Wednesday April 24, 2024 
Poestenkill – Vote NO on the Blank Check Taxing District
In the Jan. 21 edition of The Advertiser Harold Van Slyke wrote “Establishing an Ambulance District…does not increase property taxes”.
What? Hello?
Saying that establishing a taxing district won’t raise taxes is like signing a blank check and not expecting it to cost any money.
Does Harold think we’re that dumb?
Mohawk Ambulance has been delivering excellent service to Poestenkill for years at no cost to the taxpayer. As one Poestenkill resident is fond of saying: “What a deal!”
Please vote no on the blank check ambulance district vote on March 30, 2021, from Noon – 8PM at the Sullivan-Jones VFW in Poestenkill.
Dave Hass
Councilman, Town of Poestenkill
The Silenced Majority
What we have witnessed during this most recent election has been a major step in the devolution of democracy into despotism. How and why can I say that? The how is that I still have a modicum of my right to free speech remaining. The why is because I read and understand history. Someday soon I could still be writing of my political observations but it could also be that it won’t be seen on the Internet by anyone.
I’ve been writing political observations for a few decades now and until last year had witnessed increasing readership in both print and electronic media. There was a time when our newspaper industry was run by men of honor and much more truthful, fair and balanced. Some editors may have disagreed with your speech but were emphatic about your right to speak it. Slowly but steadily the creep of socialism inserted itself into our nation’s editorial pages until the very same truth that I wrote years earlier was no longer acceptable.
That same socialist creep is now affecting our ability to speak truth to power on the Internet. I know that there will be new opportunities for free speech to have a comeback but does it even matter when the electoral reality is that votes, particularly rural and suburban votes, no longer matter? When the integrity of the voting process devolves to the point where losers become winners, even if it’s simply an innocent but counterproductive matter of logistics and demographics, democracy and despotism pass each other going in and out the back door. That’s when it doesn’t even matter if conservative writers have the ability to get the truth out and sway public opinion back to the center. Hopefully time will prove me wrong. But if the silent majority becomes the silenced majority, how will anyone know?
David Crawmer, Wynantskill
Working Families Party Primaries
This past November, Donald Trump lost big in New York. He wasn’t the State’s only big loser.
Others included the Independence and the Green Parties. Both lost automatic ballot status by failing to get enough votes for president on their ballot lines to meet required State law minimums. Several other minor parties also lost ballot status last year.
New York now has only four parties with automatic ballot status – Democratic, Republican, Conservative and Working Families.
When 2020 ended, there were over 9,000 registered voters in Rensselaer County (over 500 in Sand Lake) enrolled in the Independence or the Green Party, parties now without ballot status. If you are one of those voters, you are now ineligible to participate in primary elections this year – unless you re-register before February 15 and chose one of the four ballot line parties.
Voters can change their party enrollment by filing a new voter registration form with the Rensselaer County Board of Election. The form is available on the Board of Election’s website: https://www.rensco.com/departments/board-of-elections/voter-registration/.
The Albany Times Union reported January 12 that Rensselaer County Republicans were moving their supporters enrolled in the Independence Party to Working Families. Their goal is for their candidates to win Working Families primaries and run on the Working Families line, despite major differences between Republican and Working Families Party philosophies.
We urge Independence and Green Party enrollees philosophically aligned with the progressive values of the Democratic and Working Families Parties, who choose to maintain a minor party enrollment, to enroll in the Working Families Party now, before February 15, so they can vote in Working Families Party primaries for candidates aligned with those values.
Please feel free to contact me at sandlakedems@nullgmail.com.
Garrett DeGraff, Sand Lake Democratic Committee Chair