To the Editor:

In response to the letter “Dust clouds raised by ATVs choke farm fields, crops, ponds, and people” [The Altamont Enterprise, Jan. 26, 2023], unfortunately when someone quotes someone and is adamant they were present and sure, it becomes problematic when it’s baseless and completely false.

 I would also like you to address the Enterprises stance on the type of behavior when someone says “brain-child-ego-trip.” Or any name-calling, slander, personal attacks. It’s unnecessary and deteriorates the core of community.

What I did do in the subject of ATV use in town was work with community members to bring an idea forward when they reached out to me. Just like I would do for anyone in town regarding activities that reinforce the family bond, provide activities for the youth, enjoying the outdoors.

When do we sit down together and work as a community? If we don’t, we all lose! I’ve advocated for years in many facets that communication is key. If we all talked and got to know our neighbors, we would find we aren’t much different.

Joe Martin

Berne

Editor’s note: Joe Martin chairs the Berne Planning Board.

As our correction in print and online explains, Tim Lippert quoted Joe Martin as saying at a June 8, 2022 Berne Town Board meeting, “I’d like to see Berne the same at Lewis County, where they issue 30,000 permits for AT’s.” Actually, at the June 8 meeting, Berne Highway Superintendent Randy Bashwinger said that Lewis County has issued 30,000 permits for ATV riders, and Joe Martin followed up by saying that a permit system would be good for Berne. So, in the online version of Lippert’s Jan. 26 letter, the quotation marks were removed and Martin’s view was paraphrased.

We correct errors as soon as we are aware of them.

We don’t endorse name-calling and we encourage letter writers to use a civil tone. 

We have an open forum on issues important to our community because we believe that is the best way to solve problems. 

Calling a law someone’s “brainchild” means that person thought of it. Calling the law an “ego trip” seems a matter of opinion. Letter writers have their own opinions, which often differ from ours, and can be judged on how they express them.

We express the newspaper’s opinions on our editorial page, as we did on this issue on Feb. 2 with our editorial, “Democracy is adrift when isolated from the citizens it serves.”