The Dutchess County Legislature considered or acted upon a variety of items in its committee day and regular board meeting sessions on March 6 and 10, respectively. Besides an extensive agenda of correcting tax bills, a local law to establish an at-store recycling program for plastic bags was debated, the purchase of an online sex offender registry that will aid in tracking their presence in a community was approved, and an eight-member elections task force was created to consider the best method for tabulating county votes.
Presentations were also made on the questions of what to do about the vacant Nelson House hotel on Market Street in Poughkeepsie and the problem of out-of-control vine growth.
And the week’s work ended with an oblique, but highly symbolic, pronouncement by the Legislature on the Gov. Eliot Spitzer scandal.
The plastic bag recycling law is intended to address what is a worldwide problem of discarded plastic bags posing a litter or environmental hazard threat; in the latter case because of the petroleum content in their makeup, at a local level. Several members of the public spoke in favor of the law before the deliberations of the Environment Committee on the afternoon of March 6, with one person citing public policy in Ireland, where plastic bags are banned.
The proposed Dutchess County program would require that a highly visible bin be made available at store entrances to collect the bags and make reusable bags available for purchase at larger stores.
“The cost to the stores is between five and nine cents a bag, and the volume of bags is enormous, so it makes economic sense,” said legislator William McCabe (D-LaGrange). “Those stores that have recycling bins are proud of what they’re doing.”
Casting doubt on the necessity of a law to handle the problem, legislator Robert Weiss (R-East Fishkill) said that the concern is best addressed by education.
“If people are educated, there will be a spirit of cooperation,” Weiss said. “I’m not sure a law is needed at this time. People will do the right thing if they know what the right thing is.”
There will be a public hearing on the proposed law at the beginning of the next regularly scheduled board meeting on Monday, April 14, at 7 p.m.
Database watch
After hearing a presentation on the sex offender registry made before the Public Safety Committee by Undersheriff Kirk Imperati, the Legislature unanimously agreed to purchase access to the online service. Sex Offender Watch is a national database which tracks the location of registered sex offenders, and can be accessed in a local manner. Schools, day care centers and members of the public in Dutchess County will be able to subscribe for free and receive updates from Albany on where registered sex offenders reside near their neighborhoods by providing their e-mails. The service, which initially costs $11,000 and can be renewed annually for $1,500, will begin March 31.
The creation of the Secure and Accurate Elections Task Force was the subject of considerable controversy when it came before the Government Services and Administration Committee, but it centered on the form the task force would take rather than on the desirability of one.
Legislator Joel Tyner (D–Rhinebeck/Clinton), who co-sponsored the resolution and introduced it, had originally proposed a seven-member body, which would investigate the relative merits of hand-counting paper ballots versus optical scan computer voting machines, and would report back to the Legislature by July of this year.
Objections were made that this would lead to a lopsided representation in terms of partisanship, so the resolution was amended by Tyner to create an eight-member panel, four to be appointed by the majority leader, four by the minority leader, with each appointing a co-chair. The resolution then passed unanimously.
At its regular board meeting on March 10, the Legislature heard extensive presentations on the Nelson House and the problem of “mile-a-minute vine, which as its name implies is a fast-growing “noxious weed” which has become a considerable local nuisance.
Presenting the report of the Nelson House Citizen Advisory Committee, member Robert Mortell said, “The Nelson House definitely has local heritage value in terms of the people who have stayed there and the events which have taken place there,” and recommended against its demolition.
Citing the examples of other local historic hotels that have been successfully renovated and adapted to other purposes, such as the Stuyvesant and Kirkland Hotels in Kingston, he recommended that the county obtain a professional, impartial reuse feasibility assessment to explore the costs and options for transforming the building. Noting that the city has already declared the Nelson House a local landmark, he said office space or a local history education center were ideas that should be explored.
Presenting the report of the Environmental Management Council on mile-a-minute vine, council president Lalita Malik said that the plant’s out-of-control growth threatens farms, woodlands, wetlands, streambeds, parklands and private property in Dutchess County. “Some property owners have told us that it is a full time job to get rid of it. The sooner you get to tackling this problem, the better you’re going to be,” she said. Options for controlling the “noxious weed” include hand pulling, herbicides, mechanical cutting and steam spraying, she said.
At the conclusion of the meeting, the Legislature unanimously passed a resolution opposing Spitzer’s proposed reduction in state aid to New York State community colleges. But before the resolution was voted upon, Spitzer’s name was removed and the text altered to read “the Governor of New York,” in an obvious assertion by the members that it was a name which they preferred not to hear.