Our annual formal in-person spring meeting will take place Tuesday, May 8, 7 pm until about 8:30 pm. Please note, contrary to past plans and expectations, this meeting will take place in the Town of Newburgh, Orange County, rather than in New Paltz. Address is Suite 220, Arborgate Office Building, 275 Rt 17K, Town of Newburgh 12550. More details about location will follow at the end of this post.
Our meeting is open to: all registered (with your Board of Elections) Green Party voters; or, all who have recently filed official forms with their Board of Elections to register in the Green Party (please bring supporting documentation to this meeting); or, those who are 18 or older and who legally are banned from voting and who agree with Green Party values and would be registered Greens if they were allowed to vote (this could include immigrants); and who reside in Dutchess, Orange, or Ulster County.
Main purposes of this meeting are to elect our representatives to the State Committee (SC) of the Green Party of NYS (GPNY), to support campaigns of Green Party candidates in our region (including Howie Hawkins for Governor and Steve Greenfield for Congressional District 19), and to formulate ideas for GPNY's political advocacy regarding state issues for the upcoming year (current priorities have been: banning single use plastic bags (success!), promoting public transportation, stopping climate change, and promoting single payer access to healthcare). And, of course, we will have the pleasant opportunity to get acquainted with each other.
HVGP is currently entitled to 10 representatives to the SC, based on the number of registered Green voters in our geographic area and on the number of those who pay dues to GPNY. (Dues are extremely affordable and are based on an honor system sliding scale. If you do not currently pay dues, you can take care of that by going to the Green Party of New York State website. The Green Party does NOT accept ANY corporate donations, so financial resources come only from individual donations- therefore, we all need to contribute).
So far, eight of our regular HVGP participants have agreed to run to fulfill the office of SC representative. Duties include making a good faith effort to attend all or most of the three annual GPNY meetings (held 9am to 5pm the 3rd Saturday of January, May, and September) in the Capital District (hospitality and carpooling or train station pickup available); to keep abreast of GPNY issues via regular participation in HVGP meetings (usually via monthly conference call, usually the first Tues eve of the month) and monthly GPNY conference calls (usually the third Tues eve of the month) and by checking in with GPNY's website, and like any other engaged member of HVGP, helping to collect signatures of registered Greens in our area on official state ballot petitions which allow our candidates to appear on Election Day ballots and our SC reps to be recognized by the State Board of Elections. This year the designated time (by State Board of Elections and GPNY) for doing this is between June 5 and July 12. Term of office of SC reps is 2 years. Nominations for SC reps will be taken during this meeting, presumably followed by voting.
Incidentally, next GPNY meeting and annual General State Convention is Saturday, May 19 in the Capital District - see GPNY website for details. It is open to all registered Greens in NYS, and during it, candidates for the November ballot will be formally selected.
Location details: Arborgate Offices is a small private office building that looks like a large residential house on the corner of State Route 17K and a side street called Arbor Drive in the Town of Newburgh. Most GPS misdirects people a block or so away, so beware! There is a traffic light at that corner. You will need to turn onto Arbor Drive (which leads into a residential development called Colden Park), immediately pass a row of mailboxes on your right, and then immediately turn right into the parking area, which holds about a dozen vehicles. If there is no room, you can park on Arbor Drive. Enter the building by way of the solid black door by the stoop in the parking lot area (we will have a sign up saying "HVGP Meeting"). Come up the inside stairs (there's about six of them) and turn left to Suite 220.
General location is on State Route 17K between Exits 5A and 6 of I-84. If you take the Thruway, you would get off on Exit 7, and then briefly take I-84 to Exit 6 and turn right onto 17K. From New Paltz, you could do that or take "the back way" to Newburgh, ending up on Rock Cut Road and turning right off Rock Cut onto 17K and then at the next light, turn left onto Arbor Drive.
Reason for change of location: As you may know, we originally planned to have this meeting in New Paltz, given the centrality of New Paltz for our HVGP geographic area. But, basically, no room at the inn : ) in New Paltz - we found that Village Hall rooms and library rooms were already regularly booked on Tuesday evenings, no legitimate way for us to get into SUNY NP, no free or affordable adequately sized quiet rooms that we could find. And thank you, Steve Greenfield and Andrew Dalton, for looking, and looking!
So, hope to see you - 7 pm Tues. May 8 - Suite 220, Arborgate Offices, 275 Rt 17K, Town (not City!) of Newburgh, 12550.
If you are planning on coming, it would be handy to know in advance (for purposes of having enough chairs available) - please call or text Andrew at 845 699 3051. Contact him also for any further info, or should you get lost en route - hope not!
Cheers,
Barbara Kidney
CoChair
Hudson Valley Green Party
