Today's daily news.

Click above to download or play today's "Better Weather." Produced by Joe Demanso of the Catskill Makers Syndicate.

Patricia R. Doxsey is reporting for the Daily Freeman Rhinebeck's Foster's Coach House Tavern has taken down racist depictions of black people from its walls, hours after the author and podcaster Touré tweeted a photo of what he called "an insanely racist" carved wood wall hanging to his 216,000 Twitter followers. The restaurant has been a village mainstay for more than a century. On its Facebook page and in a statement to the Freeman, Foster's wrote: "Certain artwork has made our patrons uncomfortable and in order to be sensitive to our customers and community we have chosen to remove the artwork. Foster’s has been on the record in its support of peaceful assembly voicing civil rights and equality. We look forward to continuing our service to the community which we have done for over 130 years," the statement continued. The wood carving that was removed is a depiction of an 1892 illustration by Thomas Worth titled "Speeding On The Darktown Track" created for the Darktown comic series by Courier and Ives. In a series of tweets August 9, Touré posted a photo of the wall hanging, which he described as "a black man with huge lips and bugged out eyes, being dragged by a horse and plow." He then detailed his encounter with employees and a manager of the eatery about the piece. Touré said he noticed the carving when he went into the restaurant to pick up an order. "I said the food here is fine, but why is this insanely racist statue on the wall in the dining room? Is that what y'all are about?" he posted. Touré said the manager denied the wall hanging was racist, and she defended it as art and history. Foster's Coach House Tavern first opened in 1890 as the Village Tavern. It has been owned since 2017 by Neil and Elijah Bender, who continue to operate it. Neil Bender is a developer who owns several buildings in Uptown Kingston. Read the full story in the Daily Freeman.

The Albany County Legislature passed Local Law B, prohibiting waste burning in Albany County, on Aug. 10. Legislator Dustin Reidy reported on his Twitter feed that the vote was 32-7. The clean air law bans new waste facilities from establishing in Albany County. It also stops LafargeHolcim in Ravena from burning tires and trash, and Norlite in Cohoes, from burning any more toxic firefighting foam.

Kate Lisa is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media eight families have filed a federal class-action suit against the state Health Department and various public school districts to challenge regulations that allow school officials to override immunization exemptions for students with underlying conditions. The lawsuit includes the Coxsackie-Athens Central School District. Attorneys Sujata Gibson, Michael Sussman, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mary Holland filed the case in federal court late last month representing the families living in locations across the state in their battles to allow their children to return to school after district administrators overruled valid medical exemptions signed by the students’ physicians, freeing them from certain required vaccines. Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit anti-vaccination activist group founded by Kennedy, hosted a digital Zoom press conference at 10 a.m. August 6, with the legal team, a licensed physician and two parents with immune-compromised children involved in the litigation. The families named as defendants the state Health Department and Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker, Coxsackie-Athens School District, the Albany City School District, the Shenendehowa School District, the Penfield School District, the Lansing School District, the Ithaca City School District, the South Huntington School, and the Three Village School District. The superintendent of each district was named individually, as well. The state Health Department would not comment, citing pending litigation. Randall Squier, Coxsackie-Athens superintendent of schools, did not return multiple calls for comment. In June 2019, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed new legislation into law, amending Public Health Law § [Section] 2164, which no longer allows children from attending day care, preK or public, private and parochial school for non-medical vaccine exemption. In taking legal action, the attorneys with Children’s Health Defense, are asking the court to find the state policy unconstitutional and allow the children to return to school. Read the full story in The Ravena News-Herald.

Elizabeth Doran is reporting for Syracuse [dot] com 107 New York school districts have not filed the required school reopening plans with the State Education Department and the State Health Department, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said August 10. The plans outline how a school district plans to reopen and were due July 31. According to the governor's office the Catskill, Windham-Ashland-Jewett, Germantown and Ichabod Crane school districts did not submit their plans on time. If the missing plans are not filed by Fri., Aug. 14, those districts cannot reopen, Cuomo said. School districts must conduct at least three public sessions with parents, and one exclusively for teachers, to talk about the plans and answer questions. The state of New York has 749 school districts. “Despite clear guidance provided to these schools, which included a link to the DOH portal, some districts in follow-up calls said they filed with the State Education Department, which is not an executive agency, but didn’t file with DOH,‘‘ said Rich Azzopardi, senior advisor to the governor. According to messages posted on their websites, that was the case with the Catskill and Ichabod Crane districts. In Catskill's case, the district corrected its mistake by filing the required paperwork with the DOH on Mon., Aug. 10. But Cuomo's school list is also suspect. The River Newsroom reports that one school on the list, “Jeff Youngsville,” which may be a reference to the Jefferson-Youngsville Central School District, merged with the Narrowsburg and Delaware Valley districts in 1999 to create Sullivan West. Read the full story at Syracuse [dot] com.

