Highlands Current Audio Stories

Beacon actors will 'cold read' work

Like thousands of actors before him, from Australia to Zimbabwe, Alexander Florez will rip open a sealed manila envelope tonight (May 16) and cold read a 2010 play, White Rabbit Red Rabbit, in the backyard of his Beacon home. Two other performers will take the plunge in yards on Saturday and Sunday.

The premise - some call it a gimmick - is that everyone in a confined space takes an hour-long journey akin to a one-off jazz solo. Though details have leaked, audiences and the theater community (including reporters) have kept the broad outline and most revealing moments under wraps.

The playwright, Nassim Soleimanpour, includes a clause in the contract for producers: "This play is not overtly political and should not be portrayed as such. It operates on a deeper, metaphoric level, and very expressly avoids overt political comment. All media and press agents have to keep in mind that the playwright lives in Iran. We therefore ask the press to be judicious in their reportage."

Florez is a math teacher who will never pass muster with the grammar police. He avoids capital letters as an act of resistance and his email tag links to "the case for lowercase" style guide on his website, which includes instructions about turning off caps on devices and in programs.

"I have a lot of respect and disdain for academia," he says. "I'm impressed with education but also dismayed with the gatekeeping and barriers to entry. One way to oppress is by making complicated grammar and spelling rules the standard for everyone, even though a select few invented them."

Pushback against authority is reflected in the play. According to Soleimanpour, he wrote it after he refused to serve in the Iranian military and the regime denied him a visa to leave the country. (He is now thought to live in Berlin.) The production requires props, but the playwright's website touts the lack of sets, directors and rehearsals.

Studying for his practical teaching certificate at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, Florez fell in with the acting crowd (he works at the Manitou School in Philipstown). After bouncing around the Hudson Valley, he moved to Beacon in 2022 and got involved with the improv and comedy scene.

White Rabbit Red Rabbit had an off-Broadway run in 2016: Nathan Lane, Whoopi Goldberg and Alan Cumming, among others, unsealed the script and got to work - for the first and last time. Playbill called it "the most-talked about (and least-talked about) new show."

Beacon resident Jamie Mulligan read the script to prepare the actors, gather props and make staging suggestions. But per the legal agreement, the plot and other elements may not be divulged or discussed by anyone involved.

At first, Florez figured he'd reach out to local performance venues, but Mulligan suggested staging the play at an art gallery, coffeehouse or other offbeat space. James Phillips, a theater professor at Mount Saint Mary, will read in his yard on Saturday and Twinkle Burke walks the high wire on Sunday outside the home of Hannah Brooks (with contingency plans for inclement weather).

The play stems from experimental theater of the 1960s, Mulligan says, and "requires the audience and actor to encounter these subjects simultaneously, a connection that creates a level of spark that can only happen when everyone learns about this together."

Broad outlines address elements of existential oppression and the role of individuals in society. "Someone told me that every play is about hope, so it places the human condition into primal conflicts, like man versus nature or man versus god," says Mulligan. That so many details have remained a secret for 15 years "speaks to the integrity of theater-makers."

White Rabbit Red Rabbit will be performed by Florez at 7 p.m. at 119 Howland Ave. in Beacon, at 7 p.m., on Saturday (May 17) at 24 Willow St. by Phillips and at 3 p.m. on Sunday at 99 E. Main St. by Burke. Tickets are $10 to $32.24 at dub.sh/white-rabbit.

Russell St. George, retired welder, plays with fire

Any band would relish having a cheerleader like Shirley Maloney. At a recent show by Last Minute Soulmates at the Towne Crier in Beacon, she acted out the words, exhorted the crowd to sing along and pounded on tables during the final song, a funky cover of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)."

A good portion of the rowdy crowd almost reached Maloney's level of enthusiasm. House staff created an impromptu dance floor by clearing tables near the stage as people swung their partners with elbows locked together during "Maggie's Farm" and danced in circles during a heavy version of "Hound Dog." At one point, two men started screaming, ostensibly out of joy.

