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May 23 2008
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Friday, May 23, 2008
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The Oberriters Had An Idea: Make Bats In Baseball Town
Once upon a time, in a baseball mecca called Cooperstown, there were few bats to be found, and they were from exotic places like St. Louis and Dolgeville.
“In 1976, this was a traditional, American small-town Main Street,” remembers Don Oberriter, who with wife Sharon moved that year from Utica to Pioneer Alley, where they’d opened Obies Brot Und Bier, “a slightly German sandwich bar.”
As it happens, only four places in the village sold bats at all: the National Baseball Hall of Fame, F.R. Woods, Baseball Nostalgia and the Doubleday Batting Range.
The Oberriters – Don’s family had founded Obie’s Drive-In in Washington Mills, and grown it into the 18-7, full-service Obey’s Restaurant on Oneida Street – kept their new eatery as simple as possible. For one thing, there was no back kitchen, so they could chat with customers as they made sandwiches.
Over the years, this market-research-on-the-fly made an impression. Hundreds of times they’d heard the question, “Where can we buy a bat around here?”
And so the concept that became Cooperstown Bat Company was hatched, and it quickly grew.
Their neighbor in Fly Creek, Mike Shea, had a lathe, so during the winter leading up to the 1981 season, the couple created 200 bats, plenty, they thought, to get them through the summer.
The 30-inch bats for youngsters went for $8, the full-size 34-inch bat, for $15.
“They were gone by the middle of July,” said Don during a recent interview at Cooperstown Bat’s Fly Creek plant, raising his eyebrows.
From then on, the Oberriters never looked back. You get the impression they never had time to.
Until April, that is, when the couple sold the company to Tim Haney, their long-tenured graphic artist, his wife Connie, and Christopher and Jennifer Schroeder, partners in the Midwest.
As the couple, and their son Andrew, who joined the company after graduating from the University of Oregon in the mid-‘90s, reflected on their company’s history, one landmark event quickly piled on top of the next:
• In 1982, just one year after its founding, the bat company issued the Doubleday Field Bat, its first souvenir product. The bat bore a drawing of the revered field and facts about it, as well as the date of the first Hall of Fame Game.
• In 1983, production moved beyond Mike Shea’s lathe, and the company started ordering “blanks” and engraving them locally. (When the Oberriters started out, they hadn’t known that such a product was available.)
• In 1985, Cooperstown Bat began producing bats with Hall of Fame logos that fans would buy and take to the autograph sessions at the Hall that were then an Induction Weekend staple. (Only later would baseball retailers pay the game’s stars to sign and sell autographs at their establishments.) Before long, these bats – later sealed by Cooperstown Bat to ensure authenticity – were selling for as much as $3,000 on the “secondary market.”
• In 1988, Major League Baseball authorized Cooperstown Bat to produce its products under MLB license. By then, the company was already churning out 14,000 to 20,000 bats a year.
• In 1989, the Hall of Fame’s 50th, the company undertook three limited special-edition projects: 1,000 Doubleday Field bats, 500 50th anniversary façade bats, and 500 five-bat sets in a rack, one for each of the original inductees – Ruth, Cobb, Mathewson, Honus Wagner and Walter Johnson. The $750 sets sold out in three days.
As Andrew puts it, his parents thought they were running a restaurant business with a bat-making company on the side. They discovered they were running a bat-making company with a restaurant on the side.
The year before the 50th anniversary, the Oberriters sold Obies to Katherine Busse, who with husband Rich continues to operate a restaurant there, Pioneer Patio. About the same time, they built the plant on Route 28, although they maintain a storefront on Cooperstown’s Main Street.
In 1991, the company’s first phase was punctuated by a two-page spread in Sports Illustrated All-Star Issue.
“We had regional recognition,” said Sharon. “It gave us national recognition.”
Added Don, “We never caught up from there.”
Annual sales rose above 20,000.
The Hall of Fame anniversary also set off a furor of interest in baseball memorabilia, and Cooperstown Bat was swept along by the powerful “after market,” which simply hadn’t existed a decade before. The small shows for baseball collectors went big, shifting to venues like Atlantic City or Chicago, and featuring “lots of celebrities.”
About the same time, the stock-market dip of the late ‘80s – promoted by entities like the Franklin Mint – drove money into collectibles.
The Oberriters benefits from a concept Don calls “forced rarity.”
Not only were individual bats collectable, but there was value in developing a complete set.
“When we announced a new player,” he continued, “500 to 700 bats were already sold.”
Everything had been almost too good to be true. Every initiative had struck gold. So hits – a double whammy in 1995, the players’ strike and a national forgery scandal – were perhaps inevitable.
As it happened, Cooperstown Bat Company was pretty well positioned to weather both.
“Americans saw a difference between greedy kids” – the striking players – “and the tradition,” said Don.
“People were mad at the MLB,” added Sharon. “They weren’t mad at ‘baseball’.”
The company was also vaccinated against the rash of forgeries. Early on, the Oberriters had begun issuing “certificates of authenticity on their products,” well before the concept was widely practiced.
“We would not certify something was authentic unless we were there,” said Don, so the couple could have confidence in their products.
Positives counterbalanced the negatives.
In 1993, the Oberriters bought their first engraving machine, allowing custom-made bats.
“Decal-ing is a print run,” Don explained. “The engravers are an absolutely incredible tool.”
About that time, Tim Haney, then working at Toad Hall, walked in off the street and filled out an application. Self-taught, he pushed the new technology and its design versatility to the limit.
In 1995, Mike Schmidt and Richie Ashburn were inducted, drawing record crowds. In 1999, it was Nolan Ryan’s turn, and a new record was set. Big crowds, big bat sales.
And, overriding it all, was Cooperstown Dreams Park and the youth-tournament site’s huge growth, beginning in 1997.
The kids arrive on Fridays for a week of play. Over the weekend, one or two stop by Cooperstown Bat’s Main Street outlet and in no time have a customized bat. Monday, the rest of the team shows up.
“Dreams Park has stabilized the whole area,” said Sharon.
Finally, Cooperstown Bat went heavily into Internet sales in 2001, selling both collectable and custom-designed bats.
Time had gone on. Don’s 71; Sharon’s a few years younger.
“We weren’t doing this to be gobbled up by a big company,” Don said.
And so, a half-dozen years ago, casual conversations began with Tim. As time went on, the talks got more serious.
Connie, who was raised in Laurens, had spent six years in retail in Boston after graduating from SUNY Oneonta. Of course, Tim – he grew up in Fly Creek, attended the College of the Atlantic, then spent a year in South Africa before returning home – knew the business inside out. (The couple has two children, Sawyer, 12, and Carson, 9.)
And so the deal was hatched.
Tim’s business philosophy: “Steady as she goes.”
After decades of entrepreneurial striving, the Oberriters aren’t planning to do nothing. They still own the real estate associated with the company, so will be managing that.
For now – and for the first time – said Sharon, “I’m going to enjoy the summer here.”
Lions & Tigers & Bears, OH MY!
For centuries in eastern and central Europe, Jewish woodcarvers crafted gilded lions, crowns and eagles.
On migrating from the Old World to the New around the turn of the 20th century, they may have reflected, What’s a carver to do?
The answer was: carousels, which experienced peak popularity from the late 1800s until dampening caused by the arrival of the Great Depression.
The marriage of ancient skills and modern market demand brought fantastical creations – lions, yes, and tigers, horses, you name it – in all colors and gilts, churned out by such enterprises as M.C. Illions & Sons on, yes, Coney Island.
The results rival even the great Empire State Carousel, the result of a quarter-century of toils by dozens of modern-day master carvers from Bayside to Batavia that found a home at The Farmers’ Museum three years ago.
No, it can’t be, you say. Impossible. Well, judge for yourself.
“Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel,” opens Saturday, May 24 – Memorial Day Weekend – at The Fenimore Art Museum, demonstrating how “the vigorous pull of the spiritual and the secular” resulted in a flowering of carousel art.
Then, you can cross West Lake Road, take a look at the Empire State Carousel, and make your own aesthetic judgments.
As the opening neared, Michelle Murdock, the Fenimore’s curator of exhibitions, was hammering nails and climbing ladders along with two assistants, Chris Rossi and Nisha Bansil, surrounded by a lively but frozen menagerie.
Taking a few moments to talk about the catch – “Gilded Lions” came here directly from the American Folk Art Museum in New York City – Michelle moved quickly to examples of ornate cut-paper “Decalogues” – the 10 Commandments – that would hang on the walls of European synagogues.
Many of the motifs – the animals, in particlar – were duplicated in wood carvings that similarly decorated the places of worship. You can see how the woodcarvers’ skills could be so easily adapted to the new trade.
The exhibit – 100 artworks, from the U.S., Eastern Europe and Israel – includes a photo of Charles’ Illions workshop,which turned out dozens of carousels, including the one still functioning in Central Park today.
Murdock said the Fenimore began conversations with the folk art museum a couple of years before the Empire State Carousel was put in place – it seemed like such a natural fit.
And if you want to see what Michelle hath wrought, this is your only chance. This is the last stop. The exhibit will be dismantled after the Sept. 1 closing and the artworks returned to their owners.
GOP Has All-Otsego Fall Ticket
Absent a successful primary challenge, Republicans will be fielding an all-Otsego congressional ticket this fall.
Richard Hanna, who operated a Utica-area construction company before moving to the shores of Otsego Lake – a stone’s throw from Cooperstown – five years ago, has officially announced he will challenge U.S. Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-Utica, for the 24th District seat.
He joins Sandy Treadwell, who is challenging U.S. Rep. Kristen Gillibrand, D-Hudson, in the 20th District. Treadwell lives in Lake Place, but the former New York secretary of state is Jane Forbes Clark’s cousin, vice president of the Clark Foundation and well-acquainted with Otsego County issues.
Arcuri represents the county west of the Susquehanna; Gillibrand, east of the Susquehanna. Both are freshmen.
Both Hanna – one-time owner of the Westville Airport – and Treadwell have been endorsed by the Otsego County Republican Committee, but Treadwell may be challenged in a September primary by retired state trooper John Wallace from the Hudson Valley and/or Michael Rocque, a retired Army officer from Whitehall. Challengers must collect signatures and submit petitions by early July.
Both Republicans will be bucking a national trend: The recent loss of three long-standing GOP seats to Democrats is suggesting this will be a Democratic year.
Alan Chartock, the political observer and columnist, pointed out that Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno had crafted the 20th District to give a protege, John Sweeney, a safe seat. Gillibrand beat him in 2006.
Despite the 80,000-vote Republican advantage, “she’ll be alright,” Chartock said of Gillibrand, who can count on help from U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton.
As for Arcuri, Chartock said “he has proven himself very artful.” His background as Oneida County district attorney won’t hurt, he added: “That’s safety; that’s criminal justice.”
‘Ballparks’ Site Owners Have A Deal
From the heights of Mount Wiaontha – during Victorian times, it was a popular lookout for vacationers here – you can see the Adirondacks and beyond.
If “The Ballparks of Cooperstown” happens, players and their parents are going to have quite a view.
An owner of 200 acres to the east of this village that includes Wiaontha said she and her husband have an agreement of sale with “two gentlemen” and expect to close at the end of June.
Barbara and Thomas Reed of Sutton, Mass., have owned the land for about a decade and have built a small home and pole barn there, accessible from Ellard Road in the Town of Richfield.
Tom Reed, who is in his 70s, is an executive with Edward A. Fish Associates, a development company in Braintree, Mass., but the company is not involved in the purchase.
Two entrepreneurs, Jim Copetas and Doc Snyder of Glenview, Ill., held separate briefings in April with Richfield, Springfield and Warren town officials on plans for a Dreams-Park-like facility along Route 20 in the Town of Richfield.
The plans include miniature versions of Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, eight additional diamonds, dorms for the players and ownhomes for their parents, plus restaurants, a water park, a cinema and other attractions.
Negotiations are also under way to acquire Cooperstown Diamonds, a smaller youth-tournament facility a couple of miles east of the main site, for additional diamonds.
Copetas and Snyder, who told the officials they’ve contract with Cal Ripken’s ballpark-development company, have declined to be interviewed until the deal closes on the land.
The 200 acres is across Allen Lake Road from the Butternut Barn gift shop, and is wholly owned by the Reeds.
The site of an early village reservoir, the acreage includes some wetlands, some rolling meadows, then the steeper inclines leading up Mount Wiaontha.
A neighbor, Dick Wright, said he has heard the idea is to put the townhomes on the hillside to take advantage of the view.
Mrs. Reed said she and her husband, who worked through Alice Wellenstein, a broker with Springfield Realty, at first were under the impression the two potential buyers planned to build a single home.
“What happens to the land once you sell the land, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Reed. “And it’s more difficult to know when it’s in another state.”
The Reeds had originally planned to move to the Town of Richfield when the husband retired, but Tom Reed is stimulated by his work and keeps putting off that day, his wife said.
‘Red’ Bursey Is Slam Dunk For New CCS Hall of Fame
Everyone who ever played sports for Cooperstown Central School prior to 1970 was eligible.
So when CCS Middle School Principal Mike Cring issued a call for nominees, he expected a flood of response. And he got it.
Through the many worthy athletes, coaches and administrators Cring and his committee pored over, one name shone through: Lester “Red” Bursey, coach, administrator and civic leader, who served Cooperstown and its schools for more than 40 years, beginning in 1925.
“A lot of things that happened in our athletic community were because of him,” said Cring.
Bursey – the CCS gym is named
after him and two of his portraits hang
Plin the alcove there – may have been the slam dunk, but many other worthies have made it into the first class:
• Including Bursey, 11 individual athletes, coaches and administrators in all, ranging from Harry LaDuke, recently deceased, to Paul Lambert, who served on the selection committee.
• The 1934 boys basketball team, which lost its first game by one point, then won the next 19 to claim the Southern Tier Conference championship. Bursey call it “the best basketball team ever at Cooperstown.”
• The 1961 boys basketball team, which went 19-2 overall and undefeated in the league to bring home the first Center State Conference cup. Coached by Lambert, all its members are still alive and many are still around town, from Tim Feury and Don Wertheim to Mike LaCava.
• The 1963 boys basketball team. It went 22-1 overall, 16-0 in league play to bring home the second Center State Conference championship. Players included Dick Balcom, Ken Wertheim and Kernon Cross.
• Finally, there is the 1967 football team, which went 8-0, giving up the fewest amount of points up to that time; (the record was broken a few years later.) Gary Jennings, David Rath and Michael and Wayne Weir were among the 41 players that year.
Cring was struck by the fact that no women were included in the first class. But, of course, Title IX, requiring schools to provide the same athletic opportunities to boys and girls, wasn’t put in place until 1973.
The third year will recognize athletes of the 1980s. After that, nominations will be thrown wide open. People who may have been nominated this year can be nominated again at that time, the principal said.
The principal – he went through the Morristown Central School District on the St. Lawrence, which didn’t, but now does, have an HoF of its own – has been wanting to create the CCS Hall of Fame for the past decade.
In addition to Lambert, he was assisted in the selections by Rich Jantzi, the volleyball coach; Brenda Wedderspoon, field hockey; Jennifer Pindar, soccer and a high school history teacher, and Jay Baldo, the guidance counselor who also coaches football.Labels: 05-23-08, Archives |
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May 9 2008
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Friday, May 9, 2008
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Springfield Music Fest Eyed By Madison Square Garden
3-Day Event May Draw 75,000 Fans To 1,000-Acre Site By JIM KEVLIN
EAST SPRINGFIELD
A second sizeable project has surfaced in the Town of Springfield within days of the first one.
Madison Square Garden Inc., which owns its namesake basketball arena, Radio City Music Hall, and
the New York Knicks and other pro sports teams, is preparing to purchase 1,000 acres between this hamlet
and Continental Road to the southwest to accommodate up to 75,000 fans annually at a three-day music and arts festival.
"Springfield is a great location due to its natural beauty and rolling farmland. The success of the festival
will depend on preserving those qualities of the setting," according to a project outline MSG’s Andrew
S. Lynn, vice president, planning and project development, attached to a cover letter to the Town of Springfield Planning Board.
The site, which has been criss-crossed by surveyors in the past two weeks, was one of three being considered by The Ballparks of Cooperstown, a Dreams-Park-like facility that would include mini-replicas of Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, as well as housing, restaurants and a waterpark. Since, however, that project has shifted its focus to sites east on Route 20 near Richfield Springs. Other points in Lynn’s outline include: -
The property will continue on the tax rolls, and cover any costs incurred by the municipality. -
Construction will be limited to "those structures required for the event" and designed to "minimize visual impact." -
Of the 75,000 visitors, most would camp and remain on-site for the duration of the festival. The outline compares what MSG has in mind to "other very successful music festivals" like Coachella in California, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Austin City Limits Festival, and Bonnaroo in Tennessee. Contacted in New York City, Lynn said he wasn’t authorized to comment further about the plans, but – while the outline reports MSG produces more than 250 concerts annually – this would be the company’s first such venture. Mary Clarke, town Planning Board chair, read Lynn’s letter, dated April 28, out loud at the board’s meeting Thursday, May 1, and the initial response was favorable. "This sounds like a once in a lifetime opportunity," said Ken Ostrander, who was in the audience. "It’s a huge project," said Henry Miller, the town’s building inspector, but he said building will be limited mostly to restrooms. Not even a permanent band shell is planned, he said. Planning Board member Dave Staley said the project may not be covered by a development moratorium, even if the town board passes the moratorium at its Monday, May 12, monthly meeting, because of the way the law is written. As drafted, the moratorium would apply to subdivisions greater than 25 lots and commercial buildings greater than 100,000 square feet. In an interview, Don Simpson, MSG’s senior vice president, business development, said, while matters are still in the early stages and nothing is firm, many upstate sites were inspected before the preference was narrowed to Springfield. "We love it," he said, "the whole rolling hills aspect, the outdoors expanse of nature. It’s just a beautiful place." MSG got interested in the music-festival idea because, while these kinds of venues have been popping up across the country, "there is not at this time a large festival in the northeastern United States." He declined to say what kind of music the festival would feature, whether folk or rock or whatever. MSG hopes to have the first festival in summer 2010, but Simpson emphasized there are hurdles to be overcome. He expressed hopes of a productive relationship with the municipality and with neighbhors in general. He noted the projects must receive a SEQR permit. He seconded Henry Miller’s impression that the year-’round impact will be minimal. "Certainly, we are going to bring on site for the three-day festival the structures we require," Simpson said. "But they’ll be set up and taken down. "At the end of the day, you’re going to drive by the site and it’s going to look no different than it did at the start." But Town Clerk Jeannette Armstrong was among those urging caution: "It’s a Garden of Eden up here. Before you know it, we aren’t going to have it anymore."
Nolan Ryan Taps Petrosky For VP Of Texas Rangers
Cooperstown’s loss has become Dallas’ gain. Dale Petroskey, who resigned as president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum in March, has joined the Texas Rangers as executive vice president of marketing, community development and government relations. The team’s new president, Hall-of-Famer Nolan Ryan, said he is “thrilled” Petroskey is on “our front office team.” Petroskey began work Thursday, May 1, in Dallas, where his older daughter, Kathleen, is a sophomore at Southern Methodist University. “He’s had a broad and impressive career at world-class institutions," Ryan said. "From those experiences, he has a big-picture view of the world, lots of friends inside baseball and in other fields throughout the country, and understands what it takes to achieve quality. "I’ve seen his passion for baseball. He has a natural way of getting other people excited about the game." A native of Michigan, Petroskey was an aide on Capitol Hill, then an assistant communications director in the Reagan White House, then a senior executive at National Geographic before coming to Cooperstown. "The ultimate goal of (Rangers’ owner) Tom Hicks and Nolan Ryan is to create the best franchise in baseball in every way," he said. "And I’m honored they’ve asked me to be part of their team to help accomplish that. "I’m looking forward to working with my new colleagues on the staff, and meeting the fans." Petroskey said he and wife Ann are "delighted" to be moving to Dallas, which will occur after younger daughter Clare, 17, graduates from Cooperstown Central High School at the end of June. Clare will be attending the College of Charleston in the fall. Son Frank, 19, is finishing his freshman year at the University of Vermont. Ryan said his administration’s goal will be to create a World Series contender "year after year, and to bring home a World Series trophy as soon as possible. "A key piece of that puzzle is to bring the Rangers to a wider and more receptive audience, and create a family-like bond with the fans. We know Dale will be able to help lead us in that direction." Petroskey said he and Ann "think the world of Nolan and Ruth Ryan, and we’re thrilled to be here with them." However, he spoke wistfully about Cooperstown, his home for almost a decade. "What’s we’re going to miss most is all our dear friends," he said. "We’ve had a wonderful nine years." The Hall of Fame has named Jeff Idelson, Petroskey’s vice president of communications and education, to succeed him.
Grapefruit Didn't Cut It; So Charlie Got A Cactus
It’s been bothering Charlie Vascellaro since spring training 2007, when he got Sammy Sosa’s autograph on a grapefruit. The Major League teams that do their spring training in Arizona play in the Cactus League, not the Grapefruit League. Charlie had the grapefruit freeze-dried and brought it back to Cooperstown this past February, where you can see it in Andy Vilacky’s Safe at Home Ball Park Collectibles, 91 Main St. But it continued to bother him: Not grapefruit, cactus! In March, Vascellaro – a Baltimore-based freelance writer who frequently visits Cooperstown – found himself back in Arizona, again covering spring training. This time, he vowed, he’d get it right. Thinking it through, it occurred to him no ballplayer would simply grab a piece of cactus. So took a piece of the Pricklypear variety, cut off the spikes and sanded it smooth. Out at the Brewers’ stadium in Mayville, Ariz., who did Charlie encounter but Milwaukee first-baseman and phenom Prince Fielder, last season’s National League home-run leader? Mission accomplished: Prince took it, signed it and gave it back. As Charlie recounted the story the other day, the now-souvenir was being freeze-dried at Floral Keepsakes in Scottsdale. Charlie will be back in town in mid-May, and you should be able to see the cactus next to the grapefruit down at Vilacky’s.
