Disc Jam Fallout In Stephentown
By Thaddeus Flint
Damage to the Transfer Station, the Hanson and Baker trailer court case, out-of-control legal fees and only “one dead guy” at a local concert were the themes of the night at the June 18 Stephentown Town Board meeting.
Let’s begin with the dead guy. The rumor floating about Town, along with all that Cottonwood fluff in the air, was that a small army of residents were going to show up at the meeting last Monday and make a lot of noise about all the noise from the recent concert at Gardner’s Farm. That didn’t happen. Either everyone had something better to do on a beautiful summer night than sit around the Town Hall for an hour, or the townspeople weren’t all that bothered by the sounds of Disc Jam the previous weekend. Only one resident came to complain and said her “windows were shaking.” Town Supervisor Larry Eckhart said that he received just a small amount of complaints, and that was for the music that had gone into the night longer than it was supposed to Thursday.
What was more of a concern to residents and the Town Board was the number of arrests made around the area that weekend. The original arrest tally reported on June 21 by New York State Police and the Rensselaer County District Attorney’s Office was 21 arrests for drug related offenses. However, Neil Gardner, who hosted the event, told the Board that there were “two hundred arrests” total, including those in New Lebanon, Stephentown, and even Poestenkill. Anyone who drove through Stephentown that weekend might be surprised it was only two hundred. Law enforcement was visible all over the place. Some were invisible too, with at least six undercover officers of a drug task force inside the concert, according to Gardner. Supervisor Eckhardt said sometimes it “looked like they were having a yard sale” with multiple cars pulled over and their contents strewn around the roadside as police searched for drugs. With the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ recent decision to stop bothering people about marijuana and concentrate on more important matters, it’s possible the State of New York felt it necessary to take up the slack on what, for the moment, is still an important matter here. State police also reported seizing quantities of hallucinogenic mushrooms, ketamine, MDMA, MDA, DMT, cocaine, and LSD.
With all those drugs around, it is actually somewhat surprising that only two people ended up going to the hospital. Gardner said “there was only one transport to the hospital of a girl with a broken appendix. And then we had one dead guy. So that’s all we had. So it was not a bad weekend.” While some at the Board meeting were somewhat aghast at the perceived crassness of that statement, considering there were a few thousand young people camping out in a field for three nights doing who-knows-what, maybe it really wasn’t that bad of a weekend after all. Except for the dead guy. The State Police were saying the dead guy’s (who does in fact have a name, Jeremy Deeks, of Wanaque New Jersey) death was being investigated as a possible overdose. Gardner, however, said Deeks “died from “drinking a bottle of Scotch when he got there. And then he had an aneurysm…That was unfortunate.” The other 99.9% of concert goers were fortunate to have great weather and no other reported problems. Councilman Gerald Robinson said he attended the event and reported that, of what he saw, “everything was in order.”
Outside the concert, as the “yard sales” along the roadsides attested, wasn’t as much in order. The Supervisor reported that there were around 50 arrests in Stephentown, and that these alleged malefactors will “put a tremendous burden on our court system.” Eckhardt explained that the Town gets pretty much nothing from fines for criminal activities even though they do get to pay to process them. However, “I don’t like the idea of illegal drugs in Stephentown,” said Eckhardt. “If you are going to come sell illegal drugs in Stephentown, and get caught? Well, boo-hoo. Boo-hoo on you.”
Stephentown isn’t really in a position to take on any more burdens this year, at least financially. For those keeping score at home, this month’s legal bills paid came to a total of $3,262.50, or 26% of the Town’s entire budget for attorney fees. But that percentage doesn’t really have any relevancy anymore, because the Supervisor said that Stephentown is now at $39,195 for legal fees and it’s only June. Since the budgeted amount for 2018 was an overly hopeful $12,500, legal fees are now 313% past hope. “And we’re not done,” added Eckhardt.
Not all the legal fees are for the Hanson-Baker-Stephentown case over a trailer park which might, or might not, be parked legally in the Town. However, from the sound of things at the June Board meeting, it looks like legal spending on that matter will continue for some time, with no real hope at the end of the tunnel for the taxpayers of Stephentown. Resident Francis Manning told the Board he had put a deposit on one of the now-contested manufactured homes back in September, with hopes he could move in this Spring. It’s now this summer and he isn’t in. “When is this litigation going to stop?” Manning asked. Nobody could say when this litigation was going to stop. Manning said his perception of the matter that it was “a personal vendetta” by one person in Town, and “it wasn’t the first time” this one person had created a personal vendetta. “Can you put this guy to sleep?” asked Manning.
“This guy” is presumably a local attorney who was sitting just a few rows of folding chairs in front of Manning at the time. He didn’t appear all that surprised someone would publicly ask that he be euthanized at a Town meeting and have nobody from the Board maybe point out that such suggestions might be out of line. He has repeatedly pointed out that Stephentown Board meetings often follow a generalized view of what is accepted as acceptable decorum, if any decorum is actually expected at all. As another example, at this same meeting, Neil Gardner used a rather mild expletive (one so much in the vernacular of Stephentown probably few even noticed it) to describe all the money he spent out of his own pocket he says was due to this individual. Councilwoman Pam Kueppers responded by asking Gardner to “please watch your language.”
“Well, tough. I’m talking. If you don’t like it, that’s who I am,” said Gardner, who is, in fact, who he is.