Alex Greenberger reports for Art News that David Cort, one of the founders of the Videofreex collective that started what may have been America's first pirate television station in Greene County, died recently. He was 85. “David shared his laughter with the world and his twin daughters are the inheritors of his spirit,” Videofreex said in a statement. “And those of us who knew him laughed and cried with him too. May we all go rollicking on as he would … and resisting in the face of an imminent thrashing, as he did.” The Videofreex began at the Woodstock music festival in 1969, shooting video footage of the event. That led them to a contract for a television show about the counterculture on CBS, and writing a chapter about pirate television in Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book." CBS canceled the TV series before it aired, and they took the money and video equipment from those projects and relocated to the video collective to Lanesville (in the Town of Hunter, near the Ulster County border) in Greene County in the early 1970s. There, they started "Lanesville TV," what they claim is the first pirate television station. The group included Parry Teasdale, now the editor of The Columbia Paper, and formerly of The Independent. In 2015 the the Videofreex were featured in "The Art of Guerrilla Television" art show at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz. Read more about this story in Art News.

Today's daily news update.

Eric Anderson is reporting for the Times Union Amazon could soon open a bricks-and-mortar retail outlet at Crossgates Mall. The Amazon 4-star store is one of 31 either open or planned by the online retailer at locations nationwide. The Crossgates store would be the second to open in New York. Amazon's 4-star stores carry items that carry a four-star or above rating from customers, as well as top sellers and a selection of new and trending items. Amazon says customers can test-drive electronics and other devices, learn about products like Amazon's Alexa, find toys and games and even buy books. The store will be located on the upper level of the mall, not far from Lord & Taylor and almost directly above the Apple store. It is not clear how soon the store will open. Read the full story in the Times Union.

Christopher Martin is reporting for Bloomberg hundreds of additional utility workers working over the weekend were not enough to restore power to everyone in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey after Tropical Storm Isaias hit the region almost seven days ago. At least 160,000 homes and businesses remained in the dark as of early Mon., Aug. 10, marking a sixth day without service. Most of the remaining outages are on Long Island, in the Hudson Valley and in western Connecticut, according to utility websites. The extended outages have angered Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont. Both states have launched investigations into utility efforts to restore power. Consolidated Edison Inc., had 26,000 outages in New York as of Monday morning, and more than 3,800 workers removing trees and downed wires, and repairing equipment destroyed in the storm. The company said it is on target to restore service to the majority of its customers by Monday night. Eversource, which serves Connecticut, said at least 99 percent of its customers will be restored by late in the day August 11. Read the full story at bloomberg [dot] com.

Nora Mishanec is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media on how librarian Jacqueline Elmo-Emel put her time to good use during coronavirus pandemic lockdown. When Elmo-Emel first began working at the Mountain Top Library five years ago, she found slides, genealogical records and a filing cabinet stuffed with old black-and-white photographs. She then began scanning and adding them to the digital collection of New York Heritage, a website run by the Empire State Library Network, but work progressed slowly. When the pandemic closed down the library in mid-March Elmo-Emel was able to continue her archival work despite the shutdown. Elmo-Emel, along with Elyse Browne, another Mountain Top librarian, scanned thousands of slides previously unseen from the library's collection over the past months, expediting the process by about five years, Elmo-Emel said. Elmo-Emel said she has absorbed more history by handling old letters, records and photographs than she could have ever learned in school. Once the task of digitizing the library’s collection is complete, Elmo-Emel plans to move on to digitizing the Mountain Top Historical Society’s materials. Her goal is to make the society’s collection more accessible to the general public. The process reinforced her belief that libraries should preserve information, and also share that information with a wide audience. The Mountain Top Library Digital Collection can be found at nyheritage [dot] org. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.