Ag Chief Back From Cuba, Ideal Land For NY Milk, Honey
Find the oldest tractor still in use in Otsego County. It’ll be newer than the newest tractor in use in Cuba. "Mostly, they use oxen," state Agriculture Commissioner Patrick Hooker, who lives outside Richfield Springs, reported the other day. Hooker had just returned to Albany from leading the state’s first-ever agricultural delegation to the island nation that’s been at odds with the U.S. for almost five decades now. There’s plenty of agriculture in Cuba – mangoes, kiwis, bananas, some dairy – although heat-generating dairy cows don’t thrive in the tropics, he said. But they don’t have a lot of what Upstate New York does. "They are very interested in apples," said the ag chief, whose namesake mountain – Hooker Mountain, near Westville – was settled by his ancestors. "Forest products – they need telephone poles, railroad ties, pallets." The highpoint of the trip, though, was a "Pride of New York" dinner the 17-farmer delegation hosted for top officials of Alimport, Cuba’s agency for acquiring foreign goods. The main course was New York beef tenderloin, marinated, with whipped potatoes and a Schoharie Valley onion-and-vegetable soup. For dessert, New York-style apple-caramel cheesecake and wine ice cream. Hooker was tipped off to Cuba’s possibilities a couple of years ago by a friend, Michael Scuse, the State of Delaware secretary of agriculture, who had just returned from there. Delaware grows chickens and grain, Scuse told him, and there’s plenty of that on Cuba. New York – with its apples, timber, cabbage and farm-related consumer products – had just what the Cubans need, Hooker was told. The commissioner hooked up with Kirby Jones, a former CBS correspondent who interviewed Fidel Castro in 1973 on Cuba’s trading possibilities. Returning home after the broadcast, Jones’ phone rang off the hook – businessmen wanting to know about opportunities – and he soon found himself in the consulting business; since then, he’s made more than 250 trips there. "Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, North and South Dakota, Kansas – Cuba buys a tremendous amount of grains and soybeans," Jones said from Alamar Associates, his Baltimore-based consulting firm. "But you can’t compare Kansas to New York," he continued. "You don’t have Kansas wine. You don’t have Kansas canned fruit. You don’t have Kansas cheese." New York has all of those, he said. Hooker, whose wife, Karen Huxtable, is Bassett Healthcare communications director, said 25 states have sent delegations to Cuba in the past seven years, so he believe New York had to explore the prospects. But he didn’t know what to expect. "I sure was relieved by how nice and how friendly everybody was, the man on the street as well as the government official," he said. "It was a relief. You go down there and you don’t know: How would we be received? We were received wonderfully." Through hosting the dinner and Kirby Jones’ introductions, Hooker’s delegation was able to meet Raul de la Nuez, Cuba’s minister of trade; Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, de la Nuez’s deputy, and Alimport CEO Pedro Alvarez, among others. "I took pains to make sure they understood we weren’t there from New York City," he said, "to lay out for the Cuban media and the government what a tiny land mass New York City is compared with the rest of the state." Visiting a supermarket, Hooker was perplexed to see dairy products from Germany that could just as well come from the Butternuts Valley. He noted that, while U.S. businesses have been straining under this country’s long-standing trade embargo against Cuba, dozens of countries have generated trade relationships worth billions. "They’re not giving us charity," the commissioner said, "but we have a comparative advantage in a lot of products." Due to Cuba’s proximity, freight rates alone are a plus, he said. As it happened, Hooker said, the timing wasn’t the best. "We weren’t there with a contract for potatoes or cabbage when we don’t know what the harvest will be like." However, the New Yorkers were invited back in November to Cuba’s "huge international trade show," and more concrete results may come out of that. The first step was establishing a relationship, and Hooker believes that’s happened. "We all learned is that there is an incredible opportunity for us," he said. "With 9 million residents, 2 million tourists, tourism growing, 90 miles from Florida – it makes an awful lot of sense for us to be there." Labels: 05-09-08, Archives |
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April 25 2008
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Friday, April 25, 2008
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Peters To The RescueResearcher Will Explore Concerns About Fertilizer
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
With concerns raised anew about fertilizers used to keep the Leatherstocking Golf Course green and weed free, the village trustees have turned to Dr. Ted Peters, whose decades-long efforts to protect Otsego Lake’s waters won him the OCCA’s 2006 Conservationist of the Year Award.
The trustees asked Peters, a physician and Bassett Healthcare researcher since the 1950s, to examine concerns raised at their monthly meeting Monday, April 21, by activist Michael Whaling – he is also leading the charge to ban snowmobiles from the Village of Sharon Springs – Andy Mason of the Delaware-Otsego Audubon Society, and others.
Peters – he is a charter member of the village’s Watershed Supervisory Committee, and a consultant to the village’s water and sewer commissioners – said Tuesday Mayor Carol B. Waller had not been too specific when she asked him to look into the new concerns, but he is willing to do what he can.
At the meeting the night before, Mason presented the trustees with a list of pesticides and herbicides applied to the golf course, obtained from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
The two renewed concerns that chemicals from the golf course are contaminating – or might contaminate – the nearby lake, with Whaling saying non-chemical organic applications are the wave of the future.
“The Otesaga” – the golf course is associated with the adjacent resort – “has the opportunity now to get ahead of this movement by announcing that, for 2008, the Leatherstocking Golf Course will be totally organic in its maintenance,” he said.
“The Clark family has traditionally supported the preservation of Otsego Lake and the headwaters of the Susquehanna River. This adjustment would be consistent with that distinguished history.”
The following afternoon at a press briefing in his office, Otesaga General Manager John Irvin said the hotel has traditionally been “a good steward of our environment,” and has sought to apply best practices in its maintenance of the golf course.
LGC Director Dan Spooner said “everything we do is approved by the DEC.”
And Bernie Banas, the greens’ superintendent, said he has attended the DEC-mandated training course every year for the past 15: “We are doing everything humanly possible to minimize the risk.”
A greater risk, said Banas, comes from homeowners around the lake who, lacking his expertise, fertilize their lawns a lot more heavily.
Irvin had also invited Peters to the briefing, and he reported testing Blackbird Bay and the intake to the village water plant, near Fairy Spring, in May 2001 – for a baseline – and again in August of that year. The tests found nothing, he said.
The DEC has been requiring The Otesaga to test the lake water in April every three years. Whaling quoted DEC Pathologist Wade Stone as saying, “That’s a great time to test for pesticides if you don’t want to find any.”
But Irvin said the DEC requires the tests to be done in April, and the golf course is simply following instructions.
The day after the briefing, Whaling expressed “great respect” for Peters and said he’s glad the 2001 tests found nothing: “That’s good, because we need to stop using them before it’s too late and it’s in our drinking water.”
Whaling said Stone has agreed to join him and Mason in a press conference in the near future to further dramatize their concerns.
Hard Work, Stick-With-It-Ness Took Idelson To HoF’s Pinnacle
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
In 1989, there were two PR assistant director jobs available in Major League Baseball, one with the Yankees, the other with the Orioles.
Jeff Idelson applied for both, interviewed, and was told a guy from Detroit was first in line for each job and he was second.
The guy took the Baltimore job, and Jeff joined New York shortly after New Year’s Day of 1999.
A short time later he was at a party, as was George Steinbrenner. Jeff introduced himself.
“Mr. Steinbrenner put his hands on my shoulders,” said Idelson, holding out both his hands, palms in, “and said, ‘You’re the young man from Detroit.’”
No, explained the new hire, he was the young man from Boston.
“I have three words of advice for you,” The Boss continued. “Rent, don’t buy.”
Some welcome.
Listening to Jeff Idelson – he was interviewed in the bleachers at Doubleday Field while a game was under way on the diamond below – you conclude he hasn’t gotten too many gifts in his 22 years in the business of baseball.
Except perhaps from the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum board of directors, which Tuesday, April 15, appointed him president of the National Pastime’s Mecca.
He’s thrilled to have the job, but he didn’t expect to get it on being named acting president after Dale Petroskey’s resignation three weeks before after a nine-year run.
Idelson’s had a life-long love affair with the game but, as the bard has it, the course of true love doesn’t always run smooth. Every successful relationship takes a lot of hard work. And, Idelson might say, why shouldn’t it, particularly in heatedly competitive professional baseball?
“I started as much on the bottom floor as you can get, maybe below the bottom floor,” he said. “But that always goes on in any field that’s incredibly competitive.”
Jeff’s association with the game began well before it was a career.
His dad, Beldon, a physician/teacher at Boston University Medical Center, was an avid Red Sox fan like his father before him. So was his mother, Roberta, a sociology researcher who, now retired, still has season tickets to Fenway Park, as she has for 22 years.
Not just his parents, but his mother’s parents and father’s mother – they lived in the neighborhood as Jeff was growing up – plus his sister Sarah and brother Matt, were “huge Red Sox fans.
“We talked about baseball all the time.”
The young Jeff would sit with his grandfather, parked in the driveway during family picnics, listening to Red Sox games on the car radio.
He would score as many games as he could, lying in bed, listening to broadcasts.
From 1969 on, he attended every opening day at Fenway.
Every June 22, his birthday, he could be found in the bleachers with his dad and three or four buddies.
At 15, he began vending popcorn at the ballpark, and worked his way up to soda and hotdogs in the three years before he went off to Connecticut College in New London, Conn., a short Amtrak ride from Boston’s famed ballpark.
His high school – Newton North – had 3,000 students in three grades, 50 percent more people than in all Cooperstown.
So, on graduation, Jeff had sought out a small liberal arts college, and took full advantage of it. He deejayed for three years at the college radio station, interned at the public information office, and brought baseball to campus as a club sport.
He shifted from English to international economics, spent a semester at the London School of Economics.
But, on graduating, he followed his heart, besting 20 applicants to win a part-time PR internship with his beloved Red Sox’ organization – $125 per month – and launching three years of waiting on tables and eating macaroni and cheese as he sought to break into the business fulltime.
After the first two years – he had been handling Red Sox broadcasts to 110 stations – he sold his car and moved home, but had set aside enough to spend six months in Colorado skiing as he tried to figure out what to do next.
It was there, at a youth hostel in Breckenridge, that he met his future wife Erika, a Chicago native then studying at the University of Houston. They married five years later. (The couple has two children, Aaron, 12, and Nicole, 8.)
“1988 was it,” Idelson said of his fledgling baseball career. “It was either going to work or it wasn’t.”
And so the chance to go to New York was a career maker – and five years there created the executive you see today.
George Steinbrenner lived up to his reputation.
“He demanded perfection, which is impossible,” said Idelson. “But it puts you in the mindset of always doing the best you can every day.”
Steinbrenner had contacts everywhere who would call him if they saw anything significant in their local papers. In those days before the Internet, that presented a challenge to a public relations department.
Steinbrenner would get a tip and immediately call Jeff to make sure he was on top of the story. That caused Idelson to develop a network of his own, “to be out in front on things.”
He remembers one such case with satisfaction. Steinbrenner and Mike Pagliarulo, a promising third baseman, had been feuding, and one day the ballplayer “popped off” to the Bergen Record. Idelson’s system worked, and he was tipped off early.
When Steinbrenner called – Idelson knew why – he was able to jump in first, telling his boss, “You might want to check out the Bergen Record,” then outlining what he was doing in damage control.
Smooth.
Steinbrenner had had a lot of press, good and bad, by then, and Idelson thinks he didn’t much care about it one way or another. “What he was doing was teaching me a life lesson.”
He recalled the sign on Steinbrenner’s desk – it’s still there, he discovered during a visit to New York a few months ago: “Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.”
“It’s hard to fault a guy who wants to win,” said Idelson. “Nobody in baseball wants to win more than him.”
After five grueling years, Idelson spent a transition year as assistant vice president and senior press officer for World Cup USA 1994, joining the Hall of Fame that fall as public relations director.
In 1999, he was elevated to vice president of communications, with “and education” added later as the HoF programs for school kids grew to today, where 15 million students are served annually.
By all accounts, he worked amicably with Petroskey and was often the public face of the Hall, whether fielding questions about steroids, or Curt Schilling’s bloody sock, or memorabilia from Barry Bonds’ record-breaking game, or the Hall of Fame Game cancellation.
He’s been out of town about seven days a month, and estimates he’ll be away about the same amount now, only he’ll be dealing face to face with titans of the baseball business, instead of the baseball field.
How will he handle it? Philosophically.
“I believe you should control what you can control, and don’t dwell on what you can’t control,” he said.
He pauses. Then there’s an echo of Steinbrenner: “Don’t get me wrong. A lot of what you do everyday you can control.”
Volunteers Sought To Install New Badger Park Playground
COOPERSTOWN
The Friends of the Parks has raised three-quarters of the $38,000 needed to create the village’s first public playground.
With further donations anticipated and saving cost through volunteer labor, the Friends are planning to install the playground equipment June 6-7 at Badger Park behind the Great American, formerly Village Gardens.
According to John Odell, a member of the Friends’ board, Kid City, behind Cooperstown Elementary School, is the only public playground, and pre-school children are barred from playing there most of the day.
This playground, he said, will accommodate pre-schoolers at any time, and also has equipment to keep their older siblings occupied if mom or dad happens to bring them along.
This is the first step in a Friends master plan, Odell said. The next phase? “Think Rink.”
To contribute or volunteer, call Odell or Jessie Ravage, the Friends chairman.
Jeopardy! ‘Tougher Than You Think,’ Winner Says
Contestant Brings More Than $20,000 Home
CHERRY VALLEY
Now it can be told.
Gabe Schechter of Cherry Valley, under a gag order for two months, is finally free to talk about the “great experience” after the two Jeopardy! episodes he competed in were aired Friday, April 18, and Monday, April 21.
Schechter, a researcher at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, won $19,600 the first night and came in third the second night, receiving an additional consolation prize of $1,000.
“It’s a lot faster and a lot tougher than it appears on television,” he said.
That first night, Schechter’s friends and well-wishers at the Hall of Fame had a party for him at the Grandstand Theater – more than 100 people were there – and they all watched the competition together on the big screen. Gabe sat in the front row with his wife Linda and their grandson, Eric, 10, who was visiting from Mechanicsville.
When their hero got one right, the crowd cheered.
Arriving home, his neighbor congratulated him. The Doubleday Cafe tuned its TVs to Jeopardy! both nights.
And he received calls of congratulations from hither and yon, including one from an elderly gent in Tennessee who he speaks to once a year on baseball related matters; it was aired there at 1:30 p.m. Friday afternoon, so he got a jump on the rest of Gabe’s fans.
The episodes were taped in early March at the Sony Studio in Culver City, Calif. – the former MGM Studios. (It had been planned in February, but host Alex Trebek suffered a heart attack.)
Schechter had taken the online test two years ago now. Passing that, he went to New York City for five hours of additional testing before finally being selected.
Sure, knowledge has something to do with success on Jeopardy!, but it has more to do with the buzzer and timing.
As Trebek is reading the question – or rather, Jeopardy! fans, the answer – it appears on a screen in front of the three contestants.
The contestants read the answer-like question, and know whether they have the question-like answer or not by the time Alex finishes reading.
“You’re doing a lot of things at the same time,” Schechter said.
Two lights flash on either side of the screen where the question/answer is, and only then are the contestants’ buzzers activated.
“The second game,” said Schechter, “I was just out of synch, just a split second slower than the others.”
He even missed the baseball exchange: This team plays in Arlington, Texas. (Question-like answer: What are the Texas Rangers?)
The games go by in a flash.
At the first break the first evening, Gabe was surprised to find he was ahead. He didn’t think he had responded to enough of the question/answers. That was the case, he learned later, but the ones he answered were the $1,000 ones.
“It was a great time, a lot of fun, a great experience,” he said, even though the period between the taping and the airing, when he couldn’t talk about it, was “dreamlike.”
The Jeopardy! staff treats the contestants with great consideration, he said, and rather then dog-eat-dog, “the contestants form a fraternal bond. We were all in this together.”
GPS System Sends Motorists Into Bog
HARTWICK SEMINARY
The Tom Tom GPS system is erroneously directing drivers who use it into a Hartwick bog, according to Cooperstown Fire Chief Jim Tallman.
Tallman’s department was called to stand by at the Hartwick fire station when a woman who had interviewed for a nursing job at Bassett Hospital followed Tom Tom’s directions west from Hartwick Seminary on Goey Pond Road, purportedly to reach Route 205.
The road, however, is impassable at this time of year. Tallman said he was told four cars had gotten stuck there recently.Labels: 04-25-08, Archives |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 9:04 AM |
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April 18 2008
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Friday, April 18, 2008
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Looking Inside, HoF Picks Idelson As Sixth President14-Year Veteran Elevated, Avoiding Nationwide Search 
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
Surprises in the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum’s highest management ranks continued in recent days when, in forgoing plans for a national search, the Board of Directors named a 14-year HoF veteran as the 69-year-old institution’s sixth president.
Jeff Idelson, 43, vice president for communications and education since 1999 and acting president since Dale Petroskey’s sudden resignation on Tuesday, March 25, was elevated to the presidency on Tuesday, April 15. The decision was announced the following day.
In making the announcement, HoF Chairman Jane Forbes Clark said Idelson has served “with great success and passion” since arriving in 1994, and anticipates he will continue to do so in the top job “for many years to come.”
Idelson said overseeing the extension of “70 years of success will be a great challenge that I’m very excited about continuing. The Hall of Fame is a national treasure.” At a press briefing Wednesday afternoon, he recalled having “goose bumps” at his first Hall of Fame Induction, when Phil Rizzuto was entered into the Hall. He’s expecting a similarly emotional reaction this summer when he will be on the rostrum for the first time when “Goose” Gossage is inducted.
Idelson emphasized that overseeing the institution’s “continuing evolution” is central to his approach. Added Jane Clark, “status quo is something this museum has never been.”
Since he’s been in senior management for 10 years, Idelson said, he knows the people and the issues, and should be able to get up to speed relatively quickly.
Echoing Petroskey, he characterized himself as “a team player, a good listener and a part of the collective whole.”
On specific issues, he appeared resigned to allowing the Hall of Fame Game to expire with the June 16 Doubleday Field matchup between the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres, but said he is working with state Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, to come up with an “event of magnitude” to replace it.
On finances, Jane Clark and Idelson appeared to be retreating from the contention that profitability had been part of the reason for Petroskey’s departure.
In an earlier interview, Miss Clark said the institution ran in the red in 2006, but now she said, “2006 may not have been our best year, but we were very strong in all the other years.”
Idelson pointed out that the 2007 membership increase from 20,000 to 31,000 shows the HoF’s underlying strength, and he said few museums can depend on the financial shot in the arm the Hall receives on Induction Weekend and, in the past few years anyhow, the Hall of Fame Game.
And he spoke of the Hall’s “gold-plated reputation that many corporations and individuals want to be connected with.” (A few days before, AT&T announced it would be providing $150,000 for a second year to help underwrite the Hall’s educational programs. See Page 2.)
As president, Idelson assumes a position first held by Stephen C. Clark Sr., the Hall of Fame’s founder and Jane Clark’s grandfather.
A West Newton, Mass., native, Idelson graduated from Connecticut College in 1986 with a degree in international economics, then spent three years in the Boston Red Sox’ public relations department. His duties included producing home games for the 110-station Red Sox Radio Network.
He joined the New York Yankees in 1989, serving as director of public relations and publicity during George Steinbrenner’s hiatus from the game. Before joining the Hall, he was assistant vice president and senior press officer for World Cup USA 1994.
Among his honors, he received the MLB’s Robert O. Fishel Award for Public Relations Excellence in 1994, and the 2006 Leadership and Service Award from Ithaca College’s Department of Sports Management and Media.
At the press briefing, Idelson – he and wife Erika have two children in Cooperstown schools, Aaron, 12, and Nicole, 8 – said in recent years there’s been “a concentrated effort” to give the Hall “a stronger place in the community,” and he intends to continue that pursuit.
Mayor Vows To Smooth Village’s ‘Rough Edges’
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
‘America’s Most Perfect Village is becoming rough around the edges,” Mayor Carol B. Waller said in delivering her 2008 State of the Village Speech to the Cooperstown Rotary Club Tuesday, April 15.
With the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Bassett Healthcare and the other attractions, a million people a year visit this community of 1,900 souls.
“All those footprints and tire tracks take a toll on our streets and sidewalks,” the mayor told 100 people packed into the front half of the main dining room of The Otesaga. “We have areas of the village that haven’t seen any repairs to sidewalks in 30 years.
“This impact to our infrastructure is important and expensive,” she continued. “We have a waste-water treatment plant that was built in 1967 and designed to used for 20 years. And we are now in our 41st year.”
But this was no speech of surrender. Quite the opposite.
With no help forthcoming from the County of Otsego, which reaps great revenue from the Cooperstown-fueled sales tax and bed tax but gives little back, Waller renewed her call to take the village’s case to Albany The mayor declared her 2025 Planning Commission, named at the village trustees’ reorganization meeting the week before, will go full speed ahead in an effort to convert the Village of Cooperstown into the City of Cooperstown.
A City of Cooperstown could levy its own sales tax, its own bed tax, its own entertainment tax – $1 a head on the 350,000 a year who go through the Hall of Fame turnstile, for instance.
The mayor’s husband, Bill, is chairing the 2025 Commission, and he said he is assembling a team – a lawyer, a financial expert, a lobbyist, businesspeople – to press the city-making campaign, and that this will be the first item on the commission’s agenda.
