About to begin dispensing ride tickets at the opening day of the annual Millbrook Fire Dept. Carnival on Wednesday, July 15, the ticket booth was a focus for visitors as they awaited the opening and the start of the rides.
MILLBROOK — Millbrook’s four day Fire Department Carnival that took place between July 15 through July 18 saw community turnout through rain, heat, and poor air quality.
With a looming storm and Canadian wildfires lowering air quality, residents and families still lined Franklin Avenue during the July 18 parade, cheering on local fire departments.
At 6 p.m. sharp, over a dozen fire apparatus, marching bands, and firefighters began rolling and marching through the heart of Millbrook from Front Street to Maple Avenue. Millbrook Mayor Peter Doro also marched in the parade with his two young boys, both waving American flags.
Games of chance were set up and ready to go on opening day of the annual Millbrook Fire Dept. Carnival on Wednesday, July 15.Photo by Leila Hawken
The smell of burgers and the sound of rides filled the carnival as goers waited in lines, ate cotton candy, played games, and got their faces painted. Rain didn’t stop the party, as people took the break to eat, dance or try their hand at ring toss.
The final day began with a parade that featured marching bands, fire trucks and apparatus, and firefighters from across Dutchess County. Afterwards, onlookers travelled to the carnival.
Fire departments that participated in the parade were judged across various categories with over 10 winners.
Proceeds from the carnival benefit the Millbrook Fire Department.
Among the first to try out the Paratrooper ride on Wednesday, July 15, opening day of the Millbrook Fire Dept. Carnival, were Alyssa Hotaling of Millbrook and daughter, Sophie (4).Photo by Leila Hawken
Eloise Pickering
Volunteers at St. Thomas Episcopal Church’s Food of Life pantry distribute vegetables and other food to patrons on Friday, July 17, in South Amenia.
A year after federal funding cuts to supplemental food programs, local farmers markets and food pantries continue adapting to ensure community members have access to food.
Farmers markets throughout the region accept a variety of food assistance benefits, and food pantries are switching to new choice models, allowing their guests and neighbors to choose their food rather than be sent home with a pre-packaged box.
Food assistance programs include Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits, SNAP, Double Up Food Bucks, and Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program checks.
Double Up Tokens and FreshConnect Checks are both matching programs, where coupons and tokens handed out by local food pantries or the market are then matched through federal programs or farmers markets themselves.
Previously, local food pantries have made boxes with different foods to supply households for a set amount of meals. For example, St. Thomas Episcopal Church gives each household enough food for nine meals. Community members would show up and grab a box. Now, people can choose what foods they need for their family. For example, they can choose between pasta and rice, or between various types of vegetables.
“The hope is that people can really choose the food that meets the needs of their particular household,” said Jordan Schmidt, the food programs director at the North East Community Center.
Katie Cariello, one of the food programs coordinators at NECC, said it’s important that people feel heard, both through choice models and through conversations during delivery programs.
“There’s humanity behind this,” Cariello said. “We are here helping and supporting, and that feels very impactful.”
NECC helps between 200 and 250 households each week, and last year the organization saw around 4,400 households. St. Thomas’ pantry serves around 600 households weekly.
Paulo Rossi, the pantry manager at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Amenia said that the choice model also helps with inventory and shipping.
The North East Community Center and St. Thomas Church work together to provide food assistance programs to the community.
“One of the things that I found most valuable and exciting is it’s really not about each individual organization. It’s about how we support each other across the region,” Schmidt said.
Following the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law July 2025, funding was cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. This has affected food banks that supply local pantries, limiting options and raising costs.
Interim Executive Director of the Missions at St. Thomas, Jim Wright, said that the regional food bank has “dramatically less food to offer either for sale and definitely for free. Forget for free.”
Wright said that the regional food bank is trying to expand its food options as much as possible, but federal funding cuts make it challenging.
At NECC, the pantry had to limit how often people could visit for food. Although they’re open weekly, they had to limit visits to twice monthly due to food limitations.
“We were having a really hard time with getting enough food on site to support everyone,” Schmidt said.
Both pantries partner with local farms for produce, and St. Thomas has onsite gardens. One is a teaching garden, and one is a giving garden. The giving garden has items like edible flowers, onions, and tomatoes.