Today's daily news.

Click above to download or play today's "Better Weather." Produced by Joe Demanso of the Catskill Makers Syndicate.

Bill Williams is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media approximately 35 people assembled in Kinderhook Village Square the morning of August 8, to call for Columbia County Sheriff David Bartlett to resign. Bartlett later declined to comment about the event. The group held signs that said “Justice for Harold” and “It’s Time for Bartlett to Resign” during the peaceful protest on the corner of Broad and Hudson streets. Drivers passing by honked their horns in support of the group. Trisha Arlene posted a brief video of the demonstration on Facebook, and here is an excerpt. CLICK HERE TO PLAY EXCERPT FROM THE PROTEST. Protesters expressed anger and frustration with the Sheriff's Department's handling of the investigation into the alleged assault of Harold Handy over the July 4th weekend at the home of local business owner Alex Rosenstrach and his wife, Deputy Sheriff Kelly Briscoe Rosenstrach. State police assumed control of the investigation this week at the request of Columbia County District Attorney Paul Czajka, one month after Handy was beaten. The district attorney’s office requested that state police handle the investigation given “the totality of the circumstances,” Czajka said. If an arrest is made, the Columbia County District Attorney's Office would prosecute; the state attorney general’s office declined to take the case. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.

The Altamont Enterprise reports that New York State’s Committee on Open Government says that the Berne Town Board's executive sessions for discussing “personnel matters” — as it has done at least twice this year and five times in 2019 — violate the state's Open Meetings Law. “While for some it may be a matter of semantics,” Executive Director Shoshanah Bewlay told The Enterprise, “you are correct that the [Open Meetings Law] requires that the public body describe the content of the Executive Session with specific reference to one of the stated enumerated proper topics for such session, and the words ‘personnel matters’ do not appear in the statute.” Councilperson Joel Willsey said that the board lied about discussing “personnel matters” to enter into an executive session on April 29 that he said was spent criticizing him. But new town lawyer Javid Afzali, from Bond Schoeneck & King, told the board executive session was appropriate for discussing personnel matters. “Under the Open Meetings Law,” Afzali said, “a permissible reason to go into executive session is to discuss personnel matters, which includes disciplinary matters. Elected officials are certainly subject to discipline.” But the Committee on Open Government says that is not true. Afzali declined to comment. The newspaper reports that the Berne Town Board went to an executive session, where the public cannot see or hear what is happening, because of “personnel matters" on April 22 and April 29, and five times last year under a different administration. The state’s Open Meetings Law says that an elected board may go into executive session for matters that will imperil public safety that will disclose the identity of a law-enforcement agent; that would imperil law enforcement involved in investigating or prosecuting a criminal offense; that involves litigation; that involves collective bargaining; that involves the preparation, grading, or administration of exams; or that involves the proposed acquisition, sale, or lease of property or securities when publicity could affect value. Read more about this story in The Altamont Enterprise.

Carl Campanile is reporting for the New York Post thousands of New Yorkers are still without power after Isaias. The New York State Legislature will hold a joint hearing calling utilities to account for failing to quickly restore power to hundreds of thousands of residents left in the dark after Hurricane Isaias. “Across the state we saw utilities fail and people lose power. Today, we still have thousands and thousands of people waiting for their power to be restored with no clear end in sight,”  Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins said in a statement August 8. “This is unacceptable. The Senate will be announcing hearings shortly to get to the bottom of what went wrong and why the response was so slow.” Committees overseeing utilities for the Senate and Assembly will conduct a joint hearing the week of Aug. 17, lawmakers said. The major utilities asked to testify will include Con Edison, PSEG Long Island, Central Hudson Gas and Electric, and Verizon among others, lawmakers said. Earlier in the week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo called on the state Public Service Commission to investigate the utilities, as well. MidHudsonNews [dot] com reported early August 9, that approximately 6,300 NYSEG customers in Dutchess, Putnam and Westchester counties, remained without power. Service to those customers was expected to be restored by 11 p.m., Mon., Aug. 10. Read the full stories in the New York Post and at MidHudsonNews [dot] com.

