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 There was a certain symmetry to it, before it cracked. Twenty people spoke. Wendell Tripp, Dan Naughton, Sarah Stewart, Dotty and Charles Hudson, Ashley Cooper, the Rev. Aswad, Jim Vrooman and Paula Wycoff said their piece. So did Steve Mahlum, Rich Hulse, Mike Trossett, Carl Good, Joan Clark, John Irvin, Peggy Paulson, Frank Leo and Jeanne Dewey. Then, for a minute, it looked like Bill Waller, the 20th, would carry the day. (Gar Gozigian, number 21, and Maureen Schuerman, number 22, chimed in later.) At some point in the past, Bill Waller said, he had been involved in a study to detemine how the village could lance its parking boil. It cost $30,000, but it resolved nothing. Maybe $200,000 could be spent to answer all the questions raised that evening, Waller said, and still people wouldn’t be satisfied. The only solution, he said, is action, followed by adjustment, and more adjustment, and so on. Experience would be the best teacher. “We’re going to get out of this the best parking survey the Village of Cooperstown could ever have,” he said. Applause. Said Ashley Cooper, “I agree with you: We have to start somewhere.” This was about 9:30 p.m. The village trustees’ crowded monthly meeting of Monday, Oct. 15, was entering its third hour. It sounded like there was a germ of consensus. But it wasn’t to be. The crowd was talked out. Mayor Waller extended the public hearing, in case anyone had some final thoughts, until 10 p.m. But at 10:01, the fireworks began. On one side was Eric Hage, the freshman trustee, insisting more revenues can and should be extracted from the Doubleday Field Parking Lot. Before the trustees act on the Mebust plan, he asked for a special meeting to talk through Doubleday alternatives. In the end, the trustees agreed, 4-2, to do so. It is scheduled for 7 p.m., Monday, Oct. 29. Trustees Paul Kuhn, Grace Kull, Milo V. Stewart Jr. and Hage voted aye; Trustees Jeff Katz and Mebust voted nay. In the discussion, however, Kuhn and Kull, as well as Mebust, tilted in the other direction. The three Police Committee members testified they’ve been through months of fire from various constituencies; parking is a complex issue, and there’s no single answer – it’s going to have to be incremental. “We have to recognize every constituency in the village” – residents, merchants and working people needed to keep the tourism industry flourishing, said Kuhn. “I didn’t always feel this way, but I feel this way now.” At stake is an estimated $600,000 per year, the amount the trustees believe they might garner by installing Pay & Display machines on Main and Pioneer streets, and in the Doubleday lot. Under Pay & Display – the required 12-13 machines would cost the village about $100,000 – you put your money in the machine; it spits out a ticket; you put it on your dashboard. The idea is to charge $2 an hour between May 1 and Oct. 1. The Parking Committee plan called for paid parking, but also creates a parking-permit system that mostly local people would take advantage of, that would cause minimum impact on folks living or working in Cooperstown. Drivers with $10 permits would be able to park on Main and Pioneer for two hours, as they do now. They could park in the Doubleday lot all day, as they do now. In this first step, all that would change is that the cash-strapped, tourism-bludgeoned village would be able to tap into tourist dollars to be used on streets, sidewalks, sewerage and water lines on the south side and on Irish Hill. Earlier in the process, merchants had opposed higher rates that would have been prohibitive for waiters and minimum-wage store clerks whom they depend on to make their businesses flourish. The Police Committee adjusted to those inputs, Kuhn said. “You’re bringing us all the way back to the beginning,” he told Hage. Hage began the trustees’ discussion by reading excerpts from two public-information meetings – Thursday, Sept. 29, and Tuesday, Oct. 2, in the county courthouse’s second-floor courtroom – that he said showed there was no consensus for the plan as presented. He said 14 people at the meetings argued more revenue had to be extracted from the Doubleday lot. “We heard one person say they agreed totally,” he said. Mebust challenged him: His quotations were selective and distorted people’s opinions. “It’s so off-base that I can’t let it go without being challenged,” she said. On Tuesday, Oct. 8, the Police Committee – Kuhn, Kull, Mebust and Chief Diana Nicols – had met to adjust the Mebust plan per inputs from the informational meetings. (For instance, some people had objected that permits would only be sold in the first six weeks of the year; more options needed to be considered.) Hage, who is not a member of the Police Committee, attended nonetheless, presenting seven pages of suggested adjustments. At the trustees’ meeting, Katz chided Hage for circumventing the committee process. The committee should have been allowed to develop its recommendations to the full board, he said, and Hage should have suggested his adjustments when the full board met, not meddling ahead of time. “That committee meeting didn’t do what it was supposed to do,” added Mebust. Hage said, “I would like to personally apologize to Lynne for making your life difficult.” Mebust responded by saying she didn’t consider the proposal to be the “Mebust plan.” Rather, she said, it was a consensus Police Committee view that grew out of months of challenge by the public and deliberation by the committee. Katz called Hage’s initiative “a rival proposal.” “There’s a ‘Police Committee proposal’ and an ‘Eric Hage proposal’,” he said. “This isn’t the way this form of government is supposed to work. It subverts the process.”  