In spadework done so far, he said, has only dramatized the inequity between New York State’s cities and villages.
The Village of Hempstead on Long Island, for instance, has 51,000 citizens. The City of Tonawanda, outside Buffalo, has 16,000. And yet the city receives 10 times more aid than the village.
He recognizes the obstacles – the state has no financial incentive to create more cities, and thus have to expand its pool of aid – but believes the challenge facing Cooperstown, and the revered position it holds in American life, make it a special case.
Much of the mayor’s speech was praiseful – of John Cankar, who has kept the beleaguered sewer plant in tip-top condition, of Sewer Committee chairman Ted Peters, of the staff at village hall – but she kept coming back to the deterioration.
And people from elsewhere are unaware and astonished by the state of affairs, she said, reporting a recent meeting she had with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in Oneonta.
“Senator Schumer was amazed that we, the main attraction, we, the shining jewel in the crown of the region, don’t get any tax income from all we do.”
If Cooperstown gets help, she said, “we may actually keep away the day that our sewer and water, our infrastructure, our streets and sidewalks are so bad that the visitors start to notice, are appalled and tell their fiends how bad Cooperstown has become.
“The infrastructure could crumble so much that businesses are affected, homeowners don’t want to do improvements or can’t and see the downward slide about to begin.
“The impact to this area would be terrible. If the region’s main attraction became run down, rough around the edges, it simply would not be Cooperstown anymore.
“While I say this cannot happen, I must remind everyone of areas that were overdeveloped out of control, lost their attraction, lost their way.”
Last fall’s study by Notre Dame architectural students observed the beginning of what Waller fears, she said.
When the report came in and she read parts of it, she told the gathering, “It was like a dagger in my heart.”
 Once Again, World Finds Our Novelist Dana Spiotta
CHERRY VALLEY
William Styron, Ralph Ellison, Anne Sexton and, now, Dana Spiotta.
The National Book Award finalist – for “Eat The Document,” her second novel, published in 2006 – will leave Cherry Valley this September for 10 months at the American Academy in Rome which, since 1896, has been giving fellowships to writers, architects and scholars to do their particular thing in the ancient center of arts and culture while interacting with other stimulating personalities and minds.
“We are going to come back,” Dana said emphatically the other day when the news got out about the fellowship. (She had gone down to New York City Thursday, April 10, for the official orientation.) “We consider Cherry Valley home.”
She and husband Clem Coleman operate the Rose & Kettle on Lancaster Street, and they plan to close the restaurant when this summer season is over and reopen it in time for the 2009 summer season.
For Dana, who spent a year in school in Italy when she was 12, this means “more writing time for me,” but also an opportunity to view American society from “a different perspective.”
Clem, who spent his junior year while at Temple at the Tyler School of the Arts in Rome, is likewise looking forward to the return. He and Dana last paid a visit to the Italian capital before buying the Rose & Kettle and moving to Otsego County from New York City eight years ago.
The idea is to put daughter Agnes, 4, in pre-school there in hopes she’ll be fluent in Italian by the time the family returns. (“She’ll be translating for me,” said her mother.)
The Rome Prize – specifically, Spiotta is receiving the Joseph Brodsky prize through the Drue Heinz Trust – range up to $24,000 and are awarded after a national competition.
The Rome academy – founded in 1894 and chartered by Congress in 1905 – selects two fellows from various disciplines, but the two literature prize winners are selected by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Annually, 30 fellowships in all are awarded.
Dana is working on a novel that, as is her practice, she declines to discuss until it is complete. (Her husband, Clem, had expressed some concern to her about gun catalogues coming to her in the mail, only later learning it was research for “Eat the Document,” based on a Kathy-Boudin-like scenario.)
The other literature prize winner next year will be Brad Kessler, who will be doing the final edit on his fourth novel, “The Goat Diaries,” and starting a new novel.
At 99, Otesaga Plans 100th Birthday Party
COOPERSTOWN
The Otesaga opens Tuesday, April 22, for its 99th year, but General Manager John Irvin and his executive team are already looking ahead a year – to the revered resort’s 100th birthday in 2009.
“We may be the only hotel – if not, one of a handful – open for 100 years and still under the original ownership,” said Irvin.
He holds up a copy of the newsletter from The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. It dates to 1887, but look, the Woodfill family has owned it only since 1933, a mere 75 years.
The Otesaga, built by Edward S. and Sterling C. Clark, is owned today by Jane Forbes Clark, granddaughter of Stephen C. Clark, younger brother to Edward and Sterling.
Irvin began brainstorming with his managers last fall on how to appropriately mark the upcoming landmark in hoteling history – “no idea is bad,” he told them – and they came up with an enticing menu.
Discussion quickly centered around an anniversary weekend a year from now, and the idea will be to harken back to the original opening to the degree possible.
The chefs are researching menus; that weekend, they will only be preparing dishes that would have been in vogue a century ago.
The hotel band will only play songs that were current in 1909.
The bar will serve only the most popular cocktails of that day.
But here’s the clincher: That weekend, The Otesaga will honor the rates on any bill presented from any year of the hotel’s history, Irvin said.
That’s going to be a real bargain for some people.
Irvin reached across his desk to publicity material from 1957: the Full American Plan – food and lodging – cost $14 a day. With a lake view, $20.
“We have guests who have been coming here for 30, 35 years,” said the general manager, so there’s no doubt will be many who will be able to capitalize on the offer, which is the intent. “These guests are like family.”
The Otesaga’s New York City public relations firm, Nancy J. Friedman Public Relations, which specializes in luxury hotels, is developing a plan to get the word out. We should start seeing stories about the upcoming anniversary pop up in the national press in the months ahead.
Be assured this is not the full extent of the celebration.
Irvin and his staff, in consultation with the owner, are still hatching ideas.
A New York champagne has been ordered in special bottles etched with a specially designed logo. The hotel’s California vineyard will be using labels with the special logo.
(Naturally, all stationery and printed matter will be reprinted with the anniversary insignia as well.)
The New York Press Association, the 600-weekly professional organization, was the first organization to hold a conference at The Otesaga. And it is planning its fall conference in 2009 on the shores of Glimmerglass.
While much has changed in the world at large, much has not inside The Otesaga.
Irvin reaches across to the resort’s twice-yearly newsletter to guests. The cover is two juxtaposed photos of the ballroom; the two versions, 10 decades apart, are almost identical.
But some things have changed, for the better.
Since Jane Clark took over in the mid-’90s, tens of millions have been spent bringing what had been a bit of an aging lady up to date.
All the rooms were redone. There is air-conditioning throughout. The latest in safety features – sprinklers, alarms and the like – are in place throughout.
You may remember a few years back when the hotel was enclosed in plastic: The building was being stripped down to bare wood for the first time since its completion.
The same, only better.Labels: 04-18-08, Archives |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 9:01 AM |
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April 11 2008
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Friday, April 11, 2008
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Mayor Sics Chief On Justice
Hinkes Confronts Waller Over Court Appointment
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
Tensions between Mayor Carol B. Waller and Village Justice Enid Hinkes burst to the surface during the village board’s reorganizational meeting Wednesday evening, April 9.
The mayor ordered the justice from the village board room and, when Hinkes stood her ground, directed Police Chief Diana Nicols to remove her.
“I don’t want to call the officer to escort you out,” the chief said gingerly as she stood between Hinkes and the village board and edged her toward the hall.
The issue of the evening was the reappointment of Acting Village Justice Henry Fernandez.
The mayor included Fernandez’ name on a lengthy list of appointments to trustees’ committees that was quickly recited, then unanimously approved by the trustees without any opportunity for discussion.
Hinkes, who was among the handful of audience members, apparently had hoped to have her say before the vote, but when she stood up Waller cut her off.
Waller said the matter was better discussed in executive session, but Hinkes insisted on being heard.
When the justice failed to respond to the mayor’s directive, Waller ordered Nicols to intervene.
Both elected officials were flushed and clearly rattled by the confrontation.
Questioned in her adjoining office, Hinkes said she has been involved in the selection of the previous acting justice, James Kelly, who died in January, and the two had maintained an amicable working relationship.
She said she had prepared and distributed a memo on the situation to the mayor and village trustees before the meeting, and had expected to have the opportunity to discuss the appointment before the vote.
Asked about the episode later that evening, Fernandez, an attorney, said, “I’m very disappointed in Justice Hinkes’ behavior.”
“I’m very, very supportive of the mayor and village trustees and what they are trying to accomplish,” which he said was “an efficient and cooperative relationship” between the justice court, the village and the police department.
“This is not about me,” he said. He referred any further questions to Mayor Waller or Village Attorney John Lambert.
The mayor and the village justice have been at odds for some time now, a dynamic that last broke into the open two years ago, when the village requested a state audit of the justice accounts.
Hinkes, a Democrat, has twice defeated Republican candidates, first Ronald Streek in 2003, then Gary Kuch in 2006.
After the reorganizational meeting was completed, the mayor spoke briefly before the board went into executive session to discuss the matter.
Village policy renewed that very evening required such matters to be discussed in private, she said.
The police chief and Public Works Superintendent Brian Clancy remained in the executive session, but Hinkes was required to remain in the hall.
Departing, Kuhn Reflects On Challenges Of Decade
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
‘They say it’s a thankless job,” said Paul Kuhn a few days after his term as village trustee expired. “It’s not.”
Nine people will criticize you, but the 10th will expressed thanks for a step taken with the goal of creating a better community.
“That’s what keeps you going,” he said.
For a few days, it was the first time in 12 years that Kuhn was not serving in a village post. For most of that time, they were influential ones. After just two years on the Planning Board, he was elevated to chairman. In 2001, he was elected to a three-year term on the village board, and immediately assumed a central role, and was reelected three years later.
By the time he decided to step aside, he was chairing virtually all the trustees’ most significant committees: Police, Watershed, Streets & Buildings, Finance and Justice Court.
As it turned out, his retirement turned to be only a 55-hour hiatus. His replacement, Neil Weiller, was sworn in at 12 noon Monday, April 7; Wednesday evening, Mayor Carol B. Waller appointed Kuhn to continue to chair the Watershed Committee, which is entering its final phase in ensuring septic systems on several hundred camps are not leaking into Otsego Lake.
Still, compared to Kuhn’s central role on two key issues in his last year as trustee – loading zones and paid parking, which he considers central to his legacy – that final chairmanship represents a relatively quiet bridge back into private life, a bridge paved with praise.
Compared to the many trustees he has seen come and go over the years, former Mayor Wendell Tripp said Kuhn “was one of the trustees who contributed most to the ongoing life of the village.” Tripp said he appointed Kuhn to the Planning Board in 1995 because of his knowledge, intelligence and impartiality.
Village GOP Chair Bill Waller – it took him twice to convince Kuhn to run for trustee – said “the community is in the very forefront of his mind.” Kuhn’s love of the village, his work ethic and skills developed in a 30-year business career – he was an executive with Cigna, the Philadelphia-based insurance concern – made him an attractive candidate, Waller said.
Jeff Foster, proprietor of Legends Are Forever who jousted with Kuhn on a number of downtown issues, said he discovered in recent months that the village trustee was, in fact, listening to varied inputs and adjusting to take them into account.
“I’m sad to see him go,” Foster said. “Even though I didn’t always agree with him, I liked him.”
Now past 70, Kuhn’s relationship with Cooperstown goes back to when, at age 7, his father and mother, teachers in Long Island during the winter, took counseling jobs at Camp Chenango, one of six private camps operating on Otsego Lake in the 1940s. (Only one remains.)
“This wonderful lake. The fresh air. The beautiful hillsides. It’s a place you just fall head over heels in love with,” he said during an interview in the lobby of The Otesaga after a recent Rotary Club meeting. (He is assuming the presidency of the local Rotary this summer.)
He graduated from Chaminade High School, run by the Marianist fathers in Glen Cove, then from Villanova, Class of 1960, with a mechanical engineering degree.
He spent three years in Army Intelligence, then joined Cigna, applying his engineering knowledge to ensuring the insurability of construction projects. He raised three children in the Philadelphia suburbs, but never forgot Glimmerglass’ lure.
In the 1980s, married to Mary Margaret, the couple began weekending at The Inn at Cooperstown about the time Mike Jerome assumed ownership. In fact, the Kuhns were Jerome’s first repeat customers.
After one “nice long weekend” in the fall, as they were packing the car to go home, Mary Margaret said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if, some day, we didn’t have to go home?”
That tilted the balance, and the Kuhns began to house-hunt, an effort limited by Mrs. Kuhn’s insistence that they buy only a brick or mortar home.
One evening they were at The Peppermill. Only one other table was occupied, and fellow patron Mabel Atwell engaged them in conversation.
“You’ve been spending too much time on the Northeast Extension,” she said after hearing their story. “Why don’t you move here?”
They explained the brick or mortar requirement, and she replied, “You haven’t looked at my house.”
After dinner, the Kuhns drove by 51 Chestnut. It was brick. They were hooked. (Since, they have meticulously restored the historic detailing of the brick Victorian home.)
Moving here, Paul soon found himself drawn into volunteer work at St. Mary’s “Our Lady of The Lake” parish and Bassett Hospital, and making brooms at The Farmers’ Museum.
No sooner had the couple settled in than work began on Cooperstown Dreams Park in Hartwick Seminary. Kuhn said he got an early inkling of what was to come when he was awakened by 50 people milling around outside his window in the middle of the night; it turned out to be a contingent of Dreams Park parents from Kentucky waiting for a pizza delivery.
As it happens, one of the early issues Kuhn struggled with on the Planning Board was the evolution of B&Bs in the wake of Dreams Park’s growth: He helped craft regulations, controversial with some, that required owners to live in their B&B, and setting safety standards and parking requirements.
On the village board, he believes his two greatest contributions were made in the last year, as chairman of the Police Committee, his favorite chairmanship.
First, concerned that the 50 trucks and semis that delivered to Main Street weekly were double-parking and endangering public safety, he developed new loading zones – in front of the CVS and on Pioneer Street. Then, after observing their use, the time limits were adjusted so the spaces could be used for general parking in the off hours.
“It was not a popular measure in the minds of everyone, but it was in the minds of many,” he said, adding emphatically and characteristically, “It was something that had to be done.”
Second was paid parking, which his Police Committee proposed for the Doubleday Field parking lot and Main and Pioneer streets. Despite public resistance that peaked at a packed, 300-citizen meeting at CCS’ Sterling Auditorium in November, Kuhn – along with Trustees Jeff Katz, Grace Kull, Lynn Mebust – adopted the law that authorizes the village trustees to implement paid parking. A scaled-back pilot project is now in the works for the Doubleday lot.
“You have a place (Cooperstown) that is being used a lot more than was anticipated,” he said. “...The wear and tear on just about everything that is in the village is scarey.”
If the full $600,000 anticipated from the full paid-parking plan is realized, he said, it would “pay for a large bond” – $5 million was anticipated – “to fix this village.”
Kuhn picks up on that theme in looking ahead: Finances are the biggest challenge facing the village.
He said “relationships” – between the village and the Town of Otsego, the county and the state – have to be reexamined. For instance, he said, the village shoulders the funding of the Village Library of Cooperstown with little help of surrounding towns, even though townsfolk are significant users of the library; likewise, the fire department.
Matters can’t continue as they have, he said.
“If the political environment is such that we can’t be a city” – a measure Bill Waller and a committee are exploring – “then we need to get some help from the county. Or we have to get some relief from Albany.”
Perhaps the General Assembly can authorize Cooperstown to enact its own bed tax, perhaps an entertainment tax that would allow a $1 levy on Hall of Fame tickets.
His conclusion: “Without this, the goose that lays the golden eggs is going to get tarnished.”
Looking ahead – in addition to his continuing Watershed Committee duties – he plans to continue his downtown walking-tour business – you can see him most summer days dressed as Judge William Cooper must have. He is a eucharistic minister for St. Mary’s, administering communion once a week to Bassett Hospital patients.
And he will continue his volunteering at The Farmers’ Museum – you may run into him portraying the innkeeper at the Bump Tavern.
Selig Response ‘Appalling’
Hall Of Fame Game Supporter Connolly Levels Blast
COOPERSTOWN
In response to lawmakers’ concerns about the Hall of Fame Game cancellation, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig has sent a "form-letter response" that savethefamegame.com creator Kristian Connolly has labelled "appalling."
Connolly, a Cooperstown native now working in Washington, D.C., obtained copies of the letters sent to U.S. Reps. Michael Arcuri and Maurice Hinchey and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton. Conceivably, similar letters may have been sent to U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, state Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, and other politicians who expressed concern at the MLB move.
"Commissioner Selig’s identical, form-letter response to members of Congress is stunning in its refusal to directly address the lawmakers’ concerns, and in the way it sweeps the central issue under the rug in favor of self-congratulating or hollow statements,” Connolly declared.
“It’s insulting to the senators and representatives that have expressed their desire to see the tradition continue, and insulting to baseball fans across the globe.
“The commissioner’s obvious disregard for his responsibility as the steward of America’s national pastime – not national industry – is appalling, as is his clear lack of caring about the sport’s fans – unless it involves how they can increase the bottom line. For all intents and purposes, Commissioner Selig should have used the word ‘customers’ rather than ‘fans’ or ‘visitors’ in his response, since it is unmistakable from his words that he views those of us who care about baseball – its past, present and future – only as sources of revenue.
“Furthermore, I am in complete and utter disbelief that the commissioner of baseball believes that people need to be made ‘more aware of the Hall of Fame and its importance.’ As someone who grew up in Cooperstown and has traveled all over the country and met many different people – baseball fans and otherwise – I feel confident that there is not a single village in America that is more well known than Cooperstown, and baseball and the Hall of Fame are the main reasons why. For some, Cooperstown and the Hall of Fame are symbols. For others, they’re a goal. For others still, they’re the centerpiece of debate. And for many, Cooperstown and the Hall of Fame are destinations held in such high esteem that people spend months, years, or even a lifetime dreaming about and planning for a trip to visit them.”
 Village Attorney Tapped For County Court Race
COOPERSTOWN
It may be an all-Cooperstown race for Otsego County judge this November to fill the vacancy created by Judge Michael V. Coccoma’s election to the state Supreme Court last November.
Village Attorney John Lambert, 39, outstripped four other lawyers in winning the county Republican Committee’s endorsement on Monday, April 7. Richard Harlem, an Oneonta lawyer, received 51 votes to Lambert’s 57, and that could result in a GOP primary in September.
Meanwhile, Cooperstown’s Jill Ghaleb, 43, who has been practicing family law primarily, has been interviewed by the Democratic County Committee.
Charlie Turi Returns To Village After (What A Winter!) In Qatar
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
When Charles Turi landed in Dubai in January after a 13-hour flight, his son Richard was waiting for him.
As they – counting Cici, Richie’s wife, who had accompanied her father-in-law from New York – flew on to Doha, the capital of Qatar, the son painted a grim picture of what awaited them.
Sand, tents, a primitive lifestyle.
“Rich was always a comedian,” said Charlie, who most of us recognize as that 80-something gentleman who, wearing a Yankees cap, can be seen most summer days sitting on a bench in Pioneer Park.
Yes, there were camels, but what followed were three months living in the lap of luxury in one of the world’s richest nations.
The senior Turi got his first inkling of what was to come when limo picked them up at Doha International Airport. When the limo pulled up to a luxury hotel, he figured his son’s humorous streak was at play.
“This is where we’re living,” the son told his dad.
His father – he has four other sons and two daughters – knew that Richie, who is 54, an architect with a Cornell degree and decades of experience in New York, was a key architect in Qatar’s development plans – he’s working right now on building housing in the desert for 45,000 people.
But, like most people who haven’t seen it, Charlie had a hard time visualizing what’s going on.
For the tiny emirate, recognizing its vast oil reserves will soon be on the wane, is implementing a $15 billion Tourism Master Plan.
The International Herald Tribune calls it “an aggressive construction and marketing strategy intended to launch the nation onto the world stage. Unveiled with fanfare in 2004, the scheme aims to build and attract top hotels; to create museums and theme parks; and to vastly expand the national airline. Its goal is to triple annual tourist arrivals, to 1.4 million, by 2008.”
Read anything about Doha these days, and it includes many superlatives. Charlie was amazed by the hotels that commanded thousands of dollars a night for their rooms, the construction cranes everywhere, and the swank – and affordable – shopping malls. “I got myself a whole new wardrobe for $200,” he said. Cigarettes, almost $50 a carton here, were $11 a carton there.
However, it was the warmth of the people he met that impressed him most.
One night – “we were out to dinner about every other night” – Richie, Cici and Charlie arrived early at the high-end Ramada for dinner. They sat in the lobby, sipping coffee, when the head waiter came over and told them another guest had overheard them speaking English and wanted them to join him.
Come to find out, the man was owner of one of Qatar’s biggest trucking firms. Since Charles Turi had experience in the trucking business around metropolitan New York, the two found they had plenty to talk about.
A duo – a pianist and violinist – were playing in the corner. His host asked Charlie to name his favorite song: Edith Piaf’s “La Vie En Rose.” Soon, the duo were performing it to Charlie’s complete satisfaction. And every time he revisited the Ramada to confer with his friend, the duo would strike up the song.
At one reception, Charlie had a chance to meet one of the royal princes – Qatar is a shiekdom of about 885,000 people – and was grilled about the Social Security and health-care systems in the U.S., and how they work. “All he was concerned about was people,” Turi said.
“In all the years I’ve lived here in the U.S.,” he said the other day, soon after returning to Cooperstown, “I’ve wished many times it was like that here. Money doesn’t impress me; what impresses me is how they use it.”
