Town pulled together in tough times, Costello says
SAUGERTIES, N.Y. » Town Supervisor Fred Costello is looking at the past year as something that 2021 could be built on through examples of the community pulling together in a divided world.
The comments were made during a telephone interview Tuesday, Dec. 22. Costello said that while COVID-19 may have drained resources, it also shined a light on people who reached out to help one another.
“It derailed many of the projects we were hoping to work on,” he said.
“We have learned a lot about ourselves and it’ s most ly good ,” Costello said. “We delivered thousands of meals. We have managed to deliver hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of toys. We have managed to celebrate Ian Flanigan,” referring to the Saugerties High graduate who finished third on NBC’s “The Voice.”
“We managed to do a good job with the graduating seniors from 2020,” he added. “We managed to do a parade to honor first responders, and we managed to salvage the Fourth of July celebration, albeit (it) was certainly different.”
Costello also said that much of the process of working together required taking approaches that were simultaneously technological advances while also being throwbacks to a time that many people had not experienced. Use of a large screen in a theatrical outdoor setting may have been akin to a drive-in movie experience, but the recent showing of Flanigan on “The Voice” at Cantine Field built upon the Saugerties High School graduation earlier this year, with audio piped into vehicles via low-powered radio transmitters.
“Reinventing all those things took a lot of cooperation and hard work from the organizations,” he said.
Costello, who contracted COVID-19 last month, said the town was also able to keep some semblance of normality even when muncipal offices closed due to the pandemic.
“We were able to maintain the town functions,” he said. “We were able to give people marriage licences and dog licences and collect taxes. That took a lot of reinventive hard work as well, in trying to keep people safe at the same time.”
For 2021, the focus will be on restoration of events such as the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival, the Mum Festival and Saugerties Stallions baseball games that are part of the community fabric.
“I feel like the first half of 2021 is going to be much like 2020,” he said, “but then there’s going to be a pretty dramatic shift in a return to what we thought was normal before. We are scheduled to be the host community of the New York State Firemen’s Convention in July, so that’s pretty big, and there’s a lot of fundraising and planning happening for that right now on the assumption that we’ll actually be able to do it.”
Costello said there is also expected to be a return to work on projects that were interrupted because of the pandemic shutdown.
“Hopefully, we’re going to begin construction on the new animal shelter after being successful in securing $1.1 million,” he said. “We also hope to get back to work at Bristol Beach. We still have some money to work at that and hope to get the trail from the parking area we developed to the river and hope that will happen in 2021.”