrats leverage on both the issues. You may want to call the Senator. And you can contact Congressman Antonio Delgado.

Give them a call.

Ulster County’s First Slaves Were from Somalia
The first slaves in Ulster County (in 1660) were from Somalia, sold by the Arabs to the Dutch, who brought them to the port of Kingston. Should they go back? They were here earlier than you were. Should you go back?

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is also from Somalia.