Displaying items by tag: robin dalton

SARATOGA SPRINGS — In January, Robin Dalton took office as city Public Safety Commissioner – the first woman to hold the position which oversees, among other things, the overall operation of the police and fire departments. 

She grew up in Manhattan “in a really loving, happy home, and attended classes at the Chapin School, an all-girls school on the Upper East Side that lists among its alumnae Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Vera Wang, and N.Y. Mets owner Joan Whitney Payson. “Ivanka Trump was two grades below me,” Dalton says. Shortly after earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government from Cornell University, in 2007 Dalton relocated to Saratoga Springs where she lives with her husband and their four children.

FROM LOCAL RESIDENT TO CITY GOVERNMENT

In 2012, Dalton began digging into city politics and observing council meetings. “To me it was very important to have experience in Saratoga and get involved in the community in a way to really understand the spirit of the city so I can represent the people who live here to the best of my potential. So, I really waited until I was ready to take this on because I knew it would be challenging.

“One of the best things about it was I perceived partisanship as not being a factor in how the City Council was voting. It didn’t seem people were making politically based decisions. The decisions were being made as for what’s best for the city. And I think that’s also been my happiest revelation over these past seven months. I don’t think there’s been a single moment where anyone has invoked my party to persuade me to vote one way or another. It’s a non-issue,” Dalton says. “Partisanship doesn’t have any role in how the City Council votes. And to me that’s a really good thing. That’s been really awesome.” Seven months on the job, Dalton sat down this week to talk about the status of several pressing city issues in this most unusual year. 

COVID

When the city declared a State of Emergency in March, the city’s Emergency Management Plan directed the public safety commissioner lead a team to address the emergency. “That was a moment when our form of government was at its best,” Dalton says. The city’s Commission form of governing – which charges each commissioner with different responsibilities, yet equal political power was born specifically from emergency when it was implemented in Texas, in 1901 as a reaction to the Galveston hurricane. 

“I was also fortunate to have a City Council that was supportive of how I was sourcing and disseminating information, which was taking it from our governor. It was disappointing to me we didn’t have a leader of our country who led by example – handling it with science and data rather than partisanship, so I was going to stick to the guidelines laid out by Governor Cuomo. I would say I love what he’s doing right now. Will I love what he’s doing six months from now? A year from now? Probably not, but that’s not going to prevent me from saying he’s done a great job handling the virus.” 

A member of the Republican Party, she is unafraid to step outside any pre-conceived limitations regarding party and is something she says she was upfront about when first interviewing with the city GOP Committee.  “I went through a list of things I knew they weren’t necessarily going to be happy about: I’m pro-choice, I’m pro-immigrant – but I wanted to be clear upfront about what I stand for.” 

POLITICIZING A VIRUS

“Unfortunately, everything has taken on a whole new meaning. It’s not about your health necessarily, it’s about what you stand for, what party you’re with. I think that’s really sad and destructive. It’s been divisive but at the end of the day all I care about is that the city is as healthy as possible and simultaneously that our economy is strong. There is an incredible importance in both and we’re not here to put one above the other.” 

SCHOOLS

 “We have models we look at and we’re working very closely with the hospital. We are expecting positive cases to go up because kids are coming back to school. We need to predict these things. I don’t think it’s going to take us back to where we were at our peak, which was about 10% positive cases. Right now, we’ve dropped to under 1% which is fantastic. There’s a huge mental health component and our children have suffered immensely. We’re trying to give kids a little bit of normalcy.”

ADDRESSING THE NEED FOR A FIRE/EMS STATION TO SERVE RESIDENTS OF THE EAST SIDE

“We have done a site plan and needs analysis of the Henning Road location and put out an RFP for a design firm. We had planned on moving on this aggressively, but when the pandemic hit everything got paused.” The question now is how best to move forward in a tough economic climate. To that end, the city is exploring state aid and grant possibilities to assist moving forward. “I think this is a smart way to handle it that doesn’t put us in a situation of it being a financial liability. But we’re setting ourselves up such that we can use money from the state to complete the project and deliver for our east side residents their emergency medical needs while also not putting the city in a precarious financial position.”    

