In the news

Reactions to DSS vote vary
by John Mason
Hudson-Catskill Newspapers

COLUMBIA COUNTY — Wednesday’s decision to move the Department of Social Services six miles out of Hudson to the former Ockawamick School was not a surprise, but it did spell relief for some and disappointment for others....

Alan Skerrett, county chapter president of the NAACP, was disappointed in Wednesday’s vote, but said, “Many people out there last night believe we need to continue to resist this move and will continue to resist any way we can. There seems to be a consensus of caring people that we can’t play dead.”

Speaking of caring people, Skerrett said he was most disappointed by what he saw as a lack of sensitivity among the decision-makers.

“People never respond, ‘We know it will be difficult, and we’re going to be sure it’s not a hardship.’ They never offer anything to that effect. At least say something to the effect that ‘We know this will be a hard road to go, but we’ll do our best to make it as feasible as possible.’ There’s no remorse: It makes them seem even more callous in their mission.”

He said Mayor Rick Scalera offered a dramatic contrast in his brief, but eloquent statement that was from the heart.

Supervisors approve DSS move

Protestors await the start of the Columbia County Board of Supervisors meeting inside 401 State Street, Wednesday. At that meeting, lawmakers approved the plan to move the Department of Social Services and 14 other county departments six miles outside the city of Hudson, to the abandoned former Ockawamick School. Pictured (from left): Dan Udell (C-G NAACP), Alan Skerrett (C-G NAACP), Mary Udell (C-G NAAC), Claudia Bruce, city Treasurer Eileen Halloran, Alderman Abdus Miah (D, Hudson-2) and Londa McCullough.
(Photo by John Mason, Hudson-Catskill Newspapers)

RALLY ON March 11

Bottom Line: Keep DSS in Hudson!
HOW MUCH WILL THE OCKAWAMICK PLAN REALLY COST? IS IT TRULY THE BEST OPTION?

The Columbia County Board of Supervisors is poised to move 15 county departments away from Hudson and into the abandoned former Ockawamick School in Claverack without full consideration of Plan "B," a viable option that provides the space needed, keeps the departments accessible and will cost the taxpayers less.

By contrast, the plan currently favored by the board leadership will place the Department of Social Services SIX MILES OUTSIDE of the city, despite the fact that the majority of DSS clients live in the 12534 area code. In these hard times, how can this be a smart, economic move? Is it reasonable to expect people to pay $10 to travel by taxi from Hudson -- and $10 to return -- when they need access to the services offered by DSS?

WITHOUT AN EXISTING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM OR TRANSPORTATION PLAN IN PLACE HOW WILL PEOPLE GET TO OCKAWAMICK? HOW CAN A DECISION BE MADE WITHOUT THE ANSWER TO THIS ESSENTIAL QUESTION?

On Wednesday, March 11, the Board of Supervisors will be asked to vote on the proposal to remove DSS from the city. If the vote goes forward at that time the decision will be made without the benefit of critical information and analysis, and a substantial number of people will suffer as a result.

Come to 401 State Street (corner of State and Fourth streets) at 6:30 p.m. and,

• Tell the board a decision made now almost guarantees that children and families will be denied access to essential human services. People in need will fall between the bureaucratic cracks of an already unfriendly system.
• Tell the board to stop this ill-conceived and unfair proposal before it goes any further. Urge the supervisors to visit the existing DSS office on Railroad Avenue -- see what a day there entails, and experience the issues first hand.
• Tell the board to wait -- to vote after important questions are answered, and every supervisor has the information required to make a fully informed decision.

Rally to be seen and heard 6:30 p.m., Wednesday (March 11), 401 State Street, Hudson. For more information, call Linda Mussmann at (518) 209-7966.

Thank you for speaking out with me against biased coverage and lack of diversity!

The NAACP's had a busy week!

In 55 cities, from Jacksonville and Myrtle Beach to Boston and Detroit, NAACP members like you met with Fox TV station managers to demand they pressure Fox owner Rupert Murdoch to make concrete plans for putting an end to racially biased coverage and lack of diversity at his New York Post newspaper and Fox News.