The prince was frank about his country’s strategy. The oil won’t last forever, and Qatar hopes to become an international tourism center before it runs out.
Part of that tourism push involves sports and – although everyone he met wanted to know about baseball – soccer is king there. Qatar is also positioning itself to host the 2016 Olympics and, Charlie said, has already completed five hotels that have been set aside, unused, to host the athletes eight years hence.
Charlie’s back, and you’ll see him any day, sitting in Pioneer Park. If he has a far-away look on his face, you can understand why.
“I’ve been invited to come back next year,” he said.
Richie told him, “Dad, I owe it all to you.”
Said Charles, “What more can a parent say?”Labels: 04-11-08, Archives |
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April 4 2008
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Friday, April 4, 2008
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Bank Of Cooperstown Officially Opens Doors
Income Ahead Of Projections, President Says
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
At 11 a.m. Wednesday, April 2, well-wishers gathered in front of 73 Chestnut St. to make it official.
With Mayor Carol B. Waller at his side, Bank of Cooperstown President Scott D. White cut the yellow ribbon with a set of big shears. Cooperstown’s newest financial institution was thus launched.
Inside, the bank’s localness was evident. The coffee and pinwheel sandwiches were from The Stagecoach. The pastries, from Schneider’s. The fudge, from Tin Bin Alley.
The mayor called it “a great addition to the community. I wish them success and long life.”
“People like to be able to go into a bank and talk to a decisionmaker, where they can get good-quality, fast, local service,” said Robert Ranger, West Winfield, former regional president of Fleet Bank’s Mohawk Valley operations who is on the boards of the Bank of Cooperstown and its parent, USNY Bank.
“All we have to do is a good job, to smile and get back to people,” he said.
The bank’s founder and chairman of the board, Wall Street investor Robert F. O’Neill, who has a summer home in Cooperstown, used the terms “small-town feel” and “local touch” last May in describing the new bank to potential investors. Michael Moffat, vice chairman of the board, harkened back to Howard J. Aufmuth, the prototypical small-town bank manager who held sway for years at First National Bank of Cooperstown, before it was absorbed by Banker’s Trust.
In exploring founding a local bank, O’Neill was deterred by the amount of energy absorbed by the regulatory process and the back-office challenges, but he discovered in Capitol Bancorp, founded in 1988 and based in Lansing, Mich., a model that he determined would work here.
Capitol Bancorp handles the regulatory process, the accounting and other back-office activities.
Its banks – Cooperstown’s is one of 64 under the Capitol Bancorp umbrella, mostly single-location entities – have a local on-site president and management team with full decision-making authority, reporting to a local board of directors, in this case O’Neill, Moffat and Ranger. There is also a 14-person Board of Community Directors.
Community Director Jeff Haggerty, owner of Haggerty ACE Hardware in Cooperstown and Delhi, said the new bank’s concentration on commercial loans – “that’s what I do” – is what enticed him to get involved. White, he added, processed Haggerty’s first commercial loan back in 1992.
Determined to proceed, O’Neill – his daughter, Roberta, is Mrs. Charles B. Kieler of Cherry Valley – formed the USNY Bank, intending to make the Bank of Cooperstown its sole subsidiary.
In the process, however, he met banker Mike Briggs of Geneva, who encouraged O’Neill to participate in the formation of Geneva-based Bank of The Finger Lakes.
With Briggs in place, that processed moved along more quickly, and the Geneva bank opened last Aug. 6.
The bank had a “soft opening” in December, but the vault and the ATM machine had not yet arrived. White postponed the grand opening until the new bank could provide everything a customer would expect from a full-service bank.
Capitol Bancorp has not been immune from the ebb and flow that has characterized American banking in recent decades – on March 31, for instance, it sold four of its Michigan affiliates, according to reporter Jeremy Steele, who covers the company for the Lansing State Journal.
However, Steele said, that is a reflection of Michigan’s dipping economy. Beyond its New York entities, Capitol Bancorp has tended to focus on California, the Southwest and Texas, he continued, “all the places that, if you’re a bank, you want to be right now.”
“I firmly believe community banks serve an important role in allowing local economies to grow,” said Terry J. McEvoy, an Oppenheimer & Co. senior analyst who has followed Capitol Bancorp for years.
“At a true local bank,” he said, “decisions will be made quickly and they will be made locally – compared to a bank like KeyCorp, where the decision may have to go to Cleveland and it may take a few days.”
Capitol Bancorp, valued at $350 million, has a winning strategy, he said: “It identifies markets where there’s a need for a community bank; or it identifies successful bankers … who are willing to partner up.”
The company’s stock price experience “phenomenal” growth right through 2006, when a deep recession hit the auto-making state, McEvoy said.
It discovered more than half of its loans were located in the Midwest – 85 percent of its bad loans – and the company responded by shifting loans – up to 55 percent now – to more prosperous regions, he said.
White, the bank president, told the post-ribbon-reception that the operation is running ahead of projections. “We’re doing great financially,” he said, “and that’s great for a startup.”
Groff Sister Olympic Triathlon Contender
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
Lauren, whose “The Monsters of Templeton” novel is being widely and favorably reviewed nationwide, isn’t the only one of the Cooperstown Groff sisters who’s living her dream.
“Four years ago, this was my ultimate dream,” said Sarah Groff, Loren’s younger sister, in an interview from Santa Monica, Calif., where she is mounting the final push to represent the United States at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.
“It’s been an incredible journey.”
Sarah, the younger daughter by 14 months of Gerald and Jeannine Groff, is one of the top four female triathletes in the country right now. (The Groffs’ oldest child, Adam, is a physician.)
So far, only Laura Bennett, who won the trials in Beijing last September, is guaranteed one of three spots on the U.S. team.
The other two will be chosen based on their rankings at the Olympic Team Trials April 19 in Tuscaloosa, then at the Hyvee Triathlon June 22 in Des Moines.
Just listening to Sarah talk about her typical day is exhausting.
She’s up at 5 a.m. for her “first breakfast,” toast with almond butter, a banana and coffee, then swims from 6 to 8. After a “second breakfast” at 9 – egg whites, vegetables, brown rice, water – she takes a three-hour bike ride, followed by a one-hour run.
Lunch is a turkey sandwich (or other lean meat), vegetables, fruit and nuts, followed by a “very sport-specific” workout in the afternoon aimed at strengthening the “core” muscles – the back and stomach. From 4 to 5, Sarah takes an “easy bike ride” to flush the lactic acid out of her muscles.
Supper at 6:30 or so is likewise Spartan: vegetables, a grilled boneless chicken breast, more brown rice. She’ll watch a movie – “Juno,” among the recent ones – and TiVo allows her to watch favorite shows. By 9 p.m., she’s in bed; after all, 5 a.m. comes pretty quickly after that kind of day.
Once every two weeks, a day off. As you might expect, she “sleeps a lot” on the day of leisure, does some yoga and stretching to keep limber, grocery shops, does her laundry “and all the things I’m normally too tired to do.”
Sarah, 26, was born on Nov. 27, 1981, in Hanover, N.H., and raised on Cooperstown’s Lake Street. She joined the Clark Sports Center swimming team as soon as she could, at age 7 or 8, and swam on the boys’ team at CCS before transferring to Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts her junior year.
There she competed in her first triathlon, borrowing brother Adam’s bike and riding it in one gear in that particular leg. Angus Mackie, she said, was the first triathlete she ever met. (Incidentally, she’s never done the Glimmerglass Triathlon: Swimming is her favorite part, and the local event features canoeing instead.)
At Middlebury College, she double-majored in conservation biology and studio art, graduating cum laude, and with highest honors in art. She swam freestyle all four years, earning All-New England and All-American honors.
“My parents never put any constraints on what we were capable of,” she recalled of her Cooperstown girlhood. “It made us kids into dreamers.”
At the Athens Olympics shortly after graduating, Sarah was inspired by triathlete Susan Williams.
So when came home, she crossed the country to USA Triathletes in Boulder, Colo., to train under Susan’s coach Siri Lindley, herself a top triathlete in 2001 and 2002. (USAT, with 90,000 members, sponsors 2,000 events annually and is charged with preparing U.S. athletes for the international competition.)
The highlight of Sarah’s career so far was winning the International Triathlon Union’s Pan American Cup in Geneva in 2007.
Triathletes may be like the rest of us, only – listening to Sarah – a lot tougher.
Asked about her heroes, she replied, “my family members. They’re very strong, amazing people.” In addition to her physician father and brother, her mother, a former teacher who is now a physician’s assistant, and her novelist sister, her grandfather, in his 80s, is still working 10-12 hours a day.
Her sports hero? Loretta Harrop, the Australian triathlete who competed in 2000 in her brother’s memory, after he was killed by a drunk driver. Despite her athletic prowess and her struggling overcoming that personal hardship, Harrop is “one of the most humble people you’ll ever meet.”
Sarah’s mental toughness is suggested by her response to a question about the “high point” of her career so far.
Racing in Des Moines last summer, she fell and fractured her elbow. She was due to compete in Edmonton, Alberta, the following weekend.
Despite everyone urging her to take a break, and even though she could barely move her arm for a few days, she competed, and “it was the best race of my life, despite the pain. I was able to find an inner strength I didn’t know existed.”
She placed sixth, in one of the best races of her World Cup career.
Bank’s President Has Roots In Rural Life
COOPERSTOWN
When Scott D. White got out of Cornell in 1982, he joined the Farm Credit Service, going from farm to farm, conferring with clients.
“They ranged from very astute farmers, who knew their cost structure and planned ahead,” said White, president of the new Bank of Cooperstown, “to the bachelor brothers” – they shall remain unnamed – “whose dog slept on the hood of my car while I was inside talking to them.”
It was retail banking in the trenches – or furrows, if you will – but much in White’s background made the Farm Credit Service a logical first professional step, and one he must have enjoyed. His eyes light up these 24 years later as he reminisces.
“It was meeting clients at their place of business, sitting at the kitchen table, talking about needs for the next year – delivering a commodity in a personal way,” said White.
That’s the sensibility he plans to bring to Cooperstown’s latest financial institution, where you can drive by most any day and see him through the plate-glass window on the front, talking on the phone or tapping away on his laptop.
“This is a bank where decisions are made right in this office,” he said, looking around the freshly renovated quarters, redecorated in soothing browns and greens.
Scott White uses the carpet as an example of local decisionmaking. When he went out to Krazy Tom’s in Hartwick Seminary to pick it, he had to reassure owner Charlie Contro that, yes, he didn’t have to double-check his decision with the corporate office.
The new bank’s president was raised in Voorheesville, the suburb of Albany, but he worked every summer from age 9 to 18 at his grandfather’s Christmas tree farm in Colebrook, N.H., near the Canadian border, an operation that harvested 7,000 to 10,000 evergreens a year. His father was a Cooperstown Extension agent.
So a degree in agricultural business from Cornell just seemed to make sense.
The farming connection was further strengthened when he met Lori Stalter, raised on her family’s farm in Franklin, while skiing at Scotch Mountain. Her parents, Ken and Lois Stalter, have retired from the Route 357 operation, which is now farmed by Lori’s brother Shane.
The Whites, parents of 13-year-old twin boys, Alex and Troy, seventh-graders at Unatego, are marking their 25th anniversary in October. (Coincidentally, bank Vice President Michelle Catan and her husband, Paul, have triplets, Riley, McKenzie and Christopher, 5.
When Scott White’s mentor at Farm Credit – “a very, very good mentor” – moved to NBT, he soon asked his protege to follow him.
White joined NBT in 1987 as branch manager in Sidney, but soon found himself managing the Small Business Banking Department. In 1999, he left banking for a period, serving as CFO of a Sidney-based business, then joined Wilber Bank in 2005 as a vice president.
Still, it was hard not to be intrigued when he learned that Bob O’Neill, the Wall Street investor who has a summer home on Cooperstown’s Lake Road, was planning the modern version of a small-town bank locally.
“You’re starting a new business,” White explained. “You’re in on the ground floor.”
One thing led to another and, on March 19, 2007, he joined the prospective Bank of Cooperstown and within a few days was participating in presentation to raise local investment.
Busy months followed, ferrying the bank building – the former Ron Mitchell Antiques, one of the few buildings in town with associated parking – through the village’s planning and zoning process, hiring the staff, and a “soft launch” in December.
So far, so good.
“We’re running a little ahead of where we had hoped to be,” he said.
Year Later,Chris Spurs Good Deeds
Saturday, April 5, is the first anniversary of the car crash that killed CCS senior Chris Gentile en route to his waiting mother at Holy Thursday mass.
But, if anything, efforts to bring some good from a community tragedy are gaining momentum.
At the PTO’s Crayon Carnival Saturday, March 28, “Click The Grab” T-shirts were being sold to benefit the Chris Gentile Scholarship Fund. An arrow from that phrase – it means, fasten your seat belt – points down in the appropriate direction.
Elsewhere on the shirts, designed by Ann Kieler and her mom, Roberta, are the words, “Slow The Ride.”
On the anniversary of Chris’ death, his brother Rob and his Christian-rock band, Called to Glory, will be performing two tribute concerts – entitled “Never Scared” – at the Foothills Performing Arts Center in Oneonta.
All the songs are original, said Rob, who lives in West Virginia and attends Jefferson College in Steubenville, Ohio, the Nashville of Christian rock.
“All of them have something to do with Chris in their own way,” he said. “We chose them because they were special songs to me and to other band members.”
Half the $5 fee will benefit the scholarship fund.Labels: 04-04-08, Archives |
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March 28 2008
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Friday, March 28, 2008
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Petroskey Go-Go Era At Hall of Fame Ends
President, Directors Part Ways
By JIM KEVLIN
COOOPERSTOWN
Characteristically, Dale Petroskey agreed to talk about the accomplishments at the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum over the past nine years on one condition.
“These are not things I did alone,” he said, the day after he’d tendered his resignation to the HoF Board of Directors’ executive committee. “What I’m proud of is things we did as a team at the Hall of Fame. I’m proud they happened on my tenure at the Hall of Fame.”
For now, Jeff Idelson, Petroskey’s vice president for communications and education, has been named acting president while a search for a new president ensues.
Back to Petroskey: “We helped to turn 63 Hall of Famers into a close-knit family, a cohesive group, more excited about the Hall and more excited about helping us reach our goals ... Hall of Famers – AND their spouses.”
At the time Petroskey shifted from a top job at the National Geographic Society to president of the Hall of Fame in 1999, some 30 Hall of Famers would make the annual pilgrimage here for Induction Weekend. Now, that number is routinely over 50.
“The only ones not coming back,” said the Detroit Tigers fan, “were those who were ill, too old, or with a team.”
He then quickly ticks off a checklist of accomplishments:
• Relationships – Through intensive staff training, “we’ve become very good at relationships with a number of different groups,” beginning with ensuring the regular flow of visitors has a good experience at 25 Main. “Professionalism” is the goal at all levels.
• Membership – It’s risen from 4,000 to 31,000 during Petroskey’s tenure.
• Fundraising – Revenues have increased in a number of categories – in some cases, from zero – to the point that the Hall ran in the black in 2007, a rarity for a museum. Greg Harris was brought aboard as director of development.
• Finishing what Jackie Robinson started – A systematic five-year program reviewed the careers of stand-out players, managers and executives from the Negro Leagues, to ensure every worthy player would get a plaque. In 2006, 17 were inducted at one time, “a very proud moment.”
• Education – From none, some 15 million students have benefited from the Hall’s educational program under Jeff Arnett.
• Stronger relationship with Major League Baseball – The result was a first-of-its-kind major gift from MLB to the Hall in 2007.
• Outreach – A traveling exhibit, “Baseball As America,” has visited 15 cities, beginning in New York in 2002 and ending in Boston this summer.
Foremost, the Hall of Fame itself underwent a $20 million renovation and modernization, completed in 2005.
Petroskey was interviewed the morning after the announcement hit Cooperstown like a bombshell: At 4:59 p.m. Tuesday, March 25, HoF Director of Communications Brad Horn pushed the “send” button and the message went out around the world.
“By mutual agreement,” said the press release, “the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum has accepted the resignation of Dale Petroskey as President.”
Within seconds, the news had been posted on usatoday.com, and Baseball Digest’s and the International Herald Tribune’s web sites.
At 3 p.m., the HoF staff had been summoned in a body to the Grandstand Theater. Standing at the front were Jane Forbes Clark, HoF chairman and granddaughter of Stephen C. Clark, the Hall’s founder, and Idelson. The press release was read to the surprised audience. No questions were taken.
A number of theories about what happened circulated during the evening, many having to do with purported financial peccadillos of past employees, discovered too late. But the next morning no one could be found willing to give an authoritative account.
The press release said the executive committee concluded the president “failed to exercise proper fiduciary responsibility,” but Horn was quickly emphasizing nothing that happened was criminal in nature, and no one was saying Petroskey had benefited in any way from whatever it was that had gone on.
Be that as it may, the reaction locally was shock and disappointment.
“The relationship between the village and the Hall of Fame was great,” Mayor Carol B. Waller said of the Petroskey years. “I was just as shocked as everyone else at last night’s news.”
In addition to serving on the village trustees’ Doubleday Field committee, Petroskey had been asked to serve on the 2025 Planning Commission the mayor hopes to form soon after the trustees’ April 7 reorganizational meeting that follows the March 18 municipal elections.
“He’s always been a major contributor when his schedule allowed,” said Trustee Jeff Katz, who chairs the Doubleday committee. “I never had anything but great encounters with Dale.”
Ted Hargrove, proprietor of TJ’s Place and one of Main Street’s leading baseball merchants, said, “He was a great guy.”
A Michigan native, Petroskey graduated from Michigan State in 1978 along with the Ann Holliday Grover; the two soon married.
After working on a Congressional campaign in his native state, Petroskey found himself on Capitol Hill and joined the staff of U.S. Rep. William Goodling, the Pennsylvania Republican. By 1985, he was in the Reagan White House as assistant press secretary. In 1987, he joined the National Geographic Society, where he spent the next 11 years, the last three as a senior vice president.
In 1999, he became only the fifth person in the Hall of Fame’s then-60-year history to assume the presidency.
The Petroskeys bought a house at Main and Fair streets, just across from the Hall of Fame, and their children, Kathleen, Frank and Claire, went through middle and high school at CCS.
Along with Petroskey’s accomplishment, there were occasional controversies.
In 2003, actors Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins had been invited to town to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the movie “Bill Durham.” After the two criticized the recently launched war in Iraq, Petroskey withdrew the invitation. He later apologized.
But for Petroskey, there were also high points of community service, including serving as a Little League and Pony League baseball coach. His son, who is now playing for the University of Vermont, was one of the stars of the 2007 CCS team that won the sectionals.
When local star athlete Chris Gentile died in a car crash in April 2007, Petroskey – he had coached Chris in Little League – was called upon to give the eulogy to a standing-room-only crowd at the funeral service in CCS’ Bursey Gym.
Petroskey said he has no immediate plans, but no shortage of interests.
“I enjoy being with people,” he said. “I enjoy being with athletes. I enjoy being with stimulating people. I enjoy sports and baseball. I have a very keen interest in politics.”
No, he quickly replied, he has no plans to run for anything.
‘Mr. Otsego County’ David Brenner Honored For ‘Cat-Herding’ Prowess
County Board Ex-Chair On List With Jane Forbes Clark, Bassett’s Streck
By JIM KEVLIN
ONEONTA
A year ago, Dave Brenner had a cancer scare.
He’d just turned 72, too old, he was told, for that particular operation.
A second physician, however, discovered his heart was as strong as that of a 50-year-old. His cholesterol level was fine; so was his blood pressure.
Today, you’ll see a David W. Brenner who’s fully recovered, brimming with the energy and vitality that carried him through 33 years at SUNY Oneonta, a career he juggled with 16 years on the county Board of Representatives, including three as chairman, and 12 years as mayor of Oneonta.
“I’ve always had a lot of energy and stamina,” he said the other day in an interview in his modern Central Avenue ranch home, surrounded by hills, in the Town of Oneonta. “I could work night and day.”
That’s part of it, but that’s not the only reason Brenner is receiving the Eugene Bettiol Jr. Citizen of the Year Award from the Otsego Chamber of Commerce, joining such past honorees as Jane Forbes Clark and Bassett CEO Bill Streck.
It is his ability “to herd cats,” as Otsego Chamber Executive Director Rob Robinson put it.
When you think about it, the chairman of the county board has one vote, same as the 13 other members.
Oneonta has a “weak mayor” system of government; the mayor can only vote when it’s needed to break a tie.
As a SUNY dean, Brenner was dealing with tenured cats at that, a particularly independent breed.
Yet his tenure at the county was characterized by steady progress from what, in effect, was a glorified highway department to a full-service modern government offering programs as varied as mental-health counseling to participating in a three-county municipal solid-waste authority – at the outset, even funding a Bookmobile was controversial.
“Some of us forget those early battles, and they seem sort of primitive now,” he said, sitting behind a cluttered desk in his basement office, the bookcase behind him stuffed with political-science tomes, from half a shelf of Bob Woodward’s burrowings to Lee Atwater’s “Bad Boy” and Samuel G. Freedman’s “The Inheritance,” on one family’s evolution from the New Deal through Reaganomics.
Winning the mayoralty in 1986, he put City Hall on a business-like basis, raising the salaries of the city’s administrators and, in return, requiring accountability. He developed an Administrative Manual, codifying policies.
And he successfully negotiated a lion’s share of the county sales tax for Oneonta.
How did he accomplished that, a reporter from sales-tax-starved Cooperstown asked.
“Moral suasion,” he replied, a twinkle in his eye, then threw back his head in a hearty laugh.
It was more like this. Harold Hollis, Cooperstown mayor and former longtime Freeman’s Journal editor, had been among those agitating for a review of how sales-tax revenues were being distributed.
