News

Rockland Emergency Services, area utility companies and others went through a four-hour simulated training exercise Wednesday at the Fire Training Center to review procedures in case of a freight train derailment in North Rockland. Stony Point supervisor Jim Monaghan says the event was pretty realistic…

Similar exercises were conducted last night covering the Tappan area in Orangetown. Chris Jensen is the Program Coordinator for the Rockland County Office of Fire and Emergency Services, and says they work with New Jersey responders from Old Tappan and Northvale since Tappan is right on the border…

CSX, Orange and Rockland and Suez New York also participated in the simulations.

The HNA Conference Center in Palisades, formerly the IBM Conference Center, is up for sale. Supervisor Chris Day says the China-based company that owns the 100-acre property, has been trying to unload several properties they own here in the United States. At a public hearing earlier this week, Day said a Brooklyn bidder that was looking to buy the property hasn’t been able to get the money together…

The town had changed its zoning last year, allowing HNA to sell its rooms to daily travelers even if they weren’t staying at the center for a conference, a requirement under previous zoning rules. Town councilman Tom Diviny says the town should hold a public hearing and consider changing the zone back…

The center is located between Route 340 and Route 9W in Palisades and pays about $1.6 million in property taxes each year to the town.

If you’d like to donate blood you can do so today at a blood drive at Palisades Center in West Nyack. The drive is being held from 2-4pm in the Adler Room on the fourth floor. For more information and to register just click here.

Delays in reporting a crudely-carved swastika on a men’s room wall at the Nyack Starbucks could prevent the perpetrator from being discovered. Rockland Sheriff Lou Falco says an extended amount of time passed before the incident was reported, and in that time valuable data could have been lost. While he’s a big fan of the New York State Police, Falco says getting them involved as the governor promised, is probably not necessary…

The Starbucks incident comes after a video with what many feel was anti-semitic imagery was posted on and then removed from the Rockland GOP’s Facebook page. Since then, Clarkstown police have been investigating bags containing dog feces, rusty nails possibly representing the crucifixion of Jesus, and fliers calling legislator Laurie Santulli a Nazi were found on her and her neighbors’ lawns.

The Rockland County Legislature voted along party lines 10-7 Tuesday to hold what’s being billed as a “Rockland’s Future” summit next year. The summit would include meetings that bring community leaders and residents together to focus on issues that are tearing the community apart. The meetings will likely focus on overdevelopment, anti-Semitism and other expressions of hate, local schools, home values, poverty, assimilation versus segregation and cultural diversity.