Highlands Current Audio Stories

Three hopefuls vie for Democratic line

Beacon and Philipstown have not been represented by a Democratic state senator since 2015, and the party hopes this year to flip the seat, held by Rob Rolison, a Republican seeking his third 2-year term.

First, there will be a primary on June 23 to decide which of three Democratic candidates will challenge him in November: Lisa Kaul, a Dutchess County legislator; Gay Lee, a former City of Newburgh council member; or Evan Menist, a member of the Poughkeepsie Common Council.

Sue Serino, now the Dutchess County executive, represented Beacon and Philipstown in the state Senate for three terms. She took office in 2015 after defeating Terry Gipson, a Democrat who served one term.

Rolison won the seat in 2022, defeating Julie Shiroishi, a Beacon resident who was then chief of staff to Assembly Member Jonathan Jacobson, whose district includes Beacon. In 2024, Rolison defeated Dutchess County Legislator Yvette Valdés Smith, whose district includes part of Beacon. She now chairs the Legislature after Democrats flipped the majority in 2025.

Kaul is a native of India and Rhodes Scholar who moved to the U.S. in 2004. She spent five years as an administrator at Vassar College and served on the Arlington school board before defeating Republican Marc Pfeifer in 2023 to win a seat in the Legislature representing part of the Town of Poughkeepsie. She ran unopposed in 2025 for her second term and chairs the Environment Committee.

Lee served for four years on the Newburgh City Council. She is a longtime clinical social worker and therapist with a private practice whose career includes stints with nonprofits that provide services to people who are homeless and have mental illnesses. She previously ran for the state Senate seat in 2014.

Questions for Candidates

Ahead of the Democratic primary on June 23, we gave each candidate 500 words to answer three questions. The responses are posted at highlandscurrent.org/senate-primary-39.

Menist holds a master's degree in public administration from Marist University, where he played on and coached the men's rugby team. His resume includes working as a planner and researcher for Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress, a policy organization based in the City of Newburgh, as a staffer for former state Sen. Elijah Reichlin-Melnick and as assistant deputy county executive for Ulster County.

He first won election to the Common Council in 2019 and is now in his fourth 2-year term. He also works as co-executive director of the Poughkeepsie Farm Project, which produces fruits and vegetables for purchase and donation and educates farmers.

Kaul has earned endorsements from the Dutchess County and Beacon Democratic Committees, and Menist from the Working Families Party. The Putnam Democratic Committee did not endorse a candidate; Jennifer Colamonico, its chair said the representatives from the two towns in District 39, including Philipstown, considered both Kaul and Menist to be "outstanding candidates."

As of May 29, Kaul had $227,000 on hand and Menist, $133,000. Lee has not filed campaign finance reports. Rolison reported having $7,000 on hand. As of Wednesday (June 10), Kaul has received $268,479 from the state's Public Campaign Finance Board, which matches small donations, and Menist, $234,017. Rolison has received $160,219.

Haldane weighs how students are ranked

Will future Haldane classes have more than one valedictorian?

That's one question raised by a change to the school's grading system, which will be implemented this fall with the incoming ninth-grade class.

Haldane, like Beacon and many high schools, gives bonuses when calculating grade-point averages for schedules that include rigorous courses, such as Advanced Placement, honors and college-level classes. At Haldane, AP courses get a 1.1 multiplier, meaning that 100 becomes 110 when calculating a student's four-year GPA. The top grade in an honors course is 105.

"We had a few students with over 100 percent GPAs this year," said Julia Sniffen, the Haldane High School principal. At Beacon High School, 15 to 20 seniors crack 100 each year, said Principal Corey Dwyer.

Max Sanders, the valedictorian of the 2026 Haldane class, which is scheduled to graduate today (June 12), said he has a GPA of about 101. At Beacon High School, the valedictorian, Oscar McKible, said he finished with around 105 to lead his class, which will graduate on June 24.