The group's founder, Russell St. George, moved to town in 1986 and is a dean of Beacon's music scene. He focuses on original songs but likes to mix in atypical versions of covers, including "Your Cheating Heart" as a deliberate shuffle.

"I'm not good enough to play them like the record, but I do like to shake things up with the arrangement or approach," he says. "And I still write, including songs about what's going on, like one about gun violence called 'When's it Gonna Stop?' "

His originals, some of which feature a reggae tinge, keep things simple and rely on hooky choruses that get people singing. At one point, almost the entire audience, including the waitstaff, belted out the words.

Working as a welder in Peekskill, a job he held for 37 years, St. George heard that houses in Beacon could be had on the cheap. His first local band, Daarc Ages (an acronym of members' first names), released a couple of CDs and opened for Dee Snider, Uriah Heap and Blue Oyster Cult at The Chance in Poughkeepsie and other venues.

"We'd make a CD and someone would quit, so we had to keep finding musicians and never really got off the ground," he says. "Besides, I was kind of shy."

That's odd because he sports flowing hair, a goatee and moustache. His fashion sense includes hats, big round glasses and black, accented with scarves, a look that leans more toward the hippie camp than the blue-collar world.

Over the years, he played every local venue and hosted a 17-year monthly jam at Joe's Irish Pub (now MoMo Valley) that he called St. George and Friends.

"The whole time, I never missed a date," he says. "But I turned 60, COVID hit and the end arrived." Last Minute Soulmates started as an acoustic duo that grew into an electric project by 2011. Self-effacing, he credits band members for any success.

Not shy about his left-leaning political views, he lost some followers over the years. He feels no compulsion to record his new tunes, in part because working in the studio is a drag compared to playing for a responsive audience.

"Streams and other delivery systems don't get a lot of traction," he says. "If people want to hear my songs in their best light, come see me live."

Last Minute Soulmates, with St. George (vocals, guitar), Carla Springer (vocals), Rik Mercaldi (guitar), Harry Lawrence (bass) and Mitch Florian (drums), will perform at 9 p.m. on May 23 at Gleason's, 23 S. Division St., in Peekskill.

State must approve three-year agreement

Central Hudson on Tuesday (May 13) announced a three-year agreement with the state and other parties that would raise electricity and gas delivery rates for most customers.

If the plan is approved by the state Public Service Commission, a typical Central Hudson customer will pay $5.43 (5.09 percent) more per month for electricity delivery during the first year, beginning July 1, and $6.25 and $6.62 more for the subsequent two years. Lower-income customers enrolled in an energy-assistance program would see decreases of $3.85 (4.2 percent) per month. The delivery charge for gas would increase by $7.73 (6.6 percent) per month during the first year and $11.27 and $12.37 in subsequent years.

After applying $44 million in bill credits, Central Hudson would collect $144 million in new revenue over the three years, according to a summary of the proposal. The company said it would spend that revenue on infrastructure, higher labor costs and bonuses, energy-efficiency and heat-pump programs and a 9.5 percent return on shareholder equity.

Central Hudson also agreed to provide customer bills in Spanish, continue outreach to households about energy assistance and award up to $200,000 in grants for workforce training in green-energy fields.

The 52 representatives for businesses, nonprofits, municipalities and public officials who joined the rate case as parties have until May 23 to file statements of support or opposition to the agreement, whose signatories include the state Department of Public Service. The PSC also scheduled an evidentiary hearing beginning on June 16. Public comments on the rate proposal can be submitted online to the PSC.

"At Central Hudson, we understand the financial challenges that rising bills place on our customers, and we are committed to easing this burden by implementing a rate plan that balances essential system investments with the need to keep costs as low as possible," said Steph Raymond, the utility's president and CEO.

Those costs, however, have been rising for Central Hudson's 315,000 electric and 90,000 gas customers. The most recent rate increase, approved by the PSC in July 2024, was for a one-year hike of $12.65 per month for the average electric bill and $12.25 for gas.