Brenner’s strategy: Don’t just reslice the pie. Create a bigger pie – another percent was added to the sales tax – and give everybody a bigger piece.
At that time, the towns hadn’t been getting any sales tax, so supervisors were delighted by the relative pittance would now get. Cooperstown was in better financial and physical shape then it is now, so the sales tax wasn’t an issue.
Oneonta got millions in the new formula, millions it is still benefitting from today.
“When you look at problems of government,” he said, “you have to look at what’s best for the longterm.”
Dave Brenner’s cat-herding training began early, in his Newburgh boyhood. Being the oldest of 10 children – eight survived to adulthood – makes you “a surrogate parent long before you want to be.”
His father worked in a factory, and the family had to scrape by. Young David learned “there are a lot of things I could do without.”
Living in the southern Catskills, boys like Dave were naturally interested in the girls who came up with their families during the summer. That curiosity caused him to drive one day to a particular gathering spot, an old general store in Monroe.
There he met his future bride, Lois, now his wife of more than a half-century. She was 16; he 17.
“I met this boy with a green cap and red hair,” she told her mother that evening. “And he had two of the cutest puppies in the back of his car.”
After military service, he and Lois married, he obtained his GED, and the two of them headed up to Oneonta – he had hitchhiked through the region some years before – to get his college degree on the G.I. Bill.
He was the first family member to graduate from high school, much less college, and he told himself – if only he could get a secure job that would pay him a living wage – he would strive to get into public service, to give something back.
He graduated, taught for two years at Schenevus, and was summoned back to SUNY Oneonta to supervise student teachers. Before too many years, he was director of records and registration, then registrar, dean, retiring in 1988 as associate vice president for academic affairs.
This career arc – fueled by a master’s, then a doctorate in political science from SUNY Albany – allowed him to fulfill that early pledge.
As children Janice, Donald and Douglas were growing up, their father embarked on his parallel public service career. He served on the Oneonta Reapportionment Commission, as an aide to two assemblymen, then got himself elected in 1970 to the first county board to succeed the old Board of Supervisors.
“It was kind of old vs. new, with a little bit of anti-Oneonta bias thrown in,” he said.
Leaning back in his chair, Brenner begins recalling political battles and combatants of long ago. John Owens’ firing as public defender. Still wet behind the ears, Brenner challenged Guy Rathbun – unsuccessfully – for the chairmanship. Putting MOSA together.
Saving the old courthouse in Cooperstown – he and Charlie Bateman, Mayor Carol B. Waller’s dad, made common cause – was a close thing.
The vote hinged on county Rep. Les Olmstead of Richfield Springs: “As long as he stayed with us, we were OK.”
Presiding in the front of the legislative chambers at 197 Main, he saw a couple of pro-demolition representatives talking with Olmstead.
Calling a recess, Brenner button-holed him in the hall. Yes, Olmstead said, they were trying to make him change his mind, but he wouldn’t budge.
Brenner reconvened the meeting and the historic structure was saved by an 8-6 vote.
One of Brenner’s finest hours came long after he retired from the Oneonta mayoralty in 1998.
Just last year he was contracted by the Board of Representatives to study whether the county should shift to a county-manager form of government.
His study – of a dozen other counties – was exhaustive. His conclusion: Yes, the county should make the shift.
But, he said, the animosity among the 14 representatives – the Democrats had seized control by allying with maverick Republican Don Lindberg of Worcester – made it impossible to do at that time.
Without a near-unanimous commitment, a county manager was almost certain to fail.
That recommendation is still out there, and may be a future Brenner accomplishment. For now, he draws satisfaction from such projects as the war memorial in Oneonta’s Neahwa Park.
Another satisfaction: When adoptive parents come up to him and thank him for referring them to social services, and tell him how their children are doing.
‘The Army Will Be...At Lake Otsego,’ General Declared NYSHA Acquires Rare Clinton Letter
COOPERSTOWN
 You may know – many people don’t – that letters Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr wrote back and forth before their history-altering duel have resided in the NYSHA Library for decades.
You may know that the notes written by the physician who attended Abraham Lincoln as he lay dying across the street from the Ford Theater are also owned by the New York State Historical Association.
So you can see why Wayne Wright, NYSHA Library associate director, was so excited when the phone rang in February and he was offered a find he considers third only to those two historic caches.
On the other end of the line was a dealer who had a June 27, 1779, letter from Gen. James Clinton to his brother, Revolutionary War Gov. George Clinton.
“I would also inform you that all the boats, stores, provisions, baggage of the Army will be at the landing of Lake Otsego next Wednesday, at which time I intend (to) move all the troops to that place and wait Genl. Sullivan’s orders for embarkation,” the general wrote the governor.
The letter set the stage for one of the most famous episodes of the American Revolution.
At the future site of Cooperstown, Clinton dammed the mouth of the Susquehanna, allowing Otsego Lake’s waters to back up a couple of feet. The dam was then blown up, and hundreds of barges floated downstream to reconnoiter with – and supply – Gen. John Sullivan’s waiting troops.
That allowed the combined army to destroy an estimated 40 Iroquois settlements between the future Oneonta and Binghamton, ending the tribe’s effectiveness as an ally to the British.
The event is memorialized every Memorial Day weekend through the General Clinton Regatta, canoe races that start in Cooperstown and go as far down the Susquehanna as 70 miles. This year’s races are May 23-28.
“It’s important,” Wright said, waving his arm to the east as he stood in the conference room at the NYSHA Library, “because its talking about things that happened right outside out these windows ... It belongs here.”
The dealer overnighted the document – and a second one, a transcription of the speech a delegation of 10 Oneidas delivered to Clinton at the mouth of the Susquehanna eight days later – to NYSHA in February, so it would be on site during a scheduled visit by U.S. Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-24.
Wright had two people look at the letters.
Wendell Tripp, the professor and former NYSHA director of publications, who “saw nothing suspicious about it,” Wright said.
The second, retired NYSHA conservator C.R. Jones, identified the paper, ink and watermark as being from the appropriate era.
The second document, similar ink on similar paper, although in a different hand, was reproduced verbatim in William L. Stone’s 1838 “Life of Joseph Brant-Thayendanegea.”
Negotiations ensued. A gift was received to pay the asking price. And the deal was finalized the week of March 17.
Wright was uncomfortable discussing the donor or the price, but book collector Gail Larsen of Tintagel Books, East Springfield, said the local content of the documents would increase their value.
James Clinton’s signature alone, she said, would be worth $300. Attached to a note, perhaps $700. But the local content would increase the price an unspecified amount, particularly if there was another bidder for the material.
Seward At The Table For Historic Moment Bruno ‘Quizzical’ About nytimes.com Report
Joe Bruno convenes the Republican state senators at 1:30 p.m. every Monday afternoon.
The majority whip, Jim Seward, R-Milford, sits next to him.
So he was a witness to history at 1:55 p.m. Monday, March 10, when an aide handed Bruno an article ripped from nytimes.com.
“He looked at the paper, and had this quizzical look on his face,” Otsego County’s state senator recounted the other day during a visit to Village Hall to announce a $10,000 grant to the Cooperstown Concert Series. “He got up and read it to all of us.”
The New York Times’ web site had just reported that Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who had targeted powerful GOP Senate Majority Leader Bruno for political destruction – and worse – had been linked to a prostitution ring and was about to speak to a hastily called press conference.
“It was so bizarre,” Seward said, adding the senators thought the governor was about to resign. “It was almost like it was unreal.”
The 30-some Republicans then piled into Bruno’s nearby office to catch the press conference – Spitzer, with first lady Silda by his side, expressing remorse – on what was the closest available TV set.
Two days later, at a second press conference, again with his wife by his side, Spitzer resigned.
Looking ahead, Seward – he worked with David Paterson when the new governor was state Senate minority leader – anticipates the biggest change will be in style.
In contrast to Spitzer’s hard-driving, take-no-prisoners reputation, “Peterson is very congenial,” the senator said. “Everybody likes David Paterson. He keeps his word. He tries to work things out instead of being combative.”
One of Spitzer’s stated goals was to reclaim control of the state Senate from the Republicans, which would give the Democrats control of both houses as well as the Governor’s Mansion.
But Seward, who is facing his first challenge since 1996, from Don Barber, a Tompkins County town supervisor, declined to speculate whether that drive will continue. He did note, however, that Paterson may not have the same access to fundraising that his predecessor did.
For the past year, Spitzer’s relationship with Bruno had been complicated by “Troopergate,” where gubernatorial aides had leaked records of the Senate majority leader’s use of a state helicopter, at least in part, for political purposes.
During investigations by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and local prosecutors, Spitzer had claimed only minimal knowledge of what was going on.
In the past few days, however, the New York Times reported that Darren Dopp, the aide most connected with Troopergate, had told a grand jury Spitzer was deeply involved.Labels: 04-28-08, Archives |
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March 21 2008
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Friday, March 21, 2008
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#1 Lady Redskins First In Hearts Of CCS’ Fans
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
At the end of every game, Coach Mike Niles planned to hand out one of those Atomic Fireballs to the CCS Lady Redskin who had made the best play on the hardwood that evening.
Problem was, he couldn’t find any store that carried the red-hot candies.
That’s why the girls – some tearful, some bravely holding back – spent so long in the locker room at the Hudson Valley Community College gym in Troy after the March 15 Class C state semifinals, while fans waited outside to comfort them.
Six-foot-3 center Sam Fox had found a cache of Atomic Fireballs, and the coach was making good on his promise.
Fox and Jen Wehner, the 6-foot forward, each got a Fireball for their OT performances in the Class C regional against Tioga the Saturday before. Sam blocked a key Tioga shot with a resounding thwack. Jen scored the point that put the Lady Redskins over the top.
Guard Katie Cring got one for the 17 points she scored in the second half against Milford after “The Bigs” got into foul trouble.
Guard Jen Potrikus got one for the last-second, three-point “dagger” she put into Beaver River to win the Class C sectional crown that snowy March 1 at Onondaga County Community College.
Guard Ashley Rowley got one for the key 3-for-5 foul shots she made in the final minutes the week before over Little Falls, at that time considered the key obstacle to the girls going any further.
It went on and on.
Yes, it was quite a run for the Lady Redskins: 25 wins before that one loss to Haldane at HVCC; Haldane went on to beat Madrid-Waddington for the state Class C crown the following day.
And it was quite a first season for Mike Niles, who was drafted at the last minute to coach the team when long-time coach Frank Miosek decided not to continue.
“We found out pretty early,” the coach said, “a lot of teams were going to try to take Sam and Jen away.”
Cring was the Number 3 scorer, but “I really thought that the thing that would make us go was all the soccer players” – the Rowley sisters, Abbie Hull, Lindsay Valentine and Jenny Potrikus.
So that was the goal, to get speedy guards shooting and supplementing the Big Two. (It turned out later in the season they only had to hit the rim; Jen and Sam controlled the boards and would score off rebounds.)
It was the first quarter of the Davenport Tournament when “we got our legs under us,” Niles recounted the other day during an interview in his office at CCS. The Redskins were 19-2 at the end of the first quarter, and Jen and Sam had only scored a bucket apiece; 15 points came from the guards.
The girls overcame Waterville’s full-court press. Sherburne, another league power house, went down. They were on their way.
Through all this, Niles wasn’t alone. Wife Monica was at all the final games, along with son Ethan, 9, a third-grader at Oneonta’s Center Street School, and daughter Megan, who became something of a team mascot. Mom Fran came along too.
Niles is a Queens native who was raised on Long Island until fourth grade, when his family moved to Otego. He went to Unadilla Elementary School, then Unatego High School – “where I was a very average high school player” – and SUNY Cortland – “where I was a very average intramural player.”
After a couple of years at the Clark Sports Center and a long-term substitute gig in the CCS district, he started teaching at Unadilla Elementary and found himself coaching the boys varsity basketball team at Unatego. (One of his sisters, Kelli Hafele – they have two older half-sisters and a half-brother – coached varsity girls volleyball there.)
“It was a very steep learning curve,” Niles recalled, but he did take his team deep into the regionals in his third year. Fourteenth-seeded Unatego made it to the semis against higher-ranked teams.
Back at CCS, he coached modified and JV boys basketball before the girls JV opportunity arose.
Sure, it would have been nice to win that final game – more than 600 CCS fans, many in orange and black, rocked the rafters with their cheers – but it was clearly Haldane’s year. Even Wehner’s 18 points couldn’t blunt Haldane’s offensive from the outside that led to a 63-39 final.
Already, though, Coach Niles is looking to next year. Tuesday, March 18, after meeting with the whole team, he spent some time with just the juniors.
Sure, with Brittany Shields’ 21 points, many 3-pointers from the outside – no one had seen anything quite like Haldane’s Brittany this season – the outcome was inevitable.
But Madrid-Waddington and Avon, who rounded out the final four – they were beatable, Niles told the girls. “They looked like Sherburne,” he said. “They looked like Waterville.”
With the talent coming up – the two Rowleys, 6-foot Emily Davidson, Molly Pearlman, Lauren Harris, Natalie Wrubleski – there’s no reason “we can’t get deep into the sectionals.” The key, said Niles, is to take it one game at a time.
Meanwhile, there’s basketball to be played and enjoyed, and good basketball, the coach said.
Richfield Springs boys got into the sectionals, and Davenport, and CV-S girls.
Coming up, “a really good season for basketball in this section.” You heard it first from a guy who ought to know.
Weiller, Katz Elected Trustee
 By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
The old guard didn’t sweep. Nor did the young Turks.
Downtown merchant and paid-parking questioner Neil Weiller, representing the former, was the top vote-getter in the race for two open trustee seats in Cooperstown village elections Tuesday, March 18, with 311 votes, (249 on the Republican line and 62 as an independent.)
Incumbent Jeff Katz, representing the latter, came in 28 votes behind with 283 on the Democrat line. He is a former floor trader on the Chicago exchange, now a published baseball writer.
Third was Republican Doug Walker with 259. And newcomer Jim Vrooman, the second Democrat, had 202. Both men operate B&Bs, Walker after a long career as proprietor of downtown businesses. Vrooman moved here from New Hampshire two years ago.
"Lines of communications have opened," Weiller said the next morning. "And we need to keep them open and encourage it."
"The was an equal feeling in the village for change," said Katz, "as well as having an older established group as well."
Both men expressed the need to reach out to everyone.
Republican Mayor Carol B. Waller, who was running unopposed for a fourth term and garnered 375 votes, was already looking ahead the next afternoon, interviewed shortly after emerging from the final buget session of the trustees’ Finance Committee.
The 2008-09 budget became available for viewing Thursday, March 20, at the village clerk’s office.
For the first time in six years as mayor, Waller said, cuts were imposed on the fire department, the ambulance squad – six stretchers were ordered instead of eight – and the library, where the book budget was reduced.
An immediate challenge facing the new board, the mayor said, will be bonding for $2 million to upgrade infrastructure – water lines, sewerage, roads and sidewalks – in the Irish Hill section at the west end of Main Street.
Also in the past few days, Otsego County government informed the village its workers’ compensation costs will go up $82,000 – from $50,000 – next year, virtually erasing the $100,000 special allocation the county board has promised Cooperstown.
The 505 votes in Tuesday’s election – there are 1,200 voters in the village – was considered high, but was not a record.
Two of the six village trustees are elected to three-year terms every year. Next year, Democratic incumbents Grace Kull and Milo V. Stewart, Jr., are up for reelection.
Chamber Refocuses On The Bottom Line
Snowfest, ‘Men In Black’ Unprofitable, Go
COOPERSTOWN
The annual Snow Fest? Out. The “Men in Black” holiday fashion show? Out. Holly Dollars? Out.
The Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce board of directors has sent a letter to members saying that, from now on, Chamber-sponsored events don’t have to make money, but they have to run pretty close to break-even.
“Simply put,” stated the letter over President Marc Kingsley’s signature, “the Chamber will no longer sponsor events that:
“1. Cannot be supported by raising sponsorship and/or participation revenues equal to or greater than expenses – OR – 2. Do not have sufficient volunteer support to provide clear and significant benefits to the Chamber, its members, or the community at large.”
The letter spells out an approach that has become evident in the year since a significant changing of the Chamber guard.
On March 1, 2007, John Bullis, retired Herkimer County Community College dean, replaced nine-year Chamber executive Polly Renckens.
At about the same time, Rick Gibbons, owner of Riverwood, the Main Street gift store, completed his two-year term as president and, as called for in the bylaws, was succeeded by his vice president, Kingsley, proprietor of The Inn at Cooperstown.
Kingsley’s letter confirmed that, except for those two events and Holly Dollars, the commitment to 11 other programs continues, including the PumpkinFest, the Christmas Stroll and the Cooperstown Memorial Day Community Yard Sale.
Also preserved is the annual Chamber Golf Tournament, which Bullis has said is the Chamber’s only significant money-maker.
The letter was sent out Wednesday, March 12. In an interview the next day, Kingsley said he had only heard from one or two members and, “It’s been positive.”
The Chamber’s finances are not in dire straits, he said, but the organization has to show the same prudence as any business.
“We could be financially strapped,” he said. “And that’s not where we want to go with this.”
Parking Devices Ordered For Doubleday Field Lot
Pilot Project Experiments With New Revenue Source COOPERSTOWN
The meters are coming, the meters are coming!
Two $9,759 solar-powered Guardian Multi machines, $19,518 in all, are to be ordered after the village trustees Monday, March 15, approved the bid submitted by MacKay Meters of New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. The vote was 5-1, with Trustee Milo V. Stewart Jr. voting nay.
The trustees also passed a law that allows people who work downtown to buy a $10 permit to park in the lot now used by tour buses next to the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce. Tour buses will have to park in one of the three lots on the village periphery.
The hope was to have the so-called Pay & Display machines in place in the Doubleday Field parking lot by June 1, but Trustee Paul Kuhn, chairman of the Police Committee, said it may be too late for that.
If the P&Ds don’t arrive in time, the plan is to put out a cash box and operate on the honor system, Kuhn said, the way parking entrepreneur Vinnie Russo does in his lot fronting on Chestnut Street.
The P&D machines will require people who park in the Doubleday lot to buy time at a rate of $2 an hour, using either coins or cash, then put the receipt on the dash board to avoid getting a ticket.
The machines can be upgraded to accept credit cards too, but it was unclear – lacking village-wide WiFi service – if that could be done in Cooperstown. The trustees expressed the view that, if it can be done dependably, that service should be available from the outset.
The machines are 6-foot tall, 17-inches wide and 11.6 inches deep. The cash box can handle up to $700 in quarters.
There is a service contract that allows company technicians to advise people on the scene on repairs, if necessary.
Village Clerk Teri Barown said she’d talked to folks in Colorado Springs earlier in the day, where the machines have been in use for 18 months, and they’ve received “excellent service over the phone.”Labels: 03-21-08, Archives |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:52 AM |
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March 14 2008
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Friday, March 14, 2008
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Winning Tradition Ends, Winning Tradition Starts
Lady Redskins To Play In State Championship
By SARAH STEWART & JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
Ladies, go to your corners and come out swinging.
It’s a mixed metaphor, certainly, but this is it for the 2007-08 CCS Lady Redskins Basketball team, the Moment of Truth, the Big Tamale or, simply, the Class C State Final Four this weekend at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy. It’s the first time in school history the team has made it this far.
At 12:30 p.m. Saturday, March 15, the 25-0 undefeated CCS team will meet Haldane, a 20-4 powerhouse from Cold Spring, across the Hudson River from West Point. The winner of that game will play the winner of the other Saturday semi-final – Madrid-Waddington from St. Lawrence County or Avon, south of Rochester – at 1:45 p.m. Sunday.
The girls won a berth in the final tournament in a 39-37 overtime heart-stopper Saturday, March 8, at Cicero North Syracuse. Tioga tied with two foul shots with 20 seconds left in regulation time, 35-35. In the four-minute overtime, two baskets by 6-foot Jen Wehner put Cooperstown ahead; she had 17 points, 17 rebounds overall. The final action of the game was a clean block by 6-foot-3 Sam Fox. The resounding thwack echoed around the gym, and moments later the packed Cooperstown stands exploded with clapping, cheering, jumping fans.
On Monday afternoon, March 10, Coach Mike Niles and the team watched a game tape of Haldane beating East Rockaway on Friday, March 7, at St. John’s Community College, Long Island. Coach wanted the girls to study the Haldane players.
During the hour-long screening the girls chatted, laughed and talked about the upcoming weekend.
They also characterized the players of the Haldane team – scary, huge, slow – all the while counting shots and rebounds, blocks and three-point attempts, sizing up the competition and planning their foray to the Cheesecake Factory.
It was patently clear that these talented athletes are equally focused team members as they are giddy teenagers, thrilled by the prospective giant sleepover. Serious, some stoic even, then giggling, running on anticipation and adrenaline.
The hour went by quickly.
Coach summed it up. He talked about confidence and control vs. complacency.
They must gain some humility, keep this weekend in perspective and think only of going 2-0, forget 25-0. Just 2-0. He reminded this brilliant team that their season already was one for the record books, but if they buckle down, forget the press, keep their cool heads, they could go down in school history.
Coach went over the schedule, what they should expect after check-in, and, no, he didn’t know if the hotel has a pool. The Cheesecake Factory was a possibility, but no promises. The girls wanted to know if the rooms are attached and one girl hopes her roommates won’t mind that she takes really long showers. Yes, they are allowed to bring Guitar Hero. No, no hot tub. Lights out at eleven o’clock.
The team knows what it’s up against, Coach knows what he has to do. Team mates, friends, daughters, classmates, sisters, you’ve made it to the dance. Now, focus on your team, get some sleep and enjoy the ride. You will never forget this and neither will we.
