The Freemans Journal - Cooperstowns Newspaper Since 1808: December 14 2007

The Freeman's Journal - Cooperstown's Newspaper Snce 1808

Friday, December 14, 2007

The Freeman's Journal Christmas Fund

In this busy holiday season, we remember that, for some, there is less cause for celebration. In Otsego County, there are many who could use our help to be just a bit happier.

The Freeman's Journal Christmas Fund was established in 1921 by Rowan D. Spraker Sr., editor and publisher, as a way for neighbors to help others enjoy a happier holiday. This week will mark the 85th year we have been able to offer this opportunity to the community.

Opportunities For Otsego has compiled a list of families in need. If you, your family, a neighborhood or office group wish to provide gifts for these children and families, call The Freeman's Journal at 547-6103, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Let us know which family you would like to help.

Gifts should be both new and unwrapped. Opportunities For Otsego will be unable to deliver wrapped gifts or used items. Gifts may be dropped off at The Freeman's Journal office at 21 Railroad Ave in Cooperstown or at OFO's headquarters at 3 West Broadway, Oneonta. With their approval, donors' names will be published in The Freeman's Journal at the close of the season. We thank you in advance for your time, initative and heart-warming generosity.

Here are the families on this year's list:

SPONSORED*Family # 1 Mom is disabled and in a wheelchair. She could use some socks, drinking glasses and a twin size blanket.

She has a 3-year-old son who wears size 4T and shoe size 9. He could use PJs, gloves, socks and underwear.

He likes stars and moons, "Mr. Potato Head" toys, and "cars".

SPONSORED*Family # 2 Mom is age 24 and could use things for her kitchen. She likes the birdhouse motif.

Her daughter, age 5, wears size 7 and shoe size 12/13. She needs a winter coat and boots. She likes Princess

items and "Bratz" dolls.

SPONSORED*Family # 3 Mom and Dad are teen parents with a six month old little boy. The baby wears a size 9-12 months and shoe size 2.He needs long sleeve fleece shirts and jeans. He needs a crib set (Blues Clues) and a crib screen toy with fish.

Mom would like a trac phone with minutes and Dad could use a tool set. They also need a vacuum.

SPONSORED*Family # 4 Great Aunt has taken on the responsibility of raising her nephew, age 2. He wears a size 3T and shoe size 9.

He needs hats and gloves and warm clothing for winter. He would like a Fisher Price "Little People" toy garage and likes fire trucks. Great Aunt would like writing paper/stationary.

Family # 5 Mom is a single parent raising an 11 year old son. He wears size 16 husky pants and a men's small shirt.

He could use sweatshirts and pajamas. He likes hunting, camouflage, Rubik's Cube, puzzles. Mom would like a coffee maker and frying pans.

SPONSORED by Claudia Clark in Memory of her mother Margret H. Clark *Family # 6

Mom and Dad work full time to make ends meet. They are raising two children. Their daughter, age 3, wears Size 4T and shoe size 9. She needs a winter coat and boots and her favorite color is dark pink. She would like Lincoln Logs.

The younger daughter, age 18 months, wears size 24 months and shoe size 5. She needs training underpants. She also needs a child's bicycle helmet for riding her tricycle. Mom and Dad need a snow shovel and a dictionary. Dad could use size 36 waist blue jeans.

Judge Puts Brakes On Wind Turbines

If Strike One was the state Public Service Commission's August decision removing 19 turbines from the 68-turbine Jordanville Wind Project, then Strike Two came this week.
Tuesday, Dec. 11, state Supreme Court Judge Donald A. Greenwood, Syracuse, threw out the projectïs SEQR Act review, a decision that may require Community Energy/Iberdrola, the Madrid-based multinational, to start the lengthy process all over again.
The third strike could be a company decision to pursue its efforts elsewhere, but Skip Brennan, Iberdrolaï's director of New York State projects, did not return calls on the matter.
"How far back is something we will have to evaluate," Bernard Melewski, the Saratoga lawyer who advised the Town of Warren in implementing the State Environmental Quality Review Act in regards a project that would have stretched from Van Hornesville in the Town of Stark seven miles along the ridge to Jordanville in the Town of Warren.
Both communities are on the southern end of Herkimer County, but the 400-foot-tall turbines would have been visible in the Otsego County Town of Springfield and halfway down Otsego Lake, which is in the Glimmerglass National Historic District, the nation's largest. Some said the blinking lights would be visible at night from the docks at Cooperstown.
In effect, Greenwood "vacated" the Town of Warren's acceptance of the SEQR findings, which would have allowed construction to begin, Melewski said.
"There's nothing in the decision that, if the company wants to move forward, will prevent the project from happening," he continued. "The only result of the decision short-term is there will be more expense to the company going through some or all of the process again," as well as loss of revenue to the towns and individual landowners.
Douglas H. Zamelis, of Manlius and Cooperstown, lawyer for the 15 people challenging the Town of Warren with financial assistance from Cooperstown-based Otsego 2000, was unavailable for comment.
Greenwood's 15-page decision said the Town of Warren, the "lead agency":
- Failed to consider "all reasonable options;" for instance, shorter or fewer turbines, a phasing-in process or different locations for the turbines that might have less impact.
- Failed to sufficiently mitigate concerns about views, birds, bats, noise and other environmental impacts on an area - the court quotes the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation that has "clear and defined national level significance."
- Delegated obligations to the PSC, the OPRHP and other entities, duties it needed to tackle independently.
- Violated the state Freedom of Information Law at least twice; decisions made contrary to the FOIL are void.
The judge also ruled in favor of the Town of Warren in a few instances.
Greenwood found that Thomas Puskarenko, the Stark town board member who also intended to lease land for turbines, did not make decisions that resulted in a conflict of interest. The judge also found that, while the initial "scoping" of the project was done without public input, the lead agency was not required to seek that input.
The 15 plaintiffs included Sue Brander, Van Hornesville, who was a candidate for Stark town board this fall, and Russian Orthodox Archimandrite (archbishop) George Schaefer.