The following month, Central Hudson submitted a request for another one-year increase to electric and gas delivery rates of $9 a month. The agreement announced on Tuesday replaces that request.

Assembly Member Jonathan Jacobson, a Democrat whose district includes Beacon, issued his verdict on Wednesday (May 14), urging the PSC to reject the proposed agreement. He said the return on equity is "good for shareholders of Fortis [Central Hudson's parent company] but not for its customers," who include 6,853 households in Beacon, 3,646 in Philipstown, 1,270 in Cold Spring and 326 in Nelsonville.

Marbled Meat to host house concert

Strolling down Main Street in Beacon while eating, drinking and making merry on a beautiful weekend day, Aaron Miller outlined his vision for a music series that "builds community," a phrase often bandied about.

But he gets things done. His first show with blues guitarist Jon Shain takes place on Sunday (May 18) at an unusual venue: the Marbled Meat Shop on Route 9 in Philipstown. Miller created a logo for what he calls his "butcher block party."

"I always wanted to do house concerts and thought it would be a bougie thing with wine and cheese for 20 friends, but my girlfriend figured that we might ruin the carpet," Miller said.

The couple decided to hold it outside, but when Lisa Hall of Marbled Meat heard about the plan, she urged caution. "Lisa goes, 'You know, you'll trample the lawn and maybe affect the septic tank, so why not have it here and we can do a pop-up barbecue?' "

The BYOB event will raise money and collect non-perishables for the Philipstown Food Pantry. "When I heard about cuts to meals programs, I got fired up and decided that I had to give back," says Miller, who moved to Beacon in January. "On Saturday morning, 63 families signed up to get fed, and that kills me."

Hosting the show provides a kid-friendly alternative to live music in a bar, says Hall. After Marbled opened 10 years ago, it presented Tall County and other groups. "Now the tunes have come back in an organic way," she said.

Shain, who lives in North Carolina, attended Duke University in the 1990s. So did Miller, a fan of the guitarist's college band, Flyin' Mice, which broke up long ago. "I guess I was on his short list all these years," says Shain, who will teach and perform at the Acoustic Getaway guitar camp in Stony Point this weekend.

Specializing in post-World War I Mississippi Delta blues, Shain plays with bare fingers and often uses a thumb pick to pluck the bottom strings. Strumming is rare. Masters of this mesmerizing form seem to simulate two instruments playing at once.

After branching into jazz, ragtime and bluegrass, Shain partnered with a music publisher to release two instructional books, Jon Shain's Fingerstyle Guitar Method and Gettin' Handy With the Blues, a reference to W.C. Handy, author of "St. Louis Blues," one of the genre's oldest and most popular songs.

The concert will take place on the covered patio. Inside the shop, shelves showcase goods from local craft creators like LL Pottery and Maria Pierogi, along with Understory Market and Split Rock Books on Main Street in Cold Spring.

"We know the experience of running errands down there on the weekends, so we brought some of them up here to support other businesses and help people avoid the crowds," says Hall.

Miller is already planning his next butcher block party. "I'm good at stirring up trouble and trying to make a difference," he says. "There's always a sense of community that centers on eating, drinking and music. Marbled Meat was crazy enough to let me do this."

Marbled Meat is located at 3091 Route 9 in Philipstown. The concert begins at 3 p.m. on May 18; a $20 donation is requested.

Towne Crier hosts monthly dance night

Rhoda Averbach hires a roadie to lug three bulky speakers so she can present Latin Dance Nite at the Towne Crier Cafe every month.

But her sparse DJ rig consists of a laptop. "Other DJs use all that stuff to look impressive; that gear really isn't necessary," she says segueing seamlessly between salsa, rumba, merengue, bachata, cha cha, reggaeton "y mas," according to one of her flyers.