HOMELESSNESS AND THE NEED FOR A PERMANENT CODE BLUE EMERGENCY SHELTER

 “With this pandemic and this ensuing financial collapse, we’re going to be seeing a lot of people who are in distress in terms of keeping a roof over their head. And (homelessness) is not a one-size-fits-all problem. There are some people who are drug-addicted, people who have mental issues, people who have no interest in finding or seeking shelter and have established a lifestyle outside, downtown.  That works for them, but it’s not something that as a city the residents want to tolerate. If you go over to the Woodlawn parking lot you can see it almost every day; it’s almost an encampment and really a struggle for the neighbors there. So, we’re addressing that – but homelessness is not something that can be solved by law enforcement. It can be solved by having community partners working together in the spirit that the Saratoga Collaborative to End Homelessness is working in. You need the county on board, you need all the social services to be on board and everyone needs to come at this issue wanting to get rid of all the roadblocks and challenges that are in place, to get people into housing and work through them in difficult and sometimes scary ways.  Without that, I don’t know that there is a fix for this issue.” 

“We also have this enormous need for a year-round shelter, and we don’t have that place right now. We’re just pushing people from one area of the city to the other, going around and around and it’s an enormous waste of time, energy, resources and ultimately isn’t helping the people who we want to help.  So, It’s incredibly frustrating and incredibly challenging. That’s really a critical part of this problem. We have to have this permanent, year-round facility, and then it comes down to whose responsibility is it to financially provide this. I am very committed to solving this problem, but I also know the roadblocks and challenges ahead of us are significant.

RALLIES AND PROTESTS AND ISSUES OF RACE

“Emotions have been running extremely high – not just about race but of all these contributing factors, all over America. I can’t recall a time when people have been this traumatized and have had such heightened emotions and reactions. 

“For any kind of significant change to happen it needs to happen as a community, not just as law enforcement. This is a Saratoga Springs conversation. We all need to be addressing how the experience of being white in Saratoga is very different than being black in Saratoga. (Our officers) have reached out to Black Lives Matter protesters locally, taking a knee with protestors, walking arm-in-arm with them. They’ve exercised incredible professionalism and the only thing they want is for people to exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and the right to gather and protest and to be able to do that in one piece. The absolutely last thing I wanted was for anyone to be arrested and any kind of violence to break out. 

“I will be very candid and say I don’t think having a Back The Blue rally was an appropriate choice at this time. I thought it was a bit tone-deaf and likely to make the challenges of addressing Black Lives Matter and racism and bias larger and make people louder and angrier and divide people more than it would bring people together. I’m looking at this in a bigger picture context. Because of this moment of time that we’re in, I really do feel we need to be focusing on how being black in Saratoga is extremely different than being white in Saratoga, and that’s not something people are necessarily ready to acknowledge, to work toward something better.

“I believe in my department, I believe in our professionalism. I also understand the families who have someone working in law enforcement wanting to show their support for what these officers have been doing, but unfortunately in the national context that immediately gets misconstrued or associated with racism or fascism or all sorts of political extremism. I know locally that wasn’t the intention at all, but it all led up to this horrible, stressful, awful moment where these two groups of people are screaming at each other, (figuratively) ripping each other apart, and it was so sad to watch because there’s no reason why one group should be pitted against another group. I think we all want a lot of the same things. To see how both groups expressed how emotional and angry they were was just a sad state of affairs. 

“Believe in law enforcement. Believe that black lives matter. I think it’s perfectly normal to have both those things live in the same person. But what I’m seeing is people thinking you can’t be both these things, and that’s disturbing and sad. I think we’ll get through it, but we have a lot of healing and work to do. 

IN 12 MONTHS TIME

“I hope we return to some sense of normalcy in terms of our behavior and how we interact with one another. I’m hoping that our health is good and that our economy is recovered. Life as we knew it. But, with this new and real threat of a Pandemic it’s going to be a challenge. We still don’t know everything we need to know about it. We still don’t have a vaccine. There are all these variables that need to be answered before we can say with confidence that we’re good, we’re safe.” 

Published in News
Friday, 11 October 2019 11:53

Election 2019: The Countdown Begins

SARATOGA SPRINGS – In less than one month, voters will head to the polls to choose from a pool of 11 candidates who are vying for seven city positions.  Election Day is Nov. 5. The seven seats each carry two-year terms and begin in January 2020.

