By Thaddeus Flint
An announcement a few weeks back by New Lebanon Town Councilman Matt Larabee that heroin and hypodermic needles had been found on a roadside next to a grave yard managed to get some attention lately in the digital world. But a local anti-drugs coalition is still finding it difficult to get residents concerned enough about the problem to do something about it in reality.[private]
“It’s here,” said Larabee on March 11th. “We can deny it all we want. But it’s here.”
“It’s everywhere,” said Petersburgh Town Supervisor Siegfried Krahforst, who had come down to New Lebanon Tuesday night to attend a Meeting of TRACS (Together Reducing Alcohol and drugs in our Communities).
TRACS started in 2008 in the Berlin School District after a survey found that BCS had one of the highest drug and alcohol abuse rates in Rensselaer County. By 2012, “we were second to last,” said TRACS President Biffy Cahill.
While Berlin’s drug problem seems to be diminishing, New Lebanon’s, on the other hand, seems to be growing.
New Lebanon Court Clerk Tistrya Hamilton said in September 2013 that the Town now had a “huge drug problem…unfortunately much of it is youth related.” At that time, Larabee and ex-Town Justice Darcy Poppey tried to set up a New Lebanon TRACS, but nobody wanted to attend the meetings to keep kids off of drugs and the idea was given up.
“Parents just close their eyes and say ‘not my child’”, said Krahforst who used to be a Town Justice in Petersburgh.
“We generally don’t get a lot of support,” admitted Cahill. “It’s pretty much us trying to help everybody else.”
Ignoring New Lebanon’s drug use didn’t make it go away and so TRACS in Berlin decided to see what they could do to help.
“As New Lebanon started facing heroin issues, we thought ‘why would TRACS sit up here helping Berlin and ignoring New Lebanon’,” said Cahill “We realized that our Districts intersect a lot.”
While the school districts are close, their reception to TRACS seems miles apart. Together BCS and TRACS tried to find solutions to the problems that had put that District at the top of that drug survey. “It’s a process to work together with the community and the school to solve the issues,” said Berlin High School Principal Dr. Cathie Allain in 2011. Dr. Allain joined TRACS as did Berlin’s Substance Abuse Counselor, Jill Augustine who was at Tuesday’s meeting.
The response from the New Lebanon School District hasn’t been as stellar. There were no teachers or administrators or abuse counselors from the NLCS District Tuesday night. There was only New Lebanon High School Junior Kevin Shufelt. He was getting credit to come to the meeting.
“I’m just here to check out what’s going on,” said Shufelt.
How would they even know he attended?
“Where are the teachers?” asked resident Bev Larabee.
Councilman Larabee laughed at that. “I’m still in shock that a teacher from New Lebanon mailed this out,” he said.
Shufelt might have to bring a copy of this paper in to prove he was there. Well, he was, but where was everyone else?
Cahill has made approaches to the New Lebanon School District. “But I pretty much have had the door shut in my face every time I tried.”
Which is not to say the rest of New Lebanon is really any more enthusiastic. There were only six members of the public at the meeting.
“I’m a little disappointed,” said Cahill, though she appeared undaunted by such sparse attendance. One of the problems with community organizing in the age of Social Media, is that people sometimes now only address problems through their computers.
“There were 30 ‘likes’ on Facebook,” pointed out Cahill.
Pressing a little blue thumbs-up button on Facebook is unlikely to end heroin use. Some, like resident Charles Stark, one of the six in attendance, are willing to do even more.
Stark was a US Postal Inspector for many years. One of his specialties was embezzlement. He found that stealing money was often linked with drug and alcohol abuse.
“I’ve met a lot of alcoholics and a lot of drug addicts,” he said and he is willing to offer his experiences to TRACS.
At the moment TRACS is largely unfunded. Their grant from Rensselaer County has ended. They are currently trying to get a new grant. But that takes commitment from the community.
Debbie Peterson from the Rensselaer County Mental Health Department explained that in order for an organization to be successful in receiving a grant they need twelve sectors of community to be involved.
They are:
Youth (18 or younger)
Parents
Business
Media
School
Youth-serving organization
Law enforcement
Religious/Fraternal organization
Civic/Volunteer groups
Healthcare professional
State, local, or tribal governmental agency with expertise in the field of substance abuse
TRACS is appealing to the community to find those people and organizations. It hopes to apply for another grant that would fund activities to the tune of $125,000 a year for five years and be renewable for another five years. If someone would like to contribute they can contact TRACS at TRACSCoalition@gmail.com.
“Drug problems don’t stop at the boundaries of school districts,” said Cahill. “We need support.”
The next meeting of TRACS will be held a the Stephentown Memorial Library on Tuesday, April 22, at 6:30 pm. Anybody from any community is welcome to attend.[/private]