News

Some poll workers here in Rockland are looking to get some more money for the work they do but Rockland’s County Executive says that’s up to the election commissioners. Ed Day told “The Morning Show” recently that the two commissioners would have to make the request in their budget submissions to the county…

Poll workers have had a more difficult job of late, as COVID has resulted in additional days of early voting, and this past summer featured two separate primaries, in addition to local school board and village elections, and of course, the next election coming up in November.  

Over the summer, a jailed serial killer, who’s claimed to have killed 100 people, said he was involved in two murders in Rockland County. The so-called “Torso Killer,” 75 year-old Richard Cottingham, claims to have killed a woman in South Nyack in 1970 and a Nanuet high school student in ’74. Rockland Sheriff Lou Falco says there are about a half dozen cold cases in the county, and they’re actively working on a few of them…

Falco says so far, Cottingham’s Nanuet story isn’t holding up, but the South Nyack case seems to be legitimate. Cottingham is also known as the “Times Square Killer.” He has been in a New Jersey State Prison since July 1981, serving a life sentence for multiple murders.

Older people in New York are dying from drug overdose or suicide at much higher rates now compared with a decade ago. That’s according to the latest America’s Health Rankings Senior Report from UnitedHealthcare. The report found in New York, suicides have increased nearly 10-percent, frequent mental distress is up about nine-percent and drug deaths among people 65 and older have doubled in the last 10 to 12 years. Aleks Malejs is with a peer support group in Buffalo for people struggling with addiction. She points to fentanyl as a major cause of the uptick in drug-related deaths, because it’s 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, and it’s showing up in heroin, cocaine, oxycontin and other drugs with more and more frequency…

Malejs notes more than eight-thousand people have called for help this year alone.

The head of a local business networking group is no fan of the “congestion pricing” scheme that the MTA is likely to implement before the end of next year. Al Samuels is the CEO of the Rockland Business Association, and he says if it is eventually implemented, he’d be less likely to venture into the city south of 60th street…

The MTA’s controversial Central Business District Tolling Program, more commonly known as “congestion pricing,” could force a massive toll on Rockland and other west-of-Hudson commuters and others going south of 60th street in Manhattan. The plan would help encourage commuters to use mass transit, and fund repairs and upgrades on MTA service lines.

Rockland County honored local Gold Star families at a Remembrance Ceremony Friday at Haverstraw Bay Park. The ceremony honored residents who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Gulf War and the War on Terror and their families. Rockland County Executive Ed Day said he knows the roller coaster of emotions military families can go through, both as a former police officer and as the parent of two sons serving in the armed forces…

Former Spring Valley Police Chief, Purple Heart-recipient, and Vietnam veteran, Howard Goldin, awarded this year’s honor to the family of the first Rocklander and New Yorker to lose his life during Operation Desert Shield / Desert Storm in December 1990, Navy Seaman 22 year-old Gilbert Fontaine…   

A memorial honoring Fontaine and other victims of the Gulf War and the War on Terror is located in Haverstraw Bay Park.