The Department of Environmental Conservation’s public hearings concerning the Edgewood Lake project, resumed the latter part of January, 1972. Likewise, so did the adversarial editorials in the both Livingston Manor Times and the Sullivan County Press. Both editorials in each of the weeklies were the same, word for word, referring to anonymous “our sources” who presented veiled and vague accusations into assumed conspiracy theories.

Becoming the mouthpiece for the Livingston Manor Taxpayers Association, the Livingston Manor Times also had set its sights set on education spending, both at the local and county level. In October of 1970, voters of the participating schools in the Sullivan County Board of Cooperative Educational Services [BOCES] program passed a referendum by a wide margin to centralize their educational operations from a hodge-podge of locations at Liberty into one central campus in the Town of Liberty. Three districts opposed the building program. Monticello voters were fueled by the age-old argument of location and the jealous rivalry between the villages of Liberty and Monticello to soundly defeat the referendum. The voters in the Tri-Valley district were strongly against the program citing the increase in property taxes; an interesting argument for a school district whose property owners are substantially subsidized by the New York City’s Board of Water Supply. Opposition by the Livingston Manor Taxpayers Association and the Livingston Manor Times, the BOCES referendum was also defeated in the Manor district, but only by the narrow margin of nine votes. Overall, these negative votes were easily outmatched by positive response from the other school districts. However, due to litigation initiated by the Tri-Valley School Board, the project had been held up for over a year and a half. The Taxpayers Association, though their mouthpiece, began another slash and burn rhetorical rant, this time against the BOCES board and the county’s district superintendent.  - Fred