Dunn For Village Board, Friedman For Justice

3-12-10

Alton G. Dunn, III – aka “Chip” and “Dunnie,” he’ll tell you – has been an agreeable surprise in this year’s race for Cooperstown village trustee.
You may have seen him at accidents or fire scenes – he’s a long-time volunteer with the fire department and EMT squad – and never known he was a math and science teacher at Laurens Central School.
You may not have known he was a physics major at Colgate University and holds a master’s in electrical engineering from the University of Washington.  Or that he spent 20 years pursuing a career in engineering, with Hughes Aircraft and Boeing, among others, in California, Georgia and Texas.  (With the National Science Foundation, he had a stint in Antarctica as well.)
You may have been surprised at the March 1 Candidates’ Forum to discover how comfortable he is in front of a crowd, how firm and clearly spoken – and humorous, too.
When you discovered all this, he no doubt won your vote.  Let’s elect Alton G. Dunn, III, to the village board.

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Attorney Leslie Friedman, we can only hope, represents the future of the local justice court system in New York State.
Despite a searing three-part series in the New York Times in January 2007 detailing abuses in justice courts statewide, there’s been little movement toward professionalizing them.
If we are to be a nation of laws, it only makes sense that our judges need to be trained lawyers.  Today, anyone, regardless of vocation or education, can sit on the local bench.
She is superbly trained.  She is broadly experienced.  She’s walked the walk already, serving as deputy village justice for the past year. 
And she brings a requisite mix of firmness and mercy that would give anyone who appeared before her confidence in a fair, impartial outcome, professionally arrived at.