Beyond the laptop, Latin night unfolds in analog. Dancers peruse notebooks filled with lists of song titles, write down their selections on a slip of paper and hand them to Olive Jones, who sits next to Averbach onstage.

The two, who both live in Beacon, also host Funky Dance Night at the Elks Club on the first Saturday of each month, with numbers from the disco era.

One slogan is, "If the music is good … dance." Averbach has a fine ear for music and knows how to get the dance floor bumping. A trained composer who melded jazz and classical, she worked with David Liebman and Michael Gerber to record several CDs and tour the country.

She became enamored with Latin music after realizing that it "gives people pleasure, and I like to see them happy."

Reading the room is an essential skill. "For me, it's about the music. If a song doesn't take off, I'll fade it out within 30 seconds and move on to something else," she says. "You can't go wrong with Marc Anthony."

Fast songs featuring hypnotic bass lines populate the floor. Latin dancing is akin to ballroom styles but offers more fluidity and room to improvise. As the repetitive music pulses through the room, bodies spin like tops, feet keep shuffling and hands are clasped over heads and behind backs.

When the first notes of the 2004 reggaeton hit "Gasolina," by Daddy Yankee, spilled from the speakers, people popped from their seats. One couple picked a spot in front of the kitchen door and almost caused a collision, but the waitstaff acclimated.

The music - and the scene - draws people from all over the Hudson Valley. There are similar events in New Rochelle and Middletown, and many of the dancers knew each other from Nyack.

Sitting with a group of friends she met across the river, Joanne Williams, who lives in Poughkeepsie, slipped in and out of her padded high-heel dance shoes, which help keep a dancer's center of gravity leaning forward. "I've met a lot of people through Latin dancing," she says. "It's a nice community."

For self-proclaimed salsa addict Lisa Rodriguez, who lives in Bloomingburg, "the music is contagious and there aren't many places to dance in the area."

Mastering the steps is all about counting, she says: Salsa is 1-2-3 / 5-6-7 (out of eight) and bachata is straight 1-2-3-4.

"I like playing sports, so it's good exercise that gets your dopamine going," Rodriguez says. "I enjoy the challenge of following the cues as the man leads. To do it well, you can't think too much - you have to go with the flow."

The Towne Crier is located at 379 Main St. in Beacon. The May 29 dance was canceled. The next event is scheduled for June 26; see dub.sh/latin-dance-june. Tickets are $11.

Highlights from the May 14 meeting

At the Wednesday (May 14) meeting of the Cold Spring Village Board, Mayor Kathleen Foley reported that, after an attempt to approve a sales-tax-sharing plan failed, Putnam County's town and village leaders worked with the four members of state Legislature to draft a revised home-rule request to get it done. Foley said the county Legislature must vote to accept the request and that a special meeting has been scheduled for Monday.

The mayor reported that, following recent heavy rains, Village Hall received numerous calls about water flowing out of an old conduit on Craigside Drive near Haldane. Tests showed the water appears to be from an underground stream that shifted course after the severe storms in July 2023. The village is working with the school district and Central Hudson to resolve the situation.

Seastreak has canceled plans for summer cruises to Cold Spring. Instead, it has proposed a cruise for Sept. 6, followed by Saturday and Sunday excursions from Oct. 4 through Nov. 9. Friday dockings are proposed for Nov. 7, 14 and 21.

The board approved usage-fee increases for the village sewer and water systems effective July 1.

The Cold Spring Fire Co. responded to nine calls in April, including three runs to assist other fire companies, two assists to local emergency medical services, two activated fire alarms and two brush fires. Firefighters spent six hours helping to extinguish a 19-acre blaze in Putnam Valley. Chief Matt Steltz reported that volunteers Philip Kean, Lauren De La Vega and Kimberly Seville recently completed basic exterior firefighting training.

The Cold Spring police responded to 115 calls in April, including 27 assists to other agencies, eight traffic stops and four motor vehicle crashes.

The Village Board accepted Camille Linson's resignation as associate justice, effective June 5. She is moving out of the area.