HoF Game Fans Wait All Night In Downpour
 By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
It was a rainy Friday night, March 7, but a half-dozen folding chairs were already stacked by the iron fence on the Main Street side of Cooper Park.
Standing next to them, crouched under golf umbrellas, were hard-core Hall of Fame Game fans Bryan Coones of Richfield Springs and Dan Maglione of Wall, N.J.
Bryan was Number 5. Dan was Number 7.
Numbers 1 and 2 – Joe Tartaglia and his wife, Donna, of Milford, Mass. – had set up their folding chairs at 3:30 p.m. that afternoon.
As they have been the past three years, they wanted to be the first to buy tickets to what may be the most historic HoF Game of all – after 69 years, the final one.
The last in a tradition that dates back to 1940, the year after the Hall of Fame opened, is scheduled between the San Diego Padres and the Chicago Cubs for 1 p.m. Monday, June 16, at Doubleday Field.
Bryan and Dan took a photographer over to a nearby idling car, its windows all steamed up. The Tartaglias were inside, listening to the radio, taking a break while Coones and Maglione held their spaces.
Numbers 3 and 4 were the Tartaglias’ son, Brandon, and his wife Monica, of Mendon, Mass. Number 6 was Bryan’s son, also Brandon.
It rained hard all night long. The next morning, the waiting fans had been allowed all the way up to the front door of the HoF Library, to the west of the James Fenimore Cooper statue.
And there were the Tartaglias, Coones and Dan Maglione, cheerful as could be, despite spending all night outdoors.
And despite the fact that the Tartaglias and Coones are Red Sox fans; Maglione, a Yankees fan, and thus naturally should have fallen into warring camps.
By this time, the 400-fan queue stretched all the way out the front gate and east on Main Street past the Leatherstocking Corp. headquarters.
Kristian Connelly, the Cooperstown native who’s spearheaded savethefamegame.org from his home in Washington, D.C., was there with friends, getting signatures on a petition he hopes will break MLB Commissioner Bud Selig’s resolve to end the game once and for all.
HoF President Dale Petroskey is promising a muscular alternative, still to be announced.
For the historical record, let’s round out the Top 10 roster.
Number 8 that morning was Brad Annis, who had driven in from South Bend, Ind.; a Cubs fan, he didn’t want to miss the historic event.
Number 9 was John Nink, a Mets fan from Schenectady, and Number 10, Tim Eisanman, a Cubs fan from Rochester.
After 9, the queue was allowed out of the rain and into the Library, and it snaked through the Hall of Plaques to the ticket booths in the front lobby. Shortly before 10 a.m., HoF personnel put wristbands on the first 400 people in line, estimating only those would make it to the counter before the tickets were sold out.
And by 2 p.m., it happened: The HoF declared a sellout.
The rest of the 9,571 seats are reserved for HoF members.
On game day, the HoF Game parade will begin at noon. Bands will play. The teams will be transported to the field in trolleys.
At 1 p.m. is the Home Run Derby, featuring three contestants each from the Cubs and the Padres. After the game, kids under 12 will be invited to run the bases.
By the way, the Tartaglias were first in line, but the first two tickets to the last game were actually sold to the Coones’ father and son, who made up their minds more quickly at the second ticket booth.
Seven $1/2 Million Homes Proposed Between Chestnut, Pine
COOPERSTOWN
Now, there’s an abandoned auto agency, an “exceedingly narrow” village right of way and a scrubby copse of trees between Chestnut Street and Pine Boulevard, an otherwise manicured village neighborhood.
In the future, all that may be replaced by seven stand-alone homes, examples of the “New Urbanism” movement pioneered by Duany Plater-Zyberk, the innovative urban planning firm. The 2-3 bedroom homes would have 1,800-1,900 square feet of space, on 5,000-square-foot lots.
Except for a few setback adjustments, the homes are permitted in the area’s R-2 zoning, Ned Walker, a site planner for JGB Properties, Richfield Springs, told the village Planning Board Tuesday, March 11.
Walker was accompanied by JGB director Marty Dowd, director of construction Dan Regan, and Cooperstown architect Susan Snell.
Snell showed plans of what the homes would look like, with high gables and fish-scale shingling on the side. Each would have a garage, but it would be set back again st the side of the homes, so as not to a dominant part of the view.
The plan depends on the demolition of the former car dealership, Smith Ford Cooperstown’s original building when it opened for business locally in 1957. Since Smith Ford moved to a new location on Route 28 south, the building has been a museum and, most recently, an A.G. Edwards & Son brokerage. It has been vacant for several years.
Walker told the board JGB’s plans would require the demolition of a building and a house on the property, and Planning Board acting chairman Charles Hill advised him a six-month moratorium on demolitions is in place until mid-summer while new regulations government razings in the village are developed.
“We’re not in the big hurry,” Walker replied. “We see this as an opportunity to do something rather unique.”
New Urbanism is defined as “Giving people many choices for living in sustainable, convenient and enjoyable places, while providing the solutions to global warming, climate change, and peak oil.”
Also at the meeting, the Planning Board accepted additional data from developer Joe Galati, who has offered a variety of plans – housing, a motel, a nursing home – in the railroad right of way between Grove and Chestnut streets. It also passed a resolution asking the village board to consider rezoning that commercial zone as a CDD – a coordinated development district – regardless of whether or not Galati’s plans are found satisfactory or not.Labels: 03-14-08, Archives |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:51 AM |
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March 7 2008
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Friday, March 7, 2008
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CCS Girls Overcome Superstitions To Win For First-Year Coach Niles
By SARAH STEWART
COOPERSTOWN
This is Coach Mike Niles’ first year with the CCS girl’s varsity squad and the Lady Redskins are having one heck of a year.
When the position came up last spring, after Frank Miosek stepped down, Coach Niles was asked but said no. He was happy coaching the boy’s JV basketball team and the girl’s JV soccer team.
Athletic Director Mike Cring, girl’s JV basketball coach, asked him again. Cring told Niles that it was fine if he said no but that Cring would be back the next day to ask him again. Niles said he’d have to talk to his wife, sure she would say no. She said yes.
Now, Coach Niles says, he wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Here’s the funny thing. Coach Niles is a superstitious guy. So superstitious that he would only speak of those superstitions that had been proven to have no effect, shot down, so to speak, like his rule of never re-tying his tie.
If his tie is off-kilter, a little long or a little short, he lives with it, otherwise the team would lose. He couldn’t risk the game for a fashion faux pas. Once, he did have to re-tie and all was well, but the team bought him a clip-on just in case.
Coach packs his game clothes ahead of time, he doesn’t go home before games, and if he deviated from the selection the game would end in a loss. He was forced to change once; no repercussions. The girls bought him a stain-stick anyway, to ease his mind.
And here’s the big one: Coach Niles made 30 copies of the stats sheets at the beginning of the season. That’s one for every possible game that they could play, up to and including these finals.
There is no arrogance in this. Coach says he “didn’t want to go this far and not be prepared.” As you can imagine, the worst possible thing did happen at the worst possible time.
At the Beaver River game, the sectional final, he discovered that the clipboard with the sheets was left behind, lost. He had no fresh stats sheet, his superstitious mind told him “no stats sheet, we can’t even go out there, what’s the point?”
Well, of course, the girls went out with a used sheet, freshly erased, and beat Beaver River, 55-42, in the Section 3 finals Saturday, March 1, at Onondaga Community College, after only two days of rest. The third superstition shot down.
We all have our idiosyncrasies and Coach Niles shares his, if not willingly, with a sense of humor and a quiet demeanor that belies his intensity. All of this is fun and he laughs at himself because he knows he thinks long and hard about his team, his program and how to make it the best it can be.
The younger players are introduced to the varsity players. They will know who Jen Wehner and Lindsay Valentine are.
They will remember the stars of this team and every team to come so that they have a real person to look up to, to emulate.
The older players are involved in camps for the younger players. That way, when Sam Fox says to a young girl, “good job,” it means something. Coach Niles calls these “physical dividends,” real things kids can relate to.
Coach Niles describes this team as real “cool cats.” They are relaxed and confident and treat each other well. He is a self-effacing, quiet man and is sometimes at their mercy. Before he could speak to the team prior to the Little Falls game, he had to wait until they had finished their dance party in the locker room, replete with sound system. It was OK. This team has all the moves.
One last thing, if you go to the game, and you should go, notice that Coach Niles does not take a seat on the bench. He does not hang his coat on a chair. Superstition, maybe, more than likely he is just making sure that there is room for everyone else. He seems to be built that way.
Hartwick Reassessment Hits Dreams Park Hard
By JIM KEVLIN
HARTWICK
An “impact statement” is en route to Dreams Park, telling owner Lou Presutti III the assessment on his Hartwick Seminary youth-baseball-tournament venue will go up more than five times.
Given that valuations are only tripling townwide in the just-completed Town of Hartwick reassessment, the first in two decades, Presutti could see his property tax bill almost double.
The land and buildings that comprise Dreams Park – 10 parcels – had been assessed at $3,229,546. The new valuation is $16,917,700.
Last year’s tax rate was $9 per thousand, meaning Dreams Park – if all its economic-development exemptions had expired – would have paid about $29,000 in town taxes.
The overall tripling of valuations would reduce that rate to $3. Applied to the new value, however, Dreams Park could expect to pay more than $50,000.
The facility pays a similar bill to the county.
The new Hartwick values were only posted on county Real Property Tax Services Web site at 2 a.m. Wednesday, March 5, so an in-depth analysis was hard to come by immediately.
The town’s new assessor, Matt Lippitt, failed to return phone calls.
George Cade, Cherry Valley, whose firm, Cade Appraisals, did the reassessment, was reluctant to say too much before individual property owners are notified of the outcomes.
He said he planned to send out one third of the impact statements Thursday, March 6, a third on Friday, and the final third on Monday, March 10.
However, he said the impact on, not just Dreams Park, but the whole Route 28 corridor – it has seen major commercial development in the past two decades – will be “big.”
If property owners have questions about their new assessments, they should call the assessor’s office at 293-8320. Informal reviews are planned the weeks of March 10 and of March 17. Grievance Day will be Tuesday, May 27.
Seward To Create HoF Game Panel
COOPERSTOWN
State Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, has announced he plans to create a panel to develop muscular alternatives to the Hall of Fame Game that Major League Baseball is cancelling after this year.
“I’ve just heard from MLB Commissioner Bud Selig that the plan to cancel the annual Hall of Fame game is irrevocable. I’m very disappointed, but we won’t lie down and quit,” said Seward.
The panel will include Mayor Carol B. Waller, County Board Chairman Jim Powers, and representatives of the HoF and tourist industry, he said. Letters of invitation will go out in the next week.
“We’ve got to start planning how we can turn around a tough break and make sure we have a significant annual baseball event that continues to be a tourist destination, builds on our baseball history, and is an economic asset for our area,” Seward said.
After the news of the cancellation broke, the Otsego County senator wrote President George W. Bush, who he had hosted locally in 1987 and 1999, asking him to intervene.
2 Weeks To Village Elections, Trustee Candidates Focus Messages
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
It’s shaping up as old vs. new, although the four candidates for two village trustee vacancies in the Tuesday, March 18, elections are decrying that development.
Of the Republicans, Doug Walker is a native who has lived here most of his life, and Neil Weiller has lived here full time for 17 years, summered here 10 years before that, and has historic family ties.
Of the Democrats, incumbent trustee Jeff Katz, a downstate native, moved his family to town from Chicago five years ago; Jim Vrooman, inspired by the “Bob Newhart Show,” moved his family here three years ago and bought a B&B.
With the village elections less than a dozen days away, the four were honing their messages, devising strategies for the final push, and preparing for the one Meet the Candidates’ Night of the campaign – at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 6, at 22 Main, sponsored by the League of Women Voters.
In interviews in the past several days, all four expressed more–or–less wait–and–see attitudes toward paid parking. A pilot project, using two pay–and–display machines, will be rolled out in the Doubleday Field parking lot this summer.
All of them expressed optimism about the county Board of Representatives changing tone toward Cooperstown: That the baseball mecca that generates the lion’s share of county sales tax revenues needs help with the burden created by 400,000 annual visitors.
Each, however, had different emphases.
Walker, a former downtown merchant who operates the 2 Chestnut B&B, said long–time residents feel frozen out. “Thank goodness we’re going to have a voice again,” he said people are telling him.
Weiller, Muskrat Hill proprietor and a trained accountant, is intrigued by how to build community consensus, and has been researching master plans back to the 1960s. He sees Cooperstown’s potential as “America’s First 21st Century Village, where we honor our traditions and bring them forward.”
Katz, a stock trader on the floor of the Chicago Exchange, now a published baseball writer, emphasized if the village trustees can determine the correct policies and follow them with consistency, problems will be solved. “It’s important not to make decisions based on personal matters,” he said.
Vrooman, who spent 18 years as a manager in the printing industry in New England, said things should be structured to make tourists contributors to local solutions; if that can be accomplished, perhaps the arrival of tourists won’t be as widely decried. His goal: creation of “a viable economic community.”
In a related development, Weiller reported he has created the “Cooperstown United Party,” emphasizing national parties are irrelevant to much that happens locally. His name will appear on the ballot on two lines.Labels: 03-07-08, Archives |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:48 AM |
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February 28 2008
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Thursday, February 28, 2008
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NY Report Opens Window
To Wind, Turbine Foe Says
CHERRY VALLEY
Revolts against wind power, from Cherry Valley to Cohocton, seem to have had no impact whatsoever on the blue-ribbon panel that developed recommendations for New York State’s energy future.
If anything, Lt. Gov. David Paterson’s Renewable Energy Task Force report may actually pave the way for Albany to overrule “home rule” limitations on turbines in the interest of expediting wind-farm developments.
“Facilitate permitting” is one of the goals in the Wind Power Development section of the Paterson panel’s report, released Monday, Feb. 25.
“State agencies must strive to minimize, to the extent possible, the regulatory risk that affects the pace, scope and scale of wind-energy development by enunciating long-term goals and eliminating regulatory impediments,” that section reads.
It exhorts state agencies to ensure they “reinforce the goal of economic and environmentally sound wind-energy development.”
It encourages the re-adoption of Article X, which expired in 2003; that state law takes decisions on power-plant siting away from localities, putting it in the hands of the state. And it urges that wind farms be covered in the revised Article X.
“They keep paying homage to local control, but the suggestion is this local input is going to be advisory,” said Andy Minnig, one of the leaders of the Advocates for Cherry Valley, which, through encouraging adoption of local regulations, becalmed Reunion Power’s 24-turbine project on the town’s East Hill.
“That scares the hell out of me,” he said. “They can say: We listened closely to you guys, but you’re wrong.”
Wind power has remained an article of faith with such organizations as the Natural Resources Defense Council, but Minnig laid that to “the depth of ignorance” about the unrealistic expectations for wind and the impacts when 400-foot-tall turbines are erected in populated areas.
In an interview, Minnig kept referring back to “the simple arithmetic” that shows wind power doesn’t add up.
The Maple Ridge Wind Farm on Tug Hill, for instance, has 191 turbines on 21,000 acres and a “maximum exploitation of site” of 300 megawatts, Minnig said. That is, the wind would have to blow constantly at the optimum rate to achieve that output.
Wind-power advocates such as Carol Murphy of Alliance for Clean Energy New York, who served on Paterson’s panel, are pushing for 7,000 megawatts of wind energy, which would require a half-million optimum acres like Tug Hill. (A half-million acres is about 800 square miles; Otsego County totals 1,000 square miles.)
“Most sites upstate are not like that,” said Minnig. Tug Hill is a flat plateau, turbines can be spaced regularly. On ridges like East Hill, those efficiencies aren’t possible, he said.
While the panel includes people like Murphy, it also includes people like Paul Tonko, the new head of the NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research Development Agency. While an assemblyman, Tonko was caught in the middle of a wind-farm debate near Gloversville, part of his Schenectady-based district.
“I think that legislators are far more aware of the subtleties in the argument then they sometimes let on,” said Minnig. “The outcome may be determined by the amount of arm-twisting the governor can exercise.”
Governor Spitzer got a little more arm-twisting power this week when Assemblyman Darrell Aubertine, D-Cape Vincent, narrowly defeated Assemblyman Will Barclay, R-Pulaski, in a special election, splitting the state Senate 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats for the first time in decades.
Aubertine at one point was considering putting 50-100 turbines on his farm on the St. Lawrence River.
In Warring Iraq Neighborhood,
Capozza Says He Saw Progress
COOPERSTOWN
First Lt. Dan Capozza has two photos.
One shows the “fault line” – a commercial street in Rusafa, the Baghdad neighborhood he and his platoon patrolled – deserted, all the stores closed, buildings on either side pockmarked with bullet holes.
The other, taken 10 months later, shows a block party, American flags, Iraqi flags flying, the neighbors celebrating.
The contrast “blew my mind,” said Capozza, Delta Company, First Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, of the famed 82nd Airborne Division.
The son of Frank and Ann Capozza returned to his hometown – and a waiting plate of his mother’s spaghetti – at 2 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 26., from a year-long deployment in Iraq.
Dan’s sister, Capt. Allison (Capozza) Flannigan, is still in Iraq and will be for another year, serving with the 626th Brigade Support Battalion at Baghdad International Airport.
When Dan addressed the Cooperstown Rotary Club later that day, he said he couldn’t speak for the whole Iraq Theater, but he reported he did see substantial progress in the Baghdad hotspot he and his men were responsible for.
Dan, a CCS 2001 grad and Troop 1254 Eagle Scout, trained at West Point, was among the first troops sent to Iraq in early 2007, part of Gen. David Petraeus’ celebrated Surge.
He was assigned to a neighborhood between the volatile Baghdad slum, Sadr City, and the “Green Zone,” the U.S. military and diplomatic headquarters.
The area featured the city’s one pocket of Sunnis, “heavily armed,” in a sea of Shiites, and gunfire regularly punctuated the ambience – “Hatfield and McCoy style” – each side claiming the other shot first.
None of Capozza’s men were killed during the deployment, although five were injured, two seriously enough to be discharged for medical reasons.
Still, at one point the Sunnis fired on the Americans, with “a very large firefight resulting.” That gave Capozza’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Carl Alex – “a genius,” in his subordinate’s view – an opening.
Colonel Alex approached the Sunni leaders: “It was pretty bad for us. It was probably worse for you. You probably don’t want to do that again.
“From that point on,” said the first lieutenant, “violence in our area dropped down to about nothing.”
Colonel Alex, in a model that has been duplicated elsewhere since, convinced the Sunnis to disarm in exchange for the protection of U.S. troops, then was able to convince the surrounding Shiites to do the same.
“With the help of their local leaders” – Sunnis, who has been protecting the ethnic Sunni al Queda – “we were able to hunt down and drive out most of the al Queda in the area,” said the soldier.
In Capozza’s view, 90 percent of Iraqis are glad the Americans are in place – not because there aren’t better options, but there are no better options right now. Another 9 percent want the Americans out.
“The other 1 percent is the guys you hear about on the news,” he said.
In the months that followed the easing of tensions, Capozza’s unit was involved in developing – “we spent millions of dollars” – al Fadhil, a community park, alongside the Tigris River.
Walled, it included streets, shops, restaurants, beaches, and a small post for the Iraqi army. Everyone was searched going in; but “once you were in you were safe” to fish, picnic, or just relax with the family.
“That we were able to give them that meant a lot to the community,” said Dan. “And it meant a lot to us.”
In the next few days, he will be removing the celebrated 82nd Airborne’s awards from his tunic; on his next assignment, he will be an infantry instructor at Fort Benning.
‘Legends of Baseball’ Calls Foul
COOPERSTOWN
An outspoken critic of plans to raise Doubleday Field rental from $400 to $1,000 won that battle, but may have lost the war.
Tom Lach, president of Legends of Baseball, Columbus, Ohio, has organized amateur baseball tournaments in Cooperstown for the past 15 years.
The other day, he opened an envelope from the Village of Cooperstown to discover he has been cut back from 55 games a season to 35, a 36-percent reduction.
Lach, calling from Columbus, said he believes he is being punished for being outspoken, blaming Trustee Jeff Katz, Doubleday Field committee chairman, by name.
After Lach and others attended several village meetings, the rent was only raised from $400 to $600 per game.
But village officials were quick to deny any targeting.
“He’s not any more out of luck than anyone else,” said Katz. “He was not singled out any more than anyone else.”
Every year, he said, requests to rent Doubleday Field are processed first come, first serve.
Trustee Paul Kuhn, another member of the committee, echoed Katz.
In the past, Deputy Village Clerk Deanna Ashurst has handled those requests, but Village Clerk Teri Barown did it this year for the first time.
“The scheduling is done the way it’s done every year,” said Barown. “We take them in the order them come into the office.”
In the past, said Lach, he has submitted three separate applications, since he brings tournaments to town on three separate weeks.
This year, he said, he was told to submit one application and to rank the dates in order of his preference, first, second and third.
That may have caused his rankings to drop. But he may be out of luck.
“We don’t have any policies on appeals,” Katz said.
Due To Charitable Outpouring,
Food Bank Now Needs Drivers
The community has responded to the Cooperstown Food Bank’s dire shortages, and that’s created a new challenge: How to get the food here from Oneonta.
The most recent 18-wheeler brought 4.5 tons to Southside Mall, “the largest ever” shipment, said Fred St. John, food bank volunteer.
It took six pickups to bring the 400 cartons the 22 miles to the food bank at First Presbyterian Church, Pioneer and Church. Enough food is coming in to supply 150 families a month, a record.
The challenge now, St. John said, is to find enough volunteer drivers to man that vehicular caravan. To volunteer, call Ellen St. John at 547-9653 or Audrey Murray at 547-8089.
