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In the News This Week -- Oct 26, 2007 |
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 Delay Paid Parking,New Petition Pleads
The argument is fully joined � again. Tuesday, Oct. 23, two prominent downtown businessmen who have been apart from the debate to date � Rob Torrence of Stagecoach Coffee and Neil Weiller of Muskrat Hill � began circulating petitions urging village trustees to delay any action on a paid-parking plan until all the implications can be more fully studied. Within 24 hours, the two men had collected more than 100 signatures on petitions, and planned to present them when the village board meet at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 28, at a special meeting intended to iron out the differences among the trustees. For his part, however, Deputy Mayor Paul Kuhn, chairman of the Police Committee, which crafted the plan now under consideration, said, with the village�s need for additional revenues to pay for $5.5 million worth of infrastructure repairs on the south side and Irish Hill, he doesn�t see any of the trustees supporting delays that would prevent a paid-parking plan from being in place by next summer. "If we don�t act," he said, "shame on us." In separate interviews, Torrence said he believes the proposed $2-per-hour parking fee on downtown streets and in the Doubleday Field Parking Lot will be the final blow for the surviving non-baseball retailers, since it will discourage shoppers from towns in the region � from Cherry Valley to Schenevus � from coming here. "It�s almost a slap in the face to them," he said, adding that the $10-permit idea is to complicated for people to grasp and inconvenient to act on. "Frankly," he continued, "they (the trustees) are not addressing the parking problem. They�re addressing the revenue problem and using parking to do it." Weiller, noting his family has been in the area for 200 years and he has operated a store downtown for 17 years, agreed with Torrence that paid parking will drive away non-tourist shoppers from the downtown, and all the implications need to be considered. "Is this proposal anywhere near an acceptable level? No!" he said.  Turbine Foe's Barn Burns in Starkville  STARKVILLE Just after midnight Friday, Oct. 19, Willow – one of Denise Como’s whippets – barked. Denise, one of the three-person team challenging Stark town board incumbents in the Nov. 6 election, heard an engine running. A truck door slammed, and the vehicle drove off down Ellwood Road toward Salt Springville. “A few minutes later my dogs went crazy,” she recalled that Saturday afternoon, sitting on the long front porch of the family’s rambling farm house, guinea hens pecking at the chrome fender of a nearby truck. “When I got to the front porch, everything was aglow.” She hurried across the road to the century-old barn, but it was engulfed. There was no wind. The flames shot straight up into the air. “A perfect night for arson,” Denise called it. “I just came back here and watched it burn,” she said. When the firemen arrived from Starkville a few minutes later, there was nothing they could do either. “I never saw anything burn so fast in my life.” Three fire trucks were at the scene, and firefighters executed a “controlled fall,” ensuring the structure didn’t collapse into the roadway. The embers were still smoking amid the drizzle 36 hours later when a neighbor, Walter Bych, pulled over in his pick-up truck. The morning before, he had seen the glow from his bedroom window and had come to the scene. The word that kept cropping up in the conversations of the firefighters and investigators was “suspicious, suspicious.” “That’s the word I kept hearing,” he said. The candidate – she and Steve Reichenbach, running for town council, and Sue Brander, for supervisor, are all Advocates for Stark, members of the anti-wind-turbine group – doesn’t know why her barn was targeted. The week before, she’d knocked down a hunter’s stand set up on her property without permission. Maybe it was the disgruntled hunter. However, the political signs she’d set up in front of her barn were gone. “It’s hard to make a conclusion,” she said, adding, “I think it’s some kind of statement. Why would you burn down some little barn?” Wednesday, Oct. 24, a state police investigator at the Herkimer barracks said the troopers were at the scene, but lacked sufficient evidence