Delaware County Newscast
Your weekly quick peek at the latest news in and around Delaware County, NY
Delaware County Newscast
June 19, 2026: Seniors get the shaft, Sidney looks for big bucks, hazmat in Walton, and more!
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This week we’ve got the county officials looking to help towns and villages (as long as they don’t have to write a check), seniors are getting hit by federal cuts to nutrition programs, Sidney is hoping to score a big grant, while Walton has a surprising mess under a bridge (and more)!
Links for ya
Senior transportation via the Office for the Aging and GetThereSCNY:
https://gettherescny.org
Past episodes and more: https://delconewscast.com
Remember: Keep up with (real) local news!
- Subscribe to The Reporter — formerly the Walton Reporter: https://the-reporter.net/subscribe
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- Subscribe to the Daily Star (now three days a week): https://www.thedailystar.com/subscriptions
- Heck, even read or watch WBNG: https://fllw.me/bngdelco
Written and produced in Sidney, NY, by Andrew Kantor.
This is the Delaware County Newscast with some of the latest news from around the county this week. I'm Andrew Cantor. While Delaware County officials still don't want to share sales tax revenue with towns and villages, they are looking at other ways they might be able to help, anything but writing a check. One idea floated at the latest county finance committee meeting was offering more shared services. For example, the county could hire an additional grant writer that towns and villages could use to find more money that's up for grabs. The county might also look at getting state funding to do infrastructure analyses across the county, see what changes need to be made either to repair what's already there or to add capacity for the future. Maybe the county could get one big infrastructure grant and share that amongst the towns and villages. Stay tuned. There's bad news and good news for seniors in the county. The bad news is that the one big, beautiful bill Congress passed last year, it means big cuts to nutrition programs for seniors. Specifically, the County Office for the Aging only has about 300 coupons this year for seniors to use at farmer markets in the summer. Usually they have 1,800. The good news? Well, since the county started contracting its medical transportation program to the rural health network of South Central New York, it's been able to offer more free trips than ever to people who need to get to medical appointments. So that's a win. The town of Sydney, led by Councilmember Kevin Green and Delaware Opportunities, is once again applying for a $750,000 community development block grant from New York State. The money would provide about a dozen grants of up to $51,000 each for homeowners to deal with problems like lead paint, leaky rubs, asbestos, repairing foundations, projects like that. If the application is approved, Sydney homeowners will have a chance to apply for a piece of that pie, possibly as soon as later this year. And while we're in Sydney, the town, like a lot of others, is now considering a ban, or at least a moratorium, on data centers and battery storage facilities. The town council is going to be holding a couple of hearings on July 9th before making any decisions. Walton has discovered a mess, a big mess under the Bridge Street Bridge. Village officials went to check out what's been dumped there, thinking they might clean it up. But it was so bad they realized they had to call in a hazmat team. Now the town council wants to put up no trespassing signs, they think that might help, but once they looked into it, they found that the space under the bridge is a mix of town, village, and state property. And that means nothing about this is simple, and the town council will have to hit the books to figure out what to do next. This has been the Delaware County Newscast, and you can find us at Delkonewscast.com. I'm Andrew Cantor. See you next week.