Serving the Towns of Wawarsing, Crawford, Mamakating, Rochester and Shawangunk, and everything in between
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Editorial
A Big Week... Despite Weird News We Will Never Be Chicken Littles Here

What a whirlwind week! It started with more pieces coming in for our opinion page spaces than usual, a flurry of letters needing attention, and a sudden explosion in the number of local cultural events that had to be publicized. Talk about an abundance of riches!

But then things started to run wacky. Verizon lost its Internet service, or at least saw it stuttering, throughout the region. A number of key meetings we were covering, and hoping to run reports on, were duds, with little happening that seemed particularly newsworthy. Other meetings, however, would explode with rumors or diatribes. Everyone's had enough of the snow and cold, we figured. It's cabin fever, and almost as bad for the news cycle as that bad time in April when the worst news has tended to happen each year for a good century now.

Finally, everything exploded on as we approached our deadline, when normally we sleepily fine-tune what we've got for you to read and digest, to assimilate and contextualize. A surprise court ruling tossed the entire Honk Dam, including its drained lake mess into New York City's hands. A local school board push to get folks as worried as they are about state budget shenanigans resulted in wild rumors, spread at meetings and through kids, went as viral as a local rumor can... and needed immediate clarification. Developer Michael Treanor brought the Nevele project back into view as a sports complex... with another "Hail Mary" aspect in its new need for legislative approval of video lottery terminal gambling for Ulster County. Worries arose about a couple dozen townspeople poisoning themselves with bad drinking water.

And then the topper... Wawarsing and Ellenville finally sent out notices on what their long-in-process revaluation, the community's first in anyone's memory, held in store for individual property owners. And suddenly people saw their property values soar and their homes diminish in value. And started crying foul, as well as asking why WE didn't know more.

All of these are stories that we've been covering for long spells, and will continue covering for longer time spans to come. But they all needed attention this week because they were on our readers' minds.

Can we be definitive in the information we pass on to you? We wish so but know that the news IS an ongoing process and that sometimes the best we can do is remind people of that process, and the need to be patient for stories to work themselves out.

In other words, we'll look at all our local school budgets over the coming weeks, and keep an eye on Albany, with an underlying sense that as with prior years it will sort itself out, especially now that our economy's better off than it was just recently. We'll see if the Honk Lake Dam decision gets appealed, and then start to sort through its ramifications. We'll run more in-depth pieces on the Nevele's latest plans, and start to take a good, long look at the reval figures, and various processes people have for questioning the new values they've been given.

We may make mistakes but not knowingly. And we'll correct them, when they've been pointed out to us.

No personal boasts about past experiences to catch us up here. What you see is what you get. No distractions from the business we cover... our small town community news and how it affects each of us, as well as all our neighbors and those like us throughout our region, state, nation and even world.

In the meantime, we'll also give you our talented writers' views on life as it is lived, some upcoming glimpses into the way real estate markets are changing this year, and a rundown on all those positive economic development ideas starting to percolate for the area. We'll cover our kids and our culture, upcoming events and the great people and organizations that make life full of such quality here. And we'll try and do it all with both honesty and humility, on deadline and with humor when needed.

Sense some underhanded commentary about state and national stories now percolating. Hmm... you may actually have us there.

Now onward into March!



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