Starting with Haldane's Class of 2030, Sniffen said the district is going to cap GPAs at 100. Rigorous courses will remain weighted, she said, but "you can't be better than perfect." She said administrators are still discussing how to award valedictorian and salutatorian in 2030 if several students have perfect GPAs. "Does this impact who speaks at graduation?" she said.

It's not unheard of to have multiple valedictorians. This year, Jericho High School on Long Island has 21, shattering its previous record of 15. The district does not weight its courses, so any student who receives an A+ in every class over four years is honored. Rather than giving speeches, the valedictorians lead the procession, wear sashes and are featured in a video honoring their accomplishments.

The Washington-Liberty High School in Arlington, Virginia, has a variation on the theme. It names any student with an A+ average as valedictorian and often has 100 or more. But only the student with the absolute highest GPA, including weighted classes, speaks at graduation.

By contrast, the Cherry Creek School District near Denver, which serves 53,000 students, stopped recognizing valedictorians at its nine high schools this year. The district called naming a valedictorian "outdated" and inconsistent with its "core values of teaching all students, rather than ranking and sorting them."

At Haldane, Sniffen said that capping the four-year GPA at 100 encourages a more well-rounded high school experience. "We want to focus on the whole child, a balanced experience through high school," she said. "They should take courses they're interested in and don't look at it like 'I'm being penalized if I want to stay in band for four years.' "

Sniffen added that the change won't impact how universities evaluate student transcripts. She said colleges ignore weighting anyway and have their own processes for evaluating academic performance.

Amanda Cotchen, a guidance counselor at Haldane, said some students do seem to select classes for the bonus points. "I have been asked, 'What's the weighting on each of these classes?' My reply is usually, 'Are you interested in the course?' "

Sanders said he chose his courses not because of weighting but based on rigor. "I just asked, 'What classes do I want to fill my schedule with? For me, it happened to be APs." In retrospect, he wished he'd found time for Discrete Mathematics, an unweighted elective. "I was doing AP Calculus, and that was very involved," he said, so he took a study period instead.

McKible said he scheduled difficult classes to keep his GPA at 100 or better. But he doesn't think he missed anything. The only thing he changed was dropping a study period and lunch "to take more heavy classes," he said.

The senior successfully lobbied the administration to add weight to a science research class offered through the University at Albany. "I thought that w...

From the Depression to the iPhone

When Mary Williams forgets something important about one of her countless life stories, it isn't a problem: She consults her laptop. Born on May 13, 1926, she's been writing detailed accounts of her life for at least 80 years, from surviving hurricanes and losing her hair on a drill press, to working as an operator for AT&T ("Ma Bell") and traveling the world.

She moved to Cold Spring 10 years ago to be closer to her daughter, Galelyn Williams, who lives in the village. She grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, during the Depression and remembers the era vividly. "I was kind of a naughty child," she said, recalling that she started smoking at age 11.

"No one had any money, but it was OK because families were more tribal, people were more connected and helped each other out," she recalled. "There wasn't a lot of envy, because no one had anything. Everybody was about the same."

Jobs were scarce. Her father worked for the Works Progress Administration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's employment and infrastructure program. Her mother was unable to work but volunteered at Pawtucket City Hall.

"We ate hot dogs and whatever we could get ahold of," Williams said, adding that her mom "wasn't much of a cook" but did occasionally prepare a leg of lamb, which at 10 to 15 cents a pound was cheaper than beef or pork. "Everybody was poor — some were dirt poor — but we managed," she said. Their rent was covered by a form of welfare.

In 1936, a hurricane devastated the area, killing 600 people, especially close to shore. "It was a bugger; there were no warnings back then," Williams said. "On one little island, the waves wiped all the houses right off the map."

