Town Board adopts Police Reform Plan, broadband needs still not being met

PINE PLAINS — In addition to assessing the town’s efforts regarding broadband internet access, the Town Board unanimously adopted the Pine Plain’s Police Reform Plan at its meeting held at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 18.

Broadband needs not met

Among the items listed in her report, town Supervisor Darrah Cloud remarked that her broadband report was “a little discouraging.” To date, she said the town has a tremendous committee working on the issue and has entertained numerous officials from both the Dutchess County Legislature and the broadband companies themselves. 

Pine Plains has also signed a non-disclosure agreement so that Consolidated Communications would give the town its maps and make an estimate as to what a build-out would cost to cover all corners of the town, though the company hasn’t yet sent this material. Additionally, Cloud said Altice USA was supposed to attend one of the Town Board meetings, but canceled and hasn’t been heard from since.

Cloud observed that attaining “adequate high-speed internet for everyone is dependent on the federal and state governments taking the lead and completing the work, perhaps naming internet access as a utility and finding the money.

“The internet companies are not going to complete service on their own,” she said. “They will not invest the money.”

However, Cloud said the companies will build out on a road if all the homeowners on that road join the contract to pay a $150 start-up fee and $130 a month after that for three years. These fees, she said, pay the cost of extending the lines so they’re distributed along the road. She reported that the residents on Tripp Road have just completed this and are looking forward to high speed internet.

For the time being, Cloud said the town will continue to monitor changes in the law and funding opportunities; she also shared plans to pull together a consortium of three or four towns to meet with Dutchess County Legislator Gregg Pulver (R-19), a Pine Plains resident, on this issue in the coming weeks.

Police Reform Plan passed

Later that evening, Cloud announced that the board needs to pass the Police Reform and Modernization Plan for Pine Plains; Governor Andrew Cuomo had set an April 1 deadline for all communities with their own police agencies to do so or face losing state aid. She mentioned that the town’s plan was issued to the board a month ago with the comments and additions from the town’s police stakeholders committee. 

Providing both the board and the public with a history of the plan, Cloud said that when Cuomo mandated that every town, city and village evaluate and modernize their police policies, Dutchess County pulled all the agencies and towns with active police departments together to create a document that could be used uniformly.

“The idea was we don’t each have to reinvent the wheel in every town, we could all use the same document,” Cloud said.

She added the county’s document was designed mainly for more urban places, so when Pine Plains sat down with the document and examined it as a stakeholders committee, a lot of work that was done focused on determining what pertained to the town and eliminating what didn’t; retaining items that the town might want someday and molding some ideas to the town’s size and community needs. Cloud said she went through the document after the committee met for a few months. Taking everyone’s recommendations into account, she went into the county’s plan and did all the recommended edits, taking into account all of the commentary made on the plan. As the plan is due April 1, she reminded the board that if it didn’t pass it, the town will lose funding for its police force.

In assembling this Police Reform Plan, Councilwoman Sarah Jones remarked that it was an excellent process and that the town’s police department functions extremely well.

“I’m very happy with the process and I completely support passing the work that’s been done,” Jones said, and after further discussion, the board adopted the plan.

“I think our police will be very grateful because there’s a lot of care in it,” Cloud said of the reform plan.