HC Audio Stories

Visits to new businesses in Beacon and Cold Spring The Chisel Robert Corio knows how to wield tools. His salon in Beacon, The Chisel, is where he showcases his expertise in creating form, whether it's the styles he cuts or the wood furnishings he's crafted. Corio has been a hair stylist for years, starting in New Jersey at his father's shop and graduating to high-end New York City salons before opening a place in Cold Spring with a twist: barbering and beer. While still a partner at Barber and Brew, he's stepped back. In Beacon, he's offering something that's neither a barbershop nor a traditional salon, but a hybrid. "We're very gender-neutral," Corio says. "We want to curate an environment that supports people." Corio believes Beacon was craving a place like The Chisel. Corio occupies the main chair, and several stylists work with him. His wife, Liz, whose background is in fundraising and development, is at the front desk. There are plans for expansion, with colorists joining the group several days a week. "We're hiring," says Corio. The Chisel, at 155 Main St. in Beacon, is open daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., or by appointment. See chiselbeacon.com or call 845-265-0128. Feel Good Fitness Lisa Delgado-Caccomo has worked in fitness for years, in both chain and boutique enterprises. This year, she took the plunge with her own shop, Feel Good Fitness, which she describes as "a local space" where people can participate in boxing, Zumba, yoga, spin or Pilates classes and use the treadmills and free weights. The former Beacon High School athlete says she enjoys helping neighbors "feel good about themselves." She found a location with good visibility and a multi-year lease. Before opening, Delgado-Caccomo relied on the services of Dutchess County SCORE to analyze her business plan. Nine months in, "it's trending in the right direction in all areas," she says. Most of the trainers are friends, and her mother, sister, niece, daughter and husband have pitched in. "It's surreal to have the opportunity to have a business on Main Street in the place where I grew up," she says. Feel Good Fitness is located at 301 Main St. in Beacon. The sauna and gym are open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, Thursday and Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday. See feelgoodfitnessny.com or call 845-440-6005. The Floral Society Sierra Yaun has expanded her Dobbs Ferry shop to Beacon. The Floral Society is not a florist but specializes in bloom-related products. Foot traffic has helped the business take root in the community, says Yaun. Yaun has lived in Beacon with her daughter for three years. "The objects and tools sold at the store can be kept for life," she says. "They're not disposable." Stock includes home and garden products, beeswax candles, Japanese clippers and ceramic vases. Yaun grew up with a shopkeeper mother in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, so retail is "woven into my DNA - how people come together, and how people support one another," she says. She says she is all-in on brick-and-mortar, where people can select something beautiful for themselves or loved ones. Because of the popularity of online shopping, "gifting can be a lost art," she says. "There's something special about spending time and effort to choose something." The Floral Society, at 161 Main St. in Beacon, is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Sunday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday. See thefloralsociety.com or call 914-885-4230. Kapé Mo Filipino coffee beans have come to Cold Spring courtesy of Kapé Mo, an outlet in the Collective at 75 Main St. Mina Soriano-Elwell, her spouse, Angie Soriano-Elwell, and Angie's sister, Jessica Raquino, say they jumped at the opportunity to rent the first-floor space when a previous cafe closed. Now, it's a spot for Filipino flair, with drinks and food from Angie and Jessica's homeland. The menu includes sweet pork sausage, adobe chicken sandwiches, gluten-free pastries, chai, matcha, apple cider an...

Family's lawsuit still pending against driver A state judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against the City of Beacon by the family of a woman who died after being struck in a Main Street crosswalk. Judge Christi Acker also dismissed the family's lawsuit against Kearns Electric, the company that services the city's pedestrian signals. The civil suit is pending against Jacqueline Milohnic, the driver, and her husband, the vehicle's owner. Milohnic, 59 at the time, was driving a 2019 Jeep Wrangler on Dec. 1, 2021, when she turned left from Main Street onto Teller Avenue just after 3 p.m. and hit Carla Giuffrida, 75, a retired teacher who lived in Beacon. According to police reports, Giuffrida suffered a serious head injury but was conscious and breathing while being treated by first responders. She died five hours later at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla. Lindsay Giuffrida and her brother, Mauro, filed a lawsuit against the Milohnics, Kearns and the city in 2023. It said that their mother was crossing Teller with a "Walk" signal and alleged that Milohnic was "careless, reckless and negligent" and driving at "a dangerous and excessive rate of speed." They also claimed that Milohnic failed to yield to Giuffrida or to operate her vehicle "as a reasonable and prudent person." The suit seeks a financial judgment "in amounts commensurate with the injuries and damages sustained." On Dec. 10, Acker granted motions by the city and Kearns for summary judgment, which ended the case against them. Leo Kearns, the president and owner of Kearns Electric, said in written testimony that the company has maintained traffic and pedestrian control devices in Beacon for 30 years. The signals at Teller and Main were functioning properly when he performed yearly maintenance eight months before the accident, he said, and the company had received no complaints. Attorneys for the City of Beacon said the street and pedestrian signals at the intersection were properly designed, constructed and maintained. Brian O'Rourke, an engineer who submitted testimony for the city, noted that "within a reasonable degree of engineering certainty," traffic and pedestrian studies conducted at the site were "an adequate and reasonable evaluation" of conditions. The design of the intersection did not cause the accident, O'Rourke argued. Instead, it was Giuffrida crossing and Milohnic accelerating into a left turn and failing to yield to the pedestrian. An engineer who testified for the Giuffrida family alleged the city was liable because it had failed to provide a "leading pedestrian interval" of at least three seconds before the traffic light turned green, or other safety measures. But the judge ruled that "the liability of a municipality begins and ends with the fulfillment of its duty to construct and maintain its highways in a reasonably safe condition." A leading pedestrian interval has been installed at the intersection since the accident, City Administrator Chris White said on Tuesday (Dec. 23). In her decision, Acker wrote that the Giuffrida family must provide evidence that the city's studies were "plainly inadequate" or that there was "no reasonable basis" for the traffic plan. "They fail to do so," the judge wrote. In a statement, Lindsay and Mauro Giaffrida said they were "deeply disappointed" by Acker's decisions. The Dutchess County Transportation Council ranks Teller and Main as having the fourth-most pedestrian accidents among intersections in the county, they said, "yet meaningful safety improvements were ignored and delayed for years." "We hope the City of Beacon begins to prioritize pedestrian safety and proactively implements proven traffic-calming and visibility measures throughout the community," the siblings said. "Beacon should be a city where public safety is treated as a responsibility, not an afterthought." Milohnic was ticketed for failing to yield to a pedestrian. She challenged the citation, and City Court Judge Greg Johnston dismisse...

Public can comment through Dec. 31 Five years after it was due, Putnam County has released a draft of its updated Solid Waste Management Plan and is seeking public comments through Dec. 31. Each county in New York state is required by law to update its solid waste plans every 10 years; Dutchess released its most recent plan in 2023. One problem for Putnam is a lack of data to determine how much waste, and of what type, each municipality generates. The plan blames this on "inconsistent reporting by private haulers" during the annual permit application and renewal process and "variations in recordkeeping" by its towns and villages. The data gap means the county can't track waste disposal and recycling rates within each town and village. The plan recommends clearer guidelines and increased oversight. But it stops short of recommending a "flow control" system, which would allow the county to dictate to each municipality where waste must be delivered, because "Putnam County is a home-rule county, so each municipality has the authority to district as they see fit." The plan says 78,822 tons of municipal solid waste were generated in Putnam County in 2024, compared to 71,641 tons in 2010, even as the population shrank from 99,644 to 96,870. In addition, 11,083 tons of waste were recycled and composted, compared to 4,839 tons in 2010. Putnam doesn't have any active landfills; some of its waste is hauled to western New York and Ohio. The incinerator in Peekskill burned 54,000 tons of Putnam waste in 2024, and one in Poughkeepsie burned 2,500 tons. The plan notes that a Putnam landfill is not feasible due to cost and watersheds. It said it doesn't know how much local waste is going to landfills because it's dropped at transfer stations outside Putnam and mixed with waste from other counties. In its previous plan, released in 2010, Putnam urged the Legislature to adopt the pay-as-you-throw program that "treats waste disposal like a utility service, where users pay proportionally to their usage. Households that produce less waste pay less, while those generating more pay higher fees. This pricing model provides a direct financial incentive to reduce, reuse and recycle, leading to decreased landfill use and increased participation in diversion programs." The updated plan moves away from that recommendation, saying that research and outreach demonstrated that such a system was "not feasible" for most towns. Organics make up 25 percent to 30 percent of the county's waste stream. While several municipalities encourage backyard composting and food scrap drop-off, Putnam does not have its own composting facility. The plan recommends a feasibility study to determine if, and where, one could be built. The plan also recommends a pilot curbside collection program for compostable materials. In the meantime, compostable materials deposited at drop-off sites are composted at Sustainable Materials Management in Cortlandt Manor and turned into soil amendments that can be bought locally. (In Philipstown, food scraps can be dropped on Saturday mornings at the former landfill on Lane Gate Road.) The draft plan can be viewed online here, or copies are available at the Philipstown Town Hall, Cold Spring Village Hall, Butterfield Library in Cold Spring and Desmond-Fish library in Garrison. Comments are being accepted at bit.ly/PutnamSWMP or by leaving a voicemail at 845-808-1390, ext. 43164.

Beacon Music Factory opens venue Stephen Clair knows that it's impossible to reincarnate the groovy, decade-long music scene that animated Dogwood, which shuttered in 2023 and is now Cooper's on East Main Street. But with help from Daria Grace and a coterie of friends, he's going to try. Clair's venture, the Beacon Music Factory on Fishkill Avenue, has always housed an intimate performance space for teachers and students, but a three-month makeover upgraded the lighting, interior design and sound system to create a new venue, Lucky Dog, birthed with simple math: a beer and wine tavern license. One goal is to share the wealth with performers. After a soft opening earlier this month, the club will host a banger on Jan. 1 that resurrects an hours-long tribute to artists who have died in the past year. Around two dozen vocalists will sing karaoke with a live house band on what is billed as New Year's Day of the Dead, says Grace. The irregular, reverent event began locally as Lou Year's Day at Quinn's in 2013, says Grace, and paid tribute to the demise of Velvet Underground guiding light and iconoclastic New York rocker Lou Reed, whose only hit, "Walk on the Wild Side," reached No. 16 on the Billboard pop charts in 1972. The musical canines held another gathering in 2016 after the deaths of Prince, David Bowie and Merle Haggard. Clair ticks off 14 prominent musicians who died in 2025, including Sly Stone, Brian Wilson, Ozzy Osbourne and Garth Hudson of The Band, which maintained close ties to the Hudson Valley. The event also serves as a fundraiser for Fareground, the food and community nonprofit. The music space reunites the old dogs and introduces new trick ponies. During a showcase earlier this month, the stalwarts included Jonathan Frith and Jon Slackman. Soon after Dogwood's demise, Slackman tried to revive the venue's vibe by hosting Grateful Dead cover shows at Stinson's Hub, but the concept never took hold. Mark Weston plucked a silver resonator six-string and Beacon High School senior Skylar Clair, daughter of Stephen, fingerpicked introspective original songs. Playing guitar, Jeannine Young accompanied Brian Waite's piano for his humorous Broadway-inspired song, "Bubble Bath." "The place feels legit now with the redesign," says Clair. "It's a platform for just about anything, and we'll see what sticks. The community embraced it, helped create it and takes pride in it, so we're going to get our ya-ya's out, for sure." George Mansfield, co-founder of Dogwood, donated the club's original sign. Just inside the entrance on the unofficial opening night, Mansfield assembled three plastic letters in different fonts that spelled d-o-g. "We floated many names," says Clair. "We're next to a dog park, but we'll never be a bar like Dogwood and will only serve when there's an event." The top of a red Farfisa organ is the bar, and the place provides seats for around 50, including chairs, couches and high-top tables with barstools. A large sign reading "Free Painkillers" hangs on the wall at stage left. "We cherish Dogwood - it was something special and fun," says Frith. "But we can create a new community spot that mingles us with all the new people who have moved here since it closed." Lucky Dog is located at 333 Fishkill Ave., inside the Beacon Music Factory. The performances on Thursday (Jan. 1) begin at 4 p.m.; a $10 donation is suggested. See instagram.com.

Metro-North changing prices, policies Metro-North train commuters will pay higher fares beginning Jan. 4, and unused paper or mobile tickets will expire the next day at 4 a.m., instead of 60 days later. The latter is intended to prevent fare evasion; currently, passengers can wait to activate mobile tickets until a conductor appears, which may not happen during short trips. Monthly and weekly tickets will increase by up to 4.5 percent, and all other tickets will rise by up to 8 percent, changes approved earlier this year by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) board. Other changes include: The surcharge for tickets purchased from a conductor or through the TrainTime app but not activated before departure will increase from $6 to $8. Mobile customers will receive a few initial warnings. Round-trip tickets will become passes that expire at 4 a.m. the next day. Weekday passes will cost 10 percent less than two one-way peak tickets; weekend tickets will cost the same. After 10 trips in 14 days, mobile ticketholders will receive an 11th ride free in the same period. Reduced fares will be available 24/7 for seniors, people with disabilities and Medicare recipients, including during the morning peak hours. Children aged 5 to 17 can ride for $1 each when accompanied by a fare-paying adult, including during the morning peak hours. The MTA is upgrading its vending machines to offer change in $5 and $10 bills instead of coins and provide translations in nine languages instead of three. The project is scheduled for completion by summer 2026.

Decommissioning board also discusses funding, data centers The board overseeing the decommissioning of the shuttered Indian Point nuclear power plant south of Philipstown moved its Dec. 11 meeting from Cortlandt Town Hall to the Buchanan-Verplanck Elementary School, about a mile from the facility. The venue change was notable because Michael Trombley, the superintendent of the Hendrick Hudson school district, spoke to the board, outlining the financial pressure the district faces without the payments in lieu of property taxes paid by the plant, which closed in 2021. The shutdown resulted in the loss of nearly one-third of the district's annual operating budget, he said, "a financial hit that no school district is built to withstand." Trombley said that, while the district is grateful for state grants it has received, "these targeted, specific acts of aid do not address the long-term consequences of our district hosting over 1.7 million kilograms of spent nuclear fuel stored on tax-exempt land that cannot be repurposed for economic development." Although state and federal lawmakers have allowed municipalities to tax spent nuclear fuel as property, Trombley urged the board to lobby for the proposed federal STRANDED Act (Sensible, Timely Relief for America's Nuclear District's Economic Development) and other legislation that would increase the compensation that municipalities would receive until the U.S. government builds a permanent storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. If the legislation were to pass, Trombley said that the federal aid coming to the district would make up for the budget shortfall caused by the Indian Point closure. Without it, the district will have to raise taxes by 5 percent to 8 percent every year, or make drastic cuts, such as eliminating sports programs, severely reducing arts programs or merging with another district. "That is not meant to scare people," he said. "It is meant to provide a stark reality of what the shutdown of Indian Point has caused." Fund factors Board members asked representatives from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) at the Dec. 11 meeting about their oversight of a $2.1 billion fund that is paying Holtec Decommissioning International (HDI). While Indian Point was operating, a small portion of each customer's payments went into the fund. HDI hired its parent company, Holtec International, for some waste disposal and fuel storage work. Noting that some projects have cost much more than the estimates, board members accused Holtec of overcharging itself and essentially "double-dipping" from the fund. NRC representatives said they had determined that Holtec had not done anything to "impede" the timely decommissioning of the plant. "If they're overspending, it ends up being an impediment to decommissioning because they run out of money, right?" asked board member Richard Webster, from Riverkeeper. "Our focus is not on whether they went over or under their budget," said the Elise Eve of the NRC. "It's that they have sufficient funds to complete decommissioning." She noted factors that can affect the budget, such as inflation. She said the NRC would continue to review the fund annually to ensure it has sufficient funds. "The question is: If Holtec International charges HDI twice the price per cask as they charge any other [decommissioning] site, is that acceptable to the NRC?" asked Webster. Eve replied: "That's not something that we're going to be regulating." What next? Holtec is finishing an extensive analysis of the area around a former training building that was discovered last year to be unexpectedly contaminated with cesium-137. The company has theorized that the low-level radioactive contamination may be from soil near the first reactor that was excavated and deposited at the edges of the property when the site's second and third reactors were built in the 1970s. Once the contamination is cleaned up, Holtec plans to apply for a "partial site release," which would...

In 2021, four boys transferred from private schools into Lesli Tompkins's fourth-grade classroom at J.V. Forrestal Elementary in Beacon. They were "brilliant and eager to learn, and I could have put them in books that would have filled them with new knowledge," recalled Tompkins, who envisioned the boys doing fun projects exploring all manner of ideas. But there was a problem. "They didn't know how to read," she said. While these boys could converse like adults, their reading was far below grade level. The boys had not been taught how to sound out words, especially complicated words like photosynthesis, a common fourth-grade topic. They were part of what some view as a nationwide crisis in which only a third of elementary school students read at grade level. The news is a little better in New York state, where 53 percent of younger students are considered "proficient" at reading for their grade. That perceived crisis prompted New York to require public schools this year to certify that their reading curricula comply with the "science of reading," a vast body of research that points to phonics, or sounding out words, as the most efficient way to learn how to read. About 40 states have passed similar laws. The science of reading conflicts with "whole language" instruction, which dates to the 19th century and Horace Mann, known as the father of American public education. Mann viewed phonics as "soul-deadening." By contrast, whole-language instruction focuses on the pleasure of stories, looking at pictures and enjoying what was thought to be the "natural" process of learning. But reading is not natural, argued Sarah Holbrook, who trains teachers at SUNY New Paltz's Science of Reading Center. "Language develops naturally. But reading is a manmade phenomenon that has to be taught." The science of reading has five components: phonemic awareness (recognizing and manipulating sounds), phonics (how letters translate those sounds) and building fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Focusing on those principles has boosted reading scores in Beacon, said Sagrario Rudecindo-O'Neill, the district's assistant superintendent of curriculum and student support. Two years ago, 37 percent of third graders in Beacon were deemed proficient readers in state testing. Last year, that number rose to 45 percent. Fourth graders increased from 45 percent to 55 percent. Fifth graders went from 35 percent to 54 percent. Before 2021, Rudecindo-O'Neill said that teachers were using phonics, but in a haphazard way. Today, teachers follow a "structured literacy model" and related initiatives. Students start with the basics, learning how to decode words. "They're teaching the letters one at a time," Rudecindo-O'Neill said. "They're saying it. They're writing it. They're having opportunities to practice reading the words." One building block is "phonemic awareness," a child's ability to recognize, pronounce and manipulate the 44 distinct sounds, or phonemes, of the English language. Before children decode letters, they need to hear how elf can become shelf by adding the "sh" sound, and get a feel for how words rhyme and how words like cat, hat, bat, mat, mate, fate and late are different yet share similar sounds. With that in mind, Stacy Ricci, who has taught kindergarten and prekindergarten at the Garrison School, often starts the day with an "initial phoneme isolation." She might say the word cloud and ask students to repeat. Then they isolate the beginning "c" sound. "We use our hands to make it interactive so they can see it and feel it," she said. They move to another word like catch, showing how it includes three sounds: "c" - "a" - "tch". Such quick exercises are part of a daily routine to ensure compliance with the state's new reading mandate, said Allison Emig, the Garrison principal. "In years past, we weren't always doing this every single day," she said. Last year, 78 percent of Garrison's students tested as proficient at reading. Emig added tha...

