Editor:

The New York S.A.F.E. Law underscores the divide between upstate and downstate.In our area we generally view the clearly Constitutional right to own arms from a different perspective than many living in more densely populated areas. Led by S.C.O.P.E. and The New York Revolution, strong opposition to the S.A.F.E. Act has been voiced.

This is as it should be.The citizens of a democracy have an obligation to make their casesand a right to do so. It is particularly important before politicians act. Spirited opposition to the S.A.F.E. Act suggests that there is still some life left in a democracy where 20 percent voter turnout is common.

Nonetheless, though people differ widely on many issues, the United States is a democracy. We have Constitutionally-protected recourse through elections, as well as the courts. Our Founders had fewer peaceful options in Revolutionary America.

Yard signs make it clear that many Orleans residents want the S.A.F.E. Act repealed. In order to do so, a reversal would have to be so thorough that the Governor’s veto of a repeal measure would be overridden.That would require a 2/3 vote of both the State Senate and the State Assembly.

I have read all 39 pages of the S.A.F.E Law. In my view, it should be amended to be consistent with the U.S. Constitution. Some of its biggest problems relate to Amendments 4, 5, and 9. These relate to such things as privacy, due process, just compensation, inheritance, and possession of arms. The law, itself, appears to anticipate successful court challenges.

In times when we are tempted to trade liberty for security, we need to be doubly vigilant.Defending the entire Constitution consistently is something that is in the interests of all Americans.As a famous American patriot once noted, “Those who would sacrifice liberty for security, in the end will have neither.”

Sincerely yours,

Gary Kent
Albion

(Kent is a candidate for Orleans County Legislature, running under the Democratic Party and “Save Our Nursing Home” lines.)

Editor:

At 12:00 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 1, a group of uncompromising legislators within the House Republican caucus forced the government of the United States to close its doors.

This government shutdown is already hurting hundreds of thousands of Americans, including many New Yorkers. While we do not yet know when the government shutdown will end, my staff and I remain committed to doing all that we can for the 25th Congressional District of New York.

As Ranking Member of the House Committee on Rules, I worked around the clock to avert a government shutdown. Over the course of the last four days, I’ve taken to the House Floor three times to oppose attempts to defund the Affordable Care Act as ransom for keeping the government open.

Shutting the government down in order to undermine a democratically-passed law and prevent 30 million Americans from getting healthcare does not reflect the values that people like you and I hold dear. I will not negotiate a ransom in order to convince some in Congress to do their job.

In the coming hours and days, I will continue to do all that I can to bring forward a bipartisan bill that funds the government without any partisan gimmicks. Such legislation has already passed in the Senate, and I am confident that if Speaker Boehner brings the legislation up for a vote, it will pass the House with broad and bipartisan support.

In the meantime, the current government shutdown means that some – but not all – of the services provided by the federal government will be curtailed.

Key government operations, such as our military and national security operations, air traffic controllers, emergency personnel, border patrol and law enforcement agencies will continue to operate as usual. In addition, the US Postal Service will continue to operate and Social Security checks will continue to be delivered.

However, other vitally important federal services will either be reduced or completely suspended during a government shutdown.

Passport processing may be interrupted at select locations, and visas may go unprocessed. Medical research at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control will be greatly reduced. While some key veterans benefits will continue to be processed and VA hospitals will remain open, the Veterans Benefits Administration will be unable to process education and rehabilitation benefits. This means that our veterans now in school won’t get their tuition benefits or their student loans.

In addition, the Women, Infants and Children program, which helps pregnant women and new mothers buy healthy food and access proper nutrition, will operate for as long as it can (most likely about a week) before it also stops until the government is open again.

Finally, hundreds of thousands of working Americans – located in Rochester and across the United States – are having their pay suspended and being put on leave. This is a significant financial hardship for families and helps to add to the economic uncertainty that is being caused by the shutdown.

Tragically, all of this damage could have been avoided if Republican members of the House of Representatives had abandoned their partisan games and acted on the Senate-passed funding bill.

As I work with my colleagues in Congress to end this unnecessary shutdown, my offices will remain open and my staff and I will be available.

It is my hope that my colleagues in Congress will soon choose to join me in doing the right thing so that we can pass a bipartisan funding bill and once again allow the government to serve the people.

Louise Slaughter
Rochester

(Editor’s note: Slaughter sent this letter to her constituents by email today. She represented a portion of Orleans County in Congress for 10 years until redistricting changed her district lines, effective this past Jan. 1.)

Editor:

Currently the Orleans County Nursing Home, The Villages, offers quality care to its residents. Selling it to a private corporation could jeopardize these high standards. This appears to be the case with a recent controversy at Orchard Manor Nursing Home in Medina.

