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State grant allows Beacon development to shift, again
Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday (May 29) announced the first awards for the Mid-Hudson Momentum Fund, a $150 million initiative created to increase housing stock in the seven-county region.
One of the awards, for $2.5 million, will go to 2 Cross St. in Beacon, a mixed-use project that in April shifted seven of its 18 apartments from "affordable" to market rate. Developer Joe Donovan said on Friday that the reduction was due to a delay in receiving a loan from New York State but that the Mid-Hudson grant makes it feasible to return to his original plan.
Donovan said he is hopeful construction will begin "within a matter of weeks" on the three-story, 24,000-square-foot building at the corner of Main and Cross streets. Of its 18 apartments, nine were to be designated for the "frail elderly," above retail space on the street level.
That number is not confirmed but will be worked out in the coming weeks, Donovan said.
The Cross Street development was one of 13 projects receiving $67 million in funding that the state says will unlock more than $576 million in private investment and create 2,400 housing units, including more than 1,300 affordable units, throughout the region.
The Mid-Hudson fund focuses on mixed-use housing and infrastructure projects. The state said the winners in this round of funding were selected based on alignment with the Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council's strategic plan, public support, the number of affordable units being created and, for infrastructure projects, their ability to either create or upgrade systems that would increase housing density.
2 Cross St. has received several grants, allowing Donovan to build below-market-rate housing. Last year it received $1.58 million from Dutchess County's Housing Trust Fund, and the Dutchess Industrial Development Agency agreed to exempt the project from some sales, real estate and mortgage-recording taxes.

The Highlands doesn't have the terrain or conditions for the type of disaster that killed 101 people last year on the island of Maui in Hawaii. But that doesn't mean flames fed by 30-foot kindling couldn't spread out of control.
Some residents would see the smoke and assume it was morning mist. Others would smell it and wonder if they had missed an air-quality alert. Many would hear the sirens and spot the helicopter buzzing between river and woods, water sloshing over the sides of a 200-gallon bucket.
A few people would not realize anything was amiss until they received an automated text urging them to evacuate - assuming fire wasn't blocking their escape.
Given last year's soggy summer, the threat of a deadly wildfire may seem remote. New York doesn't have the same risks as the bone-dry scrublands of California and Colorado or the boreal forests in Alberta and Quebec. But there are risks, especially with global warming rapidly changing conditions on the ground.
That's because the Highlands is a perfect example of a "wildland-urban interface," which the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) defines as a boundary or zone at which human development meets "vegetative fuels."
Think of the unpaved backroads of Garrison, the homes tucked deep in the Nelsonville woods and the forest-bound neighborhood of Beacon Hills. Precisely what makes living in the Highlands so special - its proximity to expanses of protected nature - is also what could make a wildfire so dangerous.
The August wildfire on the island of Maui was the third-deadliest in U.S. history, with 101 deaths in Lahaina, a seaside town about the size of Beacon. Over the course of a few horrific hours, a brushfire started by a downed power line ripped through the town, fed by 70-mph winds.
Temperatures in Lahaina rose to 1,000 degrees - hotter than the surface of Venus - vaporizing victims. More than 7,000 residents abandoned their homes and 2,200 structures were destroyed or severely damaged. Four thousand vehicles were incinerated, leaving streaks of molten rubber trickling down streets. Firefighters could not draw water from hydrants because the water system collapsed.
The Lahaina fire fed on changes in the landscape that took place over decades, both natural and manmade, such as agricultural irrigation systems that dried out the land. When plantations closed, the terrain was colonized by non-native, highly flammable grasses. Years of warnings about the risk of a devastating wildfire went ignored.
These types of changes have no analog in the Highlands. Our deciduous hardwoods are far less fire-prone than the grasses and conifers that cause so much trouble in Hawaii, Australia, Greece and Canada. While droughts seem to be getting more frequent and more intense, even the worst dry spells here pale in comparison to the desertification of much of the West.
Nevertheless, local emergency responders and forest rangers have concerns. Thousands of oak and ash trees, killed by invasive pests such as the emerald ash borer and the hemlock woolly adelgid, have become 30-foot-tall, 3-foot-thick kindling.
In September 2019, Hank Osborn of the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, who grew up in Garrison, was crossing the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge when he spotted smoke rising above Sugarloaf Mountain.
Evan Thompson, the manager of the Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve, saw it around the same time as he drove south from Dennings Point in Beacon. Thompson and others went up the mountain, but they didn't have the right tools. They came back the next day, along with rangers from the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which is responsible for fighting wildland fires.