To cover expenses, the Historic District Review Board is considering a policy that would require applicants to establish escrow funds for projects that require a public hearing.

Trustee Eliza Starbuck said she is exploring options for companies that supply parking payment kiosks linked to the ParkMobile app. The board planned for two additional kiosks as part of its 2025-26 budget.

The board approved a request from the sloop Clearwater to dock at Cold Spring from July 19 to 27.

'Essentially zero risk to workers,' says company

Holtec is still trying to determine how soil at the Indian Point nuclear power plant near Philipstown became contaminated with radioactive material.

The radiation levels are not considered dangerous. A Holtec official said at a May 1 meeting of the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board that a person would have to "ingest many pounds" of the dirt to reach even one-tenth of the allowable federal limits. But the contamination is a concern because it was discovered far from where any of the three reactors were located or where nuclear waste is stored.

Holtec, which began decommissioning the closed plant in 2021, reported the contamination at the December meeting of the oversight board. It was detected when Holtec was investigating building a data center and conducted surface soil sampling around a training center on the southern end of the site. The tests detected elevated levels of cesium-137, a byproduct of nuclear fission.

"The levels are low, but it still needs to be remediated," said Frank Spagnuolo of Holtec. Don Mayer, who worked at Indian Point for more than 30 years, beginning in 1981, and now is part of the decommissioning team, said the radiation is low enough to be "essentially zero risk to workers."

Nevertheless, the contamination is being treated as radioactive waste and is being excavated and shipped via rail to nuclear storage facilities out of state. Holtec has said it has purchased equipment to conduct more extensive surveys to search for similar contamination elsewhere. "We don't want to be surprised anymore," said Spagnuolo.

It's not clear how cesium-137 ended up so far from the reactors and fuel storage. Holtec also tested the area for other common byproducts of fission, such as strontium-90 and nickel-63, but found nothing.

Mayer said he doesn't think the contamination happened during the three decades he worked at the plant. He suggested it may have occurred in the 1970s, during construction of two of Indian Point's three reactors. The first reactor, which went offline in 1974 because it lacked an emergency cooling system, had a leak at some point that contaminated the soil. Mayer said that some of that soil may have been excavated to where the training center was later built to make room for the second and third reactors and the plant's monitoring equipment at the time wasn't advanced enough to detect it.

Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years; if the contamination did occur in the 1970s, the material would be less than half as potent, which may explain the low level of radiation. "By the next meeting we'll have some good information," said Spagnuolo.

Meanwhile, a federal lawsuit filed by Holtec against New York State over a 2023 law that prohibits the company from discharging radioactive wastewater into the Hudson River continues. The state Department of Environmental Conservation said at the May 1 meeting that it is pausing the renewal of Holtec's "pollutant discharge elimination system" permit in the meantime.

Last year, the state attorney general accused Holtec of discharging radioactive water into the Hudson despite the law. Holtec countered that the discharges weren't waste from the spent fuel pools but groundwater and stormwater, a process that has been going on for 15 years.

When asked at the meeting about the discharges, Spagnuolo said he could not respond because of the ongoing litigation. He referred board members to the 2024 Annual Radioactive Effluent Release Report, released April 30. It notes that the discharges are happening but that the "offsite dose associated with the groundwater pathway remains extremely small," contributing less than 1 percent of the annual limit.

Philipstown, Dutchess County affected

An appeals court on Wednesday (May 7) upheld a law that will shift many county and town elections in New York to even-numbered years, including in Putnam and Dutchess - a change meant to align local elections with statewide and federal races.

Democrats argue that the law, which was approved two years ago, will increase turnout in local races. Republicans sued to block it, saying it violates the state constitution and could give Democrats a partisan advantage in higher-turnout election years.

State Sen. James Skoufis, a Democrat from Orange County who sponsored the legislation, said that town and county elections in odd years typically see 20 percent to 30 percent turnout, while those during presidential years can top 70 percent.

