Highlands Current Audio Stories Podcast Por Highlands Current arte de portada

Highlands Current Audio Stories

Highlands Current Audio Stories

De: Highlands Current
Escúchala gratis

Acerca de esta escucha

 The Highlands Current is a nonprofit weekly newspaper and daily website that covers Beacon, Cold Spring, Garrison, Nelsonville and Philipstown, New York, in the Hudson Highlands. This podcast includes select stories read aloud. Arte Política y Gobierno
Episodios
  • Cost Overload

    Cost Overload
    Jul 4 2025
    Their comments range from angry to anguished, some typed in all caps and punctuated with exclamation points.
    An 80-year-old retiree who said his charges from Central Hudson are outpacing last year's 2.5 percent increase in his Social Security check is among the 182 people submitting comments in response to the utility's latest request to increase the rates it charges to deliver electricity to homes and businesses.
    A single mother who said she lived with two children in a 700-square-foot house while earning $1,400 a month bemoaned the surge in her monthly bill from $100 to more than $200. "If the rates keep going up, I will have to freeze to death together with my teenage sons," she wrote.
    For the homeowners, renters and business owners who have been railing against Central Hudson's rising costs online and in public hearings before the state Public Service Commission, the frustration goes beyond the company's latest request to raise rates. Its pending three-year plan is lower than the company's original request but would still add $18 per month during that period to the average customer's bill.
    Those customers, along with residents served by New York state's other utility companies, are paying the most in at least 25 years for electricity, according to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Utility bills statewide averaged 25 cents per kilowatt-hour in March, compared to 19 cents in March 2015. Nationwide, energy bills are forecast to continue rising through next year, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
    "It's unbearable for customers," said Assembly Member Jonathan Jacobson, a Democrat whose district includes Beacon and other areas served by Central Hudson. "We get complaints all the time about their costs and their service."
    Extreme Weather Powers Demand
    Cooling, heating rises as aid disappears
    by Brian PJ Cronin
    The spikes in energy bills come as Americans feel the increasing effects of climate change, including more frequent "heat dome" events like the Highlands experienced last week when temperatures reached into the high 90s.
    Those events spur even greater electricity usage as residents crank up air conditioners and fans to sustain themselves.
    Don't expect a trade-off from warmer winters, however. Climate change is also manipulating the polar jet stream, pulling colder air from Canada south in the winter. This past winter, those polar-vortex events allowed freezing temperatures to blanket the Highlands, adding higher heating bills to the higher cooling costs residents faced during the summer.
    These bills aren't just a source of frustration and anxiety anymore. They're literally a matter of life and death. Between 1999 and 2023, 21,518 deaths recorded in the U.S. were attributed to heat as the underlying or a contributing factor, according to a study published in Aug. 2024 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
    The total number of deaths nationwide doubled from 1,069 in 1999 to 2,325 in 2023, according to the study. In New York state, extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths, said the state Department of Environmental Conservation in a report published in June 2024.
    Shortly after taking office, the Trump administration fired the entire federal staff responsible for the Low Income Heating Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps more than 6 million families avoid utility shut-offs. A representative from New York's Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance said that the state had already received its LIHEAP funding for the year, but next year is in doubt.
    Part of this year's funding is going toward the state's Cooling Assistance Program, which will help approximately 18,000 households purchase either an air conditioner or a fan. The application window for the program is closed, but New Yorkers who suffer from asthma may still be eligible. See dub.sh/cooling-help for more information.
    Customers face costs on two fronts: the rate utilities bi...
    Más Menos
    23 m
  • Beacon to Newburgh Ferry Scuttled

    Beacon to Newburgh Ferry Scuttled
    Jul 4 2025
    Low ridership, cost drive MTA decision
    Commuter ferry service between Newburgh and Beacon will not return after being suspended since January, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said last week.
    NY Waterway has operated the Beacon-to-Newburgh ferry under contract with the MTA since 2005, but the company in March announced that its weekday rush-hour service was discontinued indefinitely due to damage at the Beacon dock.
    On June 23, Evan Zucarelli, the MTA's acting senior vice president of operations, said during a Metro-North committee meeting that the initial suspension of service was triggered by "typical river icing." However, subsequent assessments "revealed significant damage" to the floating ferry dock the MTA attaches to Beacon's pier, "requiring long-term solutions," he said.