The blaze, which likely started at an illegal campfire, had grown substantially overnight. State parks employees, DEC rangers and volunteers used heavy rakes, pickaxes, hoes and shovels to clear a 10-foot-wide firebreak around the base of Sugarloaf - a standard method meant to deprive the fire of fuel.
But aft

Amid global warming, schools seek ways to cool classrooms
Learning can be challenging enough without a sweltering classroom.
Many students face this situation, as global warming has forced schools locally and worldwide to find ways to cool buildings during warmer months. In New York, it has inspired a legislative proposal to cap classroom temperatures.
Last week in Beacon, voters overwhelmingly approved a $50 million capital plan, a quarter of which will pay for HVAC upgrades that include "cooling centers" at Rombout Middle School and the district's four elementary schools, said Matt Landahl, the superintendent.
The cooling centers will be larger spaces such as cafeterias and gyms that can be used to "address the hazards associated with high heat days, wildfire smoke and periods with high cases of infectious disease," he said.
Beacon High School, which opened in 2002, is air-conditioned, unlike 40 percent of schools nationwide that need new HVAC systems, according to the General Accounting Office in Washington D.C.
Hot classrooms hinder learning, Landahl said. "The first week of the 2023-24 school year [in September] was very hot and it negatively impacted our elementary school students and staff who have limited access to air conditioning," he said.
"High heat" days are increasing locally. Ninety-degree days in the Hudson Valley have grown from about 10 a year in the 1970s to 30 or more today, according to data compiled by the New York State Water Resources Institute at Cornell University. By 2050, the number is projected to rise to 50.
Philip Benante, the superintendent at Haldane, said that most district classrooms have no air conditioning and that June and September can be uncomfortable, especially on the top floors. When the temperature approached 90 degrees on May 21, which was Election Day for the school board and budget, many classroom windows were open.
"There is a need for air conditioning in our buildings, but the essential questions are at what cost and through what method," Benante said. The district is reviewing applications from engineering firms to do an energy-use analysis in anticipation of a new HVAC system.
Haldane is developing a capital plan that it will present to voters, probably in the fall. The first phase, projected to cost $35.7 million and trigger a 10.5 percent tax hike, included $7.1 million to upgrade the HVAC system and add air conditioning to the main school building, which houses the elementary and middle schools. There was also $2.8 million to add AC to the high school.
After the proposed HVAC system stirred criticism for relying on fossil fuels, officials removed it and the high school AC from Phase 1, dropping the total cost to $29.3 million and the potential tax increase to 8.22 percent. But both will be part of Phase 2, officials say.
In the Garrison district, the school is air conditioned thanks to the $10 million capital improvement program approved by voters in 2019 and completed in 2022, which included $2.7 million to renovate the HVAC system. Carl Albano, the interim superintendent, said that the electric system has systems to circulate fresh air. "We're in a healthier environment," he said. "The air conditioning, I believe, makes a difference."
State Sen. James Skoufis, a Democrat from Cornwall, in Orange County, is the lead sponsor (and Sen. Rob Rolison, a Republican whose district includes the Highlands, is a co-sponsor) of legislation requiring classrooms to be evacuated if their temperature exceeds 87 degrees. Classrooms that hit 82 degrees would require fans, AC window units or open windows.
"Over the past several years, I have tried to build awareness of this issue," Skoufis said. "We're at a tipping point."
Melinda Person, president of New York State United Teachers, representing 600,000 educators, noted that "even animal shelters have maximum heat limits. Our schools do not, and it is disrespectful to our students and educators. When schools are too hot, students can't l

Review addressed violence, health care, conditions
An independent report on conditions in 2023 at the Fishkill Correctional Facility, a medium-security men's prison that straddles Beacon and Fishkill, documented sometimes contradictory accounts of staff interactions and violence.
The 64-page report was issued on May 8 by the Correctional Association of New York, about 10 months after an inspection at the facility. State law requires CANY to visit and evaluate each of New York's 44 prisons every five years; the agency last visited Fishkill in 2020.
(Fishkill Correctional is one of two state prisons near Beacon. The other, the Downstate Correctional Facility, closed in 2022.)
During the two-day evaluation, which took place in July, a team of 11 CANY representatives met with state prison officials and medical and mental health staff. The CANY team observed housing facilities, the work-release unit, regional medical unit and other parts of the prison. Members of the union that represents prison staff declined to speak with CANY.
Based on a survey of 109 prisoners (of the 1,372 then incarcerated), CANY concluded that prisoners were "generally satisfied with access to medical care." However, many inmates believed that the care they received was substandard. They also indicated that prison officials were slow to respond to sick calls or to arrange specialty care.
