To the Editor:

As many of you have heard over the last few weeks, our Westerlo town park was vandalized, leaving our residents with a pavilion full of graffiti. While reporting this to the Albany County Sheriff’s Office and some further conversations with Sergeant Praisner, Deputy Young, and Sheriff Apple, we agreed to restore our pavilion.

Town leaders, residents, friends, and family — even some from neighboring towns — came to help us paint. The collaboration with Sergeant Praisner and several of his deputies, Undersheriff Rice, Inspector Campbell, Brian Wood, and Sheriff Apple himself all helped in this amazing community project.

I cannot even begin to explain how this made me feel as a town leader and I can only hope our residents see the greater good that is out there with our law enforcement. They have our backs on and off the clock. 

To the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, my family is grateful for all of you and what you did to help us get our park back and prevent this from happening again. I also want to thank Lowe’s in Glenmont for its donation to aid in our project, and to Silver Creek Deli for providing pizza for our volunteers and thanks to Lisa DeGroff for all of her help and photos!

I thank you all from the bottom of my heart!

To the vandals who decided to use our walls as their canvas: Please think about where the money comes from to clean this up; it hurts all of us. I am sure the funds could have been put to better use.

Amie Burnside

Westerlo

Editor’s note: Amie Burnside is a Westerlo councilwoman.