She attended a strict Catholic grade school, "an education of thou shall nots." As a teen, she moved to nearby Oakland Beach, where roller skating was the popular entertainment. She and her friends sometimes scraped barnacles off the bottom of rowboats to earn enough to cover the 30-cent entrance fee. "We stayed friends all our lives," she said.

Williams remembers skating to her favorite song, the Glenn Miller Orchestra performing "In the Mood." "There was so much good music, couples always had 'their song,' " she said. "It was romantic, gentle music and easy to skate to."

She had her first date, at age 15, at the roller rink, with a guy named Louie. "It was the first time a guy kissed me," she said, adding that Louie was quite upset when she told him she didn't like him.

She quit school in 10th grade after her father fell ill to work and help her mother raise her younger brother. "My first job was at Sammy Salk's General Store," she said. "I worked six days a week for a total of $15. I could buy enough food with that."

She knew many young men who went off to fight in World War II, not all of whom returned. "So many, so many," she recalled. The war meant factory work. "I had a bunch of jobs, including working on a drill press," she said. She once lost half of her hair when it caught in the press. She also worked in a shipyard and took on a second job at a soda fountain.

While it was a difficult time to be a teenager, she remembers how the nation unified. "We were together as a country during World War II," she said. "But we've done nothing but fight wars since. That's all we do now, bomb people."

Not one to mince words, she said she has "lived through 17 U.S. presidents and one stupid SOB."

In 1946, she bought a 1938 Cadillac and a trailer and headed to the West Coast with a friend. "It was a pimp car, and it took us 13 days," she said with a laugh. She kept detailed notes along the 2,448 miles of Route 66 and described California as "America's best kept secret" at the time.

Williams was working for AT&T in Rhode Island and transferred to California, staying with the company for 35 years as a telephone operator. She said operators sometimes listened in while couples engaged in phone sex. "We would listen, but if you were caught, the company would fir...

Filmmaker drew inspiration from Philipstown

Lily Weisberg, a 26-year-old filmmaker from New York City, has been directing and producing films in Philipstown since she was a student at Yale.

Rare Birds, her most recent short film, was inspired by the natural beauty and "inherent intimacy" of rural Putnam County, she says. She spent many summers in Garrison, riding Metro-North from the city to attend camps at The Depot Theater. Her parents moved to Philipstown while she was in college.

Weisberg's 10-minute film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 5 and will be shown again today (June 12) and Saturday. "It's a festival I've dreamed about having a movie in as long as I've been making movies," she said.

In the film, a serial klutz named Jerry (Tony Macht) risks losing his job at a local antique store. "He's like a bull in a China shop," Weisberg said, with a laugh. "He obviously should not be working in an antique store."

Jerry is also a camp counselor, and one of the campers, 12-year-old Candice (Zoe Ziegler), is a frequent visitor. She is determined to get Jerry fired so the friends can spend more time together. Their relationship, says Weisberg, is "the kind that can only really exist in a small town. They're both these oddball characters, but they're united because they are similar and from the same place."

The film was shot at Bowen Barn, a shop in Stanfordville, but Weisberg and her team scouted antique stores in and near Philipstown and Beacon. "We used what we saw in our set design," she said. "I liked the idea of creating this sort of cocoon for them —a cozy, dark antique store where everything's fragile, but it's kind of desolate."

Weisberg directed two previous short films, Studio 210 (2021) and Working Summer (2024), at her parents' home. Her mother's studio and gardens served as inspiration for the former, in which an aspiring artist spends a summer at his friend's mother's studio. "I wanted to make something that used all of this beauty that she'd created," said Weisberg of her mother, Deborah Needleman, a basketmaker.

Achieving small-town authenticity has its challenges. Child labor laws limited how long Ziegler could be on set, and the Bowen Barn contains many fragile items that required caution when moving cameras and lights.

On the plus side, "the energy is just so good with a crew that lives and works in the Hudson Valley," said Weisberg. "People are happy because they're surrounded by nature and beauty.

