President's Letters

President's Letters

March 2026 | Jan/Feb 2026 | December 2025 | November 2025 | 

 

President's Letter - March 2026

We had a great program planning potluck dinner on February 12. Meetings are always better with food, aren’t they? I’ve included our PDF icon proposed Local Objectives for 2026-2027.

We made just a few changes- separated Citizens Right to Vote and Making Democracy Work into separate categories, made Immigration into its own category with the statement: Support basic human rights of immigrants and a path to citizenship, moved support for improving connectivity to the internet to Health Services and added the statement: Advocate for climate change mitigation and adaptation to Environmental Issues.

One of the changes we made to our Local Objectives was to drop our Citizenship Mentoring Group. It was with great sadness that we made this decision. With the current attitude of the federal government towards immigrants, very few applicants were succeeding in their quest to obtain American citizenship. When this policy changes in the future, we intend to renew our efforts to support new citizens.

Spring must be coming soon- lots of organizations are planning programs. Here are just a few:  

  •  Women’s March 2026, March 7, 9:30 AM, Schenectady City Hall steps
  •  No Kings 3 Rally, March 28, time and location TBD, sponsored by Schenectady LWV
  •  Civic Discourse panel discussion, SUNY Schenectady, date TBD in April, Schenectady LWV member will be on the panel
  •  Democracy During Detention Act panel discussion, date and location TBD in April, co-sponsored by Schenectady LWV,                          Schenectady NAACP and Union College NAACP class.

Follow us on Facebook for the latest information. We’ll also send updates by email.

Cheryl Nechamen President

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President's Letter - Jan/Feb 2026

We’ll be meeting at my house on Thursday, February 12th- bring your favorite dish to share!  The Board meeting will start at 4:30 PM- all members are most welcome to attend.  If you want to skip right to the program planning potluck, come at 5:30 PM (we won’t judge!).

While we’re enjoying a meal together, we’ll discuss our Local Objectives for the year- the issues our local League thinks are important.  We’ll also do a quick review of the national League’s positions in preparation for the national convention in June.

The national League’s positions can be found here: https://www.lwv.org/sites/default/files/2024-12/ImpactOnIssues_2024-FINA...  .  The summary of the positions is on pp. 16-20 of the document.

                          Local Objectives 2025-2026

 

Citizens Right to Vote - Making Democracy Work

•  Provide voter information during voter registration drives, tabling events and other LWVSC activities in person, on the LWVSC website and on social media

•  Support and provide voter education to youth in high schools and colleges

•  Advocate for local government transparency and monitor activities of local governmental units

•  Support improving local, state, and national elections

•  Meet with the Commissioners of the Schenectady County Board of Elections on a regular basis

•  Maintain the Citizenship Mentoring Group program that helps prepare immigrants for the US Citizenship Exam and attend Naturalization Ceremonies when possible to register new citizens

 Children and Education

•  Collaborate with other organizations to identify the needs of children

•  Encourage the availability and affordability of day care services for young children

•  Advocate for adequate and equitable funding for all public schools

•  Advocate for the strengthening of programs that improve the capacity, quality, and speed of connectivity to the internet, especially in rural and low-income communities

•  Advocate for the active recruitment by all school districts in Schenectady County of teachers of color

•  Support the annual LWVNYS’s Students Inside Albany program

Health Services

•  Advocate for national/state/local health care reform that provides quality physical and mental health care for all citizens

Justice and the Law

•  Support restorative justice programs such as the Center for Community Justice 

•  Improve accessibility to police complaint procedure and support Schenectady police reform efforts

•  Register eligible voters in the Schenectady County Jail and encourage them to vote

 Environmental Issues

•  Advocate for the protection of environmental resources, land, water and air in Schenectady County

•  Advocate for energy conservation and development of renewable energy alternatives

•  Advocate for solid waste management programs that promote Reduce, Reuse, and Recycling in the City and County

Cheryl Nechamen, President

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President's Letter - December 2025

                                                            
The recent government shutdown highlighted the reality of food insecurity.  Far too many people in our community live on the edge.  An unexpected car repair, an announcement from the landlord that the rent is increasing $200/month or a sudden job loss- any of these can push someone over the edge.

But at least there are resources in our community to help people get enough food to feed their families.  SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, is the core of food aid, although the benefits don’t go nearly far enough to meet the need.  The withholding of SNAP benefits blew a hole in many people’s budgets.  Even before the government shutdown, food pantries were struggling to meet increased demand and now their reserves are alarmingly low.

The League will be collecting monetary donations (cash or check) at the Holiday Luncheon for community food pantries.  We’ll have a list of food pantries and other food aid organizations at the check-in table so you’ll be able to write a check to your favorite food pantry.

In case you can’t make it to the luncheon, here are links to food pantries in our community:

Cheryl Nechamen, President

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President's Letter - November 2025

We had a very busy September and October with candidate forums in Rotterdam, Glenville, Schenectady and Niskayuna.  All in all, I’d say they were very successful.  Sandra McGarraugh had suggested soliciting questions from voters by email at least two years ago and she was right!  We received quite a few questions.  Audience attendance at the forums ranged from 25 to 100 people.

We also had a more effective use of social media this year.  Anita Sanchez promoted the forums on Facebook and Cindy Engel publicized the forums in the bulletin which is now distributed through MailChimp.  We posted links to the videotaped forums on Facebook and on our website.  We have asked that the videotapes be shown on public access TV.  We had some difficulty in communicating with candidates and managed to reach some of them through their Facebook pages.

A big thank you to the coordinators, Ellen Daviero, Julia Holcomb, Elaine Troy, Heide Westergard, Liz Yanoff and Connie Young, who did the heavy lifting of organizing the many details involved in running candidate forums.  Joan Fucillo and Judy Rightmyer had their trial by fire as first-time moderators!  And a big thank you to the many volunteers who helped, many of them helping with more than one forum: Ayesha Afghan, Ruth Bonn, Maxine Brisport, Carol Furman, Crystal Hamelink, Janet Hollocher, Vicki Hoshko, Janet Hutchison, Monica Mackey, Chuck Pangburn, Inge-Lise Pangburn, Bill Nechamen, Nancy Tudor, Margaret Verhayden, Dick Westergard and Margaret Wexler!  I filled in as needed.  I hope I didn’t forget anyone!  

And a shout-out to Joan Fucillo and Ellen Daviero for doing a phenomenal job of voter registration this year!  See Joan’s VS report for all the details.                                                                                         Cheryl Nechamen, President

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