The residents of the Highland Fire District can be better served by electing Jim Balint instead of a 30-year incumbent DiLorenzo.

DiLorenzo as chairman has done the following:

1. Spent $4,000,000 in the last three years on a ladder truck and three new pumpers. All the old stuff not good enough for Highland was bought by other FD to be used as first line apparatus, including several up the Hudson River in Greene County.

2. Spent $180,000+ on two new chief’s cars and again they went up the river to be used as chief’s cars with other FD. This included Chief Miller’s accident car (75,000 miles).

3. Reason to replace Miller’s car was that it was involved in a covered-up accident in New Paltz, where Miller was at fault. He crossed over the double-yellow hatch land delineation on Main Street in New Paltz which resulted in hitting a car broadside. That resulted in $6,000 damage to Miller’s chief’s car. Luckily neither his passengers nor the other driver were seriously hurt. And lucky for him, the supervising New Paltz cop who signed off on no tickets just happened to be a past chief of the New Paltz Fire Department.

4. DiLorenzo reduced voting hours to just 5-9 to discourage Senior Citizens and those working third shift not to be able to vote. He also stopped the tape recording of meetings so the actual happenings in the meetings are sanitized to the board’s appearance. Why aren’t these meetings video recorded like the other town meetings? Because they don’t want people to know what they do.

As a former fire commissioner who has 20 years of Rick Management Reviews of fire departments nationwide (over 800 departments) for a major insurer of fire departments , I think the Fire District is out of control in spending and not following the requirements of how a board is supposed to operate.

Jim Balint is running against DiLorenzo. He deserves a chance to start to clean up the mess. He is a longtime resident and understands the value of doing things correctly and above board, something that DiLorenzo has ignored in favor of his homeboy friendship with Chief Miller and others. The residents of the Highland Fire District deserve better, much better.