Nurses are demanding a fair contract at Garnet Health Medical Center after their latest contract expired in September 2025.

Dozens of healthcare workers, local officials, and labor advocates with the Hudson Valley’s 1199 SEIU chapter formed a picket line on April 30 outside Garnet Health Medical Center in Middletown. Radio Catskill's Kimberly Izar has the details.

Nurses are demanding a fair contract at Garnet Health Medical Center that includes fair wages and safer staffing practices. Headquartered in Middletown, Garnet Health provides healthcare to over 500,000 residents in Sullivan, Orange, and Ulster counties.

Radio Catskill’s Kimberly Izar has more.

New York state’s school districts are in the final push to finalize their budgets ahead of the state budget vote deadline of May 19. 

Last Tuesday, the Liberty Central School District Board of Education adopted a $72 million budget for the upcoming 2026-2027 school year with no tax levy increase. Now, it heads to voters to decide on May 19.

Radio Catskill’s Kimberly Izar spoke with the district’s Superintendent Dr. Patrick Sullivan about the budget and what residents should know.

New York really is the Big Apple. New York is the second-largest apple producing state in the country, averaging 29.5 million bushels of production annually, according to the USDA. 

But last Tuesday early morning, apple farms were hit with a late Spring freeze with temperatures that left some orchards devastated with severe crop loss. Radio Catskill’s Kimberly Izar has more.

The Hudson Valley awaits its first Black trans-owned bookstore coming this summer. Born and raised in the Hudson Valley, founder Awa-Moon Barnett is a community educator and organizer based in Newburgh who has been fundraising over the past year to open “home home” — a mobile bookshop and political education center grounded in her belief that education serves as a central site of liberation for Black and queer folks. 

Radio Catskill’s Julia Kim had the chance to sit down with Barrett on the origin story of home home, the vision she sees for the bookshop and community space and the fight for racial justice and trans liberation within the Hudson Valley.