"The fact of just loving a place comes through in a movie," she says. "I want to work in places that I love and have a relationship to."

Rare Birds will be screened in New York City today (June 12) at 8:30 p.m. at Spring Studios (50 Varick St.) and on Saturday at 2:15 p.m. at AMC 19th St. East 6 (890 Broadway). See tribecafilm.com/films/rare-birds-2026. For Weisberg's earlier films, see dub.sh/weisberg-films.

Conflict TV produced in Philipstown

"Conflict is inevitable, but combat is a choice."

That's the message the Dispute Resolution Center, which serves four counties, including Putnam, wants to convey to residents of the Highlands through a new, locally produced television series, Conflict TV.

The nonprofit provides mediation services, usually at no cost, to help those dealing with strife, from divorce or separation to disputes between landlords and tenants, co-workers, classmates, family members or neighbors.

Conflict TV's first two, 28-minute episodes are posted at youtube.com/@ConflictTV and will be shown on cable Channel 22 in Philipstown and Channel 21 in Beacon. Juan Carlos Salcedo, president of the DRC board, is the senior producer. The show is hosted by James Rollins, the founder and senior pastor of The Tabernacle Church in Middletown, who has been a mediator for 16 years.

Each episode features guests who share practical mediation techniques and case studies. "We showcase real-life stories, demonstrating how dialogue can lead to meaningful, lasting transformation," said Salcedo. He produces the series in his Philipstown studio, where he also hosts The DNA of the News, which is broadcast to Spanish-speaking countries.

"Our target audience is intentionally broad because conflict touches every stage of life, from teenagers to senior citizens," Salcedo said of Conflict TV.

Miriam Frankl, the DRC executive director, says that even when parties can't reach an agreement through mediation, "they often report reduced tension and greater understanding of the issues. And judges see less contention in cases that go to trial."

Mediators come from a variety of backgrounds, including law, social work, education and human resources. "There are no background or career requirements to be an effective mediator," she said. "One of our mediators is a former postal worker."

Last year, the DRC helped 1,700 residents of Putnam, Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties mediate conflicts. The nonprofit is funded largely by the New York state court system and is part of a network created in 1981 that covers the entire state.

Services are free except for divorce mediation and some large-group facilitations. The DRC that serves Putnam and the three other counties has 35 volunteer mediators who received months of training, Frankl said.

The Dispute Resolution Center has an office in Carmel. For more information, see drcservices.org or call 845-372-8771. In Beacon, mediation is provided by the Mediation Center of Dutchess County (dutchessmediation.org).

Duo led by Woody Guthrie's grandson will perform

Music is embedded in the DNA of the Little Stony Point Citizens Association. Pete Seeger and pals lit bonfires on the beach and jammed into the night after he discovered the Philipstown riverside spot.

In 1984, The New York Times reported that 200 people attended the association's informal kick-off. Several musicians performed, and Alex Clifton and T. Xiques breakdanced to music from a boombox.

Locals called the place Sandy Beach. The fledgling association aimed to create "a safer place to picnic, swim, hike or boat."

In a letter Seeger sent to Cold Spring resident Bob Connor around 1983, he wrote that volunteers, beyond picking up litter, should ensure that "people are not getting drunk and getting into fights" and that they stop throwing "the trash barrels into the water."

They would also "be of assistance in case anybody needs it." The association became the first of some 30 friends' groups to work with state parks. One early achievement was the pedestrian bridge over the tracks, says Brian Grahn, president of the nonprofit's board.

Most recently, the group hired Cold Spring resident Bryan Jennings as a community outreach coordinator to organize live music and "authentic programming."

On Thursday (June 18), Woody Guthrie's grandson, Cole Quest, will perform in Seeger's backyard. Along with singer and guitarist Christian Apuzzo, their focus will be on songs by country brother duets from the 1930s to 1950s. Billed as Christian and Cole, the duo is an offshoot of Cole Quest and the City Pickers.