Each volunteer is asked for one two-hour shift a week. Due to the shortage, volunteers are working two and three shifts.
Labels: 02-28-08, Archives |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:47 AM |
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February 22 2008
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Friday, February 22, 2008
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Stoneware In Cooperstown Estate
Brings Record $58,300 At Auction
OTEGO
It was nearly hidden away in the back of a corner cupboard on Cooperstown’s Chestnut Street, almost out of sight.
But discovered, the 19th-century stoneware cooler belonging to the late Margaret (Jane) Merrick, former manager of The Otesaga, sold for a record $58,300 Saturday, Feb. 16, at the Hesse Galleries here.
The cooler, embossed in dark blue with an American eagle and 13 stars, was imperfect, but that didn’t dampen the ardor of eight bidders, five who were competing over the telephone.
When the hammer finally went down – following a phone bid from Richmond, Va. – “the audience burst into applause, having witnessed an exciting moment in auction history,” according to Jackie Hesse, auction house owner.Mrs. Merrick met her husband, Skip, in 1931, when he was manager of the Nittany Lion Inn, State College, Pa., and the two co-managed Treadway Inns across the country.
During World War II, while her husband was in the Armed Forces, she managed The Otesaga and Cooper Inn single-handedly until he could rejoin her. Age 98, she died last May 11.
Hesse Galleries has another Cooperstown estate – Dorothy (Campbell) VanLeuven’s – coming up for auction on March 15 and 27.
Also at the Merrick auction, a country cupboard brought $2,530 an Oriental rug, $3,300; a Sheraton card table with eagle inlay, $2,860; and a signed Emile Galle art glass decanter, $1,210.
Hesse said the Merricks collected antiques during extensive travels on the East Coast, New England in particular.
280 Polar Bear Plungers Raise Record $56,000 To Help Kids
 By JIM KEVLIN
GOODYEAR LAKE
The 13th annual Goodyear Lake Polar Bear Jump was over, and daughter Dana Waters – with cousin Jennifer Dutcher – decided to play a little joke on her parents.
“They told us we didn’t break last year’s record,” said Jamie Waters, Dana’s dad, who with his wife Brenda have been tending the annual icy plunge since the beginning.
The Waters couldn’t believe it. What a blow.
By this time, the afternoon of Saturday, Feb. 16, they were exhausted, even though they still had the post-plunge party ahead of them at the Tally-Ho Restaurant in West Davenport.
Emotionally drained after a day where a record 312 signed up to jump through a hole in the ice – and a record 280 didn’t chicken out – Brenda and Jamie looked at each other.
Then, they began to tear up.
Dana and Jennifer realized they’d gone too far.
Just kidding, they declared. Then the two of them and April Koren, the official tallier from NBT Bank’s Cooperstown office, told them a record $56,000 had been raised, $24,000 more than the year before.
The $56,000 was almost half of the $114,000 the event had raised since the Waters had begun collecting funds for ailing children a dozen years before.
“This is making me choke up,” Jamie said a few days later in recalling the moment.
It’s hard not to get emotional when you learn about the children the effort helps.
This year, for instance, the money will repair 6-month-old Isaac Cotten of Milford’s cleft lip. The baby also has a congenital heart defect.
Christian Michele Pagillo, 15 months, of Morris, will get some relief from his cerebral palsy.Another beneficiary, Grace Utter, 6, of Cherry Valley, was able to make it to the event – although not for long – even though she had just returned from thrice-weekly kidney dialysis at Albany Medical Center the day before.
Grace got to see her dad Matt and her older sister, Kaitlyn Graham, 21, take the plunge.
Matt said Grace was fine until she was 3, when her kidneys began to deteriorate.
At some point, the idea is to get the girl kidney transplants. Matt and wife Jodi will be meeting with a nephrology team at Boston Children’s Hospital in March.
For now, though, dialysis is the only option.
Last year, 171 people jumped. This year, the number of registrants at www.pbjump.com/ kept climbing. Jamie and Brenda watched. 230. 240. The night before the jump, it passed 300.
While there were a lot of new participants, many of the old stalwarts were back, too. One veteran, Ed Gwilt of Cooperstown, raised the most in pledges, $2,876. Doris Sherman of Guilford, at $2,300, wasn’t far behind.
But there were new participants, too, including sponsors.
Royal Chrysler, Oneonta, underwrote a TV advertising campaign.
Because of the large crowd, the event was moved from the west side of the lake – near the boat launch across from the Colliersville Taylor’s Mini-Mart – to the east side.
There’s a big field up there, and Herb Krol let the organizers use it for free. And Royal Chrysler again came forward, providing shuttle vans to get people from the parking lot to the event.
Very Few In Arms At Reval
COOPERSTOWN
Owners of only 2.7 percent of the 1,056 properties revalued in the Village of Cooperstown’s first comprehensive reassessment in two decades have raised any objections about the results.
“If people think they are fairly assessed, there’s no reason to grieve,” remarked Steve Child, Otsego County director of real property, the morning after Grievance Day, Tuesday, Feb. 19, when only 18 people showed up before the village trustees to challenge the outcomes. Still, he said, you would expect perhaps a 10 percent appeals rate in a standard assessment.
Village Clerk Teri Barown was more specific: “I think it’s a vote of confidence in Al.”
Al is Al Keck, the zoning enforcement officer who, intrigued, assumed the re-sponsibility for inspecting and valuing all buildings and land within the village limits, both on the Town of Middlefield side, east of the Susquehanna, and the Town of Otsego side.
Overall, Keck has said, land on the shores of Otsego Lake went up most – as much as six times – and two-family and commercial property dropped relative to everything else. Tax-exempt property, while still extensive, went down as a proportion of the whole.
Still, the 18 people who grieved to the village board – it sits once a year as an assessment board of appeals – fell into a range of categories.
Ed Smith, whose home is at the bottom of Pioneer Street, pointed out that his lake frontage was assessed at 50 percent more per square foot than some other lakefront properties. Plus, he said, there is often nighttime rowdiness in nearby Lake Front Park..
Dan Hage, who tore down 80 percent of that yellow ranch on Pioneer Street for less than $300,000, replacing it with modern construction, said he wouldn’t be able to sell his home for the $700,000+ for which it is assessed; he argued 80 percent of the original value should be knocked off.
After buying his Pioneer Street home, Dr. Herb Marx said, his neighbor painted the adjacent home multiple Disneyland-like colors and added a two-car, two-story garage that looms over his backyard, reducing his property’s value.
And Claire Satriano said the fact her Beaver Street home, near Susquehanna Avenue, is adjacent to that ramshackled property – one of only two or three in the village – and that should be taken into account in her assessment.
Keck generally held his ground, and the trustees didn’t make any decisions that night anyhow.
The assessor said later he learned a couple of lessons from his months of detail-oriented work, and will make two recommendations to the village trustees.
One, there is too much unused or underused commercial space downtown, which could be converted to housing for young families or older people who wanted to move out of bigger homes. Plus, it’s lost assessment and, thus, lost revenue.
Two, only two senior citizens qualify for the 50 percent property-tax reduction because the income limit is $14,000. That should be raised, Keck said, to $20,000 or perhaps more.
....
On the shores of the deep blue Glimmerglass, Paula Wycoff is considering going green.
Owner and captain of the Glimmerglass Queen, she plans to refit the tour boat to run on soy-bean oil this summer, not the odorous deisel it has run on until now.
Owner of the Lakefront Motel at the end of Fair Street, she hopes to get permission from the village Planning Board to erect a 10-foot-tall wind turbine to provide 10 percent of her establishment’s electrical needs.
She has identified a vendor, ODAC Wind of California. The turbine, she said, which would not have propellers, but vertical elements with the 8-foot wide structure, would cost $69,000.
“This company is an alternative to the big boys with the big windmills,” she said. “There is no sound,” she added.
Wyckoff appeared before the Planning Board Tuesday, Feb. 12, to give a preliminary briefing. She will be returning with a more formal application.
If all goes well, she said, the village might consider doing something similar. Fairy Spring Park, she noted, might be an ideal site for one or two of these relatively unobtrusive turbines.
The businesswoman said she is motivated in both these ventures by an urge to do something to help the environment, not by profit.
The turbine will produce 26,000 Kw of electricity, she said; but her motel and restaurant complex uses 230,000 Kw a season.
Diesel oil is going for $2.99 a gallon right now; soy-bean oil, $4.80.Labels: 02-22-08, Archives |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:44 AM |
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February 8 2008
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Friday, February 8, 2008
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Schumer Leads Charge To Preserve HoF Game
U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer provided the spark, and resistance to Major League Baseball’s decision to end the seven-decade-old Hall of Fame Game caught fire.
"In this era of mega-million dollar payrolls and unaffordable luxury boxes, there is a unique value in playing a simple game of ball in a quaint setting like Doubleday Field," Schumer had written MLB Commissioner Bud Selig after the decision became public.
"Simply put," the state’s senior senator continued, "Major League Baseball needs to be a living part of Cooperstown, not merely an enshrinement of its rich past."
The latest manifestation came Wednesday, Feb. 6, when the Otsego County Board of Representatives authorized its chairman, Jim Powers, to write its own letter to Selig objecting to the decision.
"The real reason – in addition to the economic impact – is the tradition. We hate to lose the tradition," said county Rep. Jim Johson, R-Otsego, who introduced the issue at the end of the board’s monthly meeting.
Initially, local reaction was subdued, but numerous newspapers outside Otsego County quickly decried Selig’s decision.
"It’s a hassle to get to Cooperstown. And there’s not enough money to be 1
made there," the Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, editorialized. "But it’s no hassle to send two MLB teams to play in China this year. There’s no talk of complexities or inherent challenges or suitable dates.
"But there is a whiff of money to be made."
Said the Auburn Citizen, "Cooperstown will take an economic hit, as the contest always sold out and brought thousands to the village."
The varied responses prompted The Freeman’s Journal to create an Internet petition on www.ipetitions.com mid-afternoon Friday, Feb. 1, and by the end of the workday more than 100 people had already signed it electronically, asking Selig to change his mind. By Wednesday, Feb. 6, 253 people had signed, and 147 had left comments.
"In today’s world of sporting events, where the average ‘Fan Cost Index’ has topped more than $200 to attend many major league games, the preservation of the Cooperstown Hall of Fame Game is more important to the fan base than ever," wrote Kenneth R. Deans Jr.
"As Teyve said in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ Tradition. Traditions need to be observed, especially when it comes to one such as this," said Bruce P. Frassinelli of Oswego.
"What is MLB thinking?" asked Dr. Sasha Matson of Cooperstown. "You would think they have been getting enough bad press recently! This misguided action is a disgrace, and an insult to history and to the game of Baseball itself. "
"Now is the time to preserve the best, to shine over the present storm weathered by America’s National Pastime," commented Alex and Barbara Shields of Richfield Springs.
Soon, Kristian Connolly, CCS ‘95, who has worked for the Minnesota Twins and MLB.com, launched www.savethefamegame.com, urging visitors to e-mail MLB President & COO Bob Dupuy and MLB Players Association head Don Fehr, as well as Petroskey, to save the game.
Fan pressure can help change the decision, said Connolly, whose parents, Michael and Kathleen, still live within a couple of blocks of the Hall.
"Commissioner Selig has always been very aware of and concerned with his own legacy as guardian of the game," said Connolly, and might very well view the Hall of Fame Game’s demise "as a true black mark on his legacy in the minds of fans and lovers of the sport.
"I’m hopeful that the commissioner’s sense of what’s right as far as the best interest of baseball and its fans will ultimately be challenged and changed by the showing this campaign generates."
To a merchant, baseball retailers in downtown Cooperstown agreed to keep copies of the petition by their cash registers and encourage shoppers to sign it.
"It takes a great weekend away from us," said Artie Ausfeld of A&E Sports.
"It’s good. It’s very good for us," Jeff Foster, Legends Are Forever owner, said of the game. The influx of cash in May after the lean months allowed merchants to pre-pay for summer inventory in cash, he said.
"It’s just a terrific weekend for us," echoed Barry Renert, manager of Seventh Inning Stretch. "There’s no question about it."
70 Warned: Clear Your Icy Sidewalks – Or Else
COOPERSTOWN
After ice-storms over the weekend of Feb. 1-3 turned Cooperstown sidewalks into ice rinks, the village Public Works Department issued 70 warnings to homeowners and renters: Clear your walks!
Village law requires people to do so within 24 hours of the end of a storm, and Public Works Superintendent Brian Clancy said, so far this winter – with perhaps a dozen storms behind us – he’d only issued 18 warnings total.
Clancy warned people on Tuesday, Feb. 5. The next morning, he went back and checked, and only a half-dozen of the errant shovelers hadn’t responded.
The village crews then cleared those sidewalks Wednesday, Feb. 6, and – as empowered by local ordinance – those who didn’t shovel will be charged based on manpower costs, a minimum of one hour, the superintendent said.
He estimated the bills will come out to about $45.
Medallion Hunt Confounds Many
COOPERSTOWN
Call it Winter Festival Fever.
Untold dozens of local folks have been scouring the Village of Cooperstown’s public lands for the past three weeks, looking for "The Medallion," to no avail.
"There were even some high school seniors dressed as pirates looking for it the other day," said Donna Borgstrom, co-chairman of this year’s Winter Carnival, which begins Friday, Feb. 8 and runs through Sunday, Feb. 10.
The carnival features dancing and revelry at various venues the first two evenings, snow-sculpting on Main Street Saturday afternoon, the coronation of a Pirate king and queen, a parade, a 5K and 10K run, and much, much more.
Last year, the first clue was all the Hanson family needed to find the medallion at Three Mile Point Park. This year, so far nothing.
In greater numbers, medallion hunters have been showing up at The Freeman’s Journal offices at 21 Railroad Ave. first thing Thursday afternoon to try to get a jump on the competition.
The clue contained in this newspaper (see Page 12) is supposed to be specific enough to give the game away.
"People have been really hunting," said Donna, who brought the idea from St. Paul, Minn., where a similar hunt is a highlight of that city’s Winter Carnival, the nation’s oldest and largest such event.
"People have been really hunting for the medallion," said Borgstrom. "I understand people were digging at Fairy Spring Park – digging in the ground, (which they aren’t supposed to.)"
In any event, the carnival is off to a good start.
One worry. "Pray for snow," Donna said Wednesday afternoon. And that evening it appeared as if even that wish were coming true.
Bloody Sock, Asterisk, Now – The Grapefruit?
The day Sammy Sosa autographed Charlie Vascellaro’s grapefruit in Arizona last March, one of the first people Charlie called was Andrew Vilacky.
“What do I do?” he asked Vilacky, who owns Safe At Home Ball Park Collectibles, 91 Main St., Cooperstown.
“Eat it,” came the reply.
Which brings us to today. Go down to Safe At Home and you’ll see the grapefruit in one of the locked cases Andrew reserves for only his most valuable artifacts.
But we’re getting ahead of the story.
Charlie, the freelance sportswriter from Baltimore by way of Arizona and Long Island – he lives in Cooperstown summers – is out in Mayville, Ariz., for the Milwaukee Brewers spring training.
The Brewers are playing the Texas Rangers, and Charlie and a pal decide to take a seventh-inning stroll around the ballpark’s perimeter.
Sammy Sosa was having a try-out with the Rangers, and in the right-field corner is a young Spanish speaking lad, 11, with a ball he’d been given by Sammy at age 6.
He’s dying to get Sosa’s autograph on that ball, and Charlie coaches him in “aggressive politeness.”
Sammy walks into the kid’s vicinity. The boy follows Charlie’s advice, and Sosa signs the ball.
“The kid’s just glowing,” and Charlie’s feeling pretty good too.
And, against all odds, he just happens to have a grapefruit with him he’d picked off a tree some days before and had been rolling around in the back of his car.
“I stuck the grapefruit through the fence,” said Charlie. “When he saw the kid, he went right for him. Just like that, he came right for me.”
Sosa “spent a lot of time rolling it around in his hands, trying to figure out what to do. Then he signed it real nice. He even put a little number 21 on top. He was still laughing about it five minutes afterwards.”
That night, Charlie was having a beer at a bar in Tempe with a couple of sportswriters, when Mike Welton of the Mesa Tribune says, “a taxidermist. You’ve got to call a taxidermist.”
The next morning, he Googles taxidermists, but is told, “No, no. It needs to be freeze-dried.”
Charlie, who is also a travel writer, was being put up at the swank Hotel Valley Ho in Scottsdale, and when the very attentive concierge calls to find out how he’s doing, he raises the question.
“She appreciated the challenge,” Charlie recalls.
Within half an hour, she had connected him with Floral Keepsakes, an enterprise that advertises it “has specialized in floral preservation since 1988.”
It was only $30, a bargain. But Floral Keepsakes has to batch a number of jobs in a casket-like freeze-drier, so Charlie had to leave it there when he came back east at the end of March.
“They showed me ‘display case options,’” he said. “I picked out the case that you see.”
All went well, and the grapefruit showed up in the mail in Baltimore in June.
And so the story comes full circle. Charlie arrives in town Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 6, with the dried grapefruit and, frankly, it looks pretty good. Nice and yellow. Sosa’s Sharpie markings are clear and sharp.
The plan? To sell the grapefruit. The price? $3,000. That’s some piece of fruit.
GOP Representatives Unveil County Vision
Not only no new taxes, no higher taxes – if possible.
That was the pledge contained in the “vision” for the next two years of county government unveiled Wednesday, Feb. 6, by the bolstered Republican majority that reclaimed control of the county Board of Representatives as of Jan. 1.
Detailed at a press conference, presided over by board Chairman Jim Powers, R-Butternuts, that preceded the board’s monthly meeting, some of the key points included:
• A top-to-bottom review of how county business is conducted, perhaps leading to the creation of a budget officer or fiscal clerk with budget-building responsibilities. (The new majority has shied away from a full-fledged county manager.)
• A preference for promoting from within, with the idea that department heads will train their successors. The idea is to smooth out shaky transitions being blamed for some of the budget mix-ups of the past year.
• Adoption of a “zero tolerance” drug- and alcohol-abuse policy. Again, the lack of such has been blamed for one particularly embarrassing situation in the past year.
Freshman county Rep. Jim Johnson, R-Otsego, set the stage, reading a statement that declared: “Otsego County residents have been feeling their wallets squeezed by high property taxes; they are feeling uncomfortable about a county government that seems to grow and spend uncontrollably; and they have been frustrated by the burdens of tax errors, employee mismanagement and increasing regulations.”
On the uncontrollable spending issue, Powers emphasized the goal of the new majority will be “no tax-hike budgets.”
However, county Rep. Greg Relic, R-Unadilla, at the chairman’s request, explained that is “a goal” that may depend in part on whether there is a national recession.
A 5 percent dip in sales tax revenues, said Relic, who is chairing the Administration Committee, the county equivalent of Ways and Means, would translate into a 15 percent property tax hike.
Powers called the document he released a “vision.” Johnson called it a “hit list.” Regardless, the chairman said it is a work in progress that the caucus will pursue vigorously.
In addition to Powers, Relic and Johnson, the briefing included Betty Anne Schwerd, Edmeston; Scott Harrington, Oneonta; Kathy Clark, Otego, and Sam Dubben, Roseboom.Labels: 02-08-08, Archives |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:40 AM |
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February 12 2008
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Friday, February 1, 2008
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Hall of Fame Game ’08 Is It, As MLB Halts 7-Decade Run
Johnny Damon, fresh off the Boston Red Sox’ 2004 World Series miracle, came to Cooperstown the following May 23 for a memorable Hall of Fame Game against the Detroit Tigers.
Who won? Who cares.
Damon played a couple of innings before worshipful fans. He coached third base for a while. Then he took off his shirt and threw it to a young fan in the Doubleday Field stands. He ended up at Cooley’s for a couple of brewskis.
Savor those memories. Because there will be no more.
After this summer’s Hall of Fame Game – Monday, June 16, between the Chicago Cubs and the San Diego Padres – there will be no more.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum announced Tuesday, Jan. 29, that Major League Baseball has decided to do what it’s wanted to do for years: Scratch Cooperstown off its exhibition-game schedule.
While the news was a shock to many, HoF President Dale Petroskey as well as others who follow MLB machinations said they had seen it coming for years. And with the loss of the last MLB in-season exhibition game, there’s nothing to do but cope.
“There are a lot of opportunities we haven’t taken advantage of in the past,” Petroskey said in a Tuesday, Jan. 29, press briefing at 25 Main St. “We’re going to look into a lot of them now.”
For instance, he said, the HoF is seeking to schedule a Doubleday Field game between the Japanese and South Korean national teams. And why shouldn’t the state high-school baseball championships be played here? Or games between top college teams? The International League will be celebrating its 125th anniversary Sunday, May 18, at Doubleday, when the Syracuse Chiefs will vie against the Rochester Red Wings.
That the MLB kept the Hall of Fame Game going as long as they did “shows they recognize us as an important part of their heritage,” said Petroskey. As the Major Leagues expanded, pro teams have fewer and fewer days off during the season, going 18 days without a break. Fitting in Cooperstown got tougher and tougher, as indicated when the game was broken away from Induction Weekend festivities in 2003 to provide more scheduling flexibility.
“Evolution means new traditions,” said Petroskey, putting the best face on it. “With challenges come opportunities. Things evolve.”
Hall of Fame officials had conferred with Village Hall and the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce before the news became public, and Petroskey’s sentiment was echoed in those venues as well.
“It’s certainly disappointing news,” said Mark Kingsley, Inn at Cooperstown proprietor and Chamber of Commerce president, who remembered the “huge bump” the Red Sox gave the May lodging business in 2005. “But it does present some opportunities.”
