As the winter snow recedes and signs of spring buds and blooms appear so noticeable is the trash tossed on the sides of our roads.

Luckily neighboring towns provide Earth Day Clean Up days. They provide the bags and pick up. All you have to do is put in your time and effort to help clean up your community.

The Town of Rochester Earth Day Clean Up will be Saturday April 19th and 26th. There is also a pizza party at the Community Center on the 26th as a thank you. In Rochester call 626-2115 to claim your road and to arrange for a pick up. Bags are available at the Community Center. Volunteers with pick up trucks are also needed for Rochester.

Organize your neighbors to claim your road. This could be a great teaching moment for our youth to be involved in a service activity.

For those in other communities, contact your town hall for specifics on dates, bags and pick up arrangements.

It is great living in a place where the citizens take pride in their community, come together and become motivated to action.

Help out on Earth Day and every day. Keep our environment clean and healthy. You can make a difference.

Barbara Fornal
Accord

The best thing we can do for the residents of our penal system is educate them. The best thing we can do for our young immigrants is to educate them. And yet the state senate in Albany has denied funding for both these groups.

I hear people out there say they are happy that "we are not wasting hard-earned taxpayer money on these two non-deserving elements of our population." And yet these are the same people who complain so vigorously about the high crime rate among ex-inmates and the uneducated.

I worked for some years in a federal detention center in Puerto Rico, and I was surprised by two things: first, that the "confined" were so eager to learn and learned readily and, secondly, that there were practically no other educational programs available to them except for a lone elderly retired Jesuit priest who came to teach them college-level courses. So the majority of inmates spent their time just "hanging around the yard sharing with other inmates" because they had nothing else to do.

The nun/chaplain who began our program of "cultural adaptation" in order to help our "inmates" get along better in a multicultural and multilingual facility began the program with a government grant of $1,500. The course was a great joy and a great success, but, after the first six months, we were told that there was no more funding available and, if we wished to continue, we would have to do so as volunteers. We did so for some time later.

Tom Travers, Redemptorist
Ulster Park

In keeping with his reputation for saying incredible things, Shalom Lamm has done it again. On the heels of being publicly exposed in court for taking part in what the Sullivan County Board of Elections called a voter registration "sham," and what Judge Schick tactfully characterized as an attempt to "stuff the ballot box," Lamm had the gall to release a long-winded, post-election tract offering an olive branch to the people of Bloomingburg. Lamm shamelessly used his resources in an unsuccessful attempt to knock every Rural Heritage Party candidate off the ballot using any legal technicality he could muster.

After his family and the rest of the 145 people who filed bogus voter registrations were correctly denied the right to vote in Sullivan County, and after it was clear he suffered a thumping loss in the village election, his statement — saying he's the good guy, he forgives us, and, "Oh, by the way, can't we all just get along" — shows that his chutzpah knows no boundaries. Fortunately society has an answer for people like him. It's called prosecution. Citizens, the Board of Elections and the County Attorney have all done their job. Now it's time for law enforcement to do theirs.

Anita Altman
Phillipsport

Say it, and it must be so. Obama's claim to transparency amounted to a blinding, eager presumption by polarized liberals that he would proceed with another first-year promise, that of "no more business as usual." The former resulted in an intrusion that only rendered our own personal lives transparent; the latter claim resulted in the unheralded accommodation of merely a different set of even more lobbyists.

I would have rather seen the two claims manifest themselves in the form of... oh, I don't know, maybe the FDA highlighting food ingredients still found in our products but long-ago banished in Europe. Or a White House press conference that wasn't so orchestrated with selected, preordained questions and answers.

Then the Fed could have integrated the Consumer Price Index within those statistics that determine our inflation rate, thus accounting for the increased cost of food and fuel. But none of that practical application happened. It turned out to be politically expedient for us to see some falsely manufactured semblance of a promised utopia.

But all the world is now so liberally staged — much now in preparation for the arrival of Hillary. A sinister propaganda evokes the preconceived notion of innocence, lest of course "this war on woman" should prevail.

To better insulate Hillary against her Republican counterpart, Hollywood and the mainstream media give us the now trendier "war on bossy," further pre-empting any perceived transparency while facilitating the means by which Hillary remains unapproachable and unaccountable during future debates or town hall meetings.

Steven P Clum
Montgomery

Last week State Sen. Cecilia Tkaczyk came to the our town's senior center to talk about the state budget being hammered out in Albany. I'd like to thank the senator for spending time explaining some of the difficult issues involved in this budget, answering questions and explaining her positions. Sen. Tkaczyk has stood strongly in support of public education, she spoke clearly of the need for more equitable funding, She understands the need to fundamentally change the flawed system of funding education which in large part comes from property taxes. This puts the burden on individuals and communities are often unable to support the good educational systems they need and deserve. She knows that school districts have lost state funding over the last few years and that school programs are being crippled and that current proposals were not sufficient. We have seen this in our own school district. She has joined the voices of many throughout the state demanding an increase in funding for education in this budget.

She has also consistently supported small farmers, has stood strongly for the environment, against hydrofracking and recognizes the very serious dangers posed by the wastewater from fracking imported from out of state which can threaten our drinking water, our landfills and our roads.

