The Catskill Chronicle

By Paul Smart – Reprinted with permission – Phoenicia Times

  There certainly are a number of fascinating issues, elements, and odd phenomenon to take into account as we all head to the voting booths on November 3rd to decide the direction of our local government for at least the next two years. Quite a bit of what’s happening can not be affected by those in the positions we will be voting on; nevertheless, the way we end up voting will reflect the effects of everything that’s happening around us. Such is the nature of life, and elections, in a modern democracy.
  First off, there’s this whole financial mess coming down on us from state, federal and global levels. Income has become harder to produce, be it on a personal basis or municipally, through sales, mortgage and other fluctuating taxes. Credit lines and grants are fewer and farther between, given the major crises our banking systems have been through, as well as the greater roles in all our lives we’ve given these institutions in recent decades. The result has raised everyone’s anxiety levels over taxes to unanticipated levels where ANY slight shift in tax amounts, be it a few dollars or a couple hundred, is being talked about in biblical terms used to describe the breaking of camels’ backs.
  Yet balancing these worries regarding the availability of money is our systems’ continuing need to keep spending, on both personal and governmental bases. Hard costs have continued to rise, especially as demand has shrunk in many areas. Fuel and maintenance and materials still cost more, on an averaged basis, than they did a year before. And our penchant for pushing off maintenance during better days, for politicized savings, may have caught up with us on many fronts.
  Then there’s that second of the major things at play this election: the fixed costs tied to contracted labor, as well as the ever-rising expenses of insurance, retirement, and other benefits. No matter what some say, there’s not much we can do about these things on an individual or governmental basis except understand how unions and organized labor got us to so many of today’s benefits, from five day work weeks to vacations and sick leaves, as well as the institution of civil service fixes on excessive political spoils. Simply using bogeyman terms such as Marxist or Socialist means nothing if it forces us to simply look away from the reasons these philosophies arose in the first place, as a means of trying to ensure that money doesn’t all end up in one place, and that it’s uses include a bit of fairness for working folk as well as owners.
  Look…the threat of a teachers’ strike was averted at Onteora and now we can all work towards healing the bad blood built up between the different elements of our educational system in recent years. Or just hold on to them, should we prefer to see our kids raised like the sons and daughters of abusive relationships.
  The point is that these are systemic problems that need a greater societal discourse, and not use as battering rams in local elections.
  To keep things simple, we’ll also bring up a third rail upon which this year’s elections seem to be racing, even if few candidates have seen fit to discuss its presence much yet. We’re talking about climate change and our subsequent global need to shift the ways in which we utilize energy, an issue that many people scoffed at just one electoral cycle ago, but which pulled in SRO crowds at last week’s Local Government Day focus at Belleayre Mountain.
  Much of what was discussed at that gathering started with elements of doom and gloom, from the effects of increasingly drastic weather on local flooding patterns and shifting infrastructure needs, to bigger picture worries about changing economies and everyone’s need to adapt to new energy realities. But it also included enough local success stories, from Hunter’s building of solar-aided windmills to Delaware County’s initiation of promising new grass pellet and wood biomass industries, to instill hope in the most jaded participants.
  Sure, no candidates in our towns have developed meaningful platforms on these matters to attract voters yet. But that does not diminish the importance of these environmental issues in the ways we choose who we vote for this election.
  Does climate change trump development? Maybe. At least it has reached a point where it needs to hold a prominent seat at any table where new ways of spending to bring in new income is discussed.
  Just as the need to keep spending locally, be it on town and county employees, has to be considered every time we talk about how best to keep our Upstate economy afloat.
Complicated matters, on the one hand. But also the sort of backdrop that makes our town’s and county’s elections as important, if not more so, than the better-publicized votes we follow on a state, national and global level.
  Because here, we can see effects. And, hopefully, affect all our futures.

*Chronicle Editor’s note – While the editorial was written on the “other side of the mountain from Sullivan County, many of the issues are the same and so this editorial is reprinted here with gratitude to the publisher, Brian Powers – Phoenicia Times.