Her permission to address Schoharie County’s Board of Supervisors revoked, ACCORD’s Sue Spivack instead read the statement she’d hoped to make to reporters Friday.
“I’ll skip the parts that say thank you for the opportunity to speak,” Ms. Spivack said as, outside the supervisors’ third floor meeting room children wrestled in chairs, the elevator doors opened and shut, and people unknowingly walked through the middle of the press conference.
Arguing that the now-familiar remarks by Supervisor Tom Murray and then-Mayor Mark Nadeau should be of county concern, Ms. Spivack sought—and got—permission to speak to supervisors on behalf of ACCORD, which works to encourage tolerance and acceptance, especially in the Cobleskill-Richmondville schools.
Thursday, however, Ms. Spivack got a call from supervisors’ Clerk Karen Miller saying that permission had been revoked.
In a quiet but heated exchange with County and Town of Cobleskill Attorney Mike West in the lobby, Ms. Spivack argued ACCORD’s right to stand with county mayors, the Chamber of Commerce, and Assemblyman Pete Lopez, all of whom have spoken out against the racist remarks.
“It has nothing to do with the county,” Mr. West said, suggesting an alternative might be to refer it to a county committee.
“It’s not a county issue. The county doesn’t need to address it.”
However, others pointed out that in the past, speakers have been allowed to address topics like alien space craft and carburetors that run on water—neither of which were being considered by supervisors.
Though he said in July that the county doesn’t have any power to act on concerns like those of ACCORD and Cobleskill’s Concerned Citizens, Supervisors’ Chairman Earl VanWormer also said then that they were free to come and speak as long as they were “orderly and respectful.”
Specifically, Ms. Spivack’s initial request had been for a chance to ask supervisors “to make responses to the recent racist scandal in Cobleskill and to initiate specific actions and policy at the county level to address it.”
Though about a half-dozen members of ACCORD and the Concerned Citizens joined Ms. Spivack, she was the only one who asked to speak.
Denied access to the Board of Supervisors, she instead read her remarks to reporters.
‘Because this is a problem that affects our entire county, ACCORD members believe that the Board of Supervisors should be addressing it…” Ms. Spivack said, [and…] make it clear to the world that our most important elected leaders are stepping forward…”
Ms. Spivack had also hoped to ask supervisors to read the pamphlet, “Speak Up!” and publicly sign the pledge on the back of it as C-RCS board members and Superintendent Lynn Macan have already done.
“And if I went in there, this is the part where I’d say thank you,” Ms. Spivack concluded.