Competing reports vary widely on cost A study released on Dec. 10 suggested that, if it moves forward, a proposal for New York State to take over Central Hudson would cost $3.5 billion. Customers would see immediate savings, according to projections from the Hudson Valley for Public Power coalition. By Year 30, a publicly owned utility could save ratepayers $210 million per year, it said. At the same time, an executive summary of a second study, released the same day and funded by opponents of the proposed Hudson Valley Power Authority, doubled the purchase-price estimate to $6 billion to $7.5 billion. The industry-backed Protect Our Power coalition also added $2.6 billion to $5.2 billion for a potential transition from natural gas to electric service that the HVPA would study. Customers could see their bills swell by 36 percent, it said, with conversion from gas to electric costing about $57,000 per home by 2028. Protect Our Power concluded that the cost of a takeover could climb as high as $12.2 billion. Legislators must parse the conflicting narratives as they consider a bill that would have the state take control of a system serving 315,000 electric customers and 90,000 natural gas customers in parts of nine counties, including Dutchess and Putnam. Central Hudson says it's not for sale; separate legislation would allow the state to buy the utility under eminent domain, which requires only "just compensation" for property needed for public use. Central Hudson, one of six private utilities in the state, has been owned since 2013 by Fortis, a Canadian holding company. The HVPA bill, introduced in the state Senate by Michelle Hinchey (a Democrat whose district includes parts of Dutchess and Putnam counties) and in the Assembly by Sarahana Shrestha (a Democrat whose district includes the northwest corner of Dutchess), outlines the process by which the state would create a "democratically governed" nonprofit that would work to keep residential electric bills below 6 percent of household income. Putnam County Executive Kevin Byrne, a Republican, opposes the HVPA, calling the notion that it will save customers money "speculative, at best." Leaders of the electrical workers' union that represents about 700 Central Hudson employees also oppose the plan, as do the Orange, Ulster and Dutchess chambers of commerce. Dutchess County Executive Sue Serino, a Republican, has taken a wait-and-see approach, saying that "any new proposal should come with clear, concrete guarantees that it will truly deliver the savings and reliability people deserve." Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger, a Democrat, is a proponent, saying residents should be confident their utility "can meet the challenges of the day, including climate change." In February, Kingston became the first municipality in the region to back the plan, unanimously passing a resolution. A decision by legislators isn't imminent. Shrestha said this summer that she doesn't expect Democratic leaders to call for a vote until the bill has enough support to pass, which she said could take two or three years. The Hudson Valley for Public Power study relied on data from Central Hudson's rate-increase requests to the state Public Service Commission. It asserts that a public authority would save customers $15.2 million in Year 1, $116.8 million in Year 20 and $210.5 million annually by Year 30. The study did not analyze supply costs, assuming they would be the same for either entity. On the delivery side, it projected an immediate 1.9 percent decrease in gas and electric rates and a 12.7 percent decrease over Central Hudson's expected rates by Year 30. Overall, the estimated savings would be $2.9 billion over 30 years, it said. The estimates include taxes paid to localities and charitable giving, "to make this as close to an apples-to-apples comparison" as possible, said Scott Burnham, one of the analysts. The report assumed the HVPA would receive an interest-free $76 million loan from New Yor...

District had considered police presence The Beacon City School District is not adding a police officer to its security detail, at least for now. Six of seven board members (two seats are vacant) said in a straw poll on Monday (Dec. 15) that they are satisfied with the district's security staffing. The board had discussed hiring a school resource officer, who is typically armed, after Board Member Eric Schetter suggested the position for Beacon High School and possibly Rombout Middle School. On Monday, Schetter, a former 25-year administrator in the Arlington district, was the only voice in favor. "I feel the SRO makes the high school and/or the middle school that much safer," he said. "That's where I've been from the start." The board mulled the idea for several months while hearing reports from Superintendent Matt Landahl on existing security and what a resource officer might do. There are unarmed security monitors at each of the district's six elementary schools, as well as four at Rombout and nine at the high school, including two who work at night. They are supervised by Mark Thomas, a retired Beacon officer hired in 2018 as the district's first director of security. The hire came the year after then-Police Chief Doug Solomon asked the board to let him assign an officer to the district. Thomas works with Altaris, a consulting firm that conducted security audits at each school and assists with emergency planning. Through Thomas, the district works closely with Beacon and Town of Fishkill police (Glenham Elementary is in Fishkill), who do security walkthroughs and provide support during lockdown drills. In 2014 and 2016, the Obama administration issued guidance emphasizing hiring school resource officers for safety and mentoring, rather than for discipline. It urged schools to create agreements that ban SROs from enforcing school rules, but ensure they are trained in child development and de-escalation techniques. In Cold Spring, the Haldane campus has had a Putnam County sheriff's deputy as a resource officer since 2015. Garrison discussed the issue in 2020 and, earlier this year, hired a special patrol officer (SPO), a retired police officer whose role is limited to security and who does not carry a weapon. Elsewhere in Dutchess County, Landahl said on Monday, each of five comparable high schools - Poughkeepsie, Hyde Park, Spackenkill, Arlington and Wappingers - has an SRO. The Poughkeepsie City School District is the only other district with a director of security. And Beacon has the highest security guard-to-student ratio in the county, "by a lot," Landahl said. If Beacon were to hire an SRO, the district would pay the officer's salary and benefits for 10 months out of the year - roughly $100,000, "so we would need to reduce somewhere to do it," Landahl said, noting "there's not a ton of enthusiasm" among building administrators to cut existing security staff. That led Board President Flora Stadler to call for the straw poll: Table the discussion or move ahead? "I would not want to lose that [security-to-student] ratio that we have," Stadler said. Others agreed. "I'm not convinced yet that it's effective, that it does make anything safer," said Catherine Buscemi. "I'm not convinced that there would be an acceptable comfort level for students having a police officer in the school." When the board began its discussion in September, Stadler cited a 2023 University at Albany study that showed SROs are associated with a decline in some forms of violence. At the same time, they were associated with an increase in firearm offenses, which researchers said might be attributed to increased detection. The study also concluded that having a police officer in school leads to an increase in "harsh" disciplinary actions, such as suspensions and arrests, particularly among Black students, male students and students with disabilities. Meredith Heuer, the board vice president, said the district will probably have to revisit the convers...

Beacon filmmaker chronicles origins of raucous crawl Sitting in an East Village watering hole around the holidays several years ago, Seth Porges and his friend, Scott Beale, began talking about Santacon, the international bar crawl where men and women dress in Santa suits and related holiday apparel. It often gets a bad rap for the "Santanic" mayhem that happens every December when crowds collide with too much alcohol. "I figured it began with some drunken frat boys," says Porges, a filmmaker who moved to Beacon in 2016. "But Scott tells me, no, he and his friends started it in the mid-1990s, and he had the videotapes." Porges says he thought it sounded like "the stupidest thing in the world," but he discovered that the footage was "like the Zapruder tape - if it had no meaning or bearing in history." In his new documentary, Santacon, which premiered in November at the NYC DOC festival, Porges stays classy by covering the obligatory shots of fighting, puking and public urination by people in Santa suits with concision and hilarity via sensationalist TV news clips. Then he lets an amazing story breathe by lingering on the extensive video documentation of the founders' first Santacons, which took place in four cities during the mid-1990s, including the alleged theft of a mall stanchion's velvet rope at the initial event that tarnished the concept. As the U.S. became more homogenized and corporatized after the greedy 1980s, a group of weirdos in San Francisco created the Cacophony Society, which devised outlandish ideas and sometimes acted them out. In one incendiary incident that teetered toward performance art, they mocked PETA by throwing pig heads and chicken guts into the crowd during a staged parade. The group spread to other cities without any organizational structure, but the San Francisco chapter published a zine, Roughdraft. "Reading through old copies, you'd see little items and go, 'Whoa, that's the original idea for Burning Man, or that's the one for Santacon,' " says Porges. Burning Man became a commercial venture disavowed almost immediately by Cacophony. Santacon blew up into something they never intended to control or copyright, a decentralized phenomenon that benefits bars, restaurants and clothing stores. It began after Rob Schmitt, a member of the Cacophony Society, saw a postcard of Santas playing pool and said, "We should do this." A prescient post in the December 1994 issue of Roughdraft reads: "Imagine a bunch of cheap-suit Santas singing bawdy carols, staggering drunk, fighting in the street, mooning cable cars and other such mischief." On Dec. 20 of that year, participants paid $35 for a Santa costume and a seat on the "specially decorated" bus. BYOB and "don't forget the elf-throwing contest." Handheld camcorders captured the bewildered faces of bystanders as the Santas invaded a mall and a high-end restaurant. The cops clamped down during the second go-round, so Cacophony moved it from San Francisco to Portland, where the police shadowed them and warned against entering Macy's. One scene in the film shows the fat red line deciding not to mess with the thin blue line. The footage felt like "unlocking the Rosetta Stone for this underground movement that led to things like Jackass and The Rehearsal," says Porges. "They invented the flash mob, and Santacon is one of the first things to go viral worldwide." During the final Cacophony-sponsored soiree in 1998, Santas are shown in New York City joking around with the police. The event ended on a high note when some lunatic Santas climbed the Brooklyn Bridge. "It had nothing to do with fame or fortune," says Porges. "They were just merry pranksters seeking tribes of odd people to do new and interesting things and have fun in the moment with their friends. Back then, they did prank culture for art's sake. Now it's for clicks." For more info, see santacondoc.com. The film is making the festival circuit, but two of Porges' documentaries can be streamed: Cla...

Artist to create 'living museum' in Newburgh The first delivery of 24 tons of Vermont marble landed on the Newburgh waterfront earlier this month - the yellow crane and rockpile marking the start of a new sculpture park is visible from Beacon. Rhea Marmentini, 46, secured a five-year lease to create and curate a 2-acre Marmentini Living Museum just inside the fence at the Regal Bag factory complex. This is the first steppingstone in grand expansion plans envisioned by the artist and Bank Art Gallery, up the hill at Broadway and Liberty Street. Marmentini wants to place a string of mythical, mystical creatures from Governor's Island in New York Harbor (where she had a residency) upriver to whatever locales are receptive. She also works with granite on the waterfront in Athens, in Greene County. Newburgh is the concept's nucleus, and when the weather warms up, Marmentini will don ear and eye protection to wield a handheld grinder with artificial-diamond saw blades and shape shards of stone into her quirky works - although 24 tons of marble, the largest load that a flatbed truck can carry, looks larger in the mind's eye. "We're expecting a lot more deliveries," she says. Born in Hungary and raised in Spain, Marmentini is an international art rock star; her sculptures dot landscapes worldwide and her magnum opus, "Dragon de la Calderona," near Valencia, Spain, is a huge house built on a former quarry that looks like its namesake and took eight years to build. Last year, she decided to move to Brooklyn. Shirley Giler Noto, director at Bank Art Gallery, discovered her work on Instagram and began promoting her peculiar paintings, bas-reliefs and sculptures. No matter the medium, Marmentini's style is instantly recognizable. One marble statue at the gallery, "Flying Gaulkees," includes beasts with gold-leaf eyes that are neither fish nor fowl. In her work, lips often turn down, but the life-size sculpture "Catwoman," also in the gallery's cavernous subterranean space, is smiling and beguiling. Because Edward Doering owns Bank Art and the Regal Bag property, the deal to create a sculpture museum on the Newburgh waterfront zoomed from idea to reality in months. Things germinated when a representative from Garner Arts Center in Rockland County reached out to Marmentini and proposed a collaboration. Drawn to the river, she scouted Haverstraw's waterfront. When Noto heard the story, she had a eureka moment: Why not let Marmentini fill the flat, grassy area just inside the gate at the northern end of Front Street with large-scale sculptures? The living museum is intended to serve as the catalyst for a planned Hudson River Sculpture Walk that would extend beyond the former bag factory and other buildings, nearly to the Newburgh Yacht Club. Noto foresees plenty of lease extensions, but if any entity way down the line decides to remove the project, it will have to uproot concrete foundations, stainless steel anchors and the bulky artwork itself. Marmentini is sketching out a black-and-white sci-fi-style backstory about her future figures on high-end comic book paper, a mythology centered on the river's history and ecology for the last 10,000 years, after the glacier thawed. Despite being constructed from one of the planet's most resilient materials, the sculptures decay and change over time. "It would be cool if they gathered moss," she says. "Or if kids climb on them and a part gets knocked off." Bank Art Gallery, at 94 Broadway in Newburgh, is open from 4 to 8 p.m. on Friday and noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, or by appointment. See bankartgallery.com.

County executive rejected extra prosecutors Dutchess County legislators voted on Wednesday (Dec. 17) to keep two new prosecutors and an administrative assistant in the district attorney's budget for next year, despite warnings from County Executive Sue Serino about "difficult decisions" ahead. By a quick voice vote, legislators rejected Serino's veto of their bipartisan amendment to add the positions to the $653.6 million spending plan that they passed Dec. 8. Their additions included five new DA positions overall, costing $711,000, plus other amendments that increased Serino's $651.4 million proposal by $2.2 million and the use of reserve funds, or savings, by $7.2 million. In a memo explaining her veto, Serino said District Attorney Anthony Parisi had decided to "walk back" an agreement to hold the positions vacant to offset $300,000 in spending on promotions for 22 of his attorneys. Serino said she sought a compromise: allowing Parisi to keep two of the five new positions, a third prosecutor and a junior accountant approved by the Legislature. Even without the three extra positions, Parisi's office would have 73 employees, compared to 68 when he took office last year, said Serino. "You all share in the responsibility for fiscal sustainability," she said before Wednesday's override vote. "We will need to compromise in the new year to work together to do what's right for our community while minimizing the impact on taxpayers." In a statement released shortly after the override vote, Parisi said the positions were "the five most critical" of nine he asked legislators to add to Serino's draft budget. Without them, the district attorney's ability to prosecute would have been "significantly reduced," he said, citing "growing demands" from the reform of state evidence-sharing rules and ongoing efforts to fight drug and violent crime and elder abuse. "Unfortunately, the county executive's vetoes failed to acknowledge the real-world consequences these cuts would have had on victims, law enforcement and the safety of our communities," said Parisi. All 15 Republicans voted for the amended budget, with nine of 10 Democrats (one was absent) voting against the plan. It anticipates $268 million in revenue from sales taxes, $107 million from property taxes and the use of $34 million in savings - $7 million more than Serino proposed. The tax levy will stay below a state-mandated cap, and the rate assessed on property owners will fall slightly, from $2.17 to $2.10 per $1,000 of assessed value. The budget also eliminates 10 vacant jobs and leaves 17 unfilled. Legislators also rejected a proposal by Serino to end an exemption from the county's 3.75 percent sales tax on clothing and shoes costing less than $110. (Dutchess consumers pay 8.125 percent sales tax, which includes 4 percent for the state and 0.375 percent for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.) Letting the exemption expire as scheduled on March 1 would have yielded $5.4 million in additional revenue, including $133,000 for Beacon under a revenue-sharing agreement, according to Serino. Beacon's share of sales tax collections, which was $6.1 million in 2025, will still rise from 2.35 percent to 2.45 percent in 2026, or about $268,000. On Wednesday, legislators also approved each municipality's share of the $107 million property-tax levy. Beacon property owners will be assessed $4.7 million. After Jan. 1, Serino will have to work with a Legislature led by Democrats, who defeated five Republican incumbents in November to flip the 15-10 majority. Democrat Yvette Valdés Smith, who represents Ward 4 in Beacon and part of Fishkill as the minority leader, is expected to succeed Republican Will Truitt as majority leader.

Community raises funds after eviction A GoFundMe campaign was launched on Wednesday (Dec. 17) to assist Sokhara Kim, the former owner of Nice 'N Neat Dry Cleaners in Philipstown, and her husband, Chakra Oeur, who were evicted from their home and business last week. Kim says she was duped by an acquaintance who told her he had purchased the building at 3154 Route 9 and she no longer had to make payments on her mortgage. According to Janice Hogan, a Philipstown resident who posted the fundraiser, Oeur had returned home from his second kidney transplant the day before the eviction. The couple, who are natives of Cambodia, are staying with Kim's daughter in Connecticut, according to the site, and the funds raised will help cover medical and legal expenses. "All my time living in the United States, I constantly get the feeling of missing my beloved homeland," Oeur said, according to the site. "Now, I experience the feeling of missing my Cold Spring home and my beautiful garden - hopeless, helpless, miserable, empty. The dark feeling shows up in Sokhara's activities. I can feel her pain and frustration even though she doesn't say anything." The campaign, at dub.sh/sokhara-chakra, raised nearly $30,000 within 24 hours.

