From top to bottom, there’s strength in commitment

If you are a resident of the Upper Delaware River Valley, chances are that you’re feeling pretty well abandoned and disenfranchised recently by the local governments that are supposed to be serving you.

First, a bunch of officials from New York State, eager to replenish their depleted coffers with gambling revenues—not to mention redressing several hundred years of injustice dealt out to native Americans by earlier generations in other parts of the state—stampeded the Sullivan County Legislature into approving an ill-conceived, inadequately planned proposal to bring five casinos to the county. The valley’s legislators—Chris Cunningham, Rodney Gaebel and Kathy LaBuda—voted against endorsing the bill but were outvoted.

Sadly, recent polling evidence suggests that the river valley legislators reflected the views of the overall population of the county more closely than did the legislative majority.

On the heels of this blow came the Sullivan West school board vote in which the river valley communities, having entrusted their fortunes to the larger entity formed when they agreed to merge their school districts, saw their own wishes and aspirations for small viable elementary schools mowed down by a seemingly indifferent majority focused on ever-changing amounts of money and an incomplete analysis of market values.

In the wake of such experiences, it is all too easy to feel stuck like flies in a complicated web of authority we feel helpless to influence. But there is reason to believe that we may not yet have exhausted every recourse.

The recent testimony of Sandra Schultz, Assistant Superintendent of the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River suggests that we may have an unexpected source of help with regard to the casino issue. At the Assembly hearings on casinos last Thursday, Schultz pointed out that the governor’s proposed casino legislation may conflict with the River Management Plan drawn up in 1988. In that year the governor signed an executive order mandating New York State compliance with that plan. The possibility of conflict means that at the very least, more intensive study of the casino bill with specific reference to preservation of the river valley is required. Thus, this may prove to be a case in which a higher level of government actually comes to the rescue of locals whose wishes have been ignored by a lower level of government.

And there is another source of power left to us more important than a higher level of government: the lowest. No, not the township: the individual citizen, you and me.

Even when it seems that we have no help from any level of government, we can still fall back on our own resources, our friends, our businesses and our commitment to our work. The experience of this newspaper at the New York Press Association Spring Convention and Better Newspaper Contest may provide a parable in this respect.

We are a small rural paper, in one of the two smallest divisions in the association, operating out of one of the smaller towns served by New York State weeklies. But day in, day out, we have come in and done the best job we can to serve our communities and pursue our commitment to excellence.

We had nothing but ourselves and the strong bedrock of our communities, readers and advertisers to fall back on. But we were enough. Your community newspaper was named the Best of Show in New York State this year. And it didn’t take an act of Congress to make it that way.

This same source of power may yet come to our aid in the matter of the closure of the Narrowsburg and Delaware Valley schools. Groups of valley residents are gathering to access what the community feels, to establish a set of goals and explore possible options of the future of the school community. Gaining strength from each other, we may yet be able to take our destinies back into our own hands.

Dr. Punnybone

A Changed Man