To the Editor:

The two Republican candidates for town board in New Scotland, Mr. [Christopher] Mielke and Mr. [Craig] Shufelt, and Ms. [Jess] Sardella, the chairperson of the New Scotland Republican Committee, have decided to run their campaigns by spreading innuendo, conspiracy theories, and disinformation.

In other words, they’re trying to bring Trump’s playbook to our beloved town. We’re all too familiar with the strategy, so let’s overwhelmingly reject it on Nov. 4. New Scotland is worth it.

Last week, Ms. Sardella wrote The Enterprise a letter chock-full of lies and intentional misinformation about battery energy storage systems (BESS) and my role in regulating them. How is a reader or resident to know she’s lying? That’s exactly the point: to force me to refute the allegations and create what looks like a he-said-she-said situation.

But it’s not just my word against hers; it’s fact against fiction. Ms. Sardella’s letter claims that I was approached by developers in November 2023. That’s fiction. In fact, I have the original email contact from Feb. 5, 2025, which I would be more than happy to share with The Enterprise.

Even if her timeline were correct, it would be nonsensical. She would have one believe that, after that first contact, I went to a fellow board member and asked him to sponsor a law regulating these systems, which he introduced that same month; I got the board to vote unanimously for that law in May 2024; then waited until the summer of 2025 (over a year later) to apply to the town, right before an election. Does that sequence of events make any sense to anyone?

No — because it simply isn’t true. But beyond the dishonest attempt to question my integrity is the more important question of the BESS law itself.

Ms. Sardella and my opponent, Mr. Mielke, have written to the town board requesting a moratorium to examine the benefits and dangers to the community regarding these systems. Mr. Shufelt has been stoking fear as he goes door-to-door, using his position as a volunteer fireman to lend authority to his underinformed views.

I agree that these systems should be carefully examined. In fact, that’s exactly what we did — two years ago. Aware that New York state was encouraging the use of BESS, to lower energy costs for consumers, upgrade the electrical grid, and balance energy distribution to avoid blackouts, the board began discussing the possibility of regulating these systems in August 2023.

We aimed to balance the obvious benefits of the systems to communities with the protection of neighboring properties. That’s exactly why we limited their siting to large parcels of land, plenty of distance away from neighboring dwellings.

We took almost a year to examine the issue, introduce a law, send that law back and forth with the planning board to get further input, and hold public hearings. Ultimately, we drafted and passed the most stringent law in the area.

It’s true that, as Ms. Sardella claims, other local communities have instituted moratoria on BESS. But that’s because they failed to regulate these systems early enough and were caught unprepared. Our board should be commended for being ahead of the issue and not being told to go back and redo all the work that we’ve done. Ms. Sardella, Mr. Mieke, and Mr. Shufelt would know all this had they come to any of these meetings.

Over the last 10 years, New Scotland has had one of the best boards this town has ever seen. It has stayed under the tax cap every year while dealing with COVID, skyrocketing health-care costs, major inflation, a unionized workforce, and over 50-percent increases in trash pickup and EMS services.

Through all this, New Scotland is thriving, with numerous businesses opening in the last few years. If my opponents wish to offer new ideas or propose a new direction for the town, they should do so.

If they sincerely believe I have acted unethically, we have an ethics board to handle that complaint. (Mr. Mielke should know that too; he’s on it.) But for the sake of the town and our future, they should stop lying to voters. And they should stop trying to break what we have built.

Adam Greenberg

Councilman

New Scotland

Town Board

Editor’s note: Adam Greenberg shared the email from New Leaf Energy with The Enterprise.