Hearing the
voices, all of them
Shortly after the polls closed last Tuesday, I had the privilege
of standing inside the heart of the Town of Olive as it waited
patiently to cast its votes. We were in a building named for
a passionate educator who basically founded the Onteora school
system: For those of you who don’t know Bennett, it’s
a great school and a great place. I never knew Reginald Bennett
but I’ve heard a lot about him from my buddy Howard
Mosher, whose dad was his best friend. A native of Chichester,
most of Reg’s favorite fishing holes are on what’s
now my land, the same pools I’ve taught my kids to fish
in. Like other places around here, I sometimes wonder how
much or how little they’ve changed, like our towns themselves.
What I saw at Bennett School was the pride and purpose of
people standing together to face what many believed was a
threat to their community. For that, I loved and respected
every one of them. But what struck me was that that’s
exactly the same way I felt just a few hours before, seeing
exactly the same thing in the faces at the Phoenicia School.
After taking a few pictures, I asked election officials to
show me the vote counters on the machines. Totaling the numbers
and adding those who hadn’t voted yet, I saw that by
the next morning, the heart of Olive would be hurting, as
if it had somehow lost something, and I wondered what Reg
Bennett would make of all this. If he were to run for school
board today, to many he’d be an outsider in Olive too.
Any time a good school budget passes there’s reason
to be pleased. We are pleased about that, and about the good
judgment shown by the voters on the other ballot propositions.
This year for the obvious reason I’m married to one
of the board candidates, we made no endorsements nor otherwise
sought to influence the election outcome. But the voters in
every town, we think, did fine without our input. In Olive
and Shandaken, strong bipartisan turnouts for local residents
showed a healthy concern for those town’s interests.
Hurley’s voters also turned out in decent numbers, Woodstock’s
on the other hand, well, someone should probably inform most
of that town that they live here too.
We congratulate Olive’s George Haug on what we see as
an extremely successful write-in campaign. It was, as he said
he hoped, a civics lesson of sorts, and it certainly drew
an impressive voter turnout. But we take serious issue with
those who sounded the false alarm that Large Parcel is somehow
still alive as an issue or a threat to the town of Olive.
Onteora’s board both before and after this election
has a committed 4-vote majority (Olive’s 3 members plus
board President David Patterson) which will insure that the
issue cannot and will not come before the board for the next
several years. So the issue is effectively deader than Elvis.
And the fiction that it’s not, repeated in hundreds,
perhaps thousands of calls to Olive’s voters, was in
our view little more than a cynical manipulation. Why some
tried to sell it to others is a question people in Olive really
should be asking each other. We wish Olive well in its efforts
to exclude reservoir properties from Large Parcel in the future,
we certainly agree they shouldn’t be included. But we
also think that trying to frighten and control one’s
own neighbors through deception is not the right way to build
community or even to maintain political control. Someone once
asked Reg Bennett what it was he really taught kids up at
the Sunshine Hill schoolhouse. “I teach them to tell
the truth,” he said.
We’re not going to try and answer Pontius Pilate’s
big question but we will say this: Elections are not about
winning anything, they’re about governing, about trying
to make things work as well as they can work. Olive did not
lose anything in this election nor did Shandaken or the other
towns win. What happened we think, is that a better sense
of balance has been established, one that more accurately
reflects Onteora’s different communities and their need
to be represented. We think what it means is that we’ll
see a somewhat more responsive, more inclusive, and more stable
school board going forward. That we think, is a win for everyone
and especially for every kid in the district.
To the three board candidates, we offer congratulations on
a good and positive campaign. To the one new board member,
I’m proud of you sweetheart, and I know you’ll
do a great job. To the people of Shandaken, who, like those
in Olive, turned out in force for what they believed was right
and fair, I’m very proud to be one of you. We all know
it’s tough to make a living here. Taxes, including school
taxes are a real burden for most everyone but they weren’t
what this election was about. That issue was taxation without
representation, something that’s not only tyranny, but
something no town should ever seek to impose on its neighbor.
Every community’s entitled to a voice in our collective
future. To everyone who came out to help find those voices
and to be heard themselves, thank you for stepping up.
BP