Village says sewage treatment issues rectified Cold Spring will not face financial penalties following four instances in which fecal coliform and biochemical oxygen demand discharges from the wastewater treatment plant on Fair Street exceeded acceptable levels. According to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the discharges occurred between August 2024 and August 2025. The DEC issued a Notice of Violation in October that could have resulted in penalties of up to $37,500 per day. A state inspection of the plant in September identified three other infractions: an expired operating permit, an unlicensed assistant plant operator, and the use of an uncalibrated flow meter. At the Wednesday (Dec. 10) meeting of the Village Board, Mayor Kathleen Foley shared recent correspondence from the DEC stating that the agency was satisfied with the measures taken to address the violations and that no fines would be levied. Foley addressed what she described as "a lot of misunderstanding" about the violations. She noted that wastewater discharges and village drinking water are tested twice daily and that the village was not "caught" in the violations. "We reported our own violations" to the state and the Putnam County Health Department, she said, adding that municipalities are allowed up to four discharges that exceed acceptable levels before the DEC will inspect a plant. "At no point was raw sewage or untreated water discharged into the Hudson River; it was always treated," Foley said, explaining that the fecal coliform levels were immediately brought back to the acceptable range after bacteria levels in the plant's digesters had dropped. The village is paying tuition for Landon Wood, an employee of the water and wastewater department, to be trained as an assistant plant operator. He is expected to be licensed by June. In the interim, the village has contracted with a licensed operator as needed. Foley said the village began using a second licensed plant operator in 2022, but the employee later found work elsewhere. Following the state notice, the village also had the plant's flow meter calibrated and is updating its operating permit. In other business … The Village Board held its annual reorganization meeting. Foley, trustees Andrew Hall and Tony Bardes, and village justice Luke Hilpert, each of whom was elected in November, were sworn in. In addition, the board approved appointments to various boards and staff positions. The Poughkeepsie Journal was named the official newspaper for legal notices, while the Putnam County News & Recorder was dropped. The Highlands Current will continue to be used as an alternative. In most cases, a newspaper must have mostly paid circulation to be an official paper. The mayor was authorized to sign an intermunicipal agreement with Putnam County for the collection and distribution of sales tax. The nine county municipalities will collectively share 1 percent of the sales tax collected by the county, with a minimum of $50,000 annually. "It's a small victory - just the beginning," Foley said. "Now we press for more." An engineering inspection on the work on the pedestrian tunnel was scheduled for Monday (Dec. 15). Foley clarified why two crews have been working on trees in the village. Brothers Tree Service has been removing dead trees on village property, and Wright Tree Service is trimming trees near power lines for Central Hudson. The Cold Spring Police Department responded to 115 calls in November, including 27 assists to other agencies, nine traffic stops, eight motor vehicle accidents, eight alarms, eight assists to members of the public, two persons in crisis, two disputes and single calls for a domestic incident, fraud, harassment, lost property, menacing, noise and a missing adult. The Cold Spring Fire Co. answered 13 calls in November, including seven activated alarms, a confirmed carbon monoxide incident, two motor vehicle crashes with injuries and single calls for a mountain rescue,...

250 Years Ago (December 1775) The royal governor in New York, William Tyron, took 25 folio volumes of records of the Colony of New York to a British ship anchored in the harbor, HMS Duchess of Gordon, for "safekeeping." The New York Provincial Congress, in reply to a Tyron appeal for peace, said the revolt was not due to "a desire to become independent of the British crown" nor a lack of devotion to the king, but only because of the "oppressive acts of the British parliament." The Continental Congress passed the Naval Construction Act of 1775, which authorized the fitting of 13 gunships, including two stationed in New York. The Provincial Congress ordered 1,000 copies of the proceedings of the Continental Congress translated into Dutch and German. 150 Years Ago (December 1875) The company running the Sunk Mine in Putnam Valley ordered the operation shut down, throwing about 100 miners and 50 drivers out of work. Many of the teamsters had spent hundreds of dollars to get their horses and wagons fit for the winter, and several grocers had extended considerable credit. Constable James McAndrew presented a bill to the Putnam County Legislature for $50 [about $1,500 today] for his services, but a motion was passed to strike $4.75 in line items for tea and horse feed. William Foster shot and killed "a fine dog" owned by John Brewer for humane reasons, according to The Cold Spring Recorder. The dog was being pelted with snowballs by a group of boys when it ran under the No. 5 train to escape, losing a leg and becoming valueless. Five shirts were taken from Michael McCormick's clothesline. The steamer New Champion made its last delivery to the wharf before being retired; even with the lower rates for river transport, the tariff was $450 [$13,000]. William Wood, 24, was severely burned on the head and face while filling an alcohol lamp in Samuel Owen's home. Seth Secor brought two tubs of lard from the depot to his store on a Wednesday afternoon, rolled one inside and left the other on the porch. Two hours later, the second tub had disappeared. A search was conducted among the itinerants at Sandy Landing, where the tub was found hidden in leaves with most of the lard removed. Caleb Mekeel returned from Florida with a carpet bag full of oranges. Gangland Cold Spring On Dec. 18, 1875, The New York Times published a lengthy front-page story about the fall of the Highland Brigands, a gang of thieves whose leader and fence both lived in Cold Spring. For the previous two years, the gang had been a menace, burglarizing freight cars for whatever they could, including a shipment of corsets. The Times story was based on the testimony of a detective who had posed as a thief and won the confidence of the fence, Isaac Levy, who had moved to Cold Spring with his wife after the Civil War and owned two Main Street businesses: a cigar store/barbershop and a clothing store/oyster bar. Mrs. Levy grew suspicious of this new friend, but Levy vouched for him. The gang's leader was William "Bill" Conroy, who was in jail in Oneida County after being charged in a home invasion there. His sisters and mother also lived in Cold Spring, which he considered his hometown. Levy confided much to the undercover detective about crimes committed and planned. For example, he said he'd heard the wife of a railroad flagman who lived in a shanty south of the Garrison station was observed hiding $8,000 [$235,000] in her Bible. Levy alerted his gang, but another gang from the Bowery arrived first, tied up the couple and stole their gold, but couldn't find the cash. Levy also told the detective that Isaac Delanoy, the night watchman at the Cold Spring station, and Mr. Ferris, the village justice, were making it "hot" for the gang and may need to be "fixed." Levy said after the men were dead, he would summon 20 gangsters from the city to burn down the wood-framed village, which had no fire company or water works. Meanwhile, Conroy, sitting in jail in Rome, New York, had aske...

Plastic pollution is turning up in surprising places, for surprising reasons No matter how dedicated you are to Leave No Trace principles while enjoying the Highlands, you may be leaving something behind. In 2023, researchers Tim Keyes and Joe Dadey led an expedition of high school students down the Hudson River. They began at the source at Lake Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondacks and proceeded to paddle and hike to New York Harbor. Along the way, they took water samples to measure for microplastics. As The Current reported in 2019, scientists have found microscopic fragments in the deepest ocean trenches, nearly 7 miles down. They've found them in the most desolate parts of the Arctic, in the rain over the mountains, in the fish, in the water. And they've found them in human poop, because we inhale and consume tens of thousands of pieces each year, which is probably a gross underestimation because scientists haven't yet inventoried every animal or food that absorbs them. Keyes even found microplastics in samples taken last year at Mount Denali in Alaska. "It was a very low measurement, but it wasn't zero," he said. Microplastics are defined as particles that measure 5 millimeters or smaller. They are created when plastic items, such as water bottles, are broken down by sunlight or the rocking of waves. Because the Hudson River flows through heavily populated, industrialized areas, the researchers were not surprised to find microplastics in the water. But they also presumed that samples from Lake Tear, in the high peaks of the "forever wild" Adirondacks, accessible only by trails, would have relatively low amounts. That was not the case. The most polluted sample measured 28.94 particles per milliliter at Glens Falls. The least polluted was 2.12 particles/ml at the City of Hudson. Lake Tear measured 9.45 particles/ml. The Lake Tear sample seemed to defy belief. The researchers theorized that its source was airborne pollution. There was precedent: In the 1970s, the Adirondacks experienced a wave of tree and fish die-offs because of acid rain polluted by coal-burning power plants in Ohio. Some alpine lakes still haven't recovered. This past summer, the researchers returned to Lake Tear for more samples, including from the even more isolated Moss Pond, about a quarter-mile away. Unlike Lake Tear, there's no hiking trail to the pond, only a dense and uninviting bushwack, and it's not a source for the Hudson. The most recent samples from Lake Tear measured 16.54 particles/ml, nearly twice the amount taken a few years earlier, although Keyes thinks that this summer's lack of rain compared to 2023 may have played a role. However, the Moss Pond samples showed barely any contamination. That ruled out the airborne pollution hypothesis. And it led the researchers to an uncomfortable conclusion. "It's coming off the trail," said Keyes. "It's our clothing, our packs and our shoes." Plastics everywhere "Microplastics are a foreign object in your body," said Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency who co-wrote a new book, The Problem with Plastic. "You're breathing them in, you're swallowing them." It was at the EPA that the scope of the plastics problem came on her radar; she's since founded an advocacy group, Beyond Plastics. "It's not just the plastic," she said. "It's the chemicals used to make plastic that hitchhike on the microplastics. You excrete some of it, but not all of it, and we don't know what the chemical mixture is of the plastic additive, or what is in your body, because they could be made from 16,000 different chemicals." Enck said that early research has suggested links between microplastics and heart attacks, strokes and neurological disorders. "The microplastics are crossing the blood-brain barrier," she said. Plastics have changed the world, from lightweight implants that save lives to packaging that keeps food fresh. Outdoor gear has also benefited; synthetic fabrics l...

Owner says she was duped by acquaintance The owner of a Philipstown dry cleaner who was evicted on Tuesday (Dec. 9) after a bank foreclosed on her business and home says an acquaintance convinced her he had paid off the mortgage. Sokhara Kim is an immigrant from Cambodia and a longtime Philipstown resident who owns Nice 'N Neat Dry Cleaning. She said that Derek Keith Williams convinced her he had bought her building at 3154 Route 9, which she had owned since 2017, for $1.2 million. During an interview Tuesday in the parking lot of Philipstown Plaza, with her car stuffed with belongings, Kim said that Williams - the boyfriend of a woman who worked for her - offered in 2019 to buy her business and building. She consulted with her children, who told her to take the offer, pay off the $600,000 mortgage at M&T Bank and retire. Kim said that Williams then launched an elaborate ruse that played on her fear of losing the property. She said he showed her a check for $1.2 million but said he would need access to her M&T Bank account to deposit it. She said they visited the bank, where his name was added. She said he then told her that it would be better, for tax purposes, to deposit the check with an entity he had created, DKW Trust. Kim made 21 mortgage payments to M&T. "I was never late," she said. But once Williams convinced her that DKW Trust owned the property - Kim says he showed her a receipt from M&T indicating the mortgage had been paid off - he told Kim she didn't need to make payments. According to Kim, Williams said she could live and work at 3154 Route 9 at no charge as its "attendant." Carmen Chuchuca, a native of Ecuador who owned Bella's Salon, which occupied one of three storefronts in the building, said Williams began collecting $2,500 per month in "rent" from her, saying he owned the property, which Kim confirmed to her. (Chuchuca moved out on Dec. 6 ahead of being evicted by the Putnam County sheriff and plans to reopen elsewhere.) Kim said she also provided Williams with regular payments for "expenses" totaling thousands of dollars per month. In September 2023, Williams moved into the storefront between the two businesses that had been an art studio for Kim's husband, Chakra Oeur, saying he needed a place for a few weeks to complete the paperwork for the sale, Kim said. He brought his seven dogs, she said. Those few weeks became more than two years. Kim said Williams kept the subterfuge going by controlling the rural mailbox outside the dry-cleaning business. He would always retrieve the mail. If any document needed to be signed, she said he would tell her, "If you don't sign, you're going to lose your property." "That's what controlled me," she said. "I was afraid to lose my property. He said everything was under his name." Williams has been in the Putnam County jail since last month. According to Robert Tendy, the district attorney, a Philipstown jury convicted him of aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, a misdemeanor. When he did not return to court for sentencing, or a later court date, a warrant was issued, resulting in his arrest on Nov. 1 by sheriff's deputies. [Update: On Monday (Dec. 15), Williams was sentenced to six months in the county jail.] Three days later, a deputy visited 3154 Route 9 and handed Kim an eviction notice. She said she learned from the Sheriff's Office that M&T Bank had foreclosed on the property more than a year earlier. Kim said she had received an eviction notice in April, but Williams told her it was a mistake by the bank. When she heard nothing more over the summer, she said Williams cited this as evidence that he had resolved the matter. Williams, meanwhile, was filing spurious motions to fight the foreclosure and eviction. In July, he attempted twice to add his name to the deed at the Putnam County Clerk's Office, according to receipts submitted in court. A complaint Williams filed in August in federal court asked a judge to award $150 million in damages to him...

Buyer plans to convert station into residence The Beacon City Council is expected to vote on Monday (Dec. 15) to authorize the sale of the former Beacon Engine Co. fire station on East Main Street, the second of two surplus stations to be sold by the city. The contract should be signed in the next week, said City Attorney Nick Ward-Willis. As was the case with the sale in June of the former Mase Hook & Ladder station at 425 Main St., city officials said they would not reveal the buyer or sale price until the contract is finalized. "Similar to a private deal, you don't negotiate in public, especially on the financial terms," Ward-Willis told the council in May. On Monday (Dec. 8), Ward-Willis said the buyer lives out of state in a building on the National Register of Historic Places. What attracted them to the 1889 Beacon Engine station at 57 East Main St., which is also on the National Register, "is the ability to restore this and turn it into a new use," he said. The buyer intends to convert the 6,052-square-foot structure into a single-family home. "They're excited to move to the city," Ward-Willis said. "They have connections to the city and are ready to try to close pretty quickly on this." A single-family home is permitted in the R1 zoning district, so Planning Board approval will not be required for the conversion. However, the building is in Beacon's protected historic district, so substantial exterior changes would require a "certificate of appropriateness" from the board. In May, a real-estate agency hired by the city listed Mase for $1.95 million and the Beacon Engine firehouse for $1.75 million. The Beacon Engine listing is still active at $1.595 million. Both properties, former headquarters for volunteer companies that served the city for more than a century, became surplus after a $14.7 million centralized fire station opened near City Hall in 2024. The ownership of the Beacon Engine station was disputed by a group of retired volunteer firefighters who served there. The volunteers continued to use the building after the station closed in 2021 for social gatherings and to coordinate charitable campaigns. They fought eviction, arguing that - as had long been believed - the volunteer company owned the original structure, while the city owned the engine bay added in 1924. City officials conducted a title search in 2023 that they said revealed municipal ownership of the entire site, and a state judge in July dismissed four requests from the retired volunteers, declaring the City of Beacon as the sole owner. The council's vote on Monday will acknowledge that an ownership transfer would not negatively impact the environment and authorize City Administrator Chris White to move forward with the sale. Mase Hook & Ladder The former Mase station was purchased by Michael Bensimon, a Westchester County resident who owns commercial buildings at 475 Main and 508 Main. It is being converted to have a ground-level retail space occupied by Stanza Books, which is now at 508 Main St., and four apartments on the upper two floors. Stanza has asked the Planning Board for permission to construct a partially enclosed patio as a barrier between the store and the parking lot. On nice days, a rear door will be open, and the patio will protect children who come outside, co-owner Mark Harris told the board on Tuesday (Dec. 9). A public hearing on Stanza's application will be held in January. The Planning Board issued a certificate of appropriateness to the developer in October for minor exterior modifications, including the installation of ornamental sconces along the facade. A residential entrance will be added to the eastern side of the structure, and insulated glass doors will provide access to two of the apartments. Bensimon also plans to replace some windows and repair and/or repaint deteriorated areas of the facade, trim and door panels with matching materials.

Council expected to hire consulting firm Beacon is wasting no time getting started on the first leg of a proposed 13-mile rail trail from the city to Hopewell Junction. The City Council is expected to vote on Monday (Dec. 15) to approve spending $350,000 to hire a Westchester County firm to design a 3.3-mile section from the Beacon waterfront to the Town of Fishkill line. The trail could eventually connect to the planned Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail and, in Hopewell, the Dutchess Rail Trail and 750-mile Empire State Trail. If the council approves the request, City Administrator Chris White said that Barton & Loguidice, which conducted a feasibility study on the trail for the Dutchess County Transportation Council, could begin design and engineering work as early as January. The city's goal is to put the project out to bid by November and construct the 12- to 14-foot-wide multi-use segment in 2027. "What we've been doing in the last couple of months is figuring out how we can start our piece and accelerate it and go forward," Mayor Lee Kyriacou said during the council's Monday (Dec. 8) meeting. In October, the Barton & Loguidice report recommended a "rail-to-trail" conversion of the abandoned line, which begins at the Hudson River. The line, which has not been active for 30 years, runs through Beacon and along the east end of Main Street before crossing back and forth over Fishkill Creek on its way through the Village of Fishkill and the towns of Fishkill and East Fishkill. The line is owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In 2024, Metro-North, an MTA agency, "railbanked" the tracks, reserving its right to revive service, although an agency representative said it had no plans to do so. The Dutchess Transportation report estimated that it would cost $46 million to $56 million to construct the entire trail; Beacon officials anticipate the first segment will be $4.5 million. There are two bridges (near Dennings Avenue and at South and Tioronda avenues) and an overpass at Wolcott Avenue, but otherwise, the paved trail will be "basically a road project," White said. The city has requested a "sizeable" grant from the governor's office to link the project to a proposed development at the Beacon train station that is part of Gov. Kathy Hochul's housing agenda. It is also seeking funds from Dutchess County and two private organizations. In other business scheduled for Monday: The council is expected to vote on an update to the city's fee schedule. Beacon charges fees for dozens of services, including dog licenses, building inspections, record searches and permits for backyard chickens. Not all fees are increasing, and some that are no longer applicable, such as for junk dealers and amusement parks, will be removed. Some fees have not changed since 2010, White said. Council members will consider a request from the developer of the Edgewater apartment complex for a two-year extension to the special-use permit issued for the project in 2018. Phase 2 of the 246-unit development is underway; three of seven residential buildings have been completed. Ben Swanson, the mayor's assistant, will be appointed Beacon's deputy city administrator, a new position. Since he was hired in 2021, Swanson's duties "went from being primarily clerical to really being supervisory and much more executive," White said. His new responsibilities will include coordinating housing and food resources and filling in if White is unavailable. The council will vote on a 10-year renewal of the city's franchise agreement with Optimum, aka Cablevision of Wappingers Falls. The non-exclusive agreement allows Optimum to provide cable and internet service in Beacon in exchange for a franchise fee equal to 5 percent of its gross revenue from the previous year. In 2024, Optimum paid the city $172,393. As in years past, the council will consider $10,000 spending proposals from students in the Participation in Government class at Beacon High School. Emilio Guerra an...