The appeals court ruled that the law can take effect immediately. The decision overruled a lower court that struck down the law, enacted in December 2023. The Republican-led Dutchess Legislature voted last year to spend $100,000 to join the legal challenge to the legislation.

Under the law, anyone in office before 2025 will complete his or her term, but subsequent terms will be shortened. Here's what that means locally:

Two of the four Philipstown Town Board seats, which have four-year terms, will be on the ballot in 2027 for three-year terms. They will be on the ballot again in 2030 for four-year terms. The other two seats, which will be on the ballot in November, will be for three-year terms that end in 2028.

The Philipstown highway commissioner and town clerk seats, which have four-year terms, will be on the 2027 ballot for three-year terms, then return to the ballot in 2030 for four-year terms. The town supervisor, who serves a two-year term, will be elected in November to a one-year term and the seat will appear on the ballot again in 2026 for a two-year term.

The Dutchess County Legislature seats, which will all be on the ballot in November, will be for one-year terms, rather than two, and return to the ballot in 2026. The election for county executive, a four-year position, will occur as scheduled in 2027, but the winner will serve only three years, until 2030.

The law exempts villages, such as Cold Spring and Nelsonville. In cities, such as Beacon, elections can only be changed through a constitutional amendment. The law also exempts county races for sheriff, district attorney, clerk and judges.

The law does not affect the Putnam County executive, whose four-year term is on the ballot in even-numbered years and next up in 2026, or Putnam legislators, who serve three-year terms.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

Fishkill Avenue Dunkin' in limbo after 6-1 vote

It is unclear what's next for a Dunkin' coffeehouse planned for Fishkill Avenue in Beacon after the City Council on Monday (May 5) banned drive-thrus citywide.

The proposal - to build a Dunkin' with a drive-thru and three apartments at the former Healey Brothers Ford site at 420 Fishkill Ave. - was approved by the Planning Board in March. But while the Planning Board reviewed the application, the council began weighing zoning amendments that would ban drive-thrus and self-storage facilities.

Council members decided during their April 28 workshop to split the two. They will continue discussing the self-storage measure, but the law prohibiting drive-thrus went to a vote Monday and was adopted, 6-1, with Mayor Lee Kyriacou voting "no."

The ban originated in the city's ongoing study of the Fishkill Avenue corridor, where a citizen committee recommended last year that, to encourage more pedestrian-friendly growth, the council prohibit new self-storage facilities, drive-thrus, gas stations, car washes, auto lots and repair shops. Existing businesses would remain. On Monday, Kyriacou called a walkable, more residential Fishkill Avenue "a laudable goal," but said "it's a long, long way off."

He cautioned that zoning today for the council's vision for the corridor could backfire. "My concern is that if we don't permit some transitional uses - and I do think a drive-thru would be a transitional use - we will end up with many more years of car dealerships, probably used-car dealerships, instead of seeing the change that we want," Kyriacou said.

The rest of the council disagreed. Pam Wetherbee, who represents Ward 3, which includes the Fishkill Avenue corridor, said that prohibiting drive-thrus would allow the area to evolve quickly. Nobody could have predicted Beacon's rapid growth, she said, "and I think it's going to happen just as quick" on Fishkill Avenue.

George Mansfield said that "we have to zone for what we want ultimately to see." Drive-thrus "go up fast" and "one follows the other," he said. Paloma Wake said that "in motion" changes in the corridor, such as sidewalk improvements, will increase accessibility and make restricting drive-thrus "the best long-term decision for Beacon."

It remains to be seen where the move leaves the approved Dunkin' application. City Attorney Nick Ward-Willis told the council in January that the project would be regulated by whatever zoning is in place when a foundation is poured and "something substantial has come out of the ground."

Taylor Palmer, the attorney for Jay Healey, the developer (who is a member of the committee studying Fishkill Avenue), told the council last month that the project would not be viable without the drive-thru. Healey could ask the Zoning Board of Appeals for a use variance allowing it to proceed; Palmer said Wednesday that no decision had been made.

