Town makes headway with broadband, police reform and sewer study

PINE PLAINS — In the last few months of 2020, the town of Pine Plains was able to make significant progress on three major projects — including its police reform plan, sewer feasibility study and efforts to address broadband access — and town officials are looking forward to advancing further in the coming new year.

Broadband

Recognized as an ongoing challenge for local municipalities in both Dutchess and Columbia Counties, the issue of securing broadband access has been intensely discussed at the Pine Plains Broadband Committee’s weekly meetings in 2020. Describing the discussions as an eye-opening experience, town Supervisor Darrah Cloud praised the Broadband Committee’s brilliance, adding that many of its members have worked for internet companies and therefore have been able to shed a light on “the enormous folly of the FCC in determining that all these towns are fully served by broadband.”

Because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) looks at Census blocks — or the smallest geographic areas used by the United States Census Bureau to tabulate data — to determine service in an area, Cloud said that if one person reports having service in a Census block, the FCC declares that area as served. 

As a result, she said many towns in both Dutchess and Columbia Counties don’t have adequate broadband. Another issue previously brought to the committee’s attention focused on how it would take another five years at least for Optimum to upgrade all the service lines in northeastern Dutchess County, totaling $35,000 a mile for laying down the fiber optic cables.

“The big lesson in all this has been ‘follow the money,’” Cloud said recently, “and some of the companies came out and said it’s not worth it to string a $35,000 wire to one house.”

Moving forward, Pine Plains is now trying to band together with Columbia County to address the issue, while Cloud is striving to attract interest from more towns in Dutchess County. Come Thursday, Jan. 7, the town’s Broadband Committee plans to meet with Columbia County’s Broadband Committee. Though she anticipates learning more at the meeting, Cloud said the Columbia County Broadband Committee is looking at public-private enterprises involving town investments in infrastructure and in creating a foundation.

“We’ve just got our fingers in every single pie trying to figure out which way to go and who can help us and who’s willing to partner,” Cloud said.

On Dec. 18, Cloud happily announced via her newsletter that the Pine Plains Central School District was invited by Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office to join a program geared toward obtaining broadband with help from the not-for-profit Education Superhighway. She explained that, if all goes well, Education Superhighway would pay for the build-out of high-speed internet to reach residences where students don’t have internet access.

Police reform

Having worked on the town’s police reform plan with Pine Plains Officer-in-Charge John Hughes and Pine Plains Police Officer Michael Beliveau, Cloud said they’ve been putting together all the policies they need for the reform plan, as per the governor’s Executive Order last year that all communities with their own police agencies develop a reform policy by April 1 or face losing state aide. 

Once a week, the town’s stakeholders committee has been meeting to discuss the plan, and following the recent release of the Dutchess County Police Reform and Modernization Collaborative’s comprehensive report, the group has been reading the report and earmarking sections to help guide its plan.

“It’s about changing the culture of policing or, in a way, rewarding the best parts of it and working on the bias that is kind of implicit in a lot of us because as the song goes, we were very carefully taught to be racist and nobody wants to be that way, I don’t think,” Cloud said. “It’s not a happy place, but it’s time for reflection on that in every sector and they’re all working on it… It’s been eye-opening for, I think, the regular citizens who are on the stakeholders committee as far as what goes on in police agencies, the trends we’re seeing and how hard it is to get the training to handle new situations that are emerging.”

Among some of those emerging situations, Cloud emphasized the significance of training local police officers on mental health issues, focusing on how to handle specific individuals, what to look for and what behavior can tell an officer to help prevent a situation from escalating. 

The stakeholders’ last committee meeting for the time being was held on Wednesday evening, Dec. 23. As of this time, Cloud said she, Hughes and Beliveau plan to take the committee’s recommendations and add them into the town’s policies.

Sewer feasibility study

In discussing another major document for the town, Cloud said the Pine Plains Town Board just received its sewer feasibility study — which she likened to “250 pages of engineering bliss” — and that the board plans to dig into it for the next month to understand the recommendations and the possibilities. 

Having worked all summer on the project with the engineering and environmental consulting firm Tighe & Bond, Cloud said the company conducted various tests all over town and started putting the document together in earnest this past September. 

As of press time, the town supervisor said the board is going to read through the sewer study and schedule a meeting with the project’s engineer, during which time the board will figure out the next step in the process. 

Additionally, Cloud said the town will need to hold a public meeting on the sewer study somewhere down the line to get community feedback.