Diane Walden is reporting for The Columbia Paper Ancram's Stiehle House, thought to be one of the oldest structures in town, is no more. The wood frame building, located at 2407 Route 82, was condemned and demolished August 5, after being run through by an alleged drunk driver. Joseph P. Martino, 27, of Ancram was the driver of a Subaru Forester traveling southbound on Route 82 when he failed to negotiate a turn at the County Route 7 and State Route 82 intersection, and plowed into the north side of the west wall of the building. He continued through the structure and exited through the south end of the east wall, one-story above grade. The house was situated very close to the road. The driver and his two dogs escaped the crash unscathed. Martino was charged with driving while intoxicated and other related charges. Following the crash, Ancram Building Inspector and Code Enforcement Officer Edward Ferratto brought in Taconic Engineering that found the building was “unsafe and in imminent danger of collapse constituting a clear threat to human life and safety.” Ferratto condemned the building based on Taconic's findings. The building was owned by the Ancram Preservation Group and was under renovation at the time of the crash. The preservation group had hoped to renovate the Stiehle House for use by the Ancram Opera House as an office and housing for interns and artists. “This will be an irreparable loss for Ancram. With the Stiehle House gone, the hamlet will have no physical center. It is the first building seen on entering the hamlet from any direction. Its absence will be vividly apparent..." said Ancram Preservation Group President Christopher White. Read the full story in The Columbia Paper.

Today's daily news update.

Sarah Trafton is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media the state Commission of Correction found the Greene County Sheriff's Office violated state law and its own policies, thereby contributing to the death of Matthew Leombruno of Coxsackie in April 2018, when he was incarcerated at the county jail in Catskill. A 2019 report found that jail officials could have prevented Leombruno's death at the now-shuttered facility located on Bridge Street in the village. During the past 12 years, the Sheriff's Office has recorded four suicides and one overdose; two of the deaths remain under investigation. Four suicides, with two under state investigation, and one overdose death in 12 years outpaces the rate found in similar-sized jails statewide. In the Leombruno case, the commission cited several failures in the jail administrators’ response to warning signs that he would harm himself, according to the report. Corrections officers found Leombruno, 43, hanging from a bedsheet tied to the bars of his jail cell at approximately 11:30 p.m. on April 12, 2018, and he succumbed to his injuries at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson two days later. The state Medical Review Board eventually determined that jail administration violated state corrections law by failing to keep Leombruno safe. Staff both failed to recognize the man’s “serious suicidal ideation,” and failed to take proper safety precautions, including placing him on constant watch, which could have prevented his death, according to the report. Corrections Sgt. Christopher Statham did nothing even after receiving a phone call from a family member warning that Leombruno might harm himself, according to the report. He also failed to identify the risk factors present and did nothing after listening to several statements of suicidal intent in recorded phone calls between Leombruno and his daughter. Statham was hired in 2012 and remains employed by the county Sheriff's Office. In early 2019, Leombruno’s family filed a $35 million civil lawsuit in federal court naming Greene County and unnamed county corrections officers as defendants, alleging negligence and wrongful death. The case is currently in the early stages of discovery. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.

Melanie Lekocevic is reporting for Capital Region Independent Media the Ravena Village Board is once again considering the question of whether residents should be permitted to raise chickens in their backyards. The issue comes up every couple of years and it was raised at the board's July 21 meeting. “Some people approached me and they thought that, considering the current state of the country and the coronavirus, with things maybe not as accessible, that it highlighted the need for self-sustenance,” Mayor Bill Misuraca said. Village board member Mary Ellen Rosato looked at how three nearby communities — the town of Colonie, the city of Albany, and the town of Bethlehem — are handling the issue. “They are all a little bit different, but most of what I saw was no roosters, most say how many you can have — some are six, some are just four on a parcel. No roosters, no breeding,” Rosato said. “You have to have something containing them, and you have to have a permit approved by the building department.” The three communities Rosato researched do not allow chickens to be kept for commercial or breeding purposes. The question of having backyard chickens in Ravena has come up several times in the past, most recently in 2018. The idea drew both supporters and opponents, but the village board took no action two years ago. It is not yet known whether a law will be proposed this time around. Read the full story in The Ravena News-Herald.