Cold Spring company looks to expand With five ballet programs in the can, two more in the works and a troupe of professional dancers that gel well, the Cold Spring Dance Company is entering an ambitious phase since incorporating as a nonprofit in 2019. Last weekend at her studio, artistic director Cally Kordaris debuted The Greek Ballet: Resurrection, which combines classical ballet, contemporary movement and Greek folk dances. At one point, the four female dancers struck poses resembling images found on ancient vases. "I like to call it 'expressive ballet,' " says Kordaris, who nurtured the piece in her imagination for decades. To spread her love of dance, she built a professional studio three years ago at the top of a Philipstown mountain where she has lived since 2014. Her handpicked group of dancers, which ranges from six to 10, depending on the piece, come from prominent companies in the city, including Martha Graham, Twyla Tharp and Dance Theater of Harlem. In these troupes, cast members learn a few vignettes and rehearse them for months. For The Greek Ballet, Kordaris put eight dancers in an Airbnb for four days and, after learning the steps, they presented two performances. "One challenge is that not all of us have danced together before," says Kara Walsh, who freelances. "We enjoy coming up here so much, but we call it a 'work retreat' because we're at it nonstop to make this happen." They pick up the complicated steps quickly because "the brain transfers the muscle memory to the body in a way that's hard to explain," says David Wright, a member of Dance Theater of Harlem. "Repetition also helps." The company presents work twice a year when professional seasons end. An hour after the final performance on Dec. 7, the dancers hustled off to the train station and Nutcracker gigs. The troupe appreciates the studio's sprung floor, which gives a little and reduces wear and tear on their legs, says Wright. After leaping like basketball players, the male dancers landed with gentle thuds. Kordaris' 45-minute ballet animates 2,500 years of Greek history, "something we absolutely revere," she says. "As Greeks, we take it so seriously it's almost like a religion in itself." The professional production, with a light show and voiceovers, recounts many dramatic moments throughout the ages. Of the seven movements, four are set to Greek music. Despite the demanding athletic choreography, which sometimes resembled gymnastics and ice-skating twirls, the dancers moved with amazing grace, even when holding a partner over a shoulder before dropping them to the ground like feathers. Ramona Kelley made a sit-up look fluid and elegant. In another segment, after using the entire stage and expending the equivalent time of someone dribbling a soccer ball the length of a pitch and back, Micah Bullard kept his breathing under control as his chest barely moved after the lights went down. Now that the company is building momentum, Kordaris wants to bring her work to a broader audience in Putnam County or Beacon and plans to pitch producers and impresarios in New York City and beyond. "I've been in a cocoon the last few years, and now that we have five cohesive pieces and a solid core of dancers, it's time to make some moves," she says. For more information, see coldspringdance.org.

Spending plan passes without Democratic support Dutchess County lawmakers on Monday (Dec. 8) approved a $653.6 million budget for next year along party lines, with Democrats uniting against the spending plan as they prepare to take control of the Legislature next month. All 15 Republicans voted for the amended version of a draft budget that County Executive Sue Serino, also a Republican, presented in November. It anticipates $268 million in revenue from sales taxes, $107 million from property taxes and the use of $34 million in general-fund reserves, or savings - $7 million more than Serino initially proposed. The tax levy stays below a state-mandated cap, and the rate assessed on property owners will fall slightly, from $2.17 to $2.10 per $1,000 of assessed value. The budget also eliminates 10 vacant jobs and leaves 17 unfilled. Legislators rejected a proposal by Serino to end an exemption from the county's 3.75 percent sales tax on clothing and shoes costing less than $110. (Dutchess consumers pay a total 8.125 percent sales tax, which includes 4 percent for the state and 0.375 percent for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.) Letting the exemption expire as scheduled on March 1 would have yielded $5.4 million in additional revenue, including $133,000 for Beacon under a revenue-sharing agreement, according to Serino. Beacon's share of sales tax collections, which was $6.1 million in 2025, will still rise from 2.35 percent to 2.45 percent in 2026, or about $268,000. Serino, who said the changes create "a very large budget gap," now must decide whether to sign or veto the budget, or to reject individual amendments. But Democrats, who will soon take control, have already rendered their verdict. Nine of the 10 Democrats (one was absent) voted against the plan, even though it contains several amendments they proposed. One increases spending for a trust fund for affordable housing from $1 million to $2 million and another allocates $200,000 for grants of up to $25,000 to municipalities for initiatives to combat homelessness. Nevertheless, said Yvette Valdés Smith, whose district includes Ward 4 in Beacon and part of Fishkill, the budget "does not adequately address the affordability crisis that our residents are facing." The Legislature also approved proposals to add $711,000 to the district attorney's office for five full-time positions and $750,000 to the budget for safety and security improvements at municipal buildings. In her budget presentation in November, Serino highlighted $2.5 million for youth programs and $2 million for supplemental ambulance services. Buttressing the county's shorthanded EMS services has been a priority. The budget also funds two school resource officers, a Drone as First Responder Program for the Real-Time Crime Center and a new Elder Justice Task Force. The latter, a collaboration with the Office for the Aging and the district attorney and sheriff's offices, "will investigate, identify, pursue and prosecute those who exploit older adults through abuse, fraud or neglect," said Serino. After Jan. 1, Serino will have to work with a Legislature led by Democrats, who defeated five Republican incumbents in the November election to flip the 15-10 majority. Smith, who had been the minority leader, is expected to succeed Will Truitt as majority leader.

Town Board also approves theater plans The Philipstown Town Board last week banned the storage of large amounts of petroleum products and approved plans for a facility that The Depot Theater wants to build at the Recreation Department off Route 9D. During its Dec. 4 meeting, the board unanimously approved an amendment to the zoning code prohibiting "petroleum storage facilities" whose products "are used for resale or other commercial redistribution purposes." Gas stations and "hybrid petroleum storage facilities" are exempt, but other proposed laws would limit those businesses to the Route 9 corridor between Route 301 and the town's southern border. The change was spurred by fears that an oil spill could contaminate the aquifer that homeowners and businesses rely on for drinking water. Under the former code, Philipstown only restricted petroleum tanks and facilities in environmentally sensitive areas if they held more than 400,000 gallons. In 2023, Krasniqi Plaza, a heating oil business that owns 3626 Route 9, proposed a project with three 29,000-gallon tanks. Its plan spurred Philipstown to pass, in December 2023, a six-month moratorium on large petroleum storage containers. When the town extended the moratorium, Krasniqi removed the storage tanks from its proposal. Another business, Misti's Properties 3070, introduced to the Planning Board in September 2024 a project with a gas station, Dunkin' and convenience store at the former Automar property. Its proposal, which came during the moratorium, is in an area where gas stations would not be allowed under the new zoning. Misti's has not returned to the Planning Board. Dennis O'Brien, speaking on behalf of residents of Glassbury Court on Route 9, said their reliance on wells supplied by the Clove Creek Aquifer, which straddles Route 9 from just south of East Mountain Road South to the Fishkill border, makes it a vital resource. "The Clove Creek Aquifer is much more important than having another gas station on Route 9," he said. Philipstown is expected to pass two draft laws confining new gas stations and "hybrid petroleum storage facilities" - such as home heating oil companies and truck depots - that store up to 25,000 gallons of fuel to Route 9 between Route 301 and Philipstown's southern border and the stretch of 301 between Route 9 and the Nelsonville border. Public hearings were held Dec. 4 but the town delayed a vote until January to correct language defining the southern boundary as "Route 202." Depot Theater The board approved a plan by The Depot Theater, which is located on Garrison's Landing, to construct a multipurpose building at the Recreation Department on Route 9D to consolidate its backstage operations and host programs in set design and construction, costume design and tech and lighting design for middle and high school students. The theater will now apply to the New York State Council on the Arts for construction funding. Once completed, the building would be given to the town. "It will be a wonderful addition to the community," said Supervisor John Van Tassel. In other business… No one responded to the initial request for proposals to succeed the retiring Stephen Gaba as town attorney. A second request will be issued with a Dec. 31 deadline. Van Tassel said he had reached out to law firms. "They said most of the younger attorneys who are coming on board don't want to do meetings at night," he said. It was the final meeting for board members Jason Angell and Megan Cotter, who did not seek re-election to second, 4-year terms and will be succeeded on Jan. 1 by Nat Prentice and Ned Rauch, who ran unopposed. Cotter said that "serving the community that I was born and raised in" has been "an honor." Angell said that there have been mornings when he's read the news and "been worried about the direction of our country. But I think one thing that always helps that worry is working with the local community."

Supports local review of Fjord Trail project New York State has rejected a claim that it should review a proposed renovation of a Route 9D events space tied to the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail, rather than the Town of Fishkill. HHFT wants to convert Dutchess Manor into a visitor's center, offices and parking for the proposed trail. The Fishkill Planning Board has scheduled a public hearing on Thursday (Dec. 11) that will continue in January to hear feedback. At its Nov. 13 meeting, the Planning Board spent an hour discussing recent revisions to HHFT's plan for the site, especially concerns about traffic and parking. It also addressed arguments that HHFT should not be allowed to "segment," or separate, Dutchess Manor's restoration from the larger, 7.5-mile Fjord Trail, which is undergoing a state environmental review. Under New York's State Environmental Quality Review Act, segmenting projects to avoid a comprehensive review of its impacts "may result in legal action." In an Oct. 28 letter addressed to the Planning Board, the state parks department said that because the Dutchess Manor property is located within Fishkill, "it is appropriate for the town to analyze the potential impacts arising from its specific land use actions." The agency also said that Dutchess Manor, which is projected for completion in 2027, will have "independent utility" from the trail, which is scheduled for completion in 2031, and support the existing recreational trail system. It added that its review of the overall project will incorporate the visitor center's impact on traffic, parking and community character. Dominic Cordisco, the Planning Board attorney, called the letter "a very clear statement from state parks" and advised the board to focus "on the particulars of the Dutchess Manor proposal - this particular site - rather than the trail." Protect the Highlands, a group that opposes the trail as proposed, has been trying to convince the Planning Board that HHFT improperly segmented the project. Its president, former Cold Spring Mayor Dave Merandy, wrote in a Nov. 12 letter to the board that because state parks is leading the review of the Fjord Trail and is HHFT's "partner" in the project, its position on segmentation "isn't surprising." "That claim is flawed, as argued in the many letters and comments you have received from PTH [Protect the Highlands], PTH members, concerned neighbors and residents of the Hudson Highlands," he said. "We ask that you revisit and carefully consider those letters and comments during your deliberation." Extended discussions about segmentation and the trail's impact on traffic and residents have subsumed deliberations about HHFT's plans for the actual building, which call for demolishing three additions to the original 1868 residence and restoring the structure, which is on the national and state registers of historic places. In addition to a first-floor visitors' center with exhibit space and 181 parking spaces (including 29 for staff), HHFT's proposal calls for a store where hikers can buy snacks, water and other items, said Amy Kacala, HHFT's executive director. Food trucks would be available, along with shuttles to ferry hikers from the parking lot to trailheads. There would also be public restrooms, a lawn for picnicking and events, and new landscaping and lighting. HHFT is asking the Planning Board to approve its site plan and a special-use permit. It will also seek Town Board approval to rezone 14 Coris Lane, an adjacent residence that HHFT bought to use for its offices. HHFT said it expects Dutchess Manor to draw 36,000 visitors annually. In response to questions from Planning Board members about traffic, a representative of AKRF, a consulting firm hired by HHFT, said it projected that 85 vehicles would enter the property each weekday, rising to 154 on Saturdays and Sundays. That would constitute "an acceptable service level," even after the trail is completed, the representative said. At the board's requ...

Dutchess, Putnam clerks say they have new dates for next year Routine naturalization ceremonies scheduled for this month in Putnam, Dutchess and Ulster counties to welcome new U.S. citizens were abruptly canceled last week by the federal government, surprising local officials. Events planned for Wednesday (Dec. 3) in Putnam, Friday (Dec. 5) in Dutchess and Dec. 12 in Ulster were called off by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (USCIS), which approves applicants for citizenship. Brad Kendall, the Dutchess County clerk, said that USCIS told his office that it didn't have enough candidates for the Dec. 3 ceremony but confirmed dates for seven ceremonies in 2026. The agency gave the same reason - a lack of candidates - to Putnam County Clerk Michael Bartolotti, but confirmed dates for next year, with the first scheduled for Feb. 4. "To my recollection, we have never had a cancellation of this nature in the past," said Bartolotti. Last month, ceremonies scheduled in seven New York counties, including Ulster, Rockland and Westchester, were also canceled but rescheduled after Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican whose district includes Philipstown, intervened. USCIS said it canceled ceremonies because the county judges may not have the authority to conduct them. Lawler said on Nov. 20 that the agency wanted to end events in Rockland and Westchester altogether, requiring applicants to travel to New York City. In a Nov. 14 letter to USCIS Director Joseph Edlow, Lawler said making immigrants travel to New York City "would take multiple hours as well as cost these folks money due to bridge and road tolls, as well as gasoline," he said. In announcing the return of the ceremonies, Lawler described them as "among the most moving and patriotic events I attend." For his wife (a naturalized citizen from Moldova) and other immigrants, taking the oath "represents years of hard work, sacrifice and an unwavering belief in the American Dream," he said. Rep. Pat Ryan, a Democrat whose district includes Beacon, said in a statement on Friday (Dec. 5) that he also has written Edlow to protest the cancellations and ask for more information. Civics Lesson The newly revised civics test for immigrants seeking naturalization has 128 questions. During the exam, a USCIS officer asks 20 questions, chosen at random, and the applicant must answer at least 12 correctly. See how you'd do with the practice test at dub.sh/128-questions, but note that, on the oral test, the multiple-choice answers are not provided. In the previous test, applicants had to answer 10 of 100 possible questions correctly. The USCIS said it revised the test in response to an executive order issued Jan. 20 by President Trump, "Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats." In an email sent this week to the clerks in Putnam, Dutchess and Ulster counties, the agency's Albany director, Gwynne Dinolfo, asked them to confirm in writing that their judges were authorized under federal law to oversee the ceremonies. She said that the judge must have jurisdiction over civil actions "in which the amount in controversy is unlimited. Because county courts in New York have a jurisdictional limit of $25,000 in civil cases, [the judge] may not be authorized to administer the naturalization ceremony." Taylor Bruck, the Ulster County clerk, told the Daily Freeman that the directive was confusing. "The law hasn't changed, so implying that the counties have been doing something unlawful for the last 15 years without anyone mentioning it doesn't make sense," he said on Tuesday. "No one said anything about this during the first Trump administration, so why now?" Naturalization ceremonies complete a process in which legal permanent residents (aka "green card" holders) have been vetted and passed English-language and civics tests. Naturalized citizens have full voting rights and are protected from deportation except in limited circumstance...

Every so often, the sisters return In the 1930s, an aristocratic family in the U.K. became the subject of society pages because of its six sisters, who followed widely divergent paths. The Mitford sisters were Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity, Jessica ("Decca") and Deborah ("Debo"). Among them, Nancy became a bestselling novelist (Love in a Cold Climate); Diana married a British fascist leader; Unity moved to Germany and became close friends with Hitler; Deborah, the Duchess of Devonshire, presided over a country estate; and Jessica relocated to the U.S., joined the Communist Party and became an accomplished journalist (The American Way of Death). Two new books examine the lives of the Mitford sisters, and both authors will be at the Desmond-Fish Public Library in Garrison on Dec. 13. Carla Kaplan is the author of Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford, and Mimi Pond wrote and illustrated Do Admit! The Mitford Sisters and Me. They will be joined by Constancia "Dinky" Romilly, 84, Decca's daughter, who lives in Philipstown. Her father, Esmond Romilly - a nephew of Winston Churchill - was killed during World War II, and she was raised in Oakland, California, by her mother and stepfather, Robert Treuhaft. "Every 20 years, there's a Mitford boom," Dinky says. "The new generation is finding out about this pretty remarkable family. My attitude about what was remarkable about my parents was completely different from Swinbrook [the Mitford home in England], and the whole growing up isolated in the country and the fascist sisters." She points out that she was never a Mitford. "I didn't grow up in a Mitford household," she says. "My mother wasn't a recognized personality [as a writer] until after I left to go to college. I grew up in the Treuhaft household; I was Dinky Treuhaft." Along with The American Way of Death (1963), an exposé of abuses in the funeral industry, Decca was known for Hons and Rebels (1960), a memoir of her eccentric upbringing. After moving to California, she became a political activist; her husband was a civil rights lawyer. Dinky says that, as a child and teenager, "I knew that there was this weird family over there [in England] that had titles - the honorable this and the lord that. But when I was growing up, we lived in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Oakland. My parents didn't have much money. My life was going to school and taking care of my brothers after school." Of the recurring Mitford mania, Dinky says that, "in the past, I have not liked it. It has been annoying to be constantly badgered." But she says she is pleased with the two new books. Troublemaker follows Decca from her country girlhood to her life as an American communist and later journalist dubbed "queen of the muckrakers" by Time. Do Admit! is a graphic memoir that follows author Pond's girlhood obsession with the family's blue-blood lifestyle. "It's exciting to see books coming out that cover all of my mother's life, starting as a Mitford, then her life as a Treuhaft, and then a Mitford again," Dinky says. "The books are both deeply researched. You know, you don't research your own mother. You just grow up with that mother, and then, after you leave home, you watch. My mother was an activist until the day she died. I learned and relearned a lot of things from both books." Kaplan's book focuses on Jessica Mitford "as a person who very consciously changed from an aristocrat, a person of privilege, to a worker in the movements of her time, to a radical activist," says Dinky. It documents "the change in this woman and how she negotiated it, and how that fit in with the history of the period." Pond's book is about the six sisters, "how they developed, how they grew, what their relationships were among each other," Dinky says. "Another good reason to read Mimi's book is that it's clear that my mother was her favorite!" A third book will be available at the event: a newly released paperback edition of Decca's edited letters, of w...