The two candidates seeking the office of public safety commissioner - Robin Dalton (R,C,I), and Kendall Hicks (D) - met face-to-face this week, engaging in a discussion forum at the Presbyterian-New England Congregational Church on Oct. 7

The focus topic: “Immigration, Public Safety and Community.” Terry Diggory, of the Saratoga Immigration Coalition, acted as event moderator. “Although immigration is currently debated as an issue of national security, public safety at the local level requires fostering a community where everyone, including immigrants, can feel safe and welcome,” Diggory said.

Both candidates were basically in agreement regarding the safety of all city residents, regardless of status, and each praised a recent document documented by former Chief of Police Greg Veitch that essentially said local police would not stop people on the street to ask their immigration status.

“If ICE comes to our town and asks for our cooperation, we are obliged to cooperate with them…but aside from that, immigration (status) will not be the priority of Saratoga Springs Police Department,” said Dalton.

“Being black in America, I can remember when stop-and-search was a rampant thing, and I’ve been stopped many times just because of the color of my skin, so I can relate to what undocumented citizens are going through,” said Hicks, a Democrat who retired from the U.S. military after 30 years of active duty service with the National Guard. “We need to make sure our citizens - whether they’re documented or not – don’t have to live through that. We need to stand up and speak for those who can’t speak for themselves.”

“I have from day one been very pro-immigrant,” Dalton, a Republican, told the crowd of approximately 40 people. “Back in 2017, when we had ICE in our community it was one of the most profoundly disturbing experiences I had as an American…they were stopping people on the street on their way to work, based on the color of their skin, and rounding them up. It really created an atmosphere of fear and terror for people that I know, who I love, who I work with, who I see every day.”

In response to her stated position, one of the attendees of the forum loudly bellowed from the back of the church at Dalton: “You are an embarrassment to the Republican Party,” and promptly exited the room.

“There are some areas where I’m not going to toe a party line, and one of those areas is immigration,” Dalton said.

There was a brief discussion regarding a 2013 Gloversville police department report charging Hicks with assault following an alleged altercation with his girlfriend.

“What you see in the police report is the beginning of an investigation. It doesn’t tell the whole story,” Hicks said. “I was investigated, I was charged, I had a court hearing and the charges were dismissed. Not only that, I was in uniform at the time, so I was investigated by the military authorities as well and there were no charges pressed or filed in that respect as well. So, I finished a full 30-year career decorated career because I carried the bronze star. I don’t know of any soldier who has been under those type of serious charges and can retire with the bronze star.”

 “Those documents raised a lot of questions, and to date those questions have not been answered,” Dalton responded. “I hear him say now that he was cleared of the charges, that he was cleared by the military of these charges, but I have yet to see any documents that supports that narrative.”

Hicks was not endorsed by the Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee, and after news of the 2013 report became known, previous endorsements of Hicks by local Democrats Carrie Woerner, Tara Gaston, and Dillon Moran were retracted. 

“I would love to put these questions to bed, but the only way to do that, in my mind, is to see some documentation from the military, and some documentation from the Gloversville Police Department, or the court, that he was indeed cleared,” Dalton said.   

Hicks responded that he is willing to share the documents from Gloversville court dismissing the charges against him. “I have them. I carry them with me in my car at all times and I’d be happy to sit down and show them to you,” Hicks said. “As for the military, They did an investigation and I even had to redo my security clearance. Those documents are not privy to the public – I can’t go get them and show them to everyone – but me having a fully decorated retirement with the bronze star from Afghanistan – I think that should stand for itself.” 

Current Public Safety Commissioner - Democrat Peter Martin, is not seeking re-election. Among the responsibilities of the post is the overall operation of the Police Department, the Fire Department, Code Administration, Animal Control, and Parking Enforcement. The Commissioner of Public Safety is also responsible for emergency planning.

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5. Up for vote are all five City Council positions – mayor, and commissioners of Accounts, Finance, Public Works, and Public Safety – in addition to two city Supervisor seats, whose elected officials will represent the city’s interests at the county level. 

Voter registration deadline is Friday, Oct. 11. Applications must be postmarked no later than October 11, 2019 and received by a board of elections no later than October 16, 2019 to be eligible to vote in the General Election. For information, go to: https://www.elections.ny.gov/VotingDeadlines.html.

The League of Women Voters of Saratoga County has announced they are hosting two Saratoga Springs “Meet the Candidates” nights – to be held Oct. 21-22.
 

Published in News

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