Judge Halts Jordanville Wind Project For Full Text of Decision, Click Here

So, What Do We Do With Plan?

Ideas.
Where the Great American is now, a smart business center, with a supermarket at the sidewalk (parking behind), a civic building across the way, medium-rise apartments. Traffic coming from the south is slowed by traffic circle with a fountain in the middle.
Where the "red lot" is now, next to the Leatherstocking Regional Federal Credit Union on Glen Avenue, terraced apartments and townhomes into the hillside.
In front of Doubleday Field would be a park-like "civic space," with leafy walkways leading off toward Chestnut Street on one side and, on the other, toward Pioneer, where a park - the site of the Verizon building - offers respite for tired feet.
Those were among the perhaps dozens of ideas on Cooperstown's future that the six grad-student team from Notre Dame's School of Architecture outlined for a rapt crowd of more than five dozen people Wednesday evening, Dec. 12, in the high-ceilinged Otsego County Courthouse.
The slides in Paul Monson's 80-minute PowerPoint presentation also revealed a somewhat seedy Cooperstown of today, crumbling cinderblocks here, patchy grass there, long views over rundown asphalt parking lots.
But how to get from ideas to reality?
One, Monson said, adjust the first draft of The Plan of Cooperstown presented by the students, then adopt it.
Two, adopt an enabling zoning ordinance that would allow intact neighborhoods ï¿½ homes big and small, a local market, a bike shop and cafe, perhaps a museum here and a fine restaurant there.
Three, hire a town architect who ensures that, in quality and style, whatever ïs proposed contributes to the whole.
Four, keep building the community of skilled designers and builders already evident to some degree locally.
Five, figure out a financing vehicle, either market driven - after all, 400,000 people visit here annually and many would like to stay - or, if necessary to ensure a range of housing options, publicly subsidized.
Finally, find a developer and/or patron to promote the master plan.
This was the final presentation in a semester-long process that began in early September with a "charette," a week-long deadline-driven exercise where professor Phil Bess drove his students - Monson, Lesley Annis, Will Dowdy, Samantha Salden, Lenka Schulzova and Jennifer Stenhouse - out in the community to scrutinize, engage people in conversation, debate among themselves, and put ideas on paper into the wee hours.
At week's end they presented preliminary conclusions to a community meeting at 22 Main, where many of the ideas fleshed out the other day were first posed.
An interim presentation occurred in South Bend in October, attended by Deputy Mayor Paul Kuhn and trustees Jeff Katz and Lynne Mebust.
The next step would be for the village trustees to decide if to proceed, then how.
Mayor Carol B. Waller announced at the beginning of this session that it would be the first of three public meetings to gauge public sentiment about the future of the village. Conceivably, those could be launching pads for what might follow.
The final presentation fleshed out a lot of the original ideas and added new ones with the goal, in Monson's concluding words, "to revive as much as possible the best of what Cooperstown was in the past and what it is today."
The students, he continued, sought to be guided by people's concerns, which he detailed as: parking and traffic congestion, lack of retail diversity, a housing shortage, and the like.
Six sets of fresh eyes discovered "the lakefront is not a very welcoming place," Monson said. "People often come and go from Cooperstown and not even realize a lake is nearby." The 1960s county office building, particularly when contrasted with the sedate courthouse, falls into a classification of architecture defined as "regrettable."
The downtown Cooperstown the students envision is, not surprisingly, perhaps, something like a college campus, pedestrian friendly, with leafy walkways, public spaces and enough people living there to support a variety of retail beyond baseball stores.
The Great American area becomes a second civic center. Railroad Avenue a third.
Instead of hilly scrub to the east of Route 28 at the southern end of town, there's an extensive neighborhood of compact single-family homes, scored by cross streets. And there, in the distance - can it be - a glowing state-of-the-art educational complex.
"Brooklyn Heights," a more high-end housing development that would begin on the hill beyond Brooklyn Avenue, would expand over the years toward the Clark Sports Center and beyond to merge with the Linden Avenue development. In between would be a natural park developed along the Susquehanna River.