Cold Spring underpass being repaired The pedestrian tunnel under the Metro-North tracks in Cold Spring, initially scheduled for closure for repairs until Monday (Dec. 1), will remain closed through at least Dec. 5, the village announced. Officials noted that pedestrians walking to and from Market Street can use the Metro-North walkways flanking the tracks to reach the platforms, and then use the overpass staircase or elevators to cross the tracks. Alternatively, follow the sidewalk on the east side of Lunn Terrace to cross the bridge/overpass to Market Street; turn left to reach the Metro-North parking lot, or turn right to reach lower Main Street and the waterfront.

Writers express virtues, concerns A year ago, the state parks department released a draft of its environmental review of the proposed Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail. It then gave the public 60 days to submit comments to the more than 700-page report. After public outcry, the state extended the deadline to 90 days. New Yorkers used the extra time well, submitting over 500 comments addressing the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement and the project in general. The state recently told The Current that the finalized report is expected to be released early next year and that "all comments received were reviewed and will be acknowledged and responded to as appropriate in the final GEIS." Through a Freedom of Information Law request, The Current received copies of every comment submitted before the deadline. Then we read all 517, ranging from a five-word submission ("It is a good thing") to several that exceeded 10 pages, including 103 pages from a Cold Spring resident who criticizes the DGEIS page-by-page; the 143-page comment that professional consultants submitted on behalf of the Cold Spring Village Board; and 274 pages from a local resident who opposes the project. "I wish it wasn't so long," the person wrote in their cover letter. "I had a lot to say." Many who spoke out against the trail urged the planners to scrap the entire project and go back to the simple dirt trail originally proposed as a connection between Beacon and Cold Spring. "If you had quietly made a sweet little trail this might have worked," wrote one Beacon resident. "Let people find it and enjoy searching it out. Why all the hype and promotion?" Supporters point out that the original plan wouldn't address the overcrowding that has made Cold Spring unnavigable on many weekends and clogged Route 9D near the Breakneck Ridge trailhead with hikers running across the highway and looking for roadside parking. "I am so surprised that more people haven't been hit by a car on Route 9D," said one person. A Philipstown resident wrote: "The expansion of its purpose and its scope from a 'simple trail' (as originally conceived), to a more formal, accessible resource that greatly enhances the experience of hikers, bikers and strollers, makes it far more attractive, useful and effective." Others in favor of the trail addressed the ecological damage caused by the now-crumbling artificial shoreline built over 100 years ago to accommodate the railroad. "The natural riverfront no longer exists," wrote one Cold Spring resident, "and in some cases, the trail may improve the connection of the land to the river for flora and fauna that typically exist at that boundary." According to another village resident, "By removing invasive species, adding native plants and trees and bolstering marine habitat along the trail, it will provide better resilience to climate change." With construction of the trail's initial section now underway, here are 10 takeaways from the public comments. Support remains split The Current sorted the comments into those entirely or largely in favor of the trail as currently proposed in the DGEIS (209), those entirely or largely against the current trail (236) and those that were mixed (72). Many of the mixed comments did not take a specific side, but asked for more clarification on certain issues involving traffic, funding and emergency services. A nine-page form letter was used by 131 of trail's opponents, although many added additional comments. ("TOO MUCH. NO!" added a Scarsdale resident.) The letter raises issues about traffic and parking ("would irreparably destroy the scenic character of this area"), added visitation, wildlife and habitat loss, and the demand on emergency services. Heading upland The form letter urges the state to simply scrap the entire plan and instead go with the Upland Alternative suggested by the local group Protect The Highlands. The Upland Alternative would lead from the Metro-North train station in Cold Spring out of the vi...

Committee completes study of Beacon corridor After nearly two years of work, the citizen committee studying the Fishkill Avenue corridor in Beacon this week released a 26-page final report whose broad range of recommendations spans zoning, viewsheds, housing and transportation and is supplemented by more than 100 pages of maps and appendices. Appointed by Mayor Lee Kyriacou in January 2024, the committee was asked to develop concepts and proposals for the northeast section of Beacon, an area that includes Fishkill Avenue (Route 52), Fishkill Creek, residential neighborhoods and former industrial sites. If constructed, the Beacon-to-Hopewell Junction rail trail would follow the dormant Metropolitan Transportation Authority rail line through that part of the city and toward the Town of Fishkill. "This has been a forgotten area of Beacon," said Pam Wetherbee, the City Council member who represents Ward 3, which includes the corridor. "There's so much potential. It's really like a hidden gem." Committee members met monthly, and in March held a public workshop attended by about 80 people. Committee Chair J.C. Calderon, who presented the report to the council on Monday (Nov. 24), said he saw the group's work as a "forensic study" of conditions in the 1.2-mile stretch from Blackburn Avenue (at Ron's Ice Cream) to Prospect Street (at Industrial Arts Brewing Co.). The report isn't meant to be "definitive or final in its recommendations," he wrote in the introduction, but a tool for city leaders, present and future, "to envision a future that encompasses the best interests" of Beacon. Thirty recommendations are spread across numerous categories, some sorted by location, others by topic. Timing runs the gamut, from short-term suggestions that can be taken up in 2026 to longer-term issues that the city will address as it refines a vision for the corridor. Some the city has already taken up. To encourage pedestrian-friendly growth around Fishkill Avenue, the committee earlier this year suggested "quick fixes" prohibiting new self-storage facilities, drive-thrus, gas stations, car washes, auto lots and repair shops. The council banned drive-thrus citywide in May and regulated self-storage facilities in June. Below are notable recommendations; some have been shortened due to space limitations. Industrial corridor (Fishkill Avenue east out of Beacon) Have industrial property owners improve the character of their sites with enhanced landscaping and alternative fencing without chain link or barbed wire. Remove self-storage facilities as a permitted use and consider restricting other "low-value or nuisance" uses. Evaluate the addition of employment-generating or green-manufacturing uses. Mixed-use corridor (State Street to Blackburn Avenue) Create a new Fishkill Avenue zoning district or extend the General Business district. Support uses such as office, retail, multi-family housing, restaurants, recreation and health care. Prevent over-concentration of any single use. Prohibit fast-food restaurants and self-storage businesses. Limit or gradually phase out autocentric uses. Allow buildings up to four stories, provided that the fourth story is recessed to reduce visual impact. Consider limiting height to three stories in viewshed areas. Evaluate Tallix and The Yard sites for infill development. Groveville (the historic neighborhood east of the train tracks) Implement a Groveville Historic District. Upgrade roads to city standards with sidewalks and trail connections. Improve Groveville bridge to enhance pedestrian and bike access to Liberty Street. Integrate housing through higher-density infill development while balancing open space preservation. Housing Retain multi-family housing as a permitted use within the mixed-use area and permit multi-family for future redevelopment proposals for the Tallix site. Regarding affordable housing, the group said that Beacon's existing requirement to designate 10 percent of new developments (of 10 units or ...

New standards take effect in December Animal shelters and rescue organizations in Beacon and the rest of the state are facing new standards that will take effect next month and change how they care for cats and dogs and require some to spend tens of thousands of dollars on upgrades. Some minor renovations have already taken place at the Animal Rescue Foundation in Beacon, which is applying for grant funding to cover up to $100,000 in expected costs to comply with the Companion Animal Care Standards Act passed by the state in 2022. When the law takes effect Dec. 15, animal shelters and rescues will have to be licensed by the state Department of Agriculture and Markets and be inspected for compliance with stringent health and safety standards. Among the new guidelines, volunteers and paid staff will have to undergo training in caring for animals, with humane handling, zoonotic diseases and animal cruelty among the mandated topics. They will also have to begin keeping comprehensive records on each animal, including behavior and health, and provide regular grooming and at least 20 minutes per day of "positive social interactions," such as petting, walking or playing with toys. To prevent overcrowding, shelters will be prohibited from keeping more animals than they have housing units for, and the law sets guidelines for the infrastructure at licensed facilities, including indoor surfaces, drainage and noise and lighting levels. Facilities must keep temperatures in housing areas between 60 and 80 degrees, isolate animals with infectious diseases and provide at least eight hours a day of both light and darkness. Since 2017, shelters run directly by municipalities or contracting with them have had to register with Ag and Markets. But the new law establishes licensing and expands oversight to private facilities (generally considered "rescues" as opposed to municipal shelters). It will cover about 450 entities statewide, according to Libby Post, the executive director of the New York State Animal Protection Federation. During the gap between the law's passage and effective date, NYSAPF has used $500,000 in funding from three foundations to offer free assistance to shelters on meeting the new guidelines, said Post. Each facility receives a report that serves as a "roadmap of what they need to do to meet the standards," she said. "In the first year, it's going to be a learning year for everybody - for the shelters and rescues as well as Ag and Markets - and no one's getting shut down," said Post. Most of the standards reflect things already being done by ARF, said David Rocha, its board president. But volunteers and staff at ARF, which is one of NYSAPF's 150 members, will have to spend more time documenting how they are caring for the animals, he said. Those volunteers usually work two- to three-hour shifts taking care of as many as 24 cats and 10 dogs, said Rocha. "In that timeframe, we want the bulk of their attention to really go to the animals, not paperwork, so we're trying to make that as easy as we can," he said. Meeting the physical requirements of the legislation will be "more difficult" for ARF, whose original footprint once served as a water treatment plant for Beacon and has been augmented with additions, said Rocha. A "kitten room" for nursing mothers was recently added as one of ARF's first upgrades. But the cinder-block building, which "sits on 6 or 8 feet of concrete," will need its floors sealed and a generator to meet the requirement for backup power. In May, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced over $10.4 million in grants to 30 organizations from the state's Companion Animal Capital Fund, which launched in 2017. One of the awardees, the Dutchess County SPCA, received $270,000 for "new cat cages with upgraded climate control and bedding." Grants from the fund, which have been used on projects such as new HVAC systems, X-ray rooms and drainage, have totaled $38 million since 2017. ARF is applying to the fund to help with an e...

Pedro Luis Ferrer is revered musician When artist and photographer Alejandro Lopez learned earlier this year that Cuban musician Pedro Luis Ferrer had relocated to Miami during the pandemic, he jumped at the chance to introduce the folk hero's music to a new audience at the Towne Crier in Beacon. Ferrer and his daughter Lena, who sings and plays handheld percussion, will appear at the club on Dec. 5 and are also performing two shows in New York City and at The Local in Saugerties during a 10-day mini tour booked by Lopez. "Miami is an art cemetery; I lived there," says Lopez, who moved to Beacon from Washington Heights in 2012 after delivering artwork to the KuBe Art Center and becoming enamored with the area. Ferrer, 73, a singer, guitarist and tres player who performs with passion and gravitas that is palpable even to non-Spanish speakers, "is a legend in Cuba," says Lopez. A revered artist who resisted the regime of Cuba's late president, Fidel Castro, Ferrer represents "more than entertainment," Lopez added. "He is a real creator, someone who tells it like it is." The sentiment of "If I Don't Leave Cuba" is subtle: "If I don't leave Cuba do not believe that I'm staying / I travel inside a ditch of hope and fear." The song "Rule of Law" takes a blunter approach: "Come the rule of law to govern on this island / Let it be a state of all the people not of one sect or one leader / Come the rule of law to the economy for the peasant and for the workers with its infinite fantasy." Ferrer got away with such lyrics for a while, but the Castro regime brought the hammer down in the 1990s. The story, says Lopez, is that after Ferrer told a reporter in Venezuela that he would be willing to sing with Celia Cruz, a stinging Castro critic known as the Queen of Salsa during her exile in New York City, the government banned his music from the airwaves and pulled the plug on his recording career. He created just three albums in his native land over 35 years, and one of the first discs he released outside the country is titled 100% Cubano. Ferrer continued to perform, often abroad, and fans circulated live recordings like Grateful Dead bootlegs. He told Mother Jones 20 years ago that "some of my songs have never been heard on the radio or TV, but that does not impede the public from singing along with me at concerts." Ferrer's original folk-style tunes fit into a broad framework called guaracha, which stretches back more than two centuries in Cuba and adapts well with the stripped-down arrangements he plays with Lena. His main instrument is the tres ("three" in English), which looks like a compact guitar and consists of six strings. The name derives from its unorthodox tuning, in which three pairs of strings are pitched with the same notes, unlike the standard style used by most guitarists. Ferrer has played in New York before with a 10-person band, but is now traveling light. "I'm not making any money here," says Lopez. "I'm doing this to give back to someone who tried to help and inspire our country for all those years." The Towne Crier is located at 379 Main St. in Beacon (townecrier.com). Tickets to the show, which starts at 8 p.m., are $30 ($35 door).

250 Years Ago (November 1775) Gen. George Washington sent Henry Knox, his newly appointed chief of artillery, to New York City and Fort Ticonderoga to secure cannon, mortar, shells, lead and ammunition to continue a siege of British-occupied Boston. "The want of them is so great that no trouble or expense should be spared to obtain them," Washington said. Knox and his brother arrived in New York City on Nov. 25 and left three days later for Lake Champlain. 150 Years Ago (November 1875) Johnny Mead broke his ankle while playing leapfrog with classmates from the Rock Street school. Tim Dunn nearly lost his ear when a chain slipped loose while he was loading filters aboard the schooner Norma at the foundry wharf. John Meisenbaher opened a Shaving and Hair Cutting Saloon. Hamilton Brown of Garden Street left home on a Friday morning, telling his wife he was headed to Glenham to look for work and would return on an afternoon train. Five days later, there was no sign of him. Investigators learned he had withdrawn all his funds from Fishkill Savings Bank, including a small sum in his 5-year-old son's name. (The Cold Spring Recorder reported that Brown returned home on the following Thursday, although it did not explain his absence.) William Warren, 14, employed by Mr. Ferris in the ice business, was sent home with the team and an empty wagon. On a nearby lane, he encountered the Cronk boys cutting down a tree. The Cronks said Warren told them: "Let 'er go, I can hold the horses," but William said the brothers let the tree fall just behind him, spooking the horses, who knocked a gate from its hinges and left him "demoralized." The Recorder suggested that, unlike in other parts of the state, and against the wishes of the "best class of our citizens," local police too often released suspects before trial for lack of evidence. Gen. Tom Thumb (aka Charles Stratton of Bridgeport, Connecticut, who was 3 feet, 4 inches tall), 37, and his wife, Lavinia Warren, appeared at Town Hall for two performances as part of a world tour. Tickets were 25 cents [$7.50]. The bill also included Minnie Warren and Major Newell, with songs, duets, dances, dialogues and comic acts and sketches. Stratton's small carriage and ponies were driven through the streets to draw attention to the shows. [P.T. Barnum "discovered" Stratton when he was 4 years old; he became a sensation in the 1840s after the showman taught him to sing and dance.] A Poughkeepsie man named Michael Mullen was arrested at Garrison's Landing on a Saturday night and accused of stealing a satchel from a fellow passenger on the 4 p.m. train. After Mullen had been held at the Town Hall jail for two days, the satchel owner said he couldn't identify him, and he was released. Thieves stole a beehive with 30 pounds of honey, valued at $25 [about $735 today], from outside the Nelsonville residence of Malcomb Evans. Mrs. Charles Cooney of Breakneck, after returning from a trip to Cold Spring, built a fire to boil water. The stovepipe, which extended through the floor above the kitchen, sent sparks into the woodwork and her modest home - worth about $100 [$3,000] - burned to the ground. Joseph Dore Jr., 6, was warming himself by resting his feet on a hot-water boiler when the lid tipped, scalding both feet. William Hustis lost 11 sheep overnight in the North Highlands to fatal injuries inflicted by wild dogs. David Hustis had earlier lost 17. Capt. Joshua Cronk was brought to his home on Fair Street after suffering partial paralysis on his left side while lying at anchor in Peekskill Bay to wait out a gale. The Recorder suggested that the cold and anxiety led to the attack. The same gale blew a 500-pound wagon in a semicircle around Thomas Jaycox's barn while spinning it around. The post office announced it would close at 10:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day. Village officials said the owner of a black lace veil could claim it at Town Hall. Thomas Reed completed a map of Putnam County from his own survey ...

