Leaders ignoring impacts of cannabis
News flash: Cannabis cultivating/manufacturing facility coming to Rotterdam.
The Planning Commission is currently reviewing an application from 401 Holding, LLC., to open a facility at 401 Duanesburg Road, the former Schalmont Bus Garage in the Rotterdam Industrial Park.
Thanks to two legislative bodies, New York state and the former Rotterdam Town Board, they got what they wished for — new tax dollars.
More importantly, didn’t they think of the social problems this would bring to our schools.
Already I have found empty cannabis containers near school property and on it.
I wonder how many discipline problems there have been in our local schools this year.
Last year, two Mohonasen School Board members handed a letter to the town board to opt out of the new cannabis law. The board took no action.
Two of those board members were lawyers who work for the county’s legal department and should have known the social impact to our community.
Three years ago, at a town board meeting, I gave the same two lawyers a copy of Clifton Park’s zoning regulations regarding cannabis restrictions, and they did nothing.
Since this would be in a light industrial zone, which does not allow farming in it, maybe they will deny it.
Several years ago, I contacted the Schalmont superintendent of schools on the cannabis issue, and he assured me that the town would control it legislatively.
Dream on! Pandora is out of the box and there is no way to put it back.
Robert Godlewski
Schenectady
Time to wean off costly gas fuel
Fossil fuels interests would have us believe that wind and solar power are unreliable and unaffordable. But that claim bumps up against reality (“Utility predicts 39% higher heating bills”) in the Sept. 7 Gazette.
This latest price spike is another wake-up call that there is a more consistently affordable way to heat our homes: with electricity generated from the wind and sun, which don’t charge for their fuel.
Reliability comes from utility-scale batteries, which are already being successfully deployed in energy-challenged California, Texas and elsewhere, and from modernizing our electric grid.
Immediate costs aside, the climate crisis brings us more frequent and severe drought, fires, floods and storms – whose mitigation costs are high and borne by taxpayers.
New York’s Climate Action Council’s Final Scoping Plan, now under development, must set aggressive policies to keep us on track to cut emissions.
This should include a ban on gas plants and pipelines and strong support for renewables.
An infusion of federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act will help, with hefty rebates for homeowners to convert to heat pumps for electric heating and cooling.
Gas is unaffordable and unreliable, short-term and long-term.
It has got to go.
Charles Bishop
Schenectady
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You speak for a minority Bob. 90% of adults believe marijuana should be legalized. Have you found any beer cans or liquor bottles on school grounds? If so, then perhaps we should go back to the days of prohibition!
Agreed if somethings a law it’s a law we all obey. Nobody gets a pass
Run for the hills folks, the cannabis shops are opening. Robert Godlewski sounds like he was the director of the 1936 movie Refer Madness. It was full of nonsensicle propaganda to make Reefer / Cannabis look like the cause of all societal ills. He “wonders” how many discipline problems there have been in our local schools this year without any research of why those problems are happening. In his world, it must be because the legalization of cannabis, that’s his conclusion. What social problems does it bring to a school when it’s still illegal to minors? Has he done the research on that and if he has why didn’t he quote it here? I’m guessing Mr. Godlewski is an older gentleman whose generation was fed anti cannabis propaganda. Mr. Godlewski, before writing such a negative letter, it might be best that you do the research of the benefits of cannabis. Some of the medical benefits of cannabis are lowering blood pressure, reducing inflammation, treating anxiety and depression, preventing seizures, and fighting cancer. Kudos to the Town of Rotterdam and good luck 401 Holding, LLC.
Really, Robert? That’s your issue? Some kids were smoking cannabis? Oh no! It’s not like kids don’t also drink alcohol or smoke tobacco. I would love to see more Cannabis cultivating/manufacturing facilities in the state, as that boosts (as you’ve said yourself) new tax dollars and gives the state more money to fix our otherwise broken infrastructure. There is literally no issue here, you just need to get your head out of the sand. As new cannabis provisions come through, I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to accomidate by the rules that the state itself sets. Until then, good luck with the scare mongering, Robert.
Do you actually believe new tax dollars go to help New Yorkers? Hahahaha that is funny, these liberal politicians just give it away to people that support their campaigns like Hochul gave away a contract for covid testing worth millions at twice the cost to someone that gave her a fundraiser less than a week before in a no-bid contract.
Charles Bishop, stop with the nonsense, Scientists said that if we used all of the renewable electricity that is available today that we could run the world for 11 seconds! they said with advances by the year 2030 we could run the world for 17 minutes. Why are we not looking at the geothermal energy in the earth that could run the world for Billions of years? I’ll tell you why, it’s because of the green sensationalists and people like Gore and all of the politicians that get rich off this crap. Besides that there is nuclear energy, we havent built a new reactor in decades. FYI, there will never be enough wind and solar to run this country let alone the world, at least not with this technology, maybe in fifty or a hundred years but not now.