When asked in March for their opinions, Planning Board members expressed concern in a memo with the "categorical prohibition" of drive-thrus. Instead, they suggested a district-by-district approach or identifying areas within zoning districts where the use should be prohibited.

In other business…

The council on Monday approved an extension of the contract for garbage and recycling collection with Royal Carting. The city will pay $60,177 monthly for garbage and $19,369 for recycling, or 1 percent increases, in 2026. The company had not increased its fees since 2019, said City Administrator Chris White.

Bulk trash drop-off at the Transfer Station on Dennings Avenue opens for the season on May 17 and runs through Sept. 20. Residents current on their taxes may bring up to 250 pounds of construction or household waste. The Transfer Station is open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Checking in with CEO of Pattern for Progress

Pattern for Progress, a nonprofit think tank based in Newburgh, is celebrating its 60th year. We spoke with Adam Bosch, its president and CEO.

How did the organization begin?

When we were founded in 1965, the Hudson Valley was going through a lot: urban renewal in city centers, people moving from New York City to suburban areas, the beginning of the environmental movement and the seeds of innovation at places like IBM in Poughkeepsie. In addition, the U.S. Army was getting ready to sell Stewart Airbase into private hands. There was a need for an objective, independent research and planning organization.

Today, we're again in a period of rapid change. We have a housing crisis in affordability and availability. We have a new wave of technology in the form of AI and remote work, and we have generational investments being made in our downtowns, bringing small cities back to life. And the pandemic drove tens of thousands of residents into the region. Our job is to look at those things, measure them and try to explain their effects on our communities and regionwide.

What are you working on in 2025?

We're creating community-driven plans for the reuse of buildings or parcels that have been abandoned for decades. We can set up tax credits on parcels that make them more feasible to be redeveloped as housing, mixed-use or as new manufacturing centers. The idea is to create development in our downtowns that provides progress without displacement.

With housing, there's an indication that corporate actors are moving into the region. There's not a lot of data, but I'll give you my anecdotal evidence. At my house in Ulster County, I am getting two flyers per month from corporations offering to buy my house - all cash, sight unseen.

We're going to trace these LLPs and LLCs to their common corporate owners and be able to quantify the extent of corporate homeownership and how it's changed over the past decade. The governor has proposed that if a company owns 10 or more properties or has $50 million or more in assets, it shouldn't be allowed to bid on a home for the first 72 hours it's on the market. In places like Arizona, Nevada, or down to the Carolinas, there are entire neighborhoods owned by a single corporation that rents homes back to people. We want to understand the effect it has on access and the cost of homeownership.

What do you see as the most important issues facing the region?

Housing is No. 1. There's not even a close second. We do not have enough homes to sustain the population we have, and the cost of both homeownership and rent have outpaced our growth and wages by a lot. That means housing is gobbling up more and more take-home pay.

No. 2 would be workforce. We have awesome training facilities at Dutchess Community College, Orange Community College, Marist and SUNY New Paltz, but the data show our labor pool is getting ready to shrink by about 120,000 people in the next 15 years. It's the size of the workforce that's a concern in the near- and medium-term, along with what I call the "youth crunch." We have seen births - not birth rates - decline over the past two decades by about 25 percent to 35 percent in each of our counties. Dutchess is down by 25 percent. Putnam is down the most of any county. If you look at the population of infants, children and teens now and compare it to a decade ago, we have 40,000 fewer kids in the region.

After that, I would say community development in terms of: Are we able to attract and retain jobs to the region? Do they pay a living wage? The other two to mention are childcare businesses shrinking by 40 percent in 15 years and outdated water and sewer infrastructure.

The redevelopment of the former Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill and a transit-oriented development at the Beacon train station could add 1,600 housing units in and around Beacon. What does the community need to see from the developers?

When we did a report on the adaptiv...