Everyone's brains seem to be on high alert in the digital age, although society has become more accepting of mental health struggles and treatment. In this, the third part of a series, we examine the challenges facing seniors. Tina is 94 years old and has attempted suicide twice this year. Once, she stuffed a plastic bag into her mouth. "I couldn't keep it in," said the Beacon resident. "If someone would have forced it on me, it would have worked. But I couldn't. I took it out." Another time, she took a scarf from her closet and tried to hang herself from a door in her apartment. But she slid to the floor. Her daughter called after seeing that attempt on a video monitor connected to her cell phone. "What are you doing?" "Resting," Tina responded. When asked if she was glad that her suicide attempts failed, she said, "Not really. I hated my life." Then she looked up at the ceiling and raised her hands like she was pleading. "Take me," she said. "I'm ready." Tina, who was willing to discuss her mental health struggles only if her real name was not used, is facing many of the typical health problems that come with aging. She and her husband, who is 91, used to enjoy driving to McDonald's in Fishkill for a meal before browsing at shops along Route 9. But a few years ago, her husband began showing signs of dementia, and her children insisted that she stop driving. "They said if there's an accident, we'll be responsible," she said. Dementia has taken a toll on her marriage of 50 years. "We hardly speak," she said. "Just little phrases like, 'Are you sleeping?' and 'You want to eat now?'" Her husband can no longer take out the garbage and is often puzzled by his electric razor. Tina has fallen several times. She traded in her cane for a rollator, a fancy walker with wheels, handbrakes and a seat. She was cheerful at a recent lunch. She enjoyed her food and seemed excited about her dessert, a chocolate bar. She was well-dressed, with nice jewelry. Her makeup and hair were impeccable. "I love to laugh," she said, adding that her life had improved recently with someone coming to her house to drive her and her husband to McDonald's. When it was suggested she seek help for her mental health, she said, "At this age, does it matter?" Tina's reaction is not unusual. According to federal government data, while people ages 65 and older comprise 17 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 22 percent of suicides, with men far exceeding women. One study estimates that a third of seniors worldwide experience symptoms of depression, although clinical depression is far less common. The key factors are well known: isolation, loss and physical infirmity. Dutchess and Putnam counties offer many resources to help older people with their mental health, including support groups and Friendship Centers where seniors meet, go shopping, have lunch and enjoy group activities. In 2023, Dutchess started a program called Friendly Calls, in which volunteers call seniors for conversation. This year, Putnam launched Putnam Pals, a program that pairs volunteers with seniors. "There's nothing better than seeing someone face to face," said Marlene Barrett, director of Putnam's Office for Senior Resources. Suicide Among Older People About 50,000 people kill themselves each year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those ages 85 and older have the highest rates, at 22.7 per 100,000, followed by those aged 75-84 and 35-44. The lowest rates were among those aged 65-74 and 15-24. Men ages 75 and older have the highest rates overall (42.2 per 100,000). A study in the Journal of Affective Disorders of adults ages 50 and older in five low- and middle-income countries found that older adults experiencing moderate food insecurity were 2.6 times more likely to attempt suicide, and older adults experiencing severe food insecurity were 5.2 times more likely. If you are facing mental-health challenges, call or text 988. Counselors are ...

Father of Cold Spring resident sketched Nazis at Nuremberg Eighty years ago this week, on Nov. 20, 1945, trials began in Nuremberg, Germany, for nearly 200 Nazis charged with crimes against humanity, including the killing of an estimated six million Jewish, Roma, gay and disabled people during the Holocaust. The international military tribunal is the subject of a new film starring Russell Crowe, who portrays Hermann Göring, the second most powerful man in Germany during World War II, behind Adolf Hitler. For Cold Spring resident Cassandra Saulter, the courtroom drama that unfolded at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice is more personal. Her father was among the U.S. soldiers assigned to guard the 22 major defendants, and he got Göring. Howard Saulter grew up in Queens and joined the Army at age 19. A private first class, he fought in late 1944 in the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium's Ardennes Forest. Germany surrendered the following spring, and that fall, Saulter was assigned to guard the accused in court and its adjacent prison. The guards worked every other day on a rotation of two hours on duty followed by four hours off. Initially, each man monitored three prisoners. But after Robert Ley, a labor leader who once received a gift of a million Reichsmarks from Hitler, committed suicide on Oct. 25, each guard was assigned to one prisoner. The trials riveted people around the world, but for the guards, it was tedious. Saulter began drawing the defendants in their cells out of boredom. Interviewed in 1946 by The New York Times, he said: "I hated the job. I decided to sketch a few of the prisoners in their cells, and it helped a lot." "He thought he might sell the drawings to raise money to attend the Art Students League," said his daughter. Göring may have been one of the most infamous of the Nazis on trial, but Howard Saulter remembered him as a model prisoner. "Göring was the most pleasant on the whole, the best behaved and the best sense of humor," he told his daughter. "Every day, when he returned to his cell after exercise, he'd say to me, 'Well, here we are home again.'" But when Saulter asked the German for his fine leather boots, saying, "You're not going to need them where you're going," Göring was not amused. "He usually had a sense of humor - that was the only time Göring blew up," said Cassandra. "Usually, they had interesting conversations." The walled court of justice building in Nuremberg on Oct. 26, 1945. (AP) A cell in the Nuremberg Prison, photographed in August 1945, before the first defendants arrived. (AP) The first day of the trial, on Nov. 20, 1945 (AP) Wilhelm Frick, left, eats lunch with Arthur Seyss-Inquart, from Army mess kits in the Palace of Justice on Nov. 29, 1945. (AP) Goring (left) eats stew from an Army mess tin at Nuremberg on Nov. 29, 1945. (AP) In this photo, the defendants are seated in front of the row of guards. (AP) Göring was convicted of war crimes but swallowed a cyanide pill the night before his scheduled execution. It was never clear how he got the poison, but Cassandra said her mother, Lillian, had a plausible hypothesis. "My father used to fall asleep, especially when bored - he had narcolepsy," Cassandra said. Her mother wondered if Göring's lawyer waited until Howard nodded off, then passed the pill to his client, possibly inside a pencil, and Göring hid it in the toilet. Saulter never sketched Göring, to his regret, but he did draw Baldur von Schirach (the former leader of the Hitler Youth and commandant in Vienna who was sentenced to 20 years), Franz von Papen (a former vice chancellor and ambassador who was acquitted but sentenced by a civilian court to eight years), Wilhelm Frick (the interior minister, who was hanged) and Arthur Seyss-Inquart (the commander of the occupied Netherlands, also hanged). Only von Papen realized he was being sketched. All four autographed their drawings. Saulter also sketched Albert Speer (the minister of armaments and war production, who w...

Win supervisor, town board seats With mail-in votes counted, Democrats appear to have won the supervisor's seat and an open council member spot in Putnam Valley, giving their party control of the Town Board. An unofficial tally posted by the Putnam County Board of Elections shows Alison Jolicoeur defeating the incumbent Republican supervisor, Jacqueline Annabi, by 23 votes (1,477 to 1,454) for a two-year term. Another Democrat, C.J. Brooks, was leading a Republican incumbent, Stacey Tompkins, by 31 votes (1,536 to 1,505) for a two-year term on the Town Board. Christian Russo, an incumbent who ran as a Republican and Conservative, was re-elected to the other open seat with 1,550 votes. Jolicoeur and Brooks join Sherry Howard to give Democrats a 3-2 majority on the five-member board, which has four Republicans, when they take office in January. In another close race in Putnam County, Tommy Regan, the Republican candidate for the seat on the Legislature that represents Southeast, defeated Thomas Sprague, the Democratic candidate, by 31 votes of 2,388 cast. Regan will succeed Paul Jonke, a Republican who did not seek a fourth, 3-year term. The Board of Elections will certify the results on Nov. 29.

Everyone's brains seem to be on high alert in the digital age, although society has become more accepting of mental health struggles and treatment. In this, the second part of a series, we examine the challenges facing first responders. When Kevin Murphy leads monthly workouts at the Cold Spring firehouse on Main Street, he wants to help firefighters get in shape both physically and mentally. It's a goal the former Putnam County sheriff's deputy is passionate about since it wasn't long ago that Murphy was overweight and suicidal. Several times, he took out a bottle of pills and a gun and tried to summon the will to pull the trigger. "I didn't want to die," said Murphy, who leads health and wellness programs for Guardian Revival, the Beacon-based nonprofit that works to improve the mental health and well-being of police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and veterans. "But I wanted the pain to stop. And I figured that the quickest way for that to happen was to kill myself. The pain was intense. It was horrible." The cause was 22 years of responding to traumatic events as a police officer, first for Putnam County, then for the Carmel, Mahopac and Pleasantville departments. At most, the average person might witness two or three traumatic events in a lifetime. First responders like Murphy can see 500 or more automobile deaths, suicides, shootings, homicides and other horrors. And they often fail to safely process what they've seen. "I would just push that traumatic stuff down," said Murphy. "I would just push it down into that bag, and I would push it, push it, push it." His 6-foot-4 frame swelled to 300 pounds. He drank a lot. "It got to the point where I convinced myself that cheap whiskey tasted good because I could afford more of it," he said. Murphy's bag of repressed trauma started to come apart on the morning of Oct. 1, 2020, while responding to a home in Pleasantville. "It was on Elm Street," Murphy said. "So this was my - and other peoples' - nightmare at Elm Street." In the front yard, he found an older woman in a white nightgown screaming about her son. "She looked like a ghost," Murphy said. Inside, Murphy found the man in the dining room, dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. On the table was a police shield. He was a 26-year-old police officer. "I protected myself at the scene by putting myself really deep into work mode," Murphy said. With no sleep, he returned for his midnight shift. "None of my co-workers would have thought any less of me if I took that night off," Murphy said. "But I thought that they would. That's the pressure I put on myself. I completed my paperwork and continued on." His superiors offered counseling. But he refused because he didn't want to "look weak." Driving to work six months later, he started crying. "I just had this immense sadness," Murphy said. "It was everything that I was holding up inside. I didn't know that officer, but I didn't mourn his death, you know? I didn't ask for help or say, 'Help me figure this out. Why am I feeling this way?'" In February 2022, after several suicide attempts, he went to a therapist. "I finally asked for help," said Murphy, who no longer drinks and has lost 60 pounds. Murphy believes that without the therapy he would have killed himself. "I want people to know that they're not alone," he said. "Our guardians should know they can seek help and receive help and have a productive life and a successful career." Murphy's story is all too common. In a survey conducted by New York State last year, more than 50 percent of first responders reported symptoms of depression, compared to 20 percent in the general population. About 16 percent said they'd considered suicide in the past year, four times the number in the general population. Eighty percent felt there was a stigma against seeking help. To address what she called a mental health crisis, Gov. Kathy Hochul this year proposed a scholarship program to train counselors for first res...

Cold Spring underpass being repaired The pedestrian tunnel under the Metro-North tracks in Cold Spring will be closed for repairs until at least Dec. 1, the village announced. Officials noted that pedestrians walking to and from Market Street can follow the Metro-North walkways flanking the tracks to reach the platforms and use the overpass staircase or elevators to cross the tracks. Alternatively, follow the sidewalk on the east side of Lunn Terrace to cross the bridge/overpass to Market Street; turn left to reach the Metro-North parking lot, or turn right to reach lower Main Street and the waterfront.

Everyone's brains seem to be on high alert in the digital age, although society has become more accepting of mental health struggles and treatment. In this, the first part of a series, we examine the challenges facing high school students. Subsequent stories will look at first responders and seniors. Kaitlyn Holder is a fitting choice to help anxious and depressed students at Beacon High School. Just a few years ago, she got so anxious attending her college classes that she would vomit on her way to the bus. Holder started this year as academic coordinator for Beacon High School's new Bridge for Resilient Youth in Transition (BRYT) program, which helps students transition back to school after extended absences due to mental health. Holder's job is to help those returning catch up on missed work. "I see myself in these students," said Holder, 25, who is often mistaken for a teenager. "In high school, I had a lot of anxiety around my performance. So much of my self-worth was tied to my grades." She graduated from Newburgh Free Academy in 2018 with all A's. But her anxiety worsened when she went to the University of Albany, moving away for the first time from her parents and her beloved pet kitty Shy. "Gradually, it just became harder to wake up on time and to get myself ready. I started missing classes because I was so anxious," she said. During the pandemic, Holder found it hard to leave her college apartment and wouldn't turn on her camera during online classes. "I actually lost credit in a lot of classes for not showing my face or speaking during the Zoom calls," she said. As a teen with autism and depression, social media made it worse. "A lot of my day was just spent sleeping. When I was awake, I was reading terrible news articles. The TikTok algorithm knows a lot. And if you are sad, and you're getting sad content on your page, and you're interacting with it, that's all going to bring you down. I only engaged in negativity online." Eventually some professors helped her find campus mental health resources, let her do more work at home and generally offered encouragement. "If I didn't have those teachers supporting me. I don't know if I would have graduated," said Holder, who finished on time with a 2.8 GPA in linguistics. While she still struggles with anxiety and depression, Holder has deleted TikTok from her phone and rarely goes on social media or watches the news. In January, she hopes to complete an online master's degree in special education from the University of Mount St. Vincent in the Bronx. She's telling her story because she wants her students to know they're not alone. "It's important for kids to know that teachers are human and we struggle," she said. Holder's is a challenge facing many young people in the Highlands and across the country: anxiety and depression worsened or created by social media. According to the National Survey of Children's Health, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, the prevalence of teen anxiety has increased 61 percent - from 10 to 16 percent - since 2016. Depression increased 45 percent - from 5.8 to 8.4 percent. To help, Highlands schools are increasing staffing and programs. At Haldane, the district in 2024 added a third school counselor and went from 1.5 school psychologists to two full-time. The district also has two social workers. Last year, a group of Haldane teachers and administrators read The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt. At the Garrison School, which goes through eighth grade, the district in recent years has begun teaching students about social and emotional intelligence in several ways, including the Yale RULER program, where students learn to Regulate, Understand, Label, Express and Regulate their emotions. Greg Stowell, the superintendent, said that issues of depression and anxiety are increasingly prevalent, even at the younger grade levels, and the district, now offers therapy t...

Sisters, brother enlisted during Vietnam For Victoria Ryan, Veterans Day on Tuesday (Nov. 11) will once again evoke memories of the 35 years the Beacon native and her siblings, Deborah and Bill, collectively served in the U.S. Army. Bill joined first, in 1970, followed by Deborah in 1973. Victoria, at the urging of her mother, enlisted just a few months after her sister. Victoria remembers Bill as "laid back, easygoing, athletic and serious minded." At the height of the Vietnam War, he enlisted rather than waiting to be drafted. A field artillery surveyor, he reached the rank of specialist and served in Germany until being discharged in late 1973. He died in a car accident in 1978 at age 25. "Bill had enrolled at University of Tennessee; he wanted to take mechanical engineering," Victoria recalled. Deborah, prior to joining the military, had worked for three years as a model. In the Army, she became the first woman to serve as a military police officer (MP) at West Point, a distinction that earned her a profile in the New York Daily News. Deborah explained to the newspaper why she had enlisted: "We were at war and the men were fighting. Why shouldn't I?" In a 2025 newsletter published by Together We Served, an organization that helps veterans stay connected and chronicles their stories, Victoria told the group how proud she was of her sister. "She pursued a law enforcement career in the Army and was deeply serious about her duties," she said. Early in her posting to West Point, Deborah pulled an officer over for speeding, Victoria recalled. "Do you know who I am?" the officer asked arrogantly. Deborah responded: "Sir, please do not confuse your rank with my authority." Deborah served in the Army until 1990. Her career included stops in Europe and Korea, and she rose to the rank of warrant officer in the criminal investigation division. She died in 2016 at age 61. "Although she was four years younger than me, I always looked up to her in many ways," Victoria said. "She died a proud veteran." Deborah's daughter, Leslie Ann Martell, a West Point graduate, served in Afghanistan and now serves in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Victoria went on to earn the rank of staff sergeant and served in the Army until 1988. In the mid-1970s, she and Deborah were both posted at West Point, where they "had a lot of great times," said Victoria. "We played tennis, had lunch together and went to Army football games; Deborah loved those games." She also recalled happy get-togethers with Deborah, Bill and their parents at the family's Beacon home during that period. While stationed at West Point, Victoria worked in administration for the third regiment Corps of Cadets. Her career also took her to Hawaii, Holland and numerous posts across the mainland U.S. Like her sister, Victoria was not afraid to speak her mind. During a physical training program at Fort Myers, Virginia, she was appalled that early morning runs were conducted in Arlington National Cemetery. She protested up the chain of command, all the way to the sergeant major of the Army. To her "astonished relief," the runs ceased. "I felt shame, embarrassment and guilt for my part in disrespecting this revered and sacred cemetery," said Victoria. "I needed to take a stand." Her saddest military experience came during her final assignment in the Army casualty office. In 1986, a DC-8 bringing personnel stationed in Egypt home to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, crashed after taking off from Gander International Airport in Newfoundland, killing all 248 passengers and the eight crew members. Calling it "the worst peacetime military aircraft disaster in the history of the U.S. Army," Victoria said her office spent months identifying all the bodies. "We told our people out in the field where to go, who to speak to and exactly, word for word, what to say to the next of kin about their loved one passing away," she said. Now retired and living in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she is an active member of...