“In addition to the vegetables we grow exclusively for our neighbors in the giving garden, we also have spectacular produce from local farms,” said Wright.
One of the more prominent issues that local food pantries face is access to protein, although it’s been slowly improving.
“It’s particularly impactful in terms of proteins,” Wright said. “It’s been getting a teeny bit better the last 2 weeks. There’s been at least some protein that our neighbors want to eat as opposed to canned chicken.”
Following federal cuts to SNAP, Schmidt has noticed some recipients are having a harder time receiving their benefits due to higher restrictions and an increase in required volunteer hours.
“These shifts seem like a disincentive to seeking or maintaining SNAP enrollment,” Schmidt said.
At food pantries, employees and volunteers make an effort to connect with their neighbors who come for food and toiletries. The teams also work to limit stigma around needing food assistance, and that the focus is keeping households fed.
“It’s about making people feel welcome and not ashamed when they’re accessing community food resources,” Schmidt said. “It’s about making sure the food is as nourishing as possible and also meets a wide range of cultural needs.”
NECC accepts a wide range of programs, including WIC benefits, SNAP, and offers Double Up Food Bucks and Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program checks.
Double Up Food Bucks and FMNP checks can be used at local farmers markets, including the Millbrook and Copake Hillsdale markets.
Millbrook Farmers Market introduced SNAP, FreshConnect and Veterans Benefits in 2025, and is continuing to expand throughout this summer.
The Copake Hillsdale Farmers Market started accepting SNAP in 2004, and has since introduced Double Up Tokens and Fresh Connect Checks.
The Copake Hillsdale market is a nonprofit, so it receives grant funding to match dollar for dollar. The market is also working towards funding for a van, which would provide transportation to the market for community members that need it.
“These programs help people,” said Copake Hillsdale Farmers Market Offsite Manager Nicole Friedrich. “There’s a lot of need.”
The Hillsdale Farmers Market sees between 10 and 12 customers each week who use some method of food assistance.
Eloise Pickering
A sign along Kaye Road in the Town of North East marks the location of Taconic Plateau Foundation’s land along the Connecticut border.
MILLERTON — The Taconic Plateau Foundation, an environmental nonprofit, plans to appeal to the Dutchess County Supreme Court for a property tax exemption after a third denial by the Town of North East. The foundation said it may be forced to close.
Established in 2022, the foundation is a nonprofit organization that oversees 175 acres of land along the New York/Connecticut border for conservation, research and educational work.
“Our charge is to maintain it as a pristine natural resource for posterity,” said Jed Marcus, a director of the foundation. He said the goal is to protect the species that call the property home.
In addition to maintaining the land, the foundation hosts public activities and scientific research. Marcus said nonprofit volunteers do not just passively maintain the land, but rather actively engage and educate the community through their work.
As a nonprofit, the Taconic Plateau Foundation has been deemed tax exempt by the IRS and the State of New York, but is seeking to be exempt from local property taxes. Currently, the foundation pays $6,643 in property and county taxes each year, Marcus said.
In 2025, the foundation recorded $8,800 in revenue from grant money.
Marcus said that the 2026 request for property tax exemption under New York State’s Real Property Tax Law was denied, as it was found by the Town of North East that the property is not used exclusively for nonprofit purposes.
“That statement is so troubling because it’s just emphatically not true,” Marcus said.
Marcus said the town did not elaborate as to why it concluded the property failed to qualify. He argues the land meets the statutory requirements and pointed to prior court decisions recognizing environmental conservation as a charitable purpose eligible for a property tax exemption.
The 1982 case of New York Botanical Garden v. Assessors of the Town of Washington established environmental conservation as a charitable activity that qualifies for real property tax exemption, he noted.
After the request was denied, the foundation appealed to the town’s Board of Assessment Review. Organization representatives received a determination letter on July 18 denying the appeal. Marcus said he was baffled by the denial.
“They just checked the box saying you’re not eligible for the request,” Marcus said.
Town of North East Assessor Katherine Johnson would not comment, citing an expectation of “continuing litigation,” but did not provide further details.
The Taconic Plateau Foundation plans to file an appeal by the end of July with the Dutchess County Supreme Court for a Real Property Law Article 7 hearing, which allows property owners to challenge property tax assessments in court. The court will review submitted documents, then decide whether to hold a hearing.
