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Highlands Current Audio Stories

Highlands Current Audio Stories

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The Highlands Current is a nonprofit weekly newspaper and daily website that covers Beacon, Cold Spring, Garrison, Nelsonville and Philipstown, New York, in the Hudson Highlands. This podcast includes select stories read aloud. Arte Política y Gobierno
Episodios
  • Mixed Signals on Indian Point

    Mixed Signals on Indian Point
    Feb 27 2026
    Despite legal barriers, persistent talk about restart
    When the Indian Point nuclear power plant south of Philipstown shut down in 2021, its legal obligations were clear: It could not restart, nor could any new nuclear power be generated there, without the unanimous consent of the Village of Buchanan, the Town of Cortlandt, Westchester County, New York State and the Hendrick Hudson School District.
    Despite that high bar, the insistence by county and state officials that they will never allow nuclear power to be generated at the site, and the fact that the plant is being dismantled, the possibility of Indian Point reopening continues to surface.
    The question came up again at the Feb. 19 meeting of the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board (DOB) after a video was posted online of a plant worker saying that the decommissioning of one part of the plant was on hold due to a possible restart.
    The video was shot by Andrew Walker, aka Radioactive Drew. On his YouTube channel, which has nearly 100,000 subscribers, Walker shares his documentaries about the world's most radioactive places. In a three-part video that premiered last month, Walker was given a tour of Indian Point by two longtime employees.
    When visiting the turbines at Reactor 3, Walker asks Brent Magurno, a radiation protection supervisor, "With the whole possible restart that's on the table of this place happening, no work has been done to take these out of service, right?"
    "Initially, yes," said Magurno. "But then we stopped once the question was asked about restarting, and so we're not proceeding until we get the final answer on that on this side of the plant."
    A few minutes later, decommissioning supervisor Brian Vangor noted that, because of an ongoing legal dispute over whether Holtec can discharge radioactive wastewater into the Hudson River, some equipment the plant could theoretically use if it were to reopen remains in place.
    "Many more things would be taken apart if the water in some of those pools I told you about was gone," he said. "New York State did us a little bit of a favor. Rare, but they did us a favor."

    Holtec International, the company responsible for decommissioning, has said it has no plans to reopen Indian Point. When DOB chair Tom Congdon asked Holtec's Matt Johnson at the Feb. 19 meeting if the video meant its plans had changed, he replied that Magurno's comment was "categorically false and incorrect."
    "We have not started work on the turbines based on our schedule and our resources," Johnson said. "My opinion is that it was somebody who was excited and showing our plant and maybe got a little ahead of himself and used a poor choice of words, so that is not what Holtec intends to put out there."
    Johnson said that he did not know when the turbines were scheduled for removal, but that it would not be in the next year.
    "We don't have any plans to restart at this time," he said. "If for some reason that came about, obviously there would be major changes to decommissioning, because we wouldn't be able to do that with funds from the decommissioning trust fund."
    Dana Levenberg, a state Assembly Member who sits on the board and whose district includes Philipstown, said that "this kind of stuff obviously makes the community trust you less."
    "You tell us one thing at the DOB meeting, and then we hear something else in a video, and people go crazy," she said. "We don't need that. We need reassurances and assurances and proof on paper, in writing, signed documents that says what your plan is, when you're going to do this, when you're going to do that, and you need to stick to it."

    In September, Kelly Trice, the president of Holtec International, said that Indian Point could be restarted in four years for $8 billion to $10 billion. At a DOB meeting a few weeks later, Holtec's Patrick O'Brien said that Trice was speaking theoretically because the federal Department of Energy had asked all shuttered nuclear plants for estimates of what it would take ...
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    7 m
  • Beacon Schools Can Raise Levy by 4.47%