"Make Murdoch Fix it" was the rallying cry of NAACP members who were joined by faith leaders, elected officials and community leaders to demand changes. In Lansing, James Gill, the second VP of the Michigan State Conference, and others met with the station manager at WSYM-FOX. In Dayton, 10 members of the Wilberforce University and University of Dayton college chapters delivered a letter to the manager of Fox affiliate WRGT. Atlanta, Greenville, North Charleston, Raleigh/Durham, Tulsa, and San Antonio also saw action!

NAACP supporters also sent more than 25,000 emails to Mr. Murdoch.

The action was sparked by a February 18 New York Post cartoon that showed police officers having shot dead a monkey that supposedly represented the author of the $800 billion stimulus package. As Roger Vann, our senior VP of field operations and membership, explained, the racist cartoon "outraged our members by comparing African Americans to primates. And it sullied police officers at a time when many communities are torn by suspicious police killings of young African American men."

In addition to the nationwide actions, the NAACP has been lobbying successfully in Washington to help pass key legislation, including the economic stimulus package and the Lilly Ledbetter equal-pay-for-women act. We also worked hard to ensure the confirmation of America's first African American attorney general, Eric Holder.

I want to thank you for standing with us and allowing us to have a strong voice to speak out against racism and for the changes we need.

Sincerely,

Benjamin Todd Jealous
President and CEO
NAACP

NY NAACP president condemns NY Post cartoon

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 18, 2009

"Yesterday, the NY Post ran an editorial cartoon depicting an unarmed, gorilla-like primate on the ground; being shot by two law enforcement officers. The caption indicated that the gorilla represented the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama.

Such a blatantly racist cartoon is not only highly disrespectful but it is also dangerously suggestive. Sadly, we know that far to many unarmed Black men have been murdered, shot to death, by law enforcement officers all across the Country." Dukes said.

"There is no signature or byline on the cartoon, showing further the usual shameful cowardice of those who are responsible; and the complicity of the entire Post staff who published it. This a new low, even for the Post." She continued.

"We remember only too well, the link between such racist stereotypes of years gone by that led to the humiliation, degradation and brutal assaults on Black citizens everywhere." said Dukes.

How ironic the celebration of African American history and the NAACP 100th Anniversary, further that one of the founders of the NAACP 100 years ago was a journalist and the publisher/owner of the New York Evening Post, Oswald Garrison Villard, a white man who was the grandson of abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison. He even donated space in The Post to issue the "call" to the formation meeting for the NAACP. He must be spinning in his grave.

Hazel N. Dukes, President
NAACP New York State Conference
39 Broadway, 22 Floor
New York, New York 10006
212-344-7474 Ext. 103

In the news

Holder Urges Justice Dept. Workers to Discuss Race Openly

The Washington Post
Thursday, February 19, 2009; A02

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. urged employees yesterday to take advantage of Black History Month to begin a dialogue about race, labeling the United States a "nation of cowards" for not discussing the country's checkered history openly.

Holder, the first African American to serve as the nation's top law enforcement officer, said that Justice Department workers have a special responsibility to acknowledge social limits and to push past them.

The department's civil rights division, which came to being half a century ago to help the Freedom Riders and students seeking to integrate public schools, more recently has been the target of criticism from Democrats who say it has lost its way.

Holder told employees that the level of social interaction among people of different races is "bleak" and that it in many ways does not "differ significantly from the country that existed some 50 years ago."

Demographic changes that within decades will result in no single racial majority only underscore the need for openness and, in some cases, confrontation on issues that separate people, Holder said.

He added: "If we are to make progress in this area, we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about racial matters that continue to divide us."