If the foundation is denied again, Marcus said it will likely go bankrupt.
“We have no assets, no money other than the land, and that will work well if we don’t have to pay taxes,” Marcus said. “If we have to pay taxes, basically, we’re going to go out of business. We just can’t raise that money.”
The foundation receives some donations that go directly toward taxes, and others that pay for conservation, charitable, or educational activities. Marcus said that there are less who contribute money for taxes than for other purposes, but the foundation can’t access the latter until the tax bill is paid.
The Taconic Plateau Foundation has set aside a $20,000 donation for litigation. If it didn’t go to court, that money would have gone towards programming and research.
The organization gets its funding through grants and donations, and the staff is made up of volunteers. Recently, the organization has had a challenging time receiving funding.
“We’ve gotten our money through grants, but we’ve kind of come to the end of the line because nobody wants to give a grant that’s simply going to go to the town to pay taxes,” Marcus said.
Graham Corrigan
MILLBROOK — Washington’s town board will begin workshopping plans for renovations to the town pool next week.
At a regular meeting on Thursday, July 9, the board discussed a preliminary feasibility study on the pool and surrounding park. A monthly workshop, hosted at Town Hall, will begin to address concerns and solidify plans on how to improve the park. The first session will take place on Thursday, July 23, at 6 p.m.
Members of the public are encouraged to attend, but only as observers to the proceedings.
The feasibility study was originally presented in May. It was prepared by Mike Murphy, the Chairman of the Reimagine the Town Park Committee, and found that residents are interested in a variety of recreational improvements. The proposals include pickleball courts, extended park hours, splash pads, a third pavilion, a new pool, and updated playground facilities. Murphy estimates the cost at between $2.5 and $3.7 million.
In other business, discussions over the town’s mass appraisal grew heated.
Assessor Lisa Evangelista detailed her findings, and emphasized the incompleteness of past data collection and site surveys. She claimed at least 100 properties are still missing from their collected data. Washington’s last home valuation took place in 2006.
The town debated the merits of passing off the task to an outside mass appraisal company, and pushed to determine a timeline for completion of the town-wide property assessment.
Part of the board’s concern stemmed from the shifting nature of property values: if data collection takes too long, the information collected at the beginning could be out of date by the end of the process.
Washington and Millbrook’s wide array of properties, from single-family homes to large farms, present unique challenges. The board agreed to begin discussions with mass appraisal firms in an attempt to expedite the process.
An application for high-density housing at the former site of Green Briar Nursing Home was also discussed. The proposal would include a number of townhouses and standalone homes, for a total of 12 units. The board highlighted the complications of the application — either a use variance or rezone would be required to facilitate the build.
The town board also approved several motions. The first will allow Washington to sell surplus highway vehicles at public auction. Another motion concerned town employees’ unused sick days: under the new resolution, town employees will be able to convert unused sick days to retirement funds at the time of an employee’s retirement, with a maximum allowance of 120 days.
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Graham Corrigan
PINE PLAINS — An on-duty Pine Plains police officer who was involved in a July 6 crash has resigned from the department, Town Board members were told during their July 15 meeting.
Officer Brian Johnson's resignation comes after he struck a 2003 Lincoln while he was traveling on Route 199 on July 6. According to State Police, Johnson failed to stop in time, totaling the vehicle.
The two occupants of the Lincoln sustained minor injuries. Johnson and Officer Aaron L. Fantroy, who was riding in the passenger seat of the patrol vehicle, were transported to Northern Dutchess Hospital. Fantroy was later transferred to Albany Medical Center for additional treatment.
State Police determined the crash was non-criminal. Investigators cited driver inattention or distraction as the cause, though they found Johnson was not using a cell phone or the patrol car's in-car computer immediately before the collision.
During the meeting, Officer John L. Hughes confirmed Johnson's resignation from the Pine Plains Police Department. Johnson was a recent graduate of the New York State Police Academy. It is unclear whether his resignation was related to the crash.
EMS response data questioned
The board’s agenda also included an EMS update from Pine Plains Rescue Squad 2nd Lt. Nelson Zayas. Zayas noted that Dutchess County has yet to release any reports or analysis on EMS calls in 2026. The county had previously released quarterly reports in 2025 that detailed EMS response times and responding agencies. Zayas’ own statistics were pulled from raw data he has collected over the course of the past year.