Beacon lyricist specializes in musicals for kids Growing up in rural North Carolina, Melvin Tunstall III lived behind a church. "My father was a deacon, but everyone thought he was the pastor," he recalls. "He cut a path between the woods and our house." Evidenced by Tunstall's singing style and his collaborative score for the musical Stuntboy: In the Meantime, now on tour, gospel music seeped into his psyche. Things are picking up for the Beacon writer, composer, lyricist and performer. Earlier this year, he traveled to North Carolina to direct a Raleigh Theatre Arts Center production of The Music of Sam Cooke, who began with gospel and ended with soul. "The call for that gig came out of nowhere," Tunstall says. "As I started to dive into the show, it's such a history lesson. That was one of my favorite theatrical experiences." For Tunstall, the past is attractive. He is working on a musical score based on the 2022 children's book Yellow Dog Blues about a boy who, while searching for his lost dog, learns about the influence of Mississippi Delta blues musicians on the electrified Chicago scene in the 1940s and 1950s. Tunstall's niche is uplifting works for young people. Polkadots: The Cool Kids Musical ran for three weeks this year at a theater in Bloomington, Indiana, and Senior Class premiered at the Olney Theatre Center in Maryland. TheaterWorksUSA produced his hour-long musical adaptation of Stuntboy, based on a graphic novel for children written by Jason Reynolds and illustrated by Raul the Third, which is now on a national tour. Like the Sam Cooke opportunity, Tunstall received an unsolicited call to write for a five-person Stuntboy cast. His musical partner, Greg Dean Borowski, sent over songs and Tunstall, who wrote the book and lyrics, added his touches and recorded demos for the cast to study. Though Tunstall's high school musical, Senior Class, tackles issues of race and class, Stuntboy is wholesome and features supportive, affirming messages. The protagonist, Portico Reeves, is an 8-year-old trying to overcome anxiety surrounding his parents' impending divorce. The production features plenty of movement onstage, along with colorful sets and costumes. Church-style harmonies bookend the opening song, which introduces Portico's female best friend and his bullying nemesis. Driven by keyboards, the tunes are poppy and upbeat. Though there are spoken interludes, most of the story is conveyed in the lyrics. After premiering at Bronxville High School in Westchester County, the production will travel to Austin, Texas, for performances on Nov. 5 and 6. Tunstall moved to New York City after college but returned to North Carolina following 9/11. Friends pulled him north again, and he joined the cast of the Toronto production of Rock of Ages in 2010 and the original Broadway production of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, hanging around for six years. He became acquainted with theater folks living in Beacon, found a beneficial living arrangement and moved to the city two years ago. "It reminds me of Blowing Rock, North Carolina," he says. Although jobs seem to find him, he continues to hustle. "This is a tough business," he says. "You have to be five years ahead of the game, but I'm married to my career. I'm just thinking, 'Let's get as much theater into the world as possible.' "

Includes more sales-tax revenue for Beacon The budget proposed by the Dutchess County executive for 2026 would lower the property tax rate and provide more sales tax revenue to Beacon. Sue Serino's proposal to the Legislature includes $651 million in spending. Among its provisions, it would eliminate 10 vacant jobs and leave 17 unfilled. (See dutchessny.gov.) Despite those changes, spending would rise by 1.8 percent, Serino said on Oct. 29 in an address to the Legislature. She cited a $6.7 million increase in "state mandates," primarily for daycare, early intervention, and special-education programs, as well as higher costs for salaries and benefits. Revenues would come from $273.8 million in sales taxes, $106 million in property taxes and $23 million in general-fund reserves, or savings. The tax levy would be $224,000 below a state-mandated cap, and the rate assessed on property owners would fall from $2.17 to $2.10 per $1,000 of assessed value. Serino said she anticipates $5.4 million in additional sales tax revenue by allowing an exemption from Dutchess' portion of the sales tax (3.75 percent) for clothing and shoes costing less than $110 to lapse on March 1. (The 8.125 percent sales tax includes 4 percent for the state and 0.375 percent for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority). Beacon's share of sales taxes, which totaled $6.1 million, will rise from 2.35 percent to 2.45 percent in 2026, or an additional $268,000. According to Serino, ending the clothing and shoe exemption would yield an extra $133,000 for Beacon. Democrats criticized the decision to end the exemption, which took effect in 2022. Legislator Yvette Valdés Smith, who represents Ward 4 in Beacon and part of Fishkill and is the Legislature's minority leader, called it a "rash decision" that will hurt working families. "The Republican-led county government's mismanagement of funds - including a luxury clubhouse at the baseball stadium, mindboggling pay raises and failed litigation against New York State - has necessitated this tax increase," Valdés Smith said in a statement. Republicans, who hold 15 of 25 seats on the Legislature, faced criticism for funding upgrades at Heritage Financial Park in Wappingers Falls, the home of the Hudson Valley Renegades, the New York Yankees' High-A affiliate. They also authorized spending up to $100,000 to sue the state over a state law requiring most local elections to be held in even years, but no funds were spent, according to the county. The state Court of Appeals upheld the law in October, but a new lawsuit challenging its legality has been filed in federal court. Smith said the budget "fails to properly address the EMS [emergency medical services] crisis" and "contains no meaningful funds for our efforts to deal with the housing crisis." In her budget address, Serino highlighted $2 million in funding for supplemental ambulance service to address shortages that have led to long wait times, along with $2.5 million for youth programs and $1 million for the county's Housing Trust Fund, which supports affordable housing projects. Her budget would fund two school resource officers, a Drone as First Responder Program for the county's Real-Time Crime Center and a new Elder Justice Task Force. That collaboration with the Office for the Aging and the district attorney and sheriff's offices "will investigate, identify, pursue and prosecute those who exploit older adults through abuse, fraud or neglect," according to Serino.

City and Dutchess, Putnam counties allocate funds The Beacon City Council voted Monday (Nov. 3) to spend $50,000 to provide grocery gift cards to city residents who have lost federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. At the same time, the Trump administration said Monday that it will partially fund SNAP, commonly known as food stamps, for November following two court orders. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had planned to freeze payments starting Nov. 1 because of the federal government shutdown. The program costs $8 billion monthly, but the White House said an emergency fund it will use has $4.65 billion, or enough to cover about half the normal benefits. It's not clear exactly how much beneficiaries will receive, nor how quickly they will see value show up on the debit cards they use to buy groceries. November payments have already been delayed for millions of people. In Dutchess County, 17,152 people rely on food stamps (including 640 households in Beacon); in Putnam County, it's 2,885 people. In Beacon, beginning Thursday (Nov. 6), $50 gift cards to either Key Food (268 Main St.) or the Beacon Natural Market (348 Main St.) or $60 in coupons for the Beacon Farmers' Market (Sundays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., 223 Main Street parking lot) will be distributed at the city's Recreation Center at 23 West Center St. Cards and coupons will be available Thursday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m., and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Beacon residents enrolled in the SNAP program must provide photo identification, proof of residency (such as mail) and their SNAP card. Options are limited to one per SNAP recipient. Additional times will be added as needed. The council has set no end date for the program; it will be determined based on demand for the cards, the use of funding, and the resumption of federal benefits or the implementation of a comparable state program. Updates will be posted at beaconny.gov. Mayor Lee Kyriacou asked city staff to develop the program last week, when it became apparent that federal benefits were at risk of lapsing. The grocery stores and the farmers' market, which is operated by Common Ground Farm, provided the cards to the city at a substantial discount, Kyriacou said. The city opted for a direct transfer of cash-like gift cards because it was the quickest and easiest program to control, given the tight deadline, he said. "We wanted to get assistance to people so that they could use and decide what they want," City Administrator Chris White said. The city will conduct online outreach and distribute flyers in both English and Spanish at low-income apartment complexes to inform residents about the program. Funding for the Beacon program was drawn from a $75,000 allotment in the 2025 budget for planning studies. White noted that "this is only a patch. The federal government needs to step up and maintain its commitment to people." Dutchess County announced it would commit $150,000 per week to support local food pantries, for up to 10 weeks, pending approval by the Legislature at its Tuesday (Nov. 6) meeting. The county said the amount was determined after consulting with Renee Fillette-Miccio, who chairs the Dutchess County Food Security Council. In Putnam, County Executive Kevin Byrne approved a request by legislators to provide $150,000 to fund food pantries. The Associated Press contributed reporting. Local Food Assistance Beacon's Backyard Kitchen The group serves a hot breakfast at 12 Hanna Lane in Beacon on Tuesday and Thursday from 6:30 to 8:30 a.m. and a to-go lunch until 10:30 a.m. See instagram.com/beaconsbackyard. Beacon Farmers Market SNAP benefits are doubled through Greens4Greens, a partnership with Common Ground Farm in Wappingers Falls. To redeem benefits, visit the manager's tent, where the benefit card can be charged any amount in exchange for $1 tokens. For every $2 processed, customers will receive a $2 voucher, up to $50. As of Nov. 2, managers are distributing ...

Reserves $6.5M for potential program The Putnam County Legislature on Wednesday (Oct. 29) approved a $229 million budget for 2026 that sets aside millions of dollars for potential property tax relief, while including money for food programs and several Philipstown nonprofits. The Legislature's revision of County Executive Kevin Byrne's $222 million proposal includes a substantial addition: carving out $6.5 million from the county's swollen reserves for a Homeowner Tax Relief Program contingency account. Byrne may take exception to adding $7 million to his proposed budget. Under the county charter, he can veto changes made by the Legislature, but the lawmakers can override those vetoes. Legislator Paul Jonke, who proposed the tax-relief idea, is one of several legislators who said this would be the first time a county has implemented such a program. Its purpose, he said, is to give tax relief to homeowners who, despite cuts by Byrne in the last two budgets, have seen "virtually no impact" on their bills. "It's going to benefit senior citizens, it's going to benefit veterans," he said. "It's going to benefit the people who need that little bit of help when they get their oil bill or their electric bills." Funding would come from the county's reserves, or savings. An audit for 2023 found that Putnam ended the year with $144.3 million in reserves, including $78.3 million in "unassigned" funds that had not been designated for specific areas of spending. With sales taxes exceeding projections and Putnam "underspending" by $22 million, the total reserves were $31.8 million higher than in 2022, and the unassigned reserves $7 million higher, according to the audit. "We're sitting on a lot of money, folks," said Legislator Dan Birmingham, who represents Mahopac and parts of Southeast. "If the public had a true vision of, they'd rightly be outraged." Legislator Nancy Montgomery, who represents Philipstown and Putnam Valley, sought to amend the proposal to extend it to all residents, not just property owners, predicting that "it's going to be a very hard sell, and it probably won't be legal just to give this tax relief in the form of cash back to owner-occupied homes." She suggested that the county could give money back through other methods, such as grants for energy-efficiency projects, fee waivers and assistance for childcare. "If we truly want to provide tax relief, we should do it legally and inclusively," said Montgomery. But Montgomery and other legislators set aside their concerns about legality to support the proposal, which still must be developed. The Legislature also approved a request by Birmingham to set aside $150,000 for food programs, following an earlier approval of $9,700 for Second Chance Foods, based in Brewster. "They're not the only organization in the county that does help those folks who are experiencing food insecurity," said Birmingham. "We have food pantries in all parts of our county." The Legislature approved $10,000 grants requested by Montgomery for Boscobel, the Garrison Art Center and Hudson Valley Shakespeare. It also increased County Historian Jennifer Cassidy's position to full-time and her annual salary to $80,000. What remains unchanged from Byrne's original $222 million proposal is a $45.2 million property-tax levy and a projected $83.5 million in sales-tax revenues. The $1 million reduction in the levy represents the largest cut in the county's history, he said. The budget also includes $2.3 million for Putnam's inaugural sales-tax-sharing agreement with Nelsonville, Cold Spring, Philipstown and five other towns and the Village of Brewster. Each municipality will receive a share based on population to be used on infrastructure. Philipstown expects to receive $169,000 and Cold Spring and Nelsonville, $50,000 each, the minimum guarantee. Byrne's budget added new positions, including a counsel for the majority-Republican Legislature and a part-time counsel for Montgomery, its lone Democrat. It also...

Nonprofits, weakened by funding cuts, brace for disaster Things were already getting worse, even before the prospect of funds running out on Saturday (Nov. 1) for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program because of the ongoing federal government shutdown. At the Philipstown Food Pantry, coordinator Kiko Lattu said the number of visitors during its Saturday morning hours has increased by 30 percent, including people who hadn't visited in years. "They were getting by for a while, but things have become more difficult," she said. In Beacon, Fareground said it has started getting more food requests at the same time it is revamping its community fridge program. Dutchess Outreach in Poughkeepsie, which had been serving around 250 people a month, saw over 2,000 in February. Second Chance Foods, based in Brewster, said more people are requesting their Wednesday distributions. "There's been an increased need, and we're already at capacity for that program," said Martha Elder, the executive director. Unless a resolution is reached soon, the cuts to SNAP - colloquially known as "food stamps" - threaten to transform a slow-moving emergency into a full-scale disaster as nonprofits and communities struggle to fill the gap. And the gap is sizable: In Putnam County, 2,885 people rely on food stamps. In Dutchess, it's 17,152, and across the river, in Orange County, it's 45,530. "Those are not numbers we will be able to support," said Jamie Levato, the executive director of Fareground. Renee Fillette-Miccio, the executive director of Dutchess Outreach, said about $3.4 million flows into the county each month for food benefits. "For every one meal provided by a food pantry, SNAP provides 12," she said. "There's just no way for the charitable food system to be able to keep up." Trickle-down After weeks of speculation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last week that federal food aid could cease on Nov. 1. The Trump administration said it could not legally tap roughly $5 billion in contingency funds. Fillette-Miccio of Dutchess Outreach spent Tuesday in Washington, D.C., speaking with lawmakers from both parties, each of whom told her that President Trump could easily restore funding. "They all had the same thing to say, which was that it's just a matter of a phone call," she said. SNAP helps about 1 of every 8 Americans buy groceries, and nearly 80 percent of recipients are older adults, disabled or children, "which means that they don't really have the capacity to work to bring in money for food," said Dr. Hilary Seligman, a professor at the University of California who studies food insecurity and its health implications. A coalition of 25 state attorneys general, including from New York, is suing the federal government to restore SNAP, arguing that the pause is illegal. [Update: On Friday (Oct. 31), a federal judge ruled, in response to a lawsuit, that the suspension of SNAP was illegal and ordered the government to report on Monday its plan to distribute funding.] On Thursday (Oct. 30), Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency, announcing $65 million in emergency food assistance and a website at bit.ly/SNAPaid that lists food banks and other social services. On Friday, Dutchess County announced it would commit $150,000 per week to support local food pantries. It said in a news release that the Legislature plans to hold an emergency meeting to authorize up to $1.5 million in spending. The potential pause comes at a time when many nonprofits have found their federal funding slashed or eliminated with little notice or explanation. Second Chance Foods learned in May, from a one-line email, that $70,000 of a $100,000 grant from the USDA had been terminated. Dutchess Outreach lost $15,000 in funding that it usually gets from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In addition, the Local Food Purchasing Act, which allowed hunger relief groups to buy food directly from farmers, has been eliminated, and the Emergency ...

Two Philipstown residents want to scare you Sam Zimmerman loves Halloween. He really, really loves it. As the senior vice president of programming and acquisitions for Shudder, AMC Networks' streaming service, he has seen any frightening film you can mention - that's his job. It's also now a central part of his life at home. In February, he and his wife and their two young sons moved to Parrott Street in Cold Spring, the heart of the village's annual trick-or-treating ritual. Zimmerman likely didn't realize it, but another fright aficionado, Tore Knos, was already in place in Philipstown. In April, The New York Times called Knos' 2024 film, Snakeeater, one of "five horror films to stream now." Although horror is booming at the box office, and there are seemingly unlimited viewing options online, Zimmerman says he most enjoys introducing viewers to sub-genres like giallo (Italian horror from the 1970s, such as films by Dario Argento) or folk horror, such as The Wicker Man (1973) and Midsommar (2019). When Shudder launched, there weren't many boutique streaming services. As VP of programming, Zimmerman helps create collections so viewers "don't spend all their time browsing; they find things they want to watch and care about and explore within the genre. "You can continuously come up with different nooks and crannies," he says. "It's fun to create pathways, to be able to say, 'Here are five or 10 films within this genre,' with some classics and some undiscovered gems. You'll get a good sense of the hallmarks and tropes." The Washington Post last year called Zimmerman "the man who picks your nightmares." Zimmerman grew up in the Bronx and says he was probably too young when he became a horror fan, "but I couldn't help it." He read the Goosebumps series, as well as books and stories by Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. "I remember my dad showing me An American Werewolf in London and my grandmother buying me Psycho," he says. In 2004, while he was in high school, his mother, stepfather and two sisters moved to Cold Spring. He would visit often, and the family hit Parrott Street at Halloween. At SUNY Purchase, Zimmerman majored in cinema studies and interned in New York City at Fangoria. "I stuck around the office until they hired me," he says. "I started going to film festivals and understood my interest was in programming, development, acquisition and production." In 2014, he became a consultant to the fledgling Shudder, then joined full-time. His focus initially was on building the catalog by licensing classic and cult films. "There were all these films that, at the time, hadn't streamed," he recalls. "I knew this was our opportunity to showcase movies that had a reputation or had been celebrated but that most people hadn't been able to see." One example: Andrzej Zulawski's Possession (1981), which had limited home video distribution. In 2016, Shudder began producing new films. Some highlights: Host, which was made quickly during the pandemic, about teens who conduct a Zoom seance (what could go wrong?), A Violent Nature ("something of an art house reinvention of what a slasher film is") and Oddity, an Irish film about a blind medium. "In some ways, horror is one of the oldest forms of storytelling," Zimmerman says. "There have always been scary stories and cautionary tales, so there's something primal there. Even intellectual horror movies are trading on instinct and provocation. They reflect our anxieties at any given moment. But they're also fun, with that satisfaction of getting a thrill." When Tore Knos needed moody, misty footage for Snakeeater, which is available on Amazon Prime, he didn't have to go far. Much of the film was set in a shadowy New York City. But he realized, during editing, that he needed a "pillow shot" to create atmosphere. "I needed a shot looking up into the fog," he recalls. "One day it was super foggy, so I drove under the Bear Mountain Bridge and got a great shot." While re...

Akropolis will perform at Howland Cultural Center After meeting at the University of Michigan, five classically trained musicians formed an unusual ensemble and called themselves the Akropolis Reed Quintet. They will perform on Sunday (Nov. 2) at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon as part of the Howland Chamber Music Circle series. Founded in 2009, Akropolis is one of the country's first reed quintets. As the group's star began rising, the clarinetist and saxophonist married and it became a nonprofit to apply for grants and expand educational outreach. Earlier this year, Akropolis won a Grammy for best instrumental composition, singling out the song "Strands." Written by pianist and collaborator Pascal La Beouf, the song fuses jazz and classical. Drummer Christian Euman is all smiles in a video made during the recording session. The title is apt because the reed instruments reel off call-and-response passages during the beginning and end, weaving the snippets together. During an interlude, the piano drifts off to dreamland before the players build back into a heavy progressive rock-style tsunami of sound that pulls the plug abruptly. Most wind quintets include flute and French horn, along with oboe, clarinet and bassoon. The repertoire for this grouping stretches to the late 18th century. Akropolis is different because, in addition to two instruments with long jazz pedigrees (sax and clarinet), it includes an oboe, bassoon and bass clarinet, which adds heft at the low end. Clarinet player Kari Landry credits the 40-year-old Calefax Reed Quintet from the Netherlands for creating the format and nurturing it through commissions and rearrangements of existing works. "They're our mentors," says Landry. "We're trying to expand the wind-based color palette and classical music in any way we can." Except for jazzy touches in George Gershwin's symphonic composition "An American in Paris" (arranged by Raaf Hekkema of Calefax), other selections being performed on Sunday will skew toward classical with world influences. "These few specks of time," by Oswald Huynh (born 1997), presents a "flashy opening that then pulls from his Vietnamese heritage, working in a folk song with stunning compositional technique," says Landry. The quintet will also perform "A Soulful Nexus," by Derrick Skye (born 1982), who is "coming up on some fame, uses the Persian classical scale system and adds percussive, fun elements," she says. The group's website is awash in pink, "a visual representation of how we stand out," says Landry. "We use that colorful joy and energy to show that we're not about presenting scary, esoteric or off-putting new music." Akropolis has commissioned more than 200 works. Its members are in their mid-30s, and Landry foresees a bright future for the configuration. "There are now hundreds of us - it's a big network," she says. "Other people are creating more music because it's a niche within chamber music, but we hope that in 100 years this instrumentation becomes commonplace, like the string quartet." The Howland Cultural Center is located at 477 Main St. in Beacon. The concert begins at 4 p.m. For tickets, which are $35 ($10 for students 25 and younger), see howlandmusic.org/tickets. There is pay-what-you-wish pricing.