In a recent article, Aaron Lichtman, a spokesperson for Orchard Manor, implies that resident care comes first. In the same article, a local doctor who wishes to remain anonymous refutes this opinion. The doctor states that what “led to his departure (from practicing at the facility)… is a decline and deficiency on quality of patient care issues.”

Citizens of Orleans County, it is our obligation to maintain quality care for the residentsof The Villages. There is no guarantee that this will happen if it is sold to a private corporation. One objective I have, if elected to the Orleans County Legislature for District # 2, is to investigate all possibilities of saving the county nursing home for now and for future generations. A do-over is not possible if it should be sold.

Linda Rak
Lyndonville

(Rak is a candidate for Orleans County Legislature. She has been endorsed by the Conservative Party and also is running under the independent “Save Our Nursing Home” line.)

Editor:

Thank you to CRFS for staying in Albion, for using an existing facility and hiring laid off Chase employees. Plus they have employed so many young people across Orleans County! It seems every young girl I know who wanted a job and proved to be reliable has been hired. A big round of applause to CRFS founder, Jodi Gaines!

Have you ever noticed that behind many successes in our county is a woman? It seems they seem to be able to figure out a way to get things done!

I think it is time for a Woman President of the USA! Don’t start throwing stones at the messenger here … it will happen. Things couldn’t get much worse.

Pat Wood
Holley

Editor:

I cannot stress enough as an individual, the importance of voter education and action. I cannot stress enough as a leader of a grassroots organization dedicated to educating and encouraging others, how discouraging it is when we attempt to participate in a local event and are declined due to a policy of “No Politics Allowed.”

I personally find a great deal of disappointment by this. We have attempted to be involved with several local festivals and public events (Albion Strawberry Festival in June and Remember Swap Meet in September) and either were not allowed or severely limited on what we could do because they want their events to remain neutral.

New York Revolution is a group of dedicated individuals who believe in upholding the Constitution and honoring our founding fathers and the sacrifices of our armed forces. We do not choose one politician over the other but rather educate the public on the importance of our Constitutional Freedoms that we have been granted since America separated from British rule.

We do not shun those with opposing beliefs from expressing their views at our table. When they are interested in listening we will share our feelings in return.

I do not consider upholding the Constitution as being political. If anything, it is historical and liberating. The knowledge and motivation that we attempt to share is patriotic and is what differs America from the rest of the world.

We also push voter registration. We encourage citizens that their vote does matter. We do not tell them who they should vote for but we do urge them to remain aware in the politics of their local, state, and national communities while making an informed vote based on their personal beliefs.

We are free in America because we are granted the right to vote. It is our duty as American citizens to remain active with our vote. Politics is a very large percentage of being an American, as we must remember that the government is “for the People,” but most importantly “by the People.”

What are we teaching our children when politics are banned from local events? How can we as Americans, New Yorkers, and Orleans County residents make informed decisions on voting day when public access to political information is very limited, let alone banned at community events?

I urge others in this community to become active in their beliefs and encourage those local festivals to allow unbiased opportunity to all groups – political or not. I live in the Land of the Free and am proud to be an American. Let’s hold America’s founding principles to be true and allow our First Amendment rights to be respected from here on forward.

Gia Arnold
Holley
New York Revolution state coordinator

Editor:

Until now, Legislator William Eick’s involvement in the subterfuge surrounding Orleans County ’s determination to sell “The Villages” was purely official. He voted for it. The tactic of giving people distorted information in order to scare them into accepting something that is not in their interest has a new contributor.

With his letter on Sept. 17, he has decided to personally help mislead the public. Legislator Eick’s diatribe was loaded with unsubstantiated accusations and innuendo. But at least he put his name to a point of view.

Bill said that I complain about marketing. I have. It is interestingand you can check the minutes from mid-2010that shortly after he was discharged from “The Villages” rehab unit, Bill himself suggested that the County needed to better market its rehab unit!

Referring to me, he says, “He makes statements that lead me to believe that he (I) would have us cut Public Safety resources.” What in the name of Heaven is he talking about? Ironically, the “eliminate, or outsource, services regardless of their importance” path he and his mentor are on is far more likely to lead in the direction he is concerned about.

The Center for Governmental Research did come out with a study of County Nursing Homes in mid-August. It mentioned Orleans County oncein the Appendix on the second to last page. True enough, I have said the “due diligence” CGR goes to such lengths to stress in the study has been largely absent from our Legislature’s decision to sell Our County Nursing Home.

A careful reading of the study report strongly suggests Orleans is one of the counties with the greatest need for a county nursing home. We have one of the five fastest growing elderly populations of the 33 counties in the study.We have large numbers of “hard-to-place” people living here. There are few in-county alternatives for “hard-to-place” people requiring a skilled nursing facility. Those are three things CGR says should be considered in pre-sale “due-diligence.”