    Beacon Schools Can Raise Levy by 4.47%
    Feb 27 2026
    Debt, new construction, inflation figure into calculation
    The Beacon City School District will be able to increase its property tax levy by as much as 4.47 percent, or $2.24 million, for the 2026-27 academic year under a state-mandated tax cap.
    District voters last year approved an $87.7 million budget with a $50.1 million levy, a 5.09 percent increase over the year before. There are three main factors that affect the levy, which is the amount the district can raise through property taxes. The first two — "allowable" and "tax-base" growth factors — are outside of the district's control.
    Since New York State established a tax cap in 2012, the allowable growth factor has permitted public school districts to raise their levies each year by 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. For 2026-27, it's 2 percent.
    A second factor measures the district's tax base, allowing schools to add revenue for new development. Beacon's tax-base growth factor has been the highest in Dutchess County in recent years and, while, at 1.7 percent, or $841,715, "it's still higher than the other school districts" in the county, "it is a little bit lower than it has been," said Deputy Superintendent Ann Marie Quartironi, who explained the formula to the school board on Feb. 19.
    The third factor that allows a district to increase its levy is debt on capital projects. This is under the district's control, and in 2026-27 state law will permit Beacon to collect an additional $1.83 million to absorb debt in its spending plan.
    The district last year applied debt for the first time on a $50 million capital project approved by voters in 2024. "That was the first step," Quartironi said. "The second step is trying to increase the debt every year in your budget," which allows the district to collect more taxes under the state formula to pay it down.
    The capital project will kick off this summer with the installation of secure entryways at five of six schools (one is already secure) and upgrades of the Beacon High School theater and athletic fields. The debt will be spread over the next three fiscal years, Quartironi said.
    Last year, the district did not include a proposition on the May ballot for school buses, but this year it will ask voters to approve the purchase (financed over five years) of one diesel bus and four vans, including two accessible for wheelchairs.School board members must approve the budget by the end of April. Administrators plan to share estimated tax bills with the board and community before voters make the final decision on May 19.
    The district anticipates receiving more than $500,000 in added funding from New York State in 2026-27 through Gov. Kathy Hochul's universal pre-K initiative. Beacon has offered a pre-K program at its four elementary schools since 2023, and this year contributed $450,000 that can now "go to other things in the general fund," Quartironi said. "The financial impact is huge for us."
    Ten percent of the state funding must be distributed to community partners. The announcement of the increased funding prompted Quartironi to issue a request for proposals last year for agencies within district boundaries to administer the program. The district, which serves about 120 pre-K students, partners with the Rose Hill Manor Day School, which is under Planning Board review to convert its preschool to a hotel, and New Covenant Learning Center.
    Mirbeau Inn & Spa, scheduled to open this spring, is not expected to receive its final certificate of occupancy from the city before Sunday (March 1), so it will likely remain on the tax rolls for 2025-26. Once up and running, Mirbeau will submit payments-in-lieu-of-taxes, which will be distributed to the school district, the city, the county and the Howland Public Library.
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    4 m
  • Charges Filed in Route 9 Eviction

    Charges Filed in Route 9 Eviction
    Feb 27 2026
    Former tenant accused of grand larceny, fraud
    A Philipstown man accused of causing the popular owners of a dry cleaner and Cambodian restaurant on Route 9 to lose their property to foreclosure has been indicted in Putnam County on grand larceny and fraud charges.
    Derek Keith Williams, a self-described "sovereign citizen" who has been serving a six-month sentence in the county jail for driving an unregistered vehicle without a license, was arraigned Wednesday (Feb. 25) on six felony counts: four for grand larceny and two for filing a false instrument with the intent to defraud.
    Williams pleaded not guilty before Judge Anthony Mole and was ordered held on $100,000 cash bail, $200,000 insured bond and $200,000 partially insured bond. He is due back in court on April 8.

    Before the indictment, Williams had been accused of convincing Sokhara Kim and Chakra Oeur that he paid off the mortgage on 3154 Route 9, where the couple ran Nice & Neat Dry Cleaners and sold Cambodian food in a landscaped garden along Clove Creek. Kim and Oeur also lived in a residence at the property, rented space to a nail salon and showcased Oeur's artwork in a gallery.
    A meeting with Williams, whose girlfriend used to run the nail salon, upended that existence, leading to the couple's eviction on Dec. 9. In a lawsuit they filed to reclaim the property, Kim said a personal loan she used to rebuild the property after a fire in 2005 had been taken over by M&T Bank when she met Williams through the girlfriend, Mauny Bun, in 2019.
    Kim said that Bun, whose mother she had known for over 30 years, "reminded me a lot of my daughter … and I put a lot of trust and faith in her." She decided to accept Williams' offer to buy the property for $1.2 million and transfer it to an entity called DKW Trust, none of which happened.
    That decision triggered a 17-month foreclosure process that began in August 2022 after Kim stopped making payments on her $570,000 mortgage. Judge Gina Capone ordered the foreclosure in February 2024. Four months later, an M&T subsidiary, Chesapeake Holdings, paid $620,200 for the property at an auction.
    Williams hid the foreclosure by demanding that Kim "turn over any mail or paperwork" and "treated questions as disobedience … responding with rage, profanity and intimidation," according to court documents.
    Their loss of the property is a "deeply tragic — and profoundly avoidable — result" of the actions of "an unhinged and dangerous criminal who exercised coercive control over them," said Jacob Chen, their attorney. He is asking Capone to vacate the foreclosure and give Kim and Oeur a chance to regain the property.
    Williams has described himself as a sovereign citizen, a fringe movement whose members broadly believe they are exempt from laws and reject documents such as Social Security cards and driver's licenses, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that tracks extremists.
    One standard tactic is "paper terrorism" — bombarding clerks' offices and courts with phony and often indecipherable filings that can exceed 100 pages and are filled with grandiose language, references to treaties and patents and widespread use of capital letters and the copyright and trademark symbols.
    Williams spent more than $5,000 on nearly 30 filings with the Putnam County Clerk's Office. Many of them were fruitless attempts to prevent M&T Bank from evicting Kim and Oeur from 3154 Route 9, where Williams had taken over the art gallery as a living space.
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    4 m
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