MILLERTON — On Oct. 12, American Legion Post 178 held its second Town Hall meeting to introduce the candidates running for the position of Dutchess County executive.During the Town Hall meeting, New York Assemblyman Marcus Molinaro spoke to a crowd of roughly two dozen people to explain his stance on several issues that are important to local residents.Molinaro’s opponent is Dan French, who participated in a Town Hall event at the Legion on Oct. 3. French and Molinaro will face off in the election on Tuesday, Nov. 8. The position of Dutchess County executive is currently held by William Steinhaus, who has held the role for 19 years.Molinaro began by giving the audience an overview of his political career, which he began at the age of 18. A year later, he became mayor of Tivoli, earning the title of the youngest mayor ever elected in the United States.He was elected as a New York State Assemblyman in 2006. He currently has 17 years of experience as an elected official.While serving as assemblyman, Molinaro co-sponsored the “Government Consolidation and Citizen Empowerment Act,” which pledges to do just as its name implies: consolidate government offices to improve efficiency and effectiveness and empower citizens to take part in their government.“I believe public service is a dignified duty,” he said while describing the piece of legislation. “We have an obligation to give back.”The themes of that piece of legislation infiltrated the responses he gave for questions asked by the audience.He said that if he becomes the county executive, he would work with the local governments to create a medium for dialogue so that the county and the municipalities can work together as partners to consolidate their efforts and services.He said that he will personally visit town hall meetings to better understand how and why the municipalities make their decisions.He believes that it is the perfect time to realign the government and ask the public what they expect from each level of government. Then it will be possible to evaluate what each part of the government does well and what it does not do well so that plans can be put in place to increase government efficiency and effectiveness while cutting out unnecessary practices.He said the government and the public need to engage in thoughtful dialogue about how things can be done better, even if the answer is walking away from some projects.“Elected officials have the responsibility to create the community that people want,” he said.Molinaro said the government isn’t always the answer for some services. He said that in some cases, charities and nonprofit organizations are better able to provide necessities that government programs like Medicaid, which he believes traps people within its rigid and ineffective system.Since Medicaid is over-burdening the government, Molinaro wants to create a system that let nonprofits pool their resources and contacts to save money and create a more efficient method to get services to those who need them.The other burden on taxpayers that Molinaro discussed was the MTA Payroll Tax, which he described as “a fiscal hostage-taking.”Molinaro stated that he believes it was wrong for the payroll tax to be instated in the first place, but acknowledged that it will be hard to walk away from that income.He said there are several ways to approach the MTA taxes. One way involves renegotiating with Connecticut to make the burden more equal. The other is phasing out the tax over five years.He also stated that an audit and restructuring of the entire MTA system are necessary.On the topic of local job creation, Molinaro said it is important to attract the big companies while also supporting the small and mid-sized companies.“Growing jobs is one thing, but sustaining those jobs over a number of years is completely different,” he said.He wants to find where growth can be sustained, then make the changes to the zoning to allow for it.To help this plan, he wants to use the Chamber of Commerce to help with economic development and ensure that people are ready to enter the workforce once the jobs are created.One of the current hot topics in Dutchess County is the outsourcing of prisoners to other counties who have more room available in their prisons.Molinaro explained that although Dutchess County is the leader in the state for Alternative to Incarceration (ATI) programs, if the well-behaved criminals are shipped out of the county, those programs are not reaching as many people as they could and are therefore not as effective as they could be.Molinaro said that retrofitting existing facilities is an option for solving the space issue, but the retrofitting will still cost a lot of money.He said that negotiating regional overflow with other counties is also a possibility, but will be very difficult to attain since the negotiations will reduce the revenue that is taken in by other counties.The audience did not ask Molinaro any questions about his stance on the Resource Recovery Agency or disposing of garbage through burning, which are hot political topics.Molinaro briefly addressed why he has chosen to move from the position of assemblyman on the state level to the position of executive on the county level instead of moving on to the senate. He said that while he enjoys being a legislator, that role is not as satisfying because it is more difficult to see the fruits of the labor. He believes that serving as county executive will give him the opportunity to put into practice all that he has learned throughout his political career.
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Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.
“I was a library kid. I walked to the library after school,” she said.
For Sher, the library is as much about the people as it about the books.
“Part of the job I love so much is that running the library is such a community,” she said.
She treasures the relationships she has built, whether recommending books, celebrating accomplishments or helping patrons through difficult times.
“I am thankful that our community is so supportive of the library, unlike what is happening in some other places where librarians are villainized,” Sher said.
Sher takes pride in the Hunt Library’s reputation for being “open and welcoming to everyone. People come in and see things and get pulled into things they weren’t expecting. Our library is seen as a positive force.”
Sher came to Falls Village after being awarded a fellowship at Adamah Farm, then a program of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. She worked at pickling, in the greenhouse and later in the development office. She also worked as a nanny.
At the same time, “I was in the library all the time,” she recalled. “I’m a voracious reader. The library is where I met a lot of my first friends in Falls Village.”
She became assistant librarian at Hunt and worked in that position for almost a decade before becoming the executive director four years ago.
Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.L. Tomaino
Sher met her husband, Adam, while working at Adamah. They had their wedding there in 2012. He now emcees many events which she co-organizes with the Falls Village Recreation Commission.