The inmates noted a shortage of nurses for emergencies, which prison officials conceded, saying Fishkill was short 50 percent of its nursing staff. At the time of the visit, the prison was down 100 staff members overall. CANY said those staffing needs matched data reported by the state in January 2023, suggesting many of the open positions had been unfilled for at least six months.
Regarding mental health care, prisoners in specialized units gave "mostly positive reviews" of the staff and programs, according to the report, while the general population wanted more mental health support.
Sumeet Sharma, a CANY director, said Wednesday (May 29) that the team observed high temperatures throughout the facility and noted that the exterior windows in cells were closed. The superintendent later said that the windows had been opened, according to the report, but the ventilation system in some housing units recirculates air, "which means that on a hot day, the air blowing through the vents is hot."
A major concern for the team, Sharma said, was access to health care, especially since Fishkill has a regional medical unit that provides care for chronically or terminally ill inmates. He said lawmakers are considering a bill to give the state Department of Health oversight over medical care in prisons.
The inmates surveyed by CANY reported mixed experiences with Fishkill's 850 security officers. Those in the general prison population generally described a positive culture with effective communication, but others reported assaults by staff and the need for security cameras. The prison launched a pilot program for officer-worn body cameras in 2021 and 2022 but CANY was told the devices "stopped working."
The report said plans to install fixed cameras and experiment again with body cameras are in place, but there is no timeline for either.
Sixty-one percent of the prisoners surveyed said they had seen or experienced verbal, physical or sexual abuse by staff members. CANY said that "unusual incident" data showed that Fishkill had higher rates than the state prison system at large of assaults, both on staff and prisoners, and staff use of force, particularly the use of a chemical irritant (see above).
And while only 20 percent of the inmates considered the grievance process "fair," 44 percent - a higher rate than at other medium-security prisons - said the same of the disciplinary system.
Sharma acknowledged the challenges the CANY team faced in writing its report. He said the association sometimes received conflicting accounts through "administrative data" provided by the state on the frequ

In December, I wrote in The Current about volunteering for 10 days in western Ukraine, where I prepared vacuum-packed, dehydrated meals (including borscht) for the front in the war against invading Russian troops.
I returned last month to work again with Lviv Volunteer Kitchen and to lead drama therapy workshops, a remnant of a former career and a little break from the war for Ukrainians. A session with psychology students at a university in Kyiv was interrupted by air raid sirens; the students conjured imaginary air defense missiles but the dean broke the fourth wall and announced the alert was possibly a wave of hypersonic Kinzhal missiles.
The students were sent to the bomb shelter, and I sat in the dean's office drinking a cappuccino. "I grew up in New York City in the 1980s, so I'm used to living in danger," I said. She smiled as if I were a lunatic.
Just about everyone I met wanted the war to end but also believed the only way to remain independent was to keep fighting. It's possible to overstate the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder, but the entire country is at risk.
I frequently saw men without limbs navigating the baroque streets of Lviv and gasped at how many had been buried in the Field of Mars cemetery since my last visit. Battle losses in the east and a third winter of relentless Russian attacks on the power grid have worn the Ukrainian people down. Yet they somehow maintain their decency.
At the volunteer kitchen, my aggressive productivity at dressing chickens despite my vegetarianism surprised me. I also spent a day making camouflage nets to help Ukrainian soldiers avoid drone attacks. But my main mission was drama therapy, and Zoya Romanets, an energetic psychodramatist, scheduled eight workshops for 200 psychologists, university students and artists in Lviv, Kyiv and Irpin, a suburb that was occupied and heavily damaged by Russian forces in March 2022.
Images of war and weapons came up in every session. In one group in Lviv, students traveled on a magic carpet to Crimea - occupied by Russia since 2014 and a raging war zone - and had a beach party, singing "The Caucasus" by Ukraine's national poet, Taras Shevchenko. To conclude, we passed around a magic seashell that granted their wishes: peace, victory and to be reunited with friends and family.
During another session in Lviv, some members asked to remove an imaginary pile of weapons, while others refused, even for make-believe. I was thinking it might be best to avoid diving too deeply into war themes, but then Claudia volunteered to do an individual session. We imagined flying over Mariupol, her hometown. She described the month she spent underground in 2022, fleeing just before the city was reduced to rubble.
I understood all this even before my translator rendered her words into English. She wanted to go home, but could not.
