Orange County, NY | featured news

CLINTONDALE – A woman died in a fire in her home on Crescent Avenue on Wednesday afternoon.State police spokesman Trooper Steven Nevel identified the woman as Theresa Korzeniecki, 49.Nevel said a preliminary investigation indicated the fire started in the wall behind the refrigerator. It is not considered suspicious.Clintondale firefighters were assisted at the scene by firefighters from the Plattekill, Modena, New Paltz, Highland and Milton departments. [...]

ALBANY — The perennial debate over how much New York spends on public schools returned to Albany on Thursday, with some lawmakers joining a Capitol protest seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding.The lawmakers, all Democrats, joined dozens of parents and education advocates outside the office of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Their demand for more money for schools came as Cuomo and the Legislature work to craft a new state budget before the new state [...]

NEW YORK — New York is suing the billionaire family behind the company that created OxyContin, joining a growing list of state and local governments seeking to hold not only the firm but its owners accountable for the nation's opioid crisis.The state, which averages nine opioid-related deaths per day, on Thursday expanded an existing lawsuit against pill maker Purdue Pharma to add members of its controlling Sackler family as defendants. Five other companies that produce opioid [...]

CITY OF NEWBURGH — Ronald P. Decker Jr. has been hired as the City of Newburgh's permanent plumbing inspector, according to a news release from interim City Manager Joe Donat sent Thursday evening.Decker was a small-business owner and sole proprietor of Decker Plumbing prior to being hired by the city. He is a licensed master plumber with 32 years of plumbing and Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning, or HVAC, experience, according to the release.Decker's [...]

CITY OF NEWBURGH — Ira Besdansky credits the YMCA in Boston for keeping him on the right track growing up.He told the Newburgh City Council during a work session on March 21 the Y kept him straight, kept him out of jail and eventually led him to his lifelong career in the nonprofit world.Besdansky, the nine-year CEO of YMCA Middletown, wants the organization to be just as helpful to the kids and adults in Newburgh as it was for him as a child.It is part of [...]

MONTGOMERY — The Village Board will hold a public hearing on the proposed budget for fiscal 2019-20 at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Village Hall.Overall spending for the general, water and sewer funds would be $5.76 million, representing an increase of $177,485 or 3.1 percent over the 2018-19 budget.The property tax rate to support the general fund would be $15.67 per $1,000 of assessed value, a 1.2 percent increase over the 2018-19 rate of $15.48 per $1,000. [...]

WALDEN — The Village Board will hold a series of budget work sessions over the next few weeks.The sessions will take place at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday next week, as well as the following two Mondays, April 8 and 15. All sessions will take place on the third floor of the municipal building.The proposed budget in its current draft calls for spending $11.19 million in the 2019-20 fiscal year. That represents a 2.17 percent increase over the current [...]

LIBERTY — The Sullivan County Department of Community Services is changing its name to better reflect its work.It is now the Sullivan County Department of Community Services — Behavioral Health Clinic, the county announced Monday.The department is on Sunset Lake Road in Liberty and provides: individual psychotherapy; family counseling; group therapy; medication therapy; crisis intervention/outreach; court evaluations; consultation and education; case [...]

GOSHEN — Despite the rise in animal cruelty calls to law enforcement, the majority of officers have little formal training in how to safely deal with the animals or conduct investigations. But more than 120 police officers and animal control officers from New York state attended the ASPCA’s Animal Cruelty Investigations Training on Wednesday and Thursday that filled in many aspects of that knowledge gap.The ASPCA partnered with the Police Chiefs’ Association [...]

If it weren’t such a destructive and downright dumb idea, it would be a joke.A bit more than a year after Sullivan County’s half-century casino dream came true and Resorts World Catskills opened just outside Monticello, gambling giants want to open up to three casinos in New York City — four years before the state is supposed to allow them there.Lobbyists from Sands, MGM and Genting (whose chairman is the majority owner of the parent company of Resorts [...]