The performers met at a bluegrass jam in Astoria. "I had just moved into the neighborhood and heard 'Going Down the Road Feeling Bad,' " says Quest, 40. "I was amazed to hear my grandfather's song at warp speed, like folk music on drugs."

As a teen, Quest (his middle name) started on electric guitar, emulating Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn, but after stumbling onto the jam, he returned regularly for years, he says.

"Rockstar mode was getting stale, and I had to break the mold," he says. "I bought a mandolin and started experimenting with slide guitar [influenced by the electric blues], but notes hit too sharp or too flat, so I placed it in my lap and experimented with open tunings."

After hearing a dobro, or resonator guitar, at the Astoria jam, Quest instantly gravitated to the instrument because he liked its bouncy sound. It's also played horizontally in open tuning with a palm-held slide. The strings are located well above the neck, so there are no frets to get in the way.

"I didn't know it, but it's exactly what I was looking for," he says. "Someone made a guitar just for me — in the 1920s."

As a child, he remembers "driving up the hill to [Seeger's] house" near Beacon. He visits Philipstown often to hike and hang. Quest and Jennings share many friends in the city folk scene. Jennings used to play with The Defibulators (the "Brooklyn hillbilly spelling"), got into booking and moved to Cold Spring in 2020.

From the association's inception, Maple Syrup Day in the spring always included a slate of musical performers. Ditto The Hoot, introduced in the fall. Grahn initiated the three-week Global Music Initiative at least a decade ago, he says.

Jennings plans to build a weekly Thursday evening concert series and expand the organization's sonic offerings: "Music is at the heart of what we are, and it's time to reconnect with our roots," he says.

Little Stony Point is located at 3011 Route 9D in Philipstown. Christian and Cole will perform on June 18 from 7 p.m. to sunset, following a 6:30 p.m. presentation by the Putnam History Museum on the Hudson Valley during the American Revolution. Admission is free. To learn more about the organization, see littlestonypoint.org. To order music, see christianandcole.com.

Traveling troupe brings romp to Howland

The jolly play Death and the Fool presents a musical romp through medieval Europe, when droves of people died from the plague and purveyors of whimsical folly did their best to leaven the mood.

The play, which will be performed by the Happenstance Theater on June 20 at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, is promoted as family-friendly, although one of the characters is Death.

"Kids have to deal with deep stuff all the time," says Sabrina Mandell, who co-directs the Maryland-based troupe with her husband, Mark Jaster. "This is no worse than church."

Mandell, who also performs, is the visionary. "I usually lead the charge and wanted to deal with the more shamanistic roots of theater," she says. "I'm interested in alchemy and art, like [Hieronymus] Bosch. I proposed those things to the ensemble, and they went at it full bore."

Death and the Fool, which began touring last year, is a spinoff from the full-scale production Adrift: A Medieval Wayward Folly, which opens a three-week run in Maryland starting next month to celebrate the company's 20th anniversary.

The 50-minute, four-page script balances humor and gravitas but omits the music, dancing, puppets, slapstick and manic antics, says Mandell. Costumes make it easier to identify the five actors, including Mandell and Jaster, as they perform multiple roles.

The play is loosely based on Tarot cards, but knowledge of that mystical realm is not required, Mandell says. "Few people will get the references, but things center on archetypal characters, like the fool, death, oracles, the magician."

The ensemble also introduces obscure medieval instruments and performs period pieces from the Dark Ages, including works by composer Hildegard von Bingen, active in Germany during the 12th century.

Jaster brings along a hurdy-gurdy, "which is mistaken for a pump organ or calliope organ grinder," he says. The real deal looks like a neckless violin; a crank at the bottom causes a mechanical bow to "circle underneath the six strings and create a drone, like bagpipes."

