Get facts straight, Mr. Ferguson

Posted 11/1/11

According to your candidate’s statement aired on Thunder 102 radio, you claim the Town of Callicoon “wrongfully” refused $370,000 in funding for the photovoltaic project. In fact, $370,000 was …

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Get facts straight, Mr. Ferguson

Posted

According to your candidate’s statement aired on Thunder 102 radio, you claim the Town of Callicoon “wrongfully” refused $370,000 in funding for the photovoltaic project. In fact, $370,000 was the proposed cost that was unanimously rejected by the board at the bid opening. In fact, $225,000 was the amount available through NYSERDA ($125,000) and Assemblywoman Gunther ($100,000). The town requested if the grant could be used for more necessary projects such as repairing bridges, or improving Youngsville’s water treatment plant. We were informed the funding could only be used for renewable energy and that other towns were “standing in line” for the funds. Not one other town requested the funds, and some of the funding from Assemblywoman Gunther was awarded to CRMC’s new emergency department construction.

Also interesting is your renewed stance on fracking. For the last three years you, and the grassroots organization “Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy” (CCSE) that you helped to establish, have been the most outspoken opponents of natural gas drilling and fracking perhaps in the State of New York.

Quoted in a local newspaper as saying “fracking will be banned in every town in New York State,” you now call “ridiculous” the claim that you favor banning fracking in our town. You wrote it is “nonsense” that you favor banning fracking in your October 19 letter to the editor in The River Reporter. Yet your “testimony of Bruce Ferguson” posted by CCSE reads: “a noisy, polluting, high-impact industrial activity such as shale gas extraction can have a devastating effect, and is an economic boon we can do without.”

Mr. Ferguson, our residents have a right to know which stance you intend to take after the election.

Amazing how a simple local election, or more precisely an individual’s campaign for public office, can alter the opinion of even the most ardent opponent (supporter?) of one of the most controversial issues of our time.

Thomas R. Bose

Candidate for Supervisor of the Town of Callicoon

Youngsville, NY

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