By Matthew Avitabile
COBLESKILL — Last weekend’s successful New York Canine Expo at the Cobleskill Fairgrounds brought thousands of locals and visitors to the area. We have significant coverage of the well-received event elsewhere in this week’s edition. However, an incident the night before the event sparked considerable controversy surrounding the filling of a pool for a canine jumping event.
Expo organizer Jess Edgerly posted a video speaking about the incident on Facebook Friday night.
She told us that she and her team got to the Fairgrounds around noon and prepped for filling the pool of about 25,000 gallons at around 1pm. Water started pumping from the hydrant on the fairgrounds and the water started coming out brown. Not wanting dogs to jump in any dirty water, the team shut off the water.
The water had to be pumped back out of the pool, followed by removing sediment for the next filling.
The Cobleskill Fire Department agreed to help fill the pool. The process continued into the dark. Edgerly said that the decision was made to use lights to illuminate the pool to supervise the process.
Following this, she heard commotion, not knowing who was arriving. She heard a woman say, “That’s my water!” She found out later that this was current Mayor Becky Stanton-Terk.
Edgerly said that she heard fellow event organizer Lois Goblet ask “Where does it say that?”
Edgerly saw Stanton-Turk point at where it said Cobleskill Fire Department on the truck.
Goblet then asked if the crew was paid hourly, to which the mayor said yes, to which Goblet asked if this was the case for the volunteer fire department, according to the witness.
Edgerly watched the two go back and forth.
“You need to look at me when I’m talking to you,” Edgerly relayed the mayor telling Goblet when she was filling the pool.
“This was weird,” said Edgerly.
A man came near the site and Edgerly asked who the woman was, to which he replied that it was the mayor.
“That’s their mayor?” asked Edgerly.
“It definitely got heated,” Edgerly.
As the conversation continued, Edgerly alleged that the mayor said that the Expo could not use “my water.”
During the discussion, which she described as a “heated argument,” and at one point said that she saw Stanton-Terk raise her arm, as if to strike Goblet. A man got in between the two to separate the two.
“The mayor was running her mouth as that man walked her away,” said Edgerly. She then asked Goblet about the situation, to which Goblet said that she was okay.
At that point another fire truck arrived. Edgerly’s husband overheard Stanton-Terk telling the Fire Department not to deliver any more water. The truck started to back out, to which she asked the Fire Department members if the mayor had shut off the water as the process was halfway through.
“The mayor cut us off,” replied the firefighter, according to Edgerly.
She was surprised about the situation and said that the argument didn’t affect Goblet directly, but instead the jumping competition. Edgerly said that her and her team, which had come in from Connecticut, had to stay up all night to finish the job.
“It could have been handled a lot differently,” she said. “One person was mad who had higher power saying ‘I’m taking this away from you.’”
“This is helping your community and you’re treating us like that? Why would we come back? We’re here to help the community get this going,” referencing that the hotel had been sold out.
“I don’t think she cared,” said Edgerly.
Organizer Lois Goblet said that Friday night the group was filling the pool for dock diving. The effort was to first use the hydrant, which gave brown water. In the past three years, the Cobleskill Fire Department has filled the pool for the county fair. This pool is operated by the same person who does it for the county fair.
Goblet argued that any discussion regarding the pool should have been brought up with the Cobleskill Ag Society Board of Directors instead.
Mayor Becky Stanton-Terk arrived around sunset to check the water usage. “She came to check out the water usage,” said Goblet. Goblet said that she explained that the group was prepping for the expo in the morning.
“This is not the place to discuss the water issue. We need to have the full board present,” Goblet relayed. “Unfortunately, because it was a conversation that had to be done conversationally and business-like [that] wasn’t embraced and ensued to unprofessional behavior.”
Goblet said that her number one concern was being prepared for competitors at 8 am and the safety of the dogs.
Goblet said that there would not be such a conflict in the future. She said that in the future, water will be purchased from a local provider. Following the incident, several businesses called her offering to pay for water as a sponsor.
When we spoke to the mayor this week, she said that there had been some “communication gaps” and that it was “no big deal.”
She said that the situation had been handled and that it was the first canine expo at the fairgrounds and that there are sometimes “bumps in the road.”
“Things happen and I don’t expect that they will happen in the future,” she said.
“The Mayor and I have a different sense of building community,” said Goblet. “She pulled the Fire Department off because it was ‘her truck’ and ‘her water.’”
The group had to fill the pool using a pumper truck previously donated by the Middleburgh FD and garden hoses. This was a priority because there would be more than 300 jumps the following day.
Despite the disagreement, Stanton-Terk said that the Expo went “really well.” She attended Saturday for the “great” event and “everyone was having a blast.”
Stanton-Terk said that she was thrilled and “they did an amazing job.” The mayor credited Goblet for her organization of the event.
“It seemed like a win-win for everyone having it.”
The mayor said that she was “excited" for the event next year. She said that the organizers have a “great foundation” and can work on “what can be improved,” including from feedback to make it “bigger and better.”
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