-- Carrie Johnson

‘Plan B’ would keep Social Services in city

by John Mason
Hudson-Catskill Newspapers
February 4, 2009

HUDSON — As county supervisors have been meeting regularly to decide which county departments will move to the new county office building planned for the former Ockawamick School, 21 county residents met to discuss ramifications of the move and to consider “Plan B.” The meeting was sponsored by the Bottom Line Party and hosted by Linda Mussmann and Supervisor Ed Cross, D-Hudson2.

Also present at the meeting were two other county supervisors, John Musall, D-Hudson1 and Bart Delaney, R-Hudson5, Hudson Mayor Rick Scalera, Aldermen Ellen Thurston, D-3rd Ward, Robert Donahue, D-5th Ward, and Carole Osterink, D-1st Ward, and local NAACP Chapter President Alan Skerritt [sic].

In 2008, the county purchased the 77,000-square-foot, $1.5-million school building on Route 217 in Claverack. At first it was intended to be the home of the Department of Social Services, but in the face of strong opposition to that, supervisors are now holding meetings aimed at deciding which departments will move there.

Under Plan B, which seemed to be favored by most of the attendees, a three-story, 38,000-square-foot building would be erected to house DSS on the northwestern corner of Fourth and Columbia streets. Across Fourth Street from that would be built a three-story parking garage with a 200-car capacity.

Behind the site of this new DSS building, across Long Alley, a new parking lot that would hold 60 vehicles is already being built.

Scalera said the building would cost about $7.5 million and the garage would be $3.6 million, making a total of about $11 million, which he said is a $4 million savings compared to the $15 million Ockawamick is predicted to cost after renovation.

In an e-mail, Supervisor William C. Hughes, D-Hudson4, suggested that, if Plan B were adopted, Ockawamick could be retrofited for non-service-based agencies like the county historian, the coroner and the Youth Bureau.

The reason attendees liked Plan B was their dissatisfaction with Plan A, and particularly with the fact that service-based agencies, such as DSS, Department of Health and Department of Mental Health would be strong candidates to move to the new site, six miles from the city of Hudson.

The mayor said the $100,000 a year the county is budgeting to transport people from Hudson to Ockawamick would add up to $3 million or $4 million over three or four decades.

Delaney said the transportation plan would cause more congestion from people sitting and waiting for their appointments, and Musall said the plan of seven trips a day could cause someone with a 15-minute appointment to be waiting for three or four hours.

“You get in the middle of something, and the light goes on, the bus is leaving, come back again tomorrow at 9 a.m.,” Cross said.

“To me, they have turned their back on Hudson and are trying, unconsciously or consciously, to decentralize the county seat,” Thurston said.

“We have individual pieces and we’re trying to make them fit,” Cross said. “It’s a tight squeeze. This fits here, this fits here — but not, how this will accommodate our consumers.”

Delaney stressed that it was not a Republican/Democrat divide, but a divide between Hudson supervisors and all the other supervisors.

“I think it’s a lack of understanding of what the county seat means and is,” he said.

Mussmann said the supervisors have been ignoring the issue of where transitional housing fits into the picture. For the past several years, the county has been housing homeless persons in motels in the area at a significant cost. It’s generally agreed that a transitional housing facility needs to be built, but no one is saying where.

Musall suggested transitional housing could be a playing card for the city in getting the county to keep the service providing agencies in Hudson.

“It’s not fair not to have [transitional housing] in the discussion,” Mussmann said.

There was also discussion of the economic impact of the move on Hudson.

“If you take 200 employees that’s going to have an economic impact,” said former Supervisor Gail Grandinetti. “They walk the streets, buy all the time. It will hurt people’s lunch [business].”

Delaney said he had done an informal survey and learned that many shops get the business of the county employees, and don’t want to see them go: “It might be the margin of profit these people need,” he said.

Sara Sterling said Hudson is already a “campus,” and wondered where employees would eat if they moved to Claverack.

Delaney recalled how, as he was marching down toward Front Street in the 2008 Flag Day Parade, an elderly woman with a cane came out and yelled at him, “How am I supposed to get to Ockawamick?”

“She doesn’t want to go out there,” he said.