Jaster also has a flute, a handheld tabor pipe, two portable harps, a chalumeau, — precursor to the clarinet — and a Baroque ukulele shaped like a lute. He enjoys wreaking havoc with the bombard, a double-reeded oboe-style instrument. "It looks innocent, but packs a punch for fanfares and intros," he says. "When we rehearse, the rest of the cast asks me to step into the other room or go outside."

Happenstance Theater specializes in historic-oriented work. Another of its productions, Barococo, is set during the Baroque era. "People are nostalgic, and history is big now," says Mandell. "The aesthetics of different periods clash with the modern, but the topics are universal and the settings elevate the work because people seldom see that look in theater, film or TV."

Despite the silliness, the heady message about enjoying life in the face of imminent death resonates as it did 900 years ago. "The content is playful and ridiculous," says Mandell. "But it's also quite moving."

The Howland Cultural Center is located at 477 Main St. in Beacon. Tickets for Death and the Fool, which begins at 2 p.m. on June 20, are $10 at dub.sh/death-fool or $15 at the door.

Cold Spring sailor returns after 364 days

In the early morning hours on June 1, Aaron Wolfe quietly moored Badger, his 27-foot Vancouver cutter, at the Chelsea Yacht Club just north of Beacon for the first time in 364 days.

The 59-year-old Cold Spring resident sailed 14,166 miles, a voyage that included two solo crossings of the Atlantic Ocean. A year earlier, after sailing south to New York City, Wolfe set a course north up the East Coast to the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, then traveled east to Newfoundland before crossing the Atlantic, landing at Dingle, Ireland.

Among the 18 countries and 82 stops he made were England, France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Canary Islands, Cape Verde, the British Virgin Islands and Bermuda. The final northern leg followed the East Coast to New York and up the Hudson River. Along the way, Wolfe read 50 books.

Hoving Home will reroute, widen waterway

The Philipstown Conservation Board determined on Tuesday (June 10) that there would be no significant environmental impacts if the Hoving Home removes a dam and reroutes a section of Philips Brook that runs through its property in Garrison.

The board's vote concluded the environmental review for the $1.8 million project, under which the treatment program for women plans to remove a 10-foot-high dam originally built decades ago to create a swimming pond. It will then move 800 feet of the brook north into a new 30-foot-wide channel that will be 3 to 5 feet deep, enabling it to hold more water.

Some sections of the stone wall constraining the brook as it flows west to Constitution Marsh will be removed, as will one of the footbridges and one of three lower dams, or weirs. Dirt excavated for the new channel will be used to fill 300 feet of the brook and the two other weirs.

Despite multiple repairs, the dam and the stone walls have sustained extensive damage from flooding and face greater water pressure as storms intensify and become more frequent, according to Inter-Fluve, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm overseeing the project.

If the dam failed, the rush of water could damage downstream properties, creating a liability risk for the Hoving Home, said Nick Nelson, a fluvial geomorphologist with Inter-Fluve who reviewed the project during a Conservation Board public hearing last month. The project is also expected to improve passage for fish and other aquatic species and reduce flooding along Snake Hill Road.

"There's water still flowing through, but what used to be a pond is filled with gravel and cobble," said Nelson. "If that dam were to fail catastrophically during a storm, all of that material would be washed downstream."

Hoving Homes submitted an application for a wetlands permit in June 2025. After neighbors raised concerns about potential flooding, the board asked its consultant, SLR Engineering, to review Inter-Fluve's projections. SLR found Inter-Fluve's modeling to be adequate. The Conservation Board, which still must issue a wetlands permit, concluded that the Hoving Home had taken steps to reduce temporary "moderate-to-large impacts" related to drainage, erosion and flooding during construction.

Beth Greco, the Hoving Homes president and CEO, said it plans to begin the project in the spring. Under a permit approved by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, Hoving will be prohibited from undertaking in-stream work from Oct. 1 to April 30, when trout spawn and incubate.