at that point “to open an arson case.” Down the road in Van Hornesville, Sue Brander is fearful Como, who moved up from Lakehurst, N.J., just four years ago with her husband, Richard Whritenour, was being punished for her politics. The Brander-Como-Reichenback team grew out of the Town of Stark’s support for Community Energy/Iberdrola’s Jordanville Wind Project, recently reduced from 68 turbines to 49. Landowners who stood to benefit from leases with the wind company have been irate about the opponents. “I’m saddened this has happened,” said Brander. “It’s certainly sobering to have a barn burned in this community under these circumstances.” Next to Como’s barn is a corrugated metal shed, where haying equipment is kept. (Denise and Richard train whippets, borzois and salukis, and keep the fields cut to run the dogs.) The door was open and two cans full of gasoline were missing. There was power to the barn, but Como said the troopers told her the fire started in a corner of the structure away from the electrical connections.  COOPERSTOWN They’d been slaving at their jobs all week long. Here it was, the weekend, and they were still at it. Wes Nick, who hails from the Pittsburgh area, had given up a berth in the Navy’s nuclear-technology division. Mike McManus of Cooperstown, a graduate of prestigious Union College, was diverted from his interest in political science. Brewery Ommegang is the beneficiary of their refocused dedication: They are brewers. And they were still toiling in the trenches Saturday, Oct. 20, after a long week at the vat. Around them, 650-700 revelers were sampling the brewery’s latest creation – Chocolate Indulgence Stout – during “Waffles & Puppets,” the 10th anniversary party of the brewer of specialty Belgian beers. Judging from that crowd, the new beer was a hit. The two kegs that were supposed to last all day were sold out mid-way through the morning, although more was available in bottles. “There was a huge demand for it,” said Larry Bennett, Ommegang’s marketing and press-relations director. “People seemed to love it.” Wes and Mike said the original idea came from “upstairs,” and strategically, said Bennett, chocolate stout made a lot of sense. “It combined Belgian beer and Belgian chocolate – a sure winner,” he said. The making of a new beer – an ongoing process at the relatively fledgling Ommegang – involves, if not everybody, a lot of collaboration (and occasional camaraderie.) Once the idea bubbled down, the brewers worked up the first “test batch” – 30 gallons or so, and a dozen or so folks partook, guided by a “testing sheet” that requires | Jan. 04, 2008 | Local Honor Roll | Pages From The Paper | july 6th 2007 | Hall of Fame Friday | Hall of Fame Saturday | Hall of Fame Sunday | Hall of Fame Monday | July282006 Archive | Aug042006 Archive | Aug112006 Archive | Aug182006 Archive | Sept012006 Archive | Sept082006 Archive | Sept152006 Archive | Sept222006 Archive | Sept292006 Archive | Oct062006 Archive | Oct132006 Archive | Oct202006 Archive | Oct272006 Archive | Nov032006 Archive | Nov172006 Archive | Nov242006 Archive | Dec012006 Archive | Dec082006 Archive | Dec152006 Archive | Dec222006 Archive | Dec292006 Archive | Jan052007 Archive | Jan192007 Archive | Jan262007 Archive | February092007 Archive | February162007 Archive | February232007 Archive | March162007 Archive | March232007 Archive | March302007 Archive | March302007 Archive | April132007 News Archive | Chris Gentile | Obituary | April272007 Archive | May112007 Archive | May112007 Archive | May252007 Archive | June 22, 2007 | July 13 2007 | Sept05 2007 | Sept 7th 2007 | Aug 31st 2007 | Local Law Parking | October 26, 2007 | Nov. 2 2007 | Nov. 16, 2007 | Glimmerglass Oct 5,2007 | Nov 16., 2007 | November 30 2007 | Nov. 30, 2007 | Dec. 07, 2007 | Dec. 14, 2007 | Dec. 21, 2007 | Dec. 28, 2007 | Jan. 11, 2008 | Jan. 18, 2008 | Jan. 25, 2008 | Feb 1, 2008 | Feb. 8, 2008 | Feb. 22, 2008 | GlimmerGlass Feb. 15, 2008 | Sports Feb. 15, 2008 | Feb.28, 2008 | March 7, 2008 | March 14, 2008 | GlimmerGlass March 14, 2008 | March 21, 2008 | March 28, 2008 | April 4, 2008 | April 11, 2008 | April 18, 2008 | April 25, 2008 | May 9, 2008 | May 2, 2008 | May 23, 2008 | | Our Services | Contact Us | Great Links | Return Home | Classified Ads | News Archive | Cooperstown Homes | Calendar -Best Bets | Letters to the Editor | |
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