Let us not miss the point. CGR was not asked to do a study before the rush to sell. Even the general study Bill refers to came out six months after the Legislature’s decision!

Perhaps Bill’s most ridiculous statement concerned my desire to bring “convicted felons in to mingle with our senior citizens and Albion Central School students in order to get free labor, putting everyone at risk” That is an outrageous lie that would be laughable had he not put his name to it. “Bill” knows it. For starters, he has been on the Legislature long enough to know “The Villages” layout better than that.

Obviously, the Community As School program space would have to be relocated while the vacant “A” and “B” wings were renovated. The whole idea never even got enough consideration to go that far, but when I brought it up five years later, it certainly touched a nerve.

Legislator Eick says, “The Villages” is nearly full.” What does that mean? As a Legislator he has easy access to the actual numbers. Why are they such a secret? The CGR report says to be viable, a county nursing home should have 97 percent occupancy, with 95 percent being “acceptable.” What is ours?

Along those lines, we couldn’t find out whether Orleans County charges the Nursing Home Enterprise fund for services provided by other County departments, as 52 percent of counties do.We couldn’t find out because Orleans apparently didn’t answer that question when responding to the CGR survey. Why the secrecy?

Another of Bill’s allegations had to do with asbestos abatement.How did Buildings and Grounds handle that in The Board of Elections space? I doubt the County is exposing Elections employees to asbestos hazards.

To be clear on one last point, sir, keeping our County-controlled long term care facilityand our commitment to our frail elderlycould become too costly at some point.Let me know when that cost gets to be greater than the cost of garbage disposal.

Let me assure Legislator Eick that he is not alone. There are large numbers of really unhappy people in Orleans County.

Gary Kent
Albion

(Kent is a candidate for Orleans County Legislature. He is endorsed by the Democratic Party and is also running under the independent “Save Our Nursing Home” line.)

Editor:

The constitution gives the people the right to spend their tax dollars as they see fit. Our legislators seem to believe their authority supersedes our constitutional rights. They’ve been in there so long they think they’re the alpha and omega of Orleans County.

How can six people know the minds of 42,000 people on something as important as the nursing home? Why in a democracy as ours is the nursing home issue not put to a public vote?

Gregory “Emil” Smith
Medina

(Smith is a candidate for the Orleans County Legislature. He is endorsed by the Conservative Party and is also running under the independent “Save Our Nursing Home” line.

Editor:

‘We the People,’ the most famous phrase in the world’s most famous document, The Constitution of the United States of America’, sent a message of freedom and unity to the world. On September 17, 1787 the Constitution was signed, by 12 of the 13 states, and sent to the states for ratification.

Of the 74 delegates invited to the Philadelphia Convention, at Freedom Hall, to adopt a constitution, only 55 attended and only 39 of them signed the most powerful document in the history of the world. The great historians of the time, in world governments, created our representative form of government, at a time when the world only knew of kings and dictators.

This great experiment in government as some came to know it, has produced the most prosperous and the strongest nation the world has known or will ever know. We should all take a moment and try to put ourselves in the place of the people who stepped forward at that time for the cause of freedom.

In 1776, when the colonies declared their independence from England only one third of the people in the colonies were in favor of this, according to John Adams. The men and women who stepped forward to fight for our freedom, were in the minority and going up against the most powerful nation in the world at the time.

The sun never set on the British Empire. They risked it all, their lives, loss of family and friends and all their wealth for ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ They believed these rights came from God and not from man. How much would you be willing to risk for freedom?

The cause of freedom was clearly spelled out in a book by Thomas Paine in January of 1776, ‘Common Sense,’ which is still relevant today. He wrote this book to explain the reasons to support freedom so the average person would understand. At the time, books were written for those with higher education and the upper classes. Most people of the time, because of economic status, had no so called formal education, that was only for the wealthy.

This book was one of the first demonstrations of the uniqueness of America. The removal of status lines between the rich and the poor, the equality of all. In the early days of our country a French Ambassador wrote home that in America you can not tell the rich from the poor by their clothes. In America, we are all Americans and equal under the law.

On March 4, 1789 the Constitution was ratified by the states and became the law of the land. Virginia held out signing, demanding there be a Bill of Rights for the people. When it was agreed to create these rights, then Virginia ratified. The first 10 amendments, Bill of Rights, was adopted by the states in 1791. James Madison, a very physically small man, extremely quiet and shy, who suffered from constant illnesses, was the strong driving force for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Without his determination and persuasion, neither document might have succeeded in being ratified.

We should all try and put ourselves in the place of the men that stepped forward to declare independence, the wives that stayed home to run the farms and businesses, raise the families for months and years alone. They risked it all. How much would you be willing to risk to preserve your freedoms? Freedom is not free and takes an ever vigilant and righteous citizenry to keep hold of it.