As he did in April, Zayas said county data on response times and non-response rates does not account for situations in which volunteer EMTs respond directly to a scene without utilizing an ambulance.
Of the second quarter’s 65 emergency calls received by Pine Plains Rescue Squad, 12 categorized EMS as late — meaning the response took more than nine minutes — or unresponsive. Zayas argues that number is actually three, and gave an accounting of each specific call. In some cases, ambulances were beaten to the scene by EMS volunteers. In others, a vehicle was out of service for repairs.
“I’m trying to give the public a view of what’s going on behind the scenes,” Zayas said, “and that things are not actually as bad as they look on paper.”
Millerton News
AMENIA — The Webutuck Central School District Board of Education is set to hold a public hearing on the district’s 2026-2027 safety plan on Monday, July 27, at 6:30 p.m.
A draft copy of the safety plan will be available prior to the meeting as part of the agenda packet. Community members may also submit comments regarding the safety plan online at the district’s website, webutuckschools.org, following the meeting.
The public hearing is set to take place in the Webutuck High School library, where the board regularly conducts its meetings every other Monday.
The regular Board of Education meeting will continue following the public hearing.
Millerton News
SALISBURY — It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of Dona Lee (Chilcoat) Alexander, our beloved mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, and friend, on July 9, 2026.
Born on Dec. 20, 1955, in Sharon, Connecticut, Dona lived a life filled with love, kindness, and an unwavering dedication to helping others.
Dona was preceded in death by her father, William Chilcoat, but leaves behind her loving mother, Katherine Chilcoat. Her cherished family includes her daughter, Sarah Olinger Hadoulis and son-in-law, Michael; her granddaughter, Penelope Hadoulis; her sister, Susan Chilcoat Bucceri and brother-in-law, Louis; her brother, Richard Chilcoat and sister-in-law, Stacey; nieces Katherine and Elizabeth Bucceri; and nephews Will, Ben (Lauren), and Graham Chilcoat.
Dona grew up in Lakeville where she graduated from Salisbury Central School (1969), Housatonic Valley Regional High School (1973), and Gettysburg College (1977) where she earned a degree in English Literature. Her thirst for knowledge and service continued as she became certified in Grief Counseling and Thanatology, completed her Clinical Pastoral Education, received her Florida Certification for Volunteer Management, and was ordained as an Inter-Faith Minister.
Dona’s professional life was a testament to her commitment to service. After she and her daughter Sarah returned to Salisbury in 1988, she worked as store manager of Community Lumber & Hardware (now Herringtons) and as a tea blender and sales manager for Harney & Sons Fine Tea before beginning a career that was dedicated to helping others. Her roles included Director of Therapeutic Recreation, Volunteers and Pastoral Services at Noble Horizons; office administrator for Habitat for Humanity NW CT; Director of Programs at Harvest Food and Outreach in Vero Beach, Florida; and as an in-home senior care aid for Senior Helpers of the Palm Beaches in Florida.
Some people leave behind footprints. Others leave behind a way of seeing the world. Dona was one of those people. She found beauty in the smallest things, especially a quiet walk on the beach with her eyes searching for sea glass, always believing that what the waves returned had a story to tell. She followed her heart wherever it led, never worried about fitting into any else’s idea of how life should be lived. She will be remembered for her gentle spirit, her dedication to helping others, her love for her new granddaughter, and her unwavering commitment to making the world a better place. She believed that acting on our better instincts reminds us, above everything, that we are all humans and that when we act with care and compassion, we can shape a more loving world. She was beautifully unconventional, deeply spiritual, and completely herself. There will never be another quite like her. We hope that wherever she is now, the shore is endless, the sea glass is abundant, and her spirit is as free as ever. She will be deeply missed.
Dona’s family wishes to extend their heartfelt gratitude to the Salisbury Visiting Nurse Association, particularly Cyndi, Laurie, and Molly, and to Visiting Nurse & Hospice of Litchfield County for their compassionate care and support.
In memory of Dona, the family suggests donations be made to the Little Guild in Cornwall, CT or Salisbury Family Services.
A celebration of her life will be held in the fall.
All other services will be private.
The Kenny Funeral Home has care of arrangements.
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