The man charged with disorderly conduct for raising the American flag at Main and Pioneer to full staff after it had been lowered to half staff on the death of Walter G. Rich, president of the Delaware Otsego Corp., has been acquitted. Following a 75-minute trial in village court Wednesday, Oct. 10, Judge Enid Hinkes ruled the prosecution’s case against David K. Butler failed to reach the required legal standard. The village was represented by attorney John Lambert; Butler represented himself. Butler is a former police chief of the DO’s railroad police, and later wrote a book, “Railroaded in Cooperstown,” critical of his former employer. Mayor Carol B. Waller had ordered the flag lowered in Rich’s honor, but Butler testified he believed that was improper because it was not in accordance with the provisions of the U.S. Flag Code. Judge Hinkes made it clear that rules regarding the raising and lowering of American flags, while useful as background to explain Butler’s motivation,would otherwise have no bearing on the outcome of the disorderly conduct charge. Admitting that he had arranged for a photographer from The Daily Star to be present at the intersection, Butler then called Police Chief Diana Nicols shortly after 1 p.m. to say that he intended to raise the flag to full-staff. Nicols testified she told Butler, “No, you’re not. We’ll be right there.” Nicols and Patrol Officer Mark H. Fassett testified that they drove immediately to the Main and Pioneer intersection, double-parked in front of Mickey’s Place, and observed Butler standing a few feet from the flagpole. The flag had already been raised to full-staff by Butler. While Nicols proceeded to lower the flag to half-staff, Fassett attempted to persuade Butler to proceed to the sidewalk area in front of Mickey’s Place. Both officers testified they tried to reason with Butler, but he insisted on his right to raise the flag to full-staff. Butler tried to establish that Nicols told him, “If you touch my flag again, I’ll arrest you.” Nicols could not recall using these exact words, but did recall the conversation in general. Butler was arrested when he again approached the flag. He was handcuffed, escorted to the patrol car and driven to the village police station, where he was charged with disorderly conduct, a charge based on what Nicols and Fassett described as obstruction of vehicular traffic at the intersection caused by Butler’s physical presence in the street, outside of a crosswalk. Butler disputed the fact that he was in the street for any substantial length of time and denied any intent to obstruct traffic or behave in a disorderly fashion. Although Nicols and Fassett both testified that Butler initially “pulled away” when he was arrested, Butler insisted that his actions did not amount to resistance and that he remained cooperative and verbally respectful. A photo of Butler as he was placed under arrest by Nicols and Fassett appeared in the Aug. 10 edition of The Daily Star and was entered into evidence as a defense exhibit. After closing arguments, Judge Hinkes told counsel that she was acquitting Butler of the charge based on a legal precedent. Citing “People vs. Griswold,” a New York case decided in Yates County in 1996, She said the village had failed to show that Butler’s conduct had caused “inconvenience, annoyance or alarm to a substantial segment of the public,” or that it was “of such nature and character that it would appear beyond a reasonable doubt” that Butler’s conduct “created a risk that a breach of the peace was imminent,” or that the accused “intended to breach the peace.”  Pancreatic cancer is the most fatal form of that disease. So when a loved one is diagnosed, there’s a feeling a helplessness. What can you do? Such was the case with Stephanie Rich, daughter of Walter G. Rich of Cooperstown, president of the Delaware Otsego Corp., who died Aug. 9. Her answer was to develop a T-shirt that dramatizes the scourge of pancreatic cancer. With a matching grant from the DO’s Susquehanna & Western Railroad, she had 300 made up and, so far, has sold 200 of them for $25 apiece. All the proceeds, $5,000 so far, will be donated to the Hirshberg Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research in Los Angeles, set up in memory of Ronald S. Hirshberg, founder of Agron, the exclusive distributor of Adidas products. He died of pancreatic cancer in 1996 at age 54. Steph and a friend and collaborator, Brittany Soule, will be out in L.A. Sunday, Oct. 28, for the L.A. Cancers Challenge 2007, the foundation’s annual run/walkathon. Last year, 2,700 people participated, raising $250,000. Steph and Brittany plan to make their donation in person. Walter Rich, who was only 61 when he died, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer nine months ago.Brittany, a 2002 CCS graduate who went on to earn a degree in advertising and marketing at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., concentrated on the design. Steph, a 2003 CCS graduate who is majoring in business administation at Utica College, handled the business considerations. The front of the shirt – available in black and in white – bears a star with a graffiti-like swirl around it. In the upper left on the back is the logo again, with the words, “Be The Difference.” On the sleeve is an inscription that notes 34,000 Americans and 60,000 Europeans die annually from pancreatic cancer. “Early detection is difficult, and because the symptoms are so non-specific and varied, the disease remains one of the most fatal and least-funded of all cancers. “Sales of this shirt support ongoing research to offer better treatment, life-extension and, ultimately, a cure.” Said Brittany, “Walter was still alive to give his approval to the final design.” “He was very proud that we were doing something to help,” said Steph. Some of the shirts were sold directly to friends and acquaintances, but the two also marketed them through their networks on Facebook and MySpace, and through Instant Messaging. They sold another 50 that way If you enjoyed the open views from the former Mount Otsego Ski Area, rest assured. Those views will savored in perpetuity. Susan Burdsall, who owns the 120 acres, has given a conservation easement to the Otsego Lake Trust, protecting the farmland and forested ridges from development. This brings to 700 acres the total amount of land on Glimmerglass’ west side covered by such easement. And Peter Hugick, Land Trust executive director, said more easements are in the works. Operated between 1932 and 1982, with a brief hiatus during World War II, Mount Otsego is fondly remembered by many in this area, and attracted 400-500 on peak weekends. As this edition was going to press, the Otsego County Board of Representatives was hearing a report that the consultant hired to help prepare the 2008 budget has already identified $1.4 million in savings. On Sept. 19, the representatives, still reeling from a budgeting mistake that caused taxes to go up 22.5 percent when they thought the number was 2.5 percent, hired Venesky & Co. of Cicero for $44,000 to help with budget preparation. 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