On the ground

Our committee met in Sidney last night and, with less than 50 days until Election Day, of course our focus was on our local candidates.

There will be exciting times in Sidney, as we’re expecting meet and greet visits from both Kirsten Gillibrand and Susan Zimet in the coming weeks. Events will range from a pizza party to a session with high school seniors studying American government, and from media ops to a town hall meeting with local small business owners.

Sadly, while they are dealing with infrastructure issues, not much happening at the local government level to get Sidney’s economy back on its feet after June’s flooding. Looks like Sidney Dems will need to light some fires under some folks to keep our town from dying a slow and painful death.

The Sidney Democratic Committee had a short meeting this week and spent most of it discussing the upcoming visit by Scott Trees, who is running for NY Assemblyman for the 127th District.

Scott is going to be walking his District — yes, you heard that right — beginning in Afton on Sunday and ending in Gellatin on August 30th. According to his campaign, that’s over 160 miles!

He arrives in Sidney on Monday, August 14th, to mix and mingle with village residents. He will also be doing an interview by Rob Ray for WCDO-FM radio that afternoon at 1:30 p.m. Then, on Tuesday, on to Unadilla to meet a group for lunch at Unadilla House before marching in the parade at the County Fair in Walton.

Gotta admire his stamina.

He has another radio appearance next week, on August 16th by Gary Wirkham for WDOS-FM, Oneonta. And he has a meet-up scheduled for later in the month with Kelly Keck, who is running for NY Assembly in the 107th District … but I’ll let the Stamford Committee tell you about that.

Sidney looks forward to meeting and greeting Scott as he begins his walk.

Due to the flooding and subsequent cleanup, the Sidney/Masonville Committee meeting that was scheduled for July 17th has been cancelled. We’ll let everybody know when the August meeting will be when we’ve decided on a date.

UPDATE: The Sidney/Masonville Committee will meet on August 9th, at the Civic Center in Sidney at 7:00 p.m. Hope to see you there!

This week, the Sidney and Masonville Town Democratic Committees had our monthly joint meeting at the Civic Center here in Sidney. Turnout was a bit thin but we were joined by Scott Trees, Democratic candidate for the NY Assembly, 127th District.

In addition to regular business, we spent quite a bit of time discussing economic development and Town Chair Dawn Rivers Baker (that’s me) presented the talk on economic development that was so well-received at the Kirsten Gillibrand fundraiser in Stamford earlier this year. Members of the Committee were somewhat startled at the statistics given in the talk and, in particular, the rather grim portrait they create of the state of the young people of Sidney.

One of the most interesting facets of talking about economic development here is how, in discussing it, the conversation almost always turns to energy — fuel costs, energy independence, alternative energy. Clearly there is an important intersection of ideas between developing the local economies from the raw materials here in Delaware County and becoming as energy self-sufficient as we would be economically self-sufficient.

Here in Sidney, we’ll begin to make plans to push for implementation of a microbusiness development and support initiative, with emphasis on helping our kids create opportunities for themselves here. Scott’s contributions to the conversation were thoughtful and helpful; I, for one, left the meeting feeling very happy about his decision to run for the 127th District seat.

Next month, we’ll turn our attention to energy issues with a presentation from Masonville Town Chair Ruth Van Putten. No doubt we’ll end up talking about economic development, too.