Sher and her family live near the library.
“It’s an easy commute,” she said with a smile. “My kids run back and forth. I can go home to walk the dog if I need to.”
“My kids have grown up here.” Her oldest son, Eli, “loves volunteering. He helps with Augustfest and often helps set up chairs for ArtWall gatherings.” Her younger son, Noah, is often at events and was eager to taste cookies at last year’s holiday cookie swap.
When she is not at the library, Sher likes to hike with her family. Bella, their Portuguese water dog, often accompanies them.
Sher enjoys seeking out people to offer events at the library.
“I do a lot of different community programming. It is one of my favorite parts of the job.”
Augustfest, featuring food, music and an auction, is the library’s biggest fundraiser.
“This summer we had a record 152 attendees, which was pretty incredible.”
Yonah Sadeh, a filmmaker from Falls Village, inaugurated the VideoWall this year, Sher explained.
“I’ve known Yonah since he was two. It’s wonderful to work with him as an adult.”
The VideoWall complements the library’s ArtWall, which showcases a new artist each month. Sher praised the ArtWall committee for its work and highlighted December’s popular “12x12 Show,” featuring works by local artists, each measuring 12 by 12 inches and priced at $150.
Sher added that some of the artists who exhibit at the ArtWall offer workshops to students at Kellogg School, next door to the library. In September, artist Danielle Mailer worked with the children. Vincent Inconiglios taught a class last November.
Being next to the school, said Sher, is a great advantage.
“Kids are coming after school, to see friends, work on projects, find a great book. Kids that love the library end up using the library as grownups.”
This past year, in partnership with Adamah, the library and school created a garden, with excess produce made available at The Center on Main.
This year is Sher’s second year participating in the Troutbeck Symposium in Amenia with James King, director of the library at Salisbury School. The Troutbeck Symposium is “a gathering of a year of student historical inquiry across the region” in which students “uncover stories that have been overlooked, forgotten, or never recorded.”
Last year, Sher and King began a project with a group of students researching Irish immigrants in Falls Village, exploring ancestry and creating small magazines about their findings.
They continued this year, visiting St. Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery on Dublin Road, cleaning seven gravestones and even righting one with the help of stonemason and gravestone restoration expert Karl Munson. Paul Kozeazny, a representative of the Catholic archdiocese, helped secure access to the site.
A film documenting their activities will be shown at the symposium in spring 2027.
A full schedule of programs and events, ranging from tech help to ceramic mug-making, can be found on the library’s website.
Despite spending her days surrounded by books, and a busy schedule of programming, Sher still loves to settle in with a book at home.
For more information on library programs and events, visit huntlibrary.org
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Touré was born in northern Mali in 1981. His father, the renowned guitarist Ali Farka Touré, came from a family of soldiers and wanted his son to join the army. The younger Touré studied drums and the calabash and practiced guitar in secret. He earned his father’s blessing to pursue music shortly before Ali died in 2006, and they played two tracks together on Vieux’s debut album.
Touré is known for his deft, polyrhythmic playing, and his songs grow out of riffs that repeat and layer to hypnotic effect. He draws on rock, blues, Latin music and various African traditions. This distinctive blend builds on his father’s work adapting the sonic traditions of Mali’s arid north to the guitar.
Vieux’s album “Mon Pays” (“My Country,” 2013) honored Mali’s culture after Tuareg separatists and extremist groups seized the north in 2012. “Samba” (2017) was recorded before about 50 listeners in Woodstock, New York. In 2022 came “Les Racines” (“The Roots”), a return to his father’s desert blues, and “Ali,” on which he and the trio Khruangbin reworked eight of the elder Touré’s songs.
Touré leads the Ali Farka Touré Foundation, which focuses on cultural and educational work in Mali. Around the anniversary of Ali’s death, it holds a festival in Bamako, Mali’s capital. Bamako has been under blockade for much of the past year, besieged by JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Against this backdrop, Touré continues to carry the music of Mali to audiences abroad.
At the Nov. 5 concert, Touré’s desert blues will share the bill with Gnawa, the music LanGus plays, which developed in Morocco among West Africans who were brought north across the desert as enslaved people. Gnawa is religious music traditionally performed at all-night healing ceremonies called lila, intended to carry participants into trance.
Samir LanGusProvided
LanGus was born and raised outside Agadir, Morocco, and began learning Gnawa from its masters at age 8. He plays the sintir, a three-stringed bass lute made of wood and camel skin. The player strikes a low string with the thumb to create a deep, resonant pulse. Iron castanets clatter over the sintir’s bass line, and vocalists trade call-and-response refrains.
LanGus infuses the tradition with jazz and improvisation. In New York, he founded the ensemble Innov Gnawa. His first solo album, “Gnawa Love,” came out in February.
Touré and LanGus’s Nov. 5 concert is one of the last public events at Race Brook Lodge, which is for sale and ended full-service operations at the end of 2025. The lodge’s final scheduled event, on Nov. 6, is an evening of Rumi’s poetry with translator and vocalist Haleh Liza Gafori, cellist Isabel Castellvi and ceremonial bard James Bird.
For tickets, visit rblodge.com.
James FitzGerald is a student at Yale Law School, where he focuses on ecological restoration and international environmental cooperation. He splits his time between Lakeville and New Haven.
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