We're Getting Close to the Election.

To the editor,

We're getting close to the election. In my mind the choices in this election are easy. On both the Copake Chronicle and the Copake politics forum as well as elsewhere, Linda Gabaccia and Bob Sacks have spelled out where they stand on various issues. They have served the town well. Among other things, Linda took the lead in both creation of a town policy handbook and taking on Sal Casino, the town's absentee polluter. Bob has been a voice of reason on the town board and most recently did the analysis that showed how Copake spends almost $10,000 per mile more than one of the other towns to maintain our roads. Thanks to Bob, this may result in our savings hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Their challengers, Harvey Weber and Joe Laporta have not, despite the fact they had been invited to post their views on the Copake Chronicle and this forum. In the assessor contest, Loredana Delventhal has committed herself to taking the training to be assessor as rapidly as possible; on the other hand David Gordineer has passed up opportunity after opportunity to take one of the most important courses required to properly do his job. In addition, he has a background of physical confrontation with the police and a shadow hangs over him because of another more recent arrest which also involves an allegation of violence.

In the contest for town justice, the incumbent Brian Herman, a highly respected attorney, is being challenged by the current chief assessor, Bill Kane, untrained in the law, who although he was once a town justice, has anger management problems and quit in the middle of an important course that assessors need to do their job.Now we just have to get out and vote.

Howard Blue