    After reviewing ridership, which had been "steadily declining" prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the $2.1 million annual cost of the service, the ferry will not return, Zucarelli said. An average of 62 riders used the ferry each day in 2024, down from "approaching 250" per day at its peak in 2008, said Andrew Buder, Metro-North's director of government and community relations. Ridership usually doubles over the summer, but last fall did not rebound to match its numbers from a year earlier, Buder said.
    "Even with that, we don't see a drop in ridership on the [Metro-North] train correlating to the drop in ridership on the ferry," he said. "If those people are still using the train, they're just choosing to get there a different way."
    Bus service costing $1.75 per ride will continue ferrying commuters between the two cities on weekday mornings and afternoons for the rest of the year, after which it will become free. The MTA has been working with New York State to expand the frequency and coverage area of the service, Zucarelli said. When pressed by an MTA board member, he said the agency would consider implementing free bus service before 2026.
    Another factor in the decision, Zucarelli said, is that Beacon is "actively developing plans to activate its dock area for tourism," while in Newburgh, where the MTA had been using a temporary dock, city officials are preparing for similar growth in 2027 with the opening of the $14.3 million Newburgh Landing Pier.
    The MTA's license to attach its ferry dock in Beacon expired June 30, and the agency notified the city that it did not intend to renew the agreement, City Administrator Chris White said.
    Neal Zuckerman, a Philipstown resident who represents Putnam County on the MTA board, pushed back against the plans during the June 23 meeting. "It is counterintuitive to me that, at the same time you've mentioned that both Newburgh and Beacon are enhancing their waterfront, that we are finding that use of the waterfront is not valuable," he said.
    Zuckerman said that what's happening on the Newburgh waterfront is "shockingly nice," while Beacon is a "TOD [transit-oriented development] dream, because it was once a moribund, empty area." Then, when Dia Beacon arrived in 2003, "it created an extraordinary resurgence" in a community that, because of the MTA, was "an easy one to get to."
    Whether ferry service returns or not, restricted access to the dock has hindered the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which would typically dock in Beacon for at least six weeks out of its April-to-November sailing season.
    Clearwater has had to reschedule school sails aboard the sloop to depart from either Cold Spring or Poughkeepsie, while some fee-based sails for private groups and pay-what-you-can community sails, which draw about 45 people per outing, have been canceled, said David Toman, the organization's executive director.
    "Our core - the idea of getting people out on the sloop, out on the water - provides a unique impact that you can't get otherwise," he said. "It is critically important to be in Beacon and be able to serve the community from that access point."
    Steve Chanks, an art director who lives in Newburgh, often ...
    Más Menos
    5 m
  • Residents Brace for Health Cuts

    Residents Brace for Health Cuts
    Jul 4 2025
    Millions expected to lose coverage
    In addition to love, health insurance pushed Catherine Lisotta and her husband to marry.
    The Garrison resident's job in the magazine industry offered coverage after he lost his job. When Lisotta got laid off, the couple turned to New York's health exchange, an insurance marketplace where people without access to coverage from employers, and incomes too high for public insurance, can enroll in a private plan using tax credits that lower premium costs.
    She never considered going without health coverage. "It would worry me too much," said Lisotta, whose insurance is covering a recent hip replacement that would have cost her over $20,000. "It would be like tempting God."

    Lisotta and other people using exchanges in New York and other states are now facing changes to health care that are estimated to raise the number of uninsured people by 12 million. Those proposals, embedded in U.S. House and Senate versions of the One Big Beautiful Bill, will cost 7.8 million people coverage through Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office
    The bill was narrowly passed in the House on Thursday (July 3) after passing the Senate on Tuesday (July 1). President Trump signed it on Friday (July 4). New York's two Democratic senators - Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, voted against the legislation, as did Rep. Pat Ryan, a House Democrat representing the 18th Congressional District, which includes Beacon. Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican who represents the 17th District, which includes Philipstown, voted for the legislation.
    New York State predicts that 1.5 million statewide will lose insurance, including 38,400 in the 18th District and 31,200 in the 17th District. The bill's provisions would also affect the health care exchanges in New York and other states established when President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
    Among the changes, people will have to verify their eligibility before enrolling instead of being allowed temporary conditional eligibility. The bill also changes a provision that allows any immigrant who is legally in the country to be eligible for coverage and subsidies through the exchanges, largely limiting that benefit to green-card holders and barring enrollment for refugees and people seeking asylum.
    There is also concern that Congress will not extend the more-robust tax credits, and expanded eligibility, approved under the administration of President Joe Biden and expiring at the end of the year. Letting them expire would cost 4.2 million people insurance, according to the CBO. Premiums could more than double in both Lawler and Ryan's districts without the extension, according to KFF, a health policy organization.
    Christine Ortiz, who owns Oh! Designs Interiors in Cold Spring, is among the insured who has been receiving text messages from the state warning that "federal rules may change your health insurance." She not only uses the exchange, but so do a son and daughter. One of them is also self-employed.
    "The only reason that we can be self-employed is because of health care," she said. "I have a studio in the village, trying to build my business, and having to not have to worry about health insurance has been such a blessing."
    Sun River Health, whose 40 locations include one in Beacon, estimates that 20,000 of its patients will lose Medicaid, said Ernest Klepeis, its chief of government affairs and advocacy.
    As the OBBB has worked its way through Congress, Klepeis has been urging senators and representatives to reject the Medicaid cuts, which include stronger work requirements for childless adults between 19 and 64, and a new requirement that recipients recertify their eligibility every six months instead of yearly.
    While Republicans say that the changes will only impact people who refuse to work, advocates say that most of the people who lost coverage from more stringent work requirements imposed in Arkansas and Georgia were actually eligible for Medicaid.
    ...
    Más Menos
    6 m
Todavía no hay opiniones