Once finished, the new channel will be wider and shallower than the existing one. Boulders will be placed along its bed to create "step pools" — areas of deeper water to slow the flow and reduce erosion of the banks. The pools also provide "resting stops" for fish and oxygen-rich water during periods of turbulence, according to Inter-Fluve.

Native plants will cover the new bank. In addition, according to Inter-Fluve, the reconstruction will avoid two areas of "archeological sensitivity" identified in consultation with the state Historic Preservation Office, which considers the site eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

The configuration will send "additional flow" through a culvert that carries the brook under Avery Road, according to project documents. Walter Hoving received a $200,000 grant to replace the town-owned culvert, which is considered undersized. But Greco said last month that the property lines bordering the culvert prevent it from being widened. "It's in good enough shape to keep," she said.

Ambulance corps covers about half of town

The Town of Fishkill is exploring a contract with Empress Emergency Medical Services to provide ambulances to residents in Chelsea, Dutchess Junction and Glenham because it will be cheaper than the Beacon Volunteer Ambulance Corps.

Brett Lesniak, the deputy chief for BVAC, said it has been covering Chelsea, Dutchess Junction and Glenham without funding from Fishkill and when it has an ambulance available. But rising expenses, unchanged reimbursements from Medicaid, Medicare and other insurers and treating uninsured residents mean "the cost of operations is drastically different" for BVAC, he said.

To guarantee dedicated coverage to the three areas — Chelsea is north of Beacon, Dutchess to the south and Glenham, northeast — would cost $1.1 million annually, with $500,000 paid by the town and the rest covered by insurance reimbursements, said Lesniak.

Empress Emergency Medical Services, whose ambulances serve Fishkill residents in the Rombout fire district, estimates that it could cover the town for about $100,000 less. During its meeting on June 3, the Town Board agreed to work with Empress on expanding its coverage.

Although BVAC's leaders say they "have no intention of not covering" the Beacon fire district, Supervisor Ozzy Albra said the corps told him it would discontinue service at the end of this year without an agreement.

"I don't like being threatened that we're going to be abandoned," said Albra. "I'm not going to take public safety into risk, and I'm not going to let somebody have a heart attack or medical issue because an alleged not-for-profit is not going to service our three districts."

In December, BVAC announced it had resumed advanced life support, which had been discontinued in 2018. Advanced life support is a higher level of service provided by full-time paid paramedics, compared to basic life support provided by part-time volunteer emergency medical technicians.

BVAC officials met with Albra to discuss charging the town for covering Chelsea, Dutchess Junction and Glenham. They also discussed having BVAC cover Rombout, but since Empress provides ambulances there, getting a "certificate of need" from New York State would be difficult for the corps, Lesniak said.

Albra said the bottom line is money. "BVAC priced themselves out of this," he said.

Empress covers Rombout from a station at Fishkill Town Hall on Route 52. Robert Stuck, the company's executive director, said during the June 3 meeting that its ambulances received 2,325 requests from the district in 2025 and responded to 2,098 of the calls at a cost of about $187,000 to Fishkill.

Most of the remaining calls were handled by an ambulance crew funded by Dutchess County as part of an initiative to fill service gaps. The county ambulance is stationed in Wappingers Falls, said Stuck.

Empress would need an additional ambulance, costing another $200,000, to expand to Chelsea, Dutchess Junction and Glenham, where BVAC covered 1,327 calls in 2025, he said. Of those calls, 865 ended at a hospital. Billing for those transports is how ambulance providers generate revenue, he said. Both Empress ambulances would be staffed with paramedics skilled in advanced life support, said Stuck.

The easiest way to fund the expansion would be to extend the Rombout ambulance district to the entire town, said Stuck. Doing so, said Albra, will require research, and finalizing the expansion may not be possible before the town completes its 2026-27 budget. But Stuck said Empress would be able to step in even if BVAC ended its service immediately.

"We will work with you to make sure that if they turn off the spigot tomorrow, you have coverage for those three areas," he said.