On my final night in Lviv, I attended a Passover seder for the first time in four decades at the invitation of Volodymyr Puzyrko, a diplomat and lawyer whom I'd met the night before at a jazz club in a scene out of a John le Carré novel. I endured a two-hour Passover Haggadah in Ukrainian, which probably made my Galitzianer ancestors happy, although I could hear them yelling, "Eat more!"
A few hours after I arrived in Kyiv by overnight train, I walked through Bucha, the leafy suburb that Russian forces briefly occupied in their attempt to encircle the capital and overthrow the government in February and March 2022. They destroyed much of the town and killed hundreds of civilians. Standing in a rebuilt neighborhood, it was difficult to imagine the line of charred Russian tanks and bodies that had littered the streets two years earlier.
Later that day in Irpin, I led a workshop in a university building next door to a burned-out husk. Because we were closer to danger than in Lviv, I assumed the session would focus on war themes, but group members - especially the men - were more interested in traveling the world, arranging

Beacon resident transcribes soldier's wartime letters
On Nov. 27, 1944, three days after his 20th birthday, Pfc. Edwin "Buster" Johnson was killed instantly by a sniper in the village of Kriegsheim in northeast France.
Eighty years later, in time for Memorial Day, Johnson's 103 wartime letters to his family in Beacon have been published in a book, Dear Mom and Dad.
Johnson's mother, Mary Moranski Johnson, kept the letters for decades in a trunk. In 2023, her daughter, Anne Johnson Thomas, loaned the collection to Joann Miskell, who had chaired the Veterans Banners Project spearheaded by the Melzingah Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Miskell began to transcribe the letters, which were written in pencil, but many took time to decipher. "They had badly faded, but with a magnifying glass, sunlight and digital editing [to adjust contrast], I was able to get through them," she says.
When Anne Thomas, 85, read the manuscript, she says she "felt like my brother was still alive and talking to me." The last surviving of the six Johnson children, she is a longtime volunteer at the Castle Point VA Medical Center in Wappingers Falls.
Buster's letters, written in 1943 and 1944, chronicle his 19 months in the Army, from his enlistment in Beacon and processing on Long Island, through training in Kentucky and Maryland, to deployment to England and France.
In one letter, he wrote: "We'll dig fox holes and crawl in and let tanks drive over us." Says Miskell: "I can only imagine how his mother felt" reading that.
While in Kentucky, Buster married his high school sweetheart, Dorothea Tompkins, 16. He wrote: "If you buy me anything for Christmas, Mom, I wish you'd buy something Dot and I both could use and send it to her. That way I'd have it when I come home."
Buster's letters while in the U.S. included descriptions of basic training and camp life. Once overseas, the correspondence became less frequent and was heavily censored to ensure it had no details that might benefit the enemy, such as a unit's location, movements or engagements. While in France, Buster never mentioned combat but hinted at it, frequently commenting he'd "been very busy lately."
Below are excerpts from a sampling of Johnson's letters:
From Kentucky
June 9, 1943: "I'm learning to fire two rifles, 33mm and 50mm machine guns, and a 37mm anti-tank gun. We take long hikes carrying full packs and guns weighing about 70 pounds."
June 12: "I like Dorothea Tompkins a lot. I'm seriously thinking of becoming engaged. Of course, I want to know what you think. She's willing to become a Catholic."
June 14: "I'm dead tired. I never realized I could be so tired."
July 2: "Three guys went AWOL. They caught one of them."
July 10: "The Chicago Cubs are playing an exhibition game here against the post team."
July 12: "I was sent to the rifle range yesterday. I didn't do too good. I was scared. I couldn't hold the rifle steady because I was shaking. Today I was better."
Aug. 11: "Boy, it's hot and crowded at service club dances. You're soaked with sweat. I stayed 15 minutes. There's 15 guys to each girl. You're lucky if you get to dance two steps with a girl."
Aug. 14: "Gee, this food is getting worse every day."
Aug. 30: "I got your letter with pictures of Joe DiMaggio and your package. The cakes are already gone."
Sept. 11: "We're going out to the assault course; we crawl on our bellies with machine guns firing over our heads. It's going to be tough, but I guess I can take it now."
Dec. 15: "Today we are out in the field. Some of our men dressed as Germans, and we had to attack them. Boy, that machine gun is heavy when you carry it for a while."
Dec. 25: "I hope everyone is well and happy this Christmas. I went to midnight Mass. Right now I'm on guard at the stockade. I stand in the tower outside the prison fence and make sure no one tries to climb it. The weapon they gave me is a 12-gauge shotgun."
Jan. 28, 1944: "I had my first boxing bout. I finished my man off in the