Thank you Sen. Tkaczyk.

Sue Rosenberg
Saugerties

I read the articles regarding Valley View with trepidation for all county employees.

If I were a county employee, I would not trust a politician who says all I want is Valley View. Once a politician smells the scent of victory, what stops him from privatizing the Law Department, Department of Mental Health, Department of Public Works (including golf course), Department of Social Services and then of course, the sheriff's office and jail. They have private jails in the South, you know. It's all about money, not people. I am sure I left out other equally important departments, but rest assured they are clearly in the sights of the politicians.

If one does not stand up now, it will be too late when you are the last department standing. Take a lesson from the theologian Martin Niemoller: "When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist, then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out."

Richard N. Lentino
Middletown

Let's be honest with ourselves for a change. New York's SAFE Act is not "intelligent gun control," as the governor said. It is un-American, people-controlling, unconstitutional and treasonous, straight from Hitler's Nazi manifesto.

The primary purpose of the SAFE Act, as written, is to: circumvent our constitutional rights, harass and impose new taxes on law-abiding citizens and pave the way for the eventual confiscation of all our guns.

Universal background checks as proposed and promoted by the real extremists — Cuomo, Obama, and company — is not "intelligent gun control" and never will be. If they wanted real, smart, effective gun control that will actually attempt to keep guns out of the hands of people who use guns for criminal purposes and to go on killing sprees, they would have proposed and passed a law that would do what I have been saying for over a year now. That is, create a database for background checks that contains only the names of convicted felons, drug addicts and the mentally unstable who could be a threat to themselves and others. We can never keep criminals from getting guns, but what I proposed would be the most effective way to keep guns out of the hands of mass murderers.

Yes, Cuomo needs to apologize to the Catholic Church. He must also apologize to every law-abiding citizen in this state and repeal the act of treason he and his self-described moderate friends committed January 2013, when they violated their oaths of office.

Attilio A. Contini
Bloomington

General Motors' hiding of automobile flaws to increase financial gain is just the latest in a long series of failures by American industries.

As long as such failings continue to be penalized by just monetary fines, there is little incentive for industries to change. If the Supreme Court gives corporations contribution rights the same as individuals, then let's give them the right to go to jail just like the rest of us.

Bob Rumpf
Middletown

Get ready for the annual "It's for the Children" campaign by school districts in an effort to pass schools' budgets.

The Empire Center's Facebook and its website SeeThroughNY.net indicate the opposite. New York State leads this nation by spending $19,076 per student, or 81 percent more than the national average of $10,560. Yet the outcomes are mediocre.

Half of the local superintendents earn more than the governor of this state. Former Orange BOCES's T. Olivo got a $168,000 pension last year on top of $238,000 salary. Valley Central closed the Maybrook school, went to half-day kindergarten and eliminated many programs while it pays 120 staff members more than $100,000. Teachers' median salary at VC is $92,000.

Districts waste your money busing thousands of kids for two hours "teaching" days during the last week of school. Local teachers unions that refused to accept a pay freeze to help save schools, programs and their colleagues' jobs demonstrated that it is not for the children and that the way to practice union solidarity and camaraderie is by throwing the newest members under the bus just so the rest continue to get raises, step increases and continue to contribute too little toward health insurance and pension.

T. Peleg
Pine Bush

The one thing we can all agree on is that upstate property owners are being hammered by school taxes. Rural districts are paying proportionately more in taxes than urban areas where schools are funded through a progressive income tax coming from a large tax base. In Saugerties, many residential and commercial properties are assessed at values way above their owner's ability to pay their school taxes. While this hurts all of us, it is especially difficult for those on fixed incomes.

NYS Sen. Cecilia Tkaczyk conducted an apolitical budget hearing open to the public and all of her constituents on March 23 at the Saugerties Senior Center. The hearing focused on the inequities in school funding and what we need to do to get our fair share. The Senator presented an overview of the problems facing the funding of our schools which was followed by a question and answer session. If you missed the hearing you can view it on Lighthouse TV 23 or online by going to http://vp.telvue.com/player?s=lighthousetv. Simply click on Special Events and then on Budget Hearing.

We all need to make our voices heard in Albany because the current system for funding our schools must change.

Mike Harkavy
Saugerties

In your April 3rd editorial, speaking of the Common Core testing, you refer to the "mixed reactions of students and the worries of parents and communities as well as teachers." And then you speak of "seeing those younger kids sharpening their skills." If that's what you see, you're not looking.

The worries are realistic; kids are not sharpening their skills in anything useful, only in the taking of invasive tests.

And the tests are not the worst of the problem. The Common Core itself, rather than sharpening skills, is dumbing kids down. Instead of addressing multi-faceted learning we are devoting more and more time to preparation for tests based on a seriously flawed Curriculum. The testing bullies students and teachers while wasting time and money. This is bad enough, but the curriculum is graver: it devastates education and guarantees there will be no improvement for the foreseeable future.

Change is certainly necessary however this one is a loser (except for the people who sell the texts and the tests.). The Common Core is not for today's kids and, contrary to government hype, not for tomorrow's either.

Bob Prener
Grahamsville