Now more than ever we need to stand by the Constitution to defend our God given rights of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ which makes our form of government unique in the world. The attacks on our way of life are more numerous than ever and come from within and outside our great nation. Are you willing to give up your rights and become a slave to big government or will you make a stand to defend our Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

As President Ronald Reagan stated: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

Donald Allport
Gaines
Legislator At-Large

Editor:

It intrigues me how Gary Kent and company know what is best for The Villages of Orleans when they are not involved with the operations of the facility.

As a member of the Health Committee of the Legislature, two legislators, the chairman and the chief administrative officer meet with the nursing home administrator on a monthly basis. During these meetings we discuss the daily operations, income and expenses, status of admissions and employee issues are reviewed and discussed. We are deeply involved in the operations of the county nursing home.

It’s very clear that Gary Kent continues to use ridiculous, over-the-top statements to argue against the decision made last February to move forward with the LDC process. He claims to know what we are going to need to spend on virtually everything, yet he hasn’t been involved with actual operations of the nursing home in years.

He complains about marketing. The Villages is very near full. Even if it were full, we’d still be bleeding money.

He complains that we haven’t looked closely at other services, yet he is the first to angrily object when we do. We have eliminated other programs and as tough as it is we have eliminated 40 full-time jobs since 2010. The Orleans County government has the third-lowest taxes per capita in New York State (according to seethroughny.net).

He advocates for bringing convicted felons in to mingle with our senior citizens and Albion Central School students in order to get some free labor, putting everyone at risk, then conveniently forgets the HVAC quote for modernizing the old portions of the building was close to $700,000 alone. I am certain that he also fails to consider that any asbestos issues can’t be addressed by the prison work crew.

He makes statements that lead me to believe that he would have us cut Public Safety resources. Does anyone think we are without a crime problem in this county?

The statement I read about the Legislature not doing studies on The Villages is ridiculous. The studies that we have done he claims are invalid and he complains about the use of consultants. He calls for CGR (a consultant) to do a study and literally the next day they publish results of the statewide study on the plight of counties in the nursing home business. He then goes on to tell everyone why that study is no good.

He frequently refers to Genesee County’s CGR study results that they paid tens of thousands of dollars to get, and quotes that Genesee was told not to sell their home. Interestingly, Genesee is looking at sale options as I write this. Why are they looking at selling after they had the magical study done? Why? Because this model of service delivery doesn’t work anymore and their study, if you read the whole thing, doesn’t say what Gary Kent says it does. How many more studies need to be done? How much money must we spend to satisfy Mr. Kent? Personally, I don’t think we could ever spend enough.

The problem is that Mr. Kent doesn’t care how much taxes go up when it comes to the nursing home. How do I know? I know because he said so, on the floor of the Legislature. It’s in the minutes.

I guarantee that I will sign this and send it out to various media outlets and there will be a loud response that attempts to drown out my voice. Why? Because the reality is that Gary doesn’t want to hear any facts or opinion other than his own. He doesn’t want you to hear the facts either.

William H. Eick
Shelby
Orleans County Legislator District 1

Editor:

There have been a lot of writings on the pros and cons about The Villages of Orleans (nursing home) in Albion. The latest statistic shows that 92 percent of county-owned nursing homes outside of New York City are losing money.

Despite this fact I believe we should keep our nursing home in the hands of our county.

I also believe we have a moral obligation to take care of our elderly and infirm for all they have done for us even if it means making financial sacrifices, rather than selling them down the road to the highest bidder.

I personally come to the nursing home about twice a week and happen to know many residents there. Among them are many well-known people who once held positions such as mayor, chief of police, etc. I don’t want this to happen to them.

Many people say there will be no change in service going from public to profit. Not immediately, but very soon you will see the quality of care drop by cutting the staff, adding inexperienced help and cutting costs in other ways. You will see fewer hard-to-place people being accepted.You will see the Four-Star rating of The Villages being history.

There is also another observation. Society doesn’t like locally owned nursing homes and hospitals. It favors corporation-owned, state and federal owned facilities for the simple reason it can be easier to control or manipulate them.This is especially important as legalization of euthanasia is being considered.With the slogan, “the right to die” which may very soon lead to “the duty to die,” especially when there is not enough money to keep the homes or hospitals going. (Remember World War II Germany.)

It may start very innocently like in the early ’70s making abortion legal. Now we have about 50 million Americans dead and an aging population as a result. We try to replace them with foreign workers or undocumented immigrants to do most of our manual work.

All in all we should keep our nursing home in the hands of the county for the above reasons.

Concerned Citizen,

Adolf Genter
Albion