Topics range from affordability to bikes and firefighters In a repeat of last year's budget deliberations, Beacon City Council members on Monday (Oct. 27) debated with Mayor Lee Kyriacou and City Administrator Chris White whether the city has done enough to advance affordable housing. Each year, after the mayor introduces his budget proposal in October, department heads present their spending plans. Their proposals typically review accomplishments, notable projects scheduled for the following year and any changes in spending. This week, after presentations on the highway, water and sewer and wastewater departments, the discussion turned to "council priorities." A year ago, council members sparred with Kyriacou and White over affordability before adding $75,000 to the 2025 budget for a communications plan and studies on affordable housing and non-vehicular transportation. The money had not been spent, Finance Director Susan Tucker said on Monday. This year's discussion centered around a proposal to create a director of housing solutions. Kingston and Hudson have hired similar staff, while Beacon officials have suggested that Ben Swanson, who has been Kyriacou's assistant for four years and will become the deputy city administrator in 2026, could work on housing. Kyriacou said on Monday that he believes Swanson, who has a law degree from New York University, has "far better qualifications" than anyone the city could hire. Instead of bringing in someone new, "I'd rather start with expertise," the mayor said. In addition, Beacon's planning consultant, Natalie Quinn, who worked for the Poughkeepsie Planning & Zoning Department from 2018 to 2022, could be a resource, he said. That led Paloma Wake, who, along with Amber Grant, will return to the council next year, to argue that housing has not gotten enough attention. "We've been stuck in the same place" on the city's requirement of 10 percent below-market rate units in new developments of 10 or more for four years, she said. "We've been hearing that the Housing Authority has the potential to build more [subsidized housing] for a while," Wake said. "There is a need to be even more proactive. What I really want to see out of this budget cycle is a clear commitment to resourcing this issue." The city's 10 percent affordable (or "inclusionary zoning") policy is an outlier in the region because it demands something of developers without a giveback, such as added density or reduced application fees, Kyriacou said. The council has been reluctant to consider a giveback for a higher affordable percentage, but "I am more than willing to go there," he said. He noted that Beacon accounts for 20 percent of the affordable housing stock in Dutchess, although the city comprises only 5 percent of the county's population. But with yearslong waiting lists at subsidized complexes in Beacon, we "still need to be doing everything we can to be ambitious enough to meet the need," Wake said. The council agreed to put inclusionary zoning and the effect of short-term rentals on the housing market on a workshop agenda. From there, Molly Rhodes, who is leaving the council to become a Dutchess County legislator, inquired about the cost of conducting a bike study. Earlier this month, members of the Beacon Bicycle Coalition presented the council with a petition signed by 1,000 people requesting a study on bike lanes and other infrastructure. Beacon does not have the resources to do that immediately, said White, but an agreement with the county Transportation Council for an inventory and gap analysis of sidewalks could lead to a report on bikes. Some council members appeared frustrated. "Every time we discuss [priorities]," the administration's response is: 'What do you not want to do? You're asking for too much,' " said Pam Wetherbee. "We know in our own lives that if we do one thing, it precludes us from doing another," said White, who added that the city has received funding commitments to repair sidewalks, ...

Group celebrating 25 years of grantmaking Seamus Carroll is convinced his daughter's journey from Haldane student to Apple iPhone designer began with Destination Imagination, the global problem-solving competition for K-12 students. Haldane's program introduced her to skills such as soldering and wiring, he said, setting her on a path that led to studying electrical engineering as an undergraduate and computer science as a graduate student. In 2014, Haldane middle schoolers involved in Destination Imagination won a state championship before traveling to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville to compete in the global finals. The students' success is owed in part to the Haldane School Foundation, a group of can-do parents who, since the organization's founding in 2000, have raised and donated over $1.5 million to support Destination Imagination and other enrichment programs spearheaded by the district's teachers. With a new logo and branding, the group will celebrate its 25th anniversary on Nov. 8 during its annual fall fundraiser at the Glynwood Center in Philipstown. Carroll and other early board members say the nonprofit's founding occurred during a time of frugal school boards and tax-weary property owners. However, with families moving into Philipstown who sought extracurricular experiences for their children, a group of residents decided to raise private donations to supplement Haldane's budgeted programming. Their efforts enabled 57 Haldane seniors to travel to New Orleans to help Habitat for Humanity rebuild in the area following Hurricane Katrina, brought in educators from a Colorado wolf sanctuary and underwrote a weeklong program for teachers who learn about the Hudson River and apply their knowledge to classroom activities. "There's a bunch of people who had the means to go to a private school, and probably would have, if some of these things didn't materialize," said Joe Curto, an early board member. When the foundation began, according to Curto, the Haldane board was "black and white" about the curriculum - "If it was good enough for me, it's good enough for you" - and the budget battles were brutal. In June 2000, the month the foundation incorporated, district voters rejected, by a 916-666 vote, a proposal to spend $24.4 million on a dedicated high school building. (Voters approved the facility in 2002.) Claudio Marzollo, already "involved in too many things," remembers declining his wife's invitation to attend one of the first organizational meetings for the foundation. "I said, 'If I go, I'm going to get roped into doing something.' " His wife returned home as the vice president, and Marzollo eventually joined the board. The group began holding fundraisers, such as a wine tasting at The Chalet and a Snow Ball. A Harvest Ball at Incredible Caterers on Route 9D was the first big event, said Curto, with live music and an open bar. "We raised a ton of money, and then it became an institution," he said. Becoming legitimate in the eyes of Haldane's administration and faculty took some time, said Carroll, but they eventually welcomed the foundation "as a source of funds to do good stuff that they couldn't get in the budget." Grants, which are awarded in the spring and fall, focus on experiences rather than computers and software, which are less durable than a memory. "It was trying to get the kids to do things that they wouldn't get to do without the funding," said Carroll. "There were a lot of field trips that wouldn't have happened if the foundation didn't pay for them." Grants usually total around $60,000 annually, said Kristen Sherman, the current president. Along with field trips to destinations like Washington, D.C., and Frost Valley, recent awards include $3,500 to cover printing costs for The Haldane Outlook, a student-run newspaper, and $4,900 for a middle school robotics club. (Editor's note: The Highlands Current received five grants from the foundation between 2018 and 2024 to support its Student Jou...

Says she has been branded 'disloyal' The chair of the Philipstown Republican Committee has resigned from the party's countywide organization, saying it is "in crisis" and has branded her disloyal for supporting a fundraiser for sheriff candidate Larry Burke. Cindy Trimble, in an Oct. 16 letter to Chair Andres Gil, said that the Putnam County Republican Committee is "challenged by internal disagreements and divisions that have affected endorsed candidates, incumbent candidates and dedicated committee members." She and other members of the Philipstown committee have formed a separate organization, the Philipstown Republican Club, she said. One reason for the breakup, said Trimble, is that she has been "targeted for disloyalty" for attending an event for Burke, a Philipstown resident and Cold Spring police officer who is challenging Brian Hess, the acting sheriff and Republican candidate for the position. If he wins, Burke would be the third consecutive sheriff from Philipstown, along with the late Kevin McConville and his predecessor, Robert Langley Jr. Gil said on Tuesday (Oct. 28) that he asked Trimble to resign and that committee leaders are expected to support the candidates endorsed by the county, "regardless of whether or not they actually chose that person." He highlighted Trimble's attendance at the Burke fundraiser and an August post on Burke's Facebook page. Although Burke is a "lifelong Republican," according to Trimble, he is running as an independent because the county committee chose Hess over Burke and others who interviewed to be the party's candidate after McConville abandoned his re-election campaign due to illness. McConville died in September. "My decision to attend [Burke's fundraiser] was based solely on friendship and community support, not politics," said Trimble, adding that she supported Hess's nomination by the county committee and has distributed his campaign signs. According to Trimble, other officials and members of the county Republican Committee "have openly chosen to support non-endorsed candidates over endorsed candidates, support non-incumbent candidates over incumbent Republicans, support write-ins over endorsed candidates, support Democrats over Republicans and support Conservatives over Republicans." In a photo on Burke's Facebook page, Trimble is shown with several Philipstown Democrats at a community meeting she organized. According to Burke's post, "Cindy had invited all concerned residents of Philipstown to come out, meet me and take part in a Q&A." Gil called that "conduct unbecoming of a leader in our party." He said: "We should never be asking a person to vote a certain way. But as a leader of the party, you are supposed to support the endorsed and nominated candidates." Asked about the remaining Philipstown Republican Committee members, Gil said that the county GOP has only received Trimble's resignation but is "looking into the matter, and we'll address the matter appropriately." Burke said on Tuesday that Gil's call for Trimble to resign is "deeply disappointing" and that he was "extremely saddened" that her personal support for him became an issue. Attending a community event or fundraiser is a "fundamental right" that should not be subject to pressure or penalties, he said. "Her resignation is a sad reflection of the state of local politics, where loyalty to individuals too often outweighs loyalty to principle," said Burke. "I hope her situation reminds everyone that integrity and

Second public hearing scheduled on parking changes The Cold Spring Village Board, at its Wednesday (Oct. 22) meeting, tabled recommendations from the Planning Board to approve 32 parking waivers for 1 Depot Square and 37 Main St. Since 2010, the board has granted waivers to businesses for $250 each, as payment in lieu of providing the required number of off-street spaces required by the Village Code when parking spaces are unavailable. On Wednesday, Mayor Kathleen Foley questioned the effectiveness of the waivers. "The physical reality of the village is that the parking waivers don't help us," she said. "It's cash in the door, but it doesn't get us closer to solving the (parking) problem." When waivers were initiated 15 years ago, (the first six were issued to Frozenberry, then at 116 Main St., where Angie's is located now), the village population didn't more than double on peak tourist weekends as it does now, she said. At 1 Depot Square, the code requires 14 off-street spots for a planned addition of a 1,250-square-foot event space at the south end of The Depot Restaurant. Angie's Bakery and Café also plans to move and expand at 37 Main St., which would require 18 off-street spots. Both locales are busy sections of the village. Brian Tormey, the owner of 37 Main St., said that while there is space behind the building, it isn't suitable for customer parking for logistical and safety reasons. Greg Pagones, who owns The Depot, said he's been using space owned by Metro-North adjacent to the restaurant for staff parking since 2007 through an informal agreement with the railroad. Pagones said Metro-North indicated several years ago it intended to formally renew the agreement, but that hasn't happened. Foley expressed concern over the lack of a contract with Metro-North. "If we enter an agreement based on the concept that that space is available to you, and a year from now, MTA says, 'Nope, you're out,' we've made decisions about parking based upon space you don't control," she said to Pagones. There was discussion as to whether Depot Square, often described as a private road, is actually a public street, and whether that status would affect off-street parking. Documents related to the street date to the mid-1800s. "There is a public right-of-way that encompasses essentially all of the roadway and the parking on either side," said the Planning Board attorney, Jonathan DeJoy. "On top of that, the street has been used as a public street for decades." The board tabled a decision on the parking waivers pending consultation with the village counsel. "We want to find middle ground that allows entrepreneurial efforts in the village to flourish," balanced with quality of life for residents, Foley said. In a Friday (Oct. 24) email, she described the situation as a quandary. "The practice of parking waivers has kicked the can for new developments down the road for a decade," she wrote. "Now the board has no option but to deal with the reality on the ground, weigh pros and cons, along with property rights, and make the best decision we can for the widest interests of the village. It is by no means a simple question." In other business … A second public hearing will be held on Nov. 12 at Village Hall on proposed changes to Chapter 126 of the Village Code, dealing with vehicles and traffic. The revisions proposed include limiting free parking on the east side of High Street to the section between Haldane Street and Northern Avenue and extending parking limits on both sides of Fair Street to include the section north of Mayor's Park to the village limits. Twenty-four winter parking permits will be available for the municipal lot on Fair Street. Permits cost $40 and are valid from Nov. 15 to April 15.

250 Years Ago (October 1775) The Committee of Safety for New York ordered repairs to the barracks and hospital at Albany in preparation for the arrival of colonial troops. The royal governor in New York City, William Tryon, took refuge on a British warship, the HMS Duchess of Gordon, in the harbor. Fearing a British attack, the Continental Congress ordered all sulfur and brimstone supplies taken from Manhattan and stored farther up the Hudson River. 150 Years Ago (October 1875) Seward Archer at Breakneck Hollow was closing the woodhouse at the Baxter-Pelton place when he spotted movement in a small upper window. Thinking it was a chicken, he climbed a ladder and groped around the loft until he caught hold of a man's leg. "What are you doing here?" he yelled. Retreating down the ladder, he went to retrieve a gun. The intruder followed and ran off with Archer firing after him. The man shot back with a pistol, but only after he was at a safe distance. A government bond belonging to George Haight that had been stolen from the foundry safe was redeemed with the U.S. Treasury by a bank in London. A large dog belonging to William Birdsall, while inside Boyd's drugstore, mistook the plate glass in the upper part of the door for open air and jumped through it. He was startled but not injured. William Lobdell narrowly missed serious injury when he lost his grip on a butcher knife and the point struck the bone of the nose at the corner of his left eye. An intoxicated miner who loudly claimed at a local barber shop that his pocket had been picked found the money in his other pocket. After several Dutchess County farmers complained about missing sheep, two Germans who owned a slaughterhouse in Poughkeepsie informed police that two young men had been selling them mutton and promised to bring them a fat cow. One suspect gave his name as William Smith, but two men from Cold Spring who visited the jail said that, in fact, his name was Spellman and he was known in the village for his thievery. George Purdy of Cold Spring won top prizes at the annual Newburgh Bay Horticultural Society fair for his Isabella grapes, greengages and quinces. The New York Central and Hudson River Railroad banned newsboys from throwing books, newspapers, prize packages or circulars into the laps of passengers. A double-decked canal barge carrying $2,000 worth of coal [about $59,000 today] sank in 100 feet of water near West Point. The crew escaped on smaller boats. Two railroad detectives arrested H. Freeman, a German peddler well-known in Cold Spring, with a huge pack stuffed with ladies' corsets. He said Isaac Levi had paid him $2 [$59] to retrieve the pack after it was thrown from a freight train near Stony Point. After being jailed on $1,000 [$29,000] bond, Freeman retracted his confession, saying he had found the corsets by happenstance. During a search of the Levi home, one of Levi's sons swung a pitcher and hit a detective in the back of the neck. When William Smith caught a thief stuffing cabbages into a bag on the Undercliff estate, the culprit asked for leniency, then stood up, punched Smith in the face and ran. Two preachers from Poughkeepsie spoke from the vacant lot at the corner of Main and Stone streets to what The Cold Spring Recorder called a "small and changing audience" about the need for a national ban on liquor sales. 100 Years Ago (October 1925) James Nastasi covered a home on Pine Street occupied by grocer John Sackal with Elastic Magnesite Stucco, which its manufacturer claimed was weatherproof, fireproof and crackproof. E.L. Post & Son offered home demonstrations of the Hoover vacuum cleaner, available on an installment plan with $6.25 [$115] down. The Playhouse in Nelsonville was screening The Ten Commandments, directed by Cecil DeMille, and Circus Days, starring Jackie Coogan. A Columbus Day celebration at Loretto Hall included performances by soprano Rita Hamun of the Metropolitan Opera House and four rounds of sparring by boxer Joe Col...

Applicant argued project would be 'low intensity' The Fishkill Planning Board earlier this month voted unanimously to deny an application to build a 51,500-square-foot self-storage facility just outside of Beacon, ending more than three years of review. The project sought to construct a two-story building with 333 self-storage units on a partially wooded, 4.7-acre parcel at 1292 Route 9D, between Van Ness Road in Beacon and Interstate 84. It would have required a special-use permit because the site is in Fishkill's restricted business zone, which does not permit self-storage facilities. To receive the permit, the Planning Board had to determine that the use is "substantially similar" to others allowed in the district, such as hotels, restaurants and offices. The board's attorney, Dominic Cordisco, explained during its Oct. 2 meeting that the application failed to meet any of the four criteria required to establish similarity: consistency with the town's comprehensive plan; consistency with the intent of the restricted business zone, which limits uses adjacent to neighborhoods; no adverse impacts to public health and safety; and no greater intensity of traffic, parking, noise and other impacts than allowed uses. Because it failed the substantial similarity test, the application was ineligible for Planning Board review. "It is, in effect, a denial, but it is the process that is laid out in the [town] code," Cordisco said. Cordisco said that the applicant had argued that a self-storage facility would be "low intensity" compared to uses allowed in the zone, "but that's not the test. The test is whether it's substantially similar and compatible with the district." Many residents, including from Beacon, had opposed the project. Beacon Mayor Lee Kyriacou last year asked the town to investigate alternative entries, saying that southbound drivers on 9D would likely make illegal left turns or U-turns to get into the facility. Kyriacou and others predicted that traffic would increase on nearby residential roads as drivers turned around to get to the site. To allay concerns, project officials said they would post directions online and petition GPS providers to use routes avoiding residential streets. A consultant hired by the town said that self-storage businesses are typically located in commercial or industrial zones. There is a self-storage facility on Route 9D, about a half mile from the proposed site, and another nearby on Route 52. After voting, Planning Board Chair Jonathan Caner noted that 1292 Realty LLC's request for a refund of $30,820 in application fees had been referred to Town Supervisor Ozzy Albra. Albra said on Thursday (Oct. 23) that the request was denied because, according to Cordisco's review, the costs incurred by the town and its consultants were "reasonable and necessary given the procedural and substantive issues and concerns posed by this application," including, in June, the unusual step of the Planning Board authorizing the town planner to finalize an environmental impact statement on the project.