Evening Sun Managing Editor Tyler Murphy

This year’s progress theme is: The Fight for Progress.

It is an attempt to highlight the challenges of the pandemic, what it has taught us and how our organizations have coped and learned.

Over the next five days, with more than 60 pages in 10 sections, Chenango County’s daily newspaper, The Evening Sun, tries to do that.

How can we not highlight those who continue to adapt and succeed in Chenango County? The 2021 Progress focuses on health care professionals, small businesses and the demand for goodwill organizations.

We have great hope for our community. Crisis can unite and divide.

Hard times force self-reckonings that in better times we are able to comfortably ignore. In tougher situations, avoiding difficult choices will only add to the consequences.

As pressures mount they inevitability reveal who we really are, for better or worse. The best thing you can do is learn from them. The pandemic has revealed much about our culture, government and ourselves.

Important lessons can be learned the hard way, one of the most important of which is figuring out how to avoid learning things the hard way.

How? Avoid being a reactionary. Plan for the worst, expect the best and remember, life may be unfair but it doesn’t mean we have to be.

If you have to react to a bad situation, ask yourself what kind of person you want to be, what kind of community you want to live in, then fight like hell for it.

No place and no one is perfect. Plans that never change almost always fail. Finding the path to improvement typically means dealing with constant failure and an occasional win. It’s a road that never ends; we just need to stay on it as best we can.

Fight the good fight. Build on what works. Enjoy the little things.

Another important thing to understand from hard lessons is how to be honest with ourselves. We can’t learn if we cannot recognize truth.

The hard truth is Chenango County was not well placed to deal with a pandemic.

The county government, like many small local governments, often operates with a lack of strong central leadership and in 2020, agency department heads mostly weathered the storms of the pandemic and financial crisis on their own.

Though experts in their field, sharing information with the public has not always been a priority for those non-elected leaders. Rural health departments were especially used to being low-key before the pandemic and typically were more concerned with medical privacy than transparency.

Elected leaders have often shunned technology upgrades and are used to minimizing expenses and information sharing.

It saves money and helps keep taxes low, and unless residents complain, nothing changes.

Local governments were initially overwhelmed by the sudden dependency on technology caused by COVID and the public outcry that followed it.

Years of neglected investment in the county’s technological infrastructure became apparent, including a lack of basic cell phone service and internet for those living outside the Route 12 corridor and main population centers.

Despite a number of bipartisan efforts to rectify this in 2020, many still struggle to have reliable access. In today’s reality of remote work demands and health uncertainties, this has cost some people their livelihoods, hurt education and increased exposure to COVID.

County leaders have been aware of the issues for years. In the past, some even questioned the need to update the infrastructure, while others admitted to hardly even using a computer or smart phone themselves.

This was compounded by the worst cyber attack in Chenango County’s history in October. It added to the woes of a contentious election with a handful of ballots not properly counted and faith in our local election process being depleted. Luckily New York State stepped in and helped stabilize the systems.

The crippling loss of emails and other computer services added more stress on public employees and stalled or slowed the county’s ability to provide public services during a time when that was already being impaired by the pandemic.

The county board meets regularly, but health and technology officials rarely appeared at the 2020 meetings to give regular updates, even in the middle of a crisis. Though the department heads sent out some information, the county board never released updates about any of the issues themselves. Only a few even returned phone calls.

Being a rural county with limited means has always made reform tough.

Workers do the best they can, but a number of issues including the pandemic, a loss of ambulance services and technology investment, have reduced the county’s ability to aid local residents.

County and local governments are growing increasingly alarmed about just staying financially solvent.

These issues have led to a number of opportunities for positive change, including the ousting of the decade-long tenure of the former board chairman at the start of 2021.

The appointment of George Seneck as county chairman has been seen by many as a significant turning point in moving the county forward.

Seneck has promised reform, education and transparency, but an entrenched, minimalist, status-quo system decades in the making is hard to turn around, especially during a pandemic. He needs all the help he can get.

Heading into 2021, many things already show signs of improvement as departments release more information at Seneck’s urging. A former teacher, Seneck also has a solid understanding of technology and what it means to the success of our youth in the area. As Guilford supervisor he was also at the center of the controversial project to build windmills in the town and is not shy about sharing information or responding to the public even when people are upset.

The ultimate goal is to save lives and reduce the spread of the virus, but lockdowns come at a cost too.

At the onset of the pandemic many in the private sector, especially small businesses in Chenango County, were left to fend for themselves. Many were forced to close their doors and deal with the harsh reality of lost income, laying off staff, cutting budgets, tapping into rainy day funds or closing forever.

Heavily partnered with small businesses and public events, The Evening Sun experienced this up close and directly felt the dire impacts.

Eventually, federal relief loans made a big difference.

There has been a different reality for many depending on how you have been afflicted by the virus, what you do for a living, and how essential your job was determined to be.

Dollar stores, Wal-Mart and many others never closed, while small businesses that provided similar products or services were punished if they did not.

Low wage staff were expected to carry on and take the risks at many of these places. They couldn’t afford to stay home anyway. Yet seemingly more essential public service workers were paid to stay home.

Similar to the 2008 recession, there has been a delayed reaction between the private and public sector. Many local governments are hoping a federal bailout will spare them from the pandemic’s harshest economic realities in 2021.

Overworked local health officials and their staff stepped up behind the scenes, working longer hours and taking risks most of us do not have to take.

Those of us who can recognize these hard truths learned from the pandemic and are working harder than ever before to help our community. The pandemic will reach far into 2021 but the effects of COVID may echo for a decade, especially with our local youth, affecting educational opportunities and substance abuse problems.

Now is the time for positive change - we simply have no choice. The fight for progress has only begun and we at The Evening Sun are committed to informing the public as best we can. We will work with anyone who hopes to build a better community.

Rising to these challenges is already making Chenango County stronger and is an investment for the next generation.

Tyler Murphy ,

Evening Sun

Managing Editor