Local Lad Stars In Reality Show

With the writers’ strike, TV is turning to reality shows to fill the gap.
And one reality show, “A Shot at Love,” has turned to Robert Banhart, Worcester.
On the show, one individual gets “A Shot at Love” by getting to know 10 people. Each week, one of the 10 is eliminated. The premise is that a one-on-one love match will be the final product.
Bobby, a Worcester Central School grad, had been pursuing a modeling career in New York when he got the role. He is one of two finalists, with the final show Tuesday, Dec. 18, on MTV

Her Son-In-Law’s ‘My Hero.’ And Here’s Why

Lawyers for the Village of Cooperstown and Bassett Healthcare presented arguments Friday, Nov. 30, in a dispute over parking at the Cooperstown hospital.
State Supreme Judge Kevin M. Dowd will issue a decision in the case at a later date.
The village wants to limit a new hospital parking lot to employees; the hospital wants patients to use it, which the village fears will increase traffic in residential streets. Early this year, Audrey Scotto’s son-in-law, David Rice, a musician in Austin, Texas, had to make a business trip to Rochester.
As he left, his son Judah, 4, gave him two toy cars to take along.
During the flight, David found himself sitting across the aisle from a mother and a boy about Judah’s age, and the father loaned the lad his son’s toy cars.
It turned out the mom and son were en route to Germany to see the boy’s father, who had been deployed in Iraq for 13 months.
“David couldn’t imagine being away from Judah that long,” said Audrey.
The result was, well, you can see for yourself at http://www.troopsvideo.com/home.html
It is a moving audio-visual presentation of “Christmas For The Ones You Leave Behind,” where David’s lyrics are illustrated with video clips and messages from soldiers’ families waiting back home for their loved ones in harm’s way.
David wrote “Christmas For The Ones You Leave Behind” after 9/11He was invited to the White House with Mandy Moore, where they performed it for George W. Bush.
To develop the content for his video, David e-mailed everyone he knew who had family members in Iraq, and they e-mailed others, and e-mails and videos began pouring back.
All proceeds from video sales go to Fisher House, a program that provides support to soldiers’ families.
As you can imagine, this idea has made David very popular among military families, and he’s been invited to perform at installations.
“David’s my hero,” said his mother-in-law. “He really is.”
David’s wife, Lisa, grew up on Long Island, but has visited her mother, who married Anthony Scotto in 1990 and moved to Westford. Judah is Audrey’s first and only grandchild; (she has two other children, Laura and Lou.)
David and Lisa met in L.A., where she was a vice president for Sony.

Parking Proposal Shrinks

If paid parking surfaced with a bang last spring, it will go forward with a whimper as 2007 comes to an end. A subdued village trustees’ Police Committee plans to recommend a go-slow paid-parking plan to the full board at its monthly meeting at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 17, at 22 Main. Deputy Mayor Paul Kuhn, Police Committee chairman, announced his intention when the committee met Dec. 11, the first time since the Nov. 19 public hearing at CCS’ Sterling Auditorium, where a crowd of 300 hooted and howled as the trustees gave themselves authorization to impose paid parking on Main and Pioneer streets and in the Doubleday Field parking lot. Next summer, said Kuhn, the committee will recommend a pilot paid-parking program for the Doubleday lot only. The village would buy – or lease, resident Dan Naughton suggested – just two $8,000 Pay & Display machines, not the dozen anticipated for the downtown-wide plan. “Experiment with those,” he said, “then move into the streets,” perhaps in the summer of 2009. Trustee Lynne Mebust characterized the new approach as “phasing in over time.” Under the plan, it would cost $2 an hour to park in the Doubleday lot. Drivers would insert coins or a credit card in one of the two P&D machines, which would spit out a ticket for them to put on their dash boards. The experiment would only run from June 1 to Labor Day, the peak of the tourist season. The trustees will also be asked to set aside the so-called Chestnut Street lot – about 40 spaces behind the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce building – for people who work downtown, who would be issued permits to park there. The audience at the committee meeting was no more than a half dozen folks, mostly people who had opposed the more broad-ranging plan. Neil Weiller, Muskrat Hill proprietor and a spark plug for the opposition, repeated the plea not to forget the casual shopper who comes here from towns around the region, “invisible in the summertime, but they are still there.” Trustee Milo V. Stewart, Jr., who developed into a strong opponent of paid parking, said the trustees must remember “the people who live downtown” and have no designated parking. John Bullis, chamber executive director, repeated his board’s position, that any plan should be comprehensive and fully digested. If the committee was subdued, it was also reduced: Trustee Grace Kull, a committee member throughout the controversy, was sitting in the audience and did not participate in any of the committee votes. Asked why she wasn’t with the rest of the committee, Kull said she had been advised not to talk about it. Kuhn and Mayor Carol B. Waller also said they couldn’t talk about whatever is going on. A call to Village Attorney John Lambert for an explanation was not returned.

Developer Seeks OK For Motel

A 45-unit motel is being proposed along the railroad right-of-way that parallels Chestnut Street to the west. Joseph Anthony Galati & Associates, the developer, will ask the village trustees Monday, Dec. 17, for a special exception to allow the project to go forward. The units, in a residential district, would front on Grove Street.

Labels: 12-14-07, Archives