“Hey, it’s a disappointment,” said Chamber executive director John Bullis, “but what are you going to do? Major League baseball did all of us a great service by coming here for so many years. It’s a great opportunity to find new and different ways to celebrate baseball. We’ve already begun to sit at the table with the Hall of Fame and the Village of Cooperstown to discuss the potential.”
Even Jane Forbes Clark, HoF chairman of the board, was quoted using the term “creative and innovative” in the official press release.
“We’re just going to have to go forward from here,” said Mayor Carol B. Waller, “to find other things to do at Doubleday Field. I think we have to be thankful for the years we had it.”
The first mention that professional ballplayers might play here – according to Tom Heitz, Otsego town historian, who researched the question while in the Cooperstown Graduate Program in Museum Studies – dates back to 1916 and the dedication of the Delaware & Hudson passenger station, that stone building set back in the trees northeast of Bruce Hall Hardware.
“Major League teams will one day come to Cooperstown, presumably by train, to play games in tribute to baseball’s pastoral birthplace,” John K. Tener, National League president, declaimed from the podium, according to an account in The Freeman’s Journal. A stadium would be needed, of course, and Tener was shown the site of the future Doubleday Field, where the nationally beloved ballpark was completed in 1920.
In 1939, a National League vs. American League All-Star Game was played in Cooperstown as part of the dedication of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The following year, a National League team and an American League team played during Induction Weekend, beginning a tradition that expires with this year’s game, the 70th.
Beyond merchants’ concerns – last May’s Hall of Fame Game parade, held on a temperate and sunny day, packed the streets with families (i.e., customers) from around Central New York and beyond – it was pointed out that Cooperstown High School students depend on revenues from Induction Weekend and HoF Game Weekend to finance their two senior trips, a day in New York and three days in Washington, D.C.
Hot-dog and soft-drink sales on Game Weekend alone raise between $6,000 and $12,000, according to High School Principal Gary Kuch, although Induction Weekend can generate eight or nine times that.
Petroskey, whose three children – Clare, the youngest, will be graduating from CCS this June – have participated in those activities, was keenly aware of the potential impact, and said talks had already begun with the schools on how to minimize the effects..
Trustee Jeff Katz, chairman of the trustees’ Doubleday Field Committee and a baseball fan and published author, echoed the theme of sadness.
“I think it’s tragic,” he said.
Both Parties Field Trustee Slates
If “change” is the buzzword for national candidates this political season, “listen” is the watchword in Cooperstown leading up to the Tuesday, March 18, village elections.
Following the Republican caucus Monday, Jan. 28, where they were nominated for village trustee, both Neil Weiller, 17-year downtown merchant and former CFO for Wedgewood China, and Doug Walker, a former Marine who once ran three downtown businesses simultaneously, used the “L word.”
And the following night, after a Democratic caucus nominated incumbent Jeff Katz and political newcomer Jim Vrooman, co-founder and co-chair – with his wife, Charlene – of the Pride Committee and a B&B operator, used the word too.
“Your customers tell you what merchandise to carry,” is how Weiller got at it. “You don’t tell your customers what you’re going to carry.”
Katz, a former stock-market floor trader and published author, said being decisive doesn’t mean acting in a vacuum: “I do listen to it all, and process it all.”
Mayor Carol B. Waller was nominated by the Republicans for a fourth term, and it appears she will be running unopposed.
The elephant in the room – or, the next night, donkey – was parking.
This year’s village election follows one of the stormiest public debates in village memory, perhaps ever, over whether to install parking meters in the Doubleday Field Parking Lot and the downtown sections of Main and Pioneer streets.
At first, the mayor and all the trustees favored the idea, estimating it would raise $600,000 that could be applied to $6 million in sewerage, water lines, sidewalks and repavings planned over the next three years on the south-side and Irish Hill neighborhoods.
An 11th-hour petition drive, however – led by Weiller and Rod Torrance, another merchant – resulting in a wave of opposition that washed over the trustees at a public hearing 300 citizens attended Monday, Nov. 19, at CCS’ Sterling Auditorium.
By a 4-3 vote – the mayor and two trustees spilt with the majority – the village board approved paid parking nonetheless, but decided to try out a plan limited to the Doubleday lot, at least this summer.
That set up this political season. Deputy Mayor Paul Kuhn, a Republican and chairman of the Police Committee that developed the parking plan, decided not to run again. So Weiller and Vrooman will be vying for that vacancy. Katz will be going toe-to-toe with Walker, who at the packed hearing spoke in strong opposition to the paid parking plan.
Weiller is a native Californian, but whose family moved to Cooperstown in the first wave of settlers Judge William Cooper attracted to the region. He’s related to Wycoffs, Hokes, Rathbun and Thayers, and spent his boyhood summers on Lake Otsego.
After studying accountancy, he moved to Manhattan, where he worked his way up to key financial position at Wedgewood and other large companies, before retiring to Cooperstown, where he’s operated Muskrat Hill, specializing in the “Life is Good” line. He has served on the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce board and as president of the Glimmerglass Opera Guild.
Walker is a 1963 CCS graduate, who spent four years in the Marines, including one in Vietnam, before returning to a degree at St. Lawrence University. He spent two years with the Peace Corps in Nepal, then taught school in Lake Placid, Boulder, Colo., and the American School of Tangiers before going into business.
After a stint in the corporate world, he returned to town and started Danny’s Market, the Walker Gallery frame shop and National Pastime – at one point he was running all three.
He also has deep family roots locally. He is president of The Native Sons, adjutant of the VFW, and is a member of the Wedocandoors Hunting Club in the Town of Ohio, Herkimer County, founded in 1927 by Michaelses, McEwens, Lippitts and other local families.
He and his former wife, the artist Deborah Guertze, have a grown daughter, Hanne, a lawyer in Binghamton.
Katz was born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island. He attended SUNY Binghamton, then moved to Chicago, where he was a floor trader for 20 years, before moving to Cooperstown in 2003 with wife Karen and sons Nate, Robbie and Joey, who are now 17, 15 and 12 respectively.
While here, he founded a music booking business; he is currently co-chairman of the Cooperstown Concert Series. He also wrote a book, “The Kansas City A’s and the Wrong Half of the Yankees,” which he researched in the National Baseball Hall of Fame library and was published last year. He was elected to the village board two years ago.
Vrooman was born in Kingston, R.I., and raised in Everett, Mass. He went through the PLC Program at Rockwell University, and worked for Polaroid and PressTech for several years as he and wife Charlene began a family in Derry, N.H.
They moved to Cooperstown on acquiring the 1805 Phinney House B&B on Elm Street. Son Bryan is 15 and daughter Emily, 9.
He and Charlene founded the Beautification Committee after they noticed while walking their dog that the downtown looks “a little worn, a little shabby,” and were encouraged to do so by former Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Polly Renckens and Kuhn.
Reassessment Ups Value On Waterfront Property
 A lot in Lakeland Shores was valued at $33,000 in 1988, the last time the Village of Cooperstown went through a reassessment.
A couple of years ago, it sold for $700,000.
Land and property values around here have skyrocketed since 1988, everyone knows.
But nowhere has the increase been faster and farther than on the shores of James Fenimore Cooper’s Glimmerglass.
That will be reflected in the new values Village Assessor Al Keck, recently with the help of the Town of Otsego’s Maxwell Appraisal Services, has been laboring to arrive at by the April 1 deadline to have the new assessment rolls in place.
In the past few days, 900 property owners in the part of Cooperstown that’s in the Town of Otsego – west of the Susquehanna River – have been receiving notices of “preliminary assessments,” which include an approximation of what their tax bills might be if all remains equal under the new rolls.
The 120 property owners on the Town of Middlefield side – east of the Susquehanna – should be receiving the same within the next few days.
Curiously, as Keck was being interviewed in his second-floor office at 22 Main the other day – he looks out on Leatherstocking Corp.’s stately building – the phone wasn’t ringing. A meticulous man, Keck had prepared schedule sheets for people wanting “information valuation reviews,” but few had called.
The village trustees, as required by state law, will convene as a Board of Assessment Review from 6 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 19, Grievance Day. If these and other reviews fail to satisfy property owners, they have the option of taking court action to contest their assessments.
Overall, total assessed value has more than doubled, from $171 million to $412 million. Exempt properties have gone up about half, from $70 million to $96 million. The value of taxable property has risen most: It has tripled, from $100 million to $314 million.
This is the final stage of a process that has been going on in the village since 2004. And while the rolls – the grand list, as it is grandly called in New England – are not complete, Keck is far enough along to allow himself a few generalizations.
For instance, if lakeshore property, relatively, is going up the most, two- and three-family properties are going up the least, proportionately.
He – and his Maxwell advisers – have divided the properties into five general categories. The second category likely to see the least relative increase is commercial. “We treated them more conservatively” because of what happened with the Key Bank building, he said.
In 1988, Key Bank had been assessed at $1,020,700. Fieldview Development bought the building in 2005. The new owner, Shane Newell, appealed the assessment in 2006 and, in 2007, it was reduced to $325,000.
In the final two categories – ordinary neighborhoods and high-end neighborhoods – the outcomes, Keck found, often depended on what individual property owners did with their houses and lots. If a couple of homes on a block were completely redone, the values in the whole neighborhood might rise more than a similar other neighborhood.
UP FOR THE SHOT...More sports
RECORD BROKEN TWICE: Two CCS volleyball players broke school records during the home game against Waterville Monday, Jan. 28: Kim Armstrong with 117 and Katie Horrigan with 120 topped the record for aces held by Julia Drysdale,who graduated in 2006. CCS’s record is 11-5, 5-4 in their division. They play Friday, Feb. 1, at Little Falls, Saturday at home vs. Sherburne Earlville, and Monday at Dolgeville, for a possible third place in the league.
CV-S HEARTBREAKER: MCS Girls Basketball stunned CV-S in Cherry Valley Tuesday, Jan. 29, despite facing a 13-point deficit at the end of the first quarter. CV-S girls retained a two-game lead in the Tri-Valley East but surrendered its perfect record. MCS Wildcats play at home Friday, Feb. 1 – Senior Recognition Night – against Worcester, while CV-S hosts Schenevus. CV-S Senior Recognition Night is Monday, Feb. 4, when it hosts Morris. In the Milford-CV-S matchup, MCS sophomore Chandler Prouty had 19 points, and 16 rebounds. CV-S’s Courtney VanBrink had 6 points and 20 rebounds; Laura Kroon 14 points, 13 rebounds, and Morgan VanAlstine 10 points, 13 rebounds.
STILL PERFECT: CCS Girls Basketball is currently 17-0, 7-0 in the league and ranked 8th in the state. They may have clinch a first-place tie if they beat Waterville Thursday, Jan. 31. They will play at home against Sherburne Earlville on Monday, Feb. 4, which is also Senior Recognition Night. In recent play on the road, the girls beat Sherburne, 65-56, Monday, Jan. 28, where Sam Fox had 23 points and 13 rebounds; Kaitlin Cring, 16 points, 5 assists; Jen Wehner, 14 points, 22 rebounds, and Rowley, 9 points. The girls beat Herkimer the Thursday before, 65-35.
DIVISION IN BALANCE: CCS Boys Basketball was 7-1 in league play and leads Division II of the CSC with two games remaining. They can clinch at least a tie for the division title by winning against Sauquoit on Friday, Feb. 1, or Sherburne Earlville Tuesday, Feb. 5, both home games. Tuesday is Senior Recognition Night. The Redskins beat Canastota 65-33 on Jan. 25, but lost a tense game at home to Richfield Springs 64-57 the following Tuesday. Quinn Snyder scored 16 points, Brad Ashford and Luke Tirrell, 13 each.
MILFORD VICTORIOUS: Milford Boys’ Basketball strengthened its position in the Tri-Valley League Wednesday, Jan. 30, going to Cherry Valley and defeating the CV-S Patriots by a decisive 61-43. Top Milford scorers were Scott Seeley with 19 points and Brian Edelstein with 12. CV-S’ top scorer was Nate Herringshaw, with 10 points. Milford is 7-2.
SWIMMING SECTIONALS: Ten CCS Boys Swim Team members have qualified for the sectionals: David Bonderoff, Josh Brigham, Peter Edmonds, Robert Harmon, Andrew Hughes (diving), Austin Lewis, Sean Levandowski, Todd Mayton, Robert Mayton and Will Reis. The MAC Championships are Friday, Feb. 1, at Greene. Diving begins at 2:40 p.m., swimming at 5. The team hosted Holland Patent Monday Jan. 28, winning the meet 97-80; Will Reis swam for his personal best in the 200 Freestyle, Josh Brigham in the 100 Free, and Peter Edmonds in the 100 Fly.
ALESSI, BERGENE TOPS: CCS Varsity bowlers were looking for their first team win when they met New York Mills at the Clark Sports Center Thursday, Jan. 31. The team narrowly lost to Canastota at the Clark Monday, Jan. 28. Coach Lampo says he sees strides in individual bowlers from week to week. So far, Dante Alessi has the high score for the boys, 569, and Hanna Bergene for the girls, 340.
GRAPPLERS VIE: CCS Varsity wrestlers will grapple in the Sectionals Saturday, Feb. 9, and again the following Saturday, both times in Canastota, after ending their season 4-2 against Richfield Springs. The team includes five seniors; Brock Bell, Robert Busse, Mike Croft, Doug Kline and Sara Ruggiero. Underclassmen are Rachel Ruggiero, Pat Claudy, George Landon, Chris Michaels and Conner Boyle.
TOP BOWLERS: Ed Cotton chalked up a three-game total of 637, the top score in the Monday Night Bowling League Jan. 28 at the Clark Sports Center, with 258, 172 and 207. Also topping 600 were Jim Wilsey with 630 (254, 186, 190), and Ozzie Bunt with 624 (225, 174, 225.)Labels: 02-01-08, Archives |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:32 AM |
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Janurary 25 2008
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Friday, January 25, 2008
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Cooperstown Might Add Historic Review
They were warned by legal counsel not to draw a line in the sand on aluminum siding.
They were advised not to block demolition of an architect-built Modernist home at the end of Spring Street.
They were troubled by reports that a River Street home, one of the oldest in the village, might be demolished. (It turned out to be a false alarm.)
So the village Planning Board is exploring whether the Village of Cooperstown should join 58 communities statewide in becoming a Certified Local Government (CLG), a designation created by the National Park Service to allow consistent, litigation-free historic preservation.
“It’s a model that we know works,” Julian Adams, community liaison coordinator for the SHPO, the state Office of Historic Preservation, told a gathering of Planning Board members, village trustees and members of the public Tuesday, Jan. 22, at 22 Main.
“We do need to shore up a few sections of our present zoning code,” said Charles Hill, a three-year Planning Board member, “ because recent case law has found perhaps we would not be able to enforce some provisions of our local law.”
“I think there’s merit to it,” said Mayor Carol B. Waller, who attended the session. She said the idea is to have a new vehicle in place by the time a demolition moratorium expires six month from now.
Created by Congress in 1980, a CLG is empowered to created a Historic Preservation Commission that would develop regulations appropriate for maintaining or enhancing local appreciation of history and historic structures.
The commission would include an architect, a historian, someone who lives in the historic district, and an individual who can demonstrate an interest in historic preservation. The commission would issue or deny what’s called a “certificate of appropriateness” on any given project.
It would also perform an educational function, raising the level of public understanding about historic resources. And, whereas the survey conducted in 1999 when the Glimmerglass Historic District was created has not been updated, the commission would be surveying and adjusting the list in an ongoing way.
Things have changed in at least two ways, said Cindy Falk, a Cooperstown Graduate Program professor and the member of the Planning Board who has set this initiative in motion.
For instance, the Clara Welch Thanksgiving Home was considered a “contributing structure” to the Glimmerglass District, but the original building has since burned and been replaced with a modern structure, (although one that echoes the original.)
On the other hand, the home at the end of Spring Street, built by noted Modernist architect Carl Strauss of Cincinnati in the 1950s, was not 50 years old in 1999, so wasn’t eligible to be included in the district. By the time it was demolished, it had crossed that line, but the survey hadn’t been updated.
“If we go from recommending to requiring,” said Falk, “there’s a question of whether that would stand up in court. When it was enacted, ours was a model law. But it needs updating.”
Most recently, the Planning Board found its hands would be tied if it attempted to prevent the owners of The Inn at Cooperstown from demolishing a carriage barn on that Chestnut Street property. It looked like demolition would occur, although it now appears a compromise will result in the building being moved, Falk said.
“Demolitions have really been our biggest hurdle,” she said.
Cooperstown Tarnished, Notre Dame Magazine Finds
When the winter edition of the award-winning Notre Dame Magazine showed up in his mail the other day, alumnus Jim Gates, director of the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s research library, was even more pleased than usual.
For on the cover was a photo of Main Street in his favorite small town – Cooperstown – keying to an eight-page spread of an article entitled, “The Once and Future Neighborhood.”
About that same time, other Notre Dame alumni were getting the 150,000-circulation magazine, and Notre Dame alumni from all four points of the compass began calling their relatives in “America’s Most Perfect Village” with the question, “Have you seen...”
The article, by John Nagy, the magazine’s associate editor, comes to a mixed conclusion about the semester-long study a group of six architect grad students under Professor Philip Bess devoted to Cooperstown, resulting in a draft master plan that was unveiled December to a local audience in the ornate courtroom at the Otsego County Courthouse.
“The jury was not convinced,” Bess tells Nagy, even as he is preparing the final report for local folks. When the students detailed their proposals to a panel at Notre Dame in October, it was criticized for “missing overall coherence.”
Still, Trustee Lynne Mebust, who attended the October critique, is quoted in a more positive vein: “I think you’ll find when you come back that it’s generated a lot of interest,” she tells Bess. “A lot of people are eager to hear what we’ve learned here.”
The article is sprinkled with familiar names: Mayor Carol B. Waller, Trustee Jeff Katz, Ed Landers, who with wife Margie hosted the students at his White House B&B on Chestnut Street, and Giles Russell, former trustee.
Waller tells Nagy of a “mass exodus” from the village since 1990, as tourism clogs the downtown during the summer months. Russell estimated that the proportion of people living in the village to those living nearby was 60-40, but that’s changed to 30-70.
The article hits several of the highpoints of the students proposals – the Doubleday Field parking lot redo, a housing development called “Brooklyn Heights” on the hill beyond the Clark Sports Center – but doesn’t treat them all positively.
But Nagy demonstrates the same clear vision that local folks praised in the students, compared to the local vision blurred by familiarity.
“Decades have passed since my first trip, and I’ve learned to take a closer look. The storefronts are full; what’s changed is what’s in them.
“Once, there were grocery and hardware stores, a movie theater, furniture dealers, craft and clothing shops – places my mother could escape to when she got sick of Ebbets Field and Wee Willie Keeler.
“Now, it’s almost entirely baseball memorabilia: high-end history and low-end crap.”
Erhmanns Return Home To Toaster-Sparked Fire
Here’s a cautionary tale.
It was like any other day, except Christmas was four days away.
George and Joyce Ehrmann had been shopping at Sangertown Mall, stopped on the way home to visit friends in West Winfield, and drove up to their Elm Street home at about 12:15 a.m. on the 22nd.
They opened the front door.
“The first thing out of my mouth, I said to Joyce, ‘Our house is on fire,’” said George, a pharmacist who is well known in Cooperstown from his days as head of the Mount Otsego ski patrol.
The firemen were there in five minutes. They got under the floor to the source of the electrical fire and doused it without water, causing very little damage. Within a day, a Service Master crew from New Hartford had cleaned the house the house the couple had lived in for 38 years and they moved back in, although they can still smell the smoke.
Here’s the cautionary part. The Ehrmanns discovered the fire was caused by a toaster that had been sitting placidly on a kitchen counter for at least 25 years. After all that time, the toaster had caused the current to arc, sparking the fire.
Shopping for toasters, George discovered all of them now contain a lengthy warning, beginning with “Do not operate while unattended.” Don’t spread the bread first. Don’t use near curtains or wall. And finally, “Always unplug toaster when not in use.”
It had never occurred to the Ehrmanns to unplug the toaster. Today, the warning says, “failure to follow these instructions can result in death or fire.”
George stopped by the other day after dropping off Joyce for an appointment with the physical therapist and shared the story.
This writer went home and unplugged the toaster.
CCS Seeks Nominations For Sports Hall of Fame
Cooperstown Central School is seeking nominations from among the titans – the Red Burseys, the Dutch LaDukes – for the first class of inductees into a prospective CCS Sports Hall of Fame. Nominations are due by March 15, limited this year to people who made their contributions before 1970. Applications are available at the high school office. A committee will meet in March to review the nominations, and a maximum of five inductees will be chosen. An induction banquet is planned in October. Next year, candidates from the 1970s will be selected. Labels: 01-25-08, Archives |
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January 18 2008
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Friday, January 18, 2008
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Chicago Investors Explore 5th Youth Baseball Facility
A Hudson Valley architect says he is representing a group of Chicago investors who are looking at an East Springfield farm, and considering other sites as well, for a Cooperstown-Dreams-Park-like facility modeled after the Boston Red Sox’ Mini-Fenway Park project.
While cautioning that everything is very preliminary, Andrew Wright of Wright Builders Inc., Kingston, said the goal is “to try to recreate a mini Yankee Stadium or mini Wrigley Field” – about two-thirds the size of a Major League ball park – on the former Cope farm on Continental Road.
Ideally, Wright said, the park would open for operation in summer 2009. Like Dreams Park, the idea is that the new facility would be a venue for a round of youth baseball tournaments during the summer months.
Wright declined to name the partners, but said he has met with Henry Miller, the Town of Springfield building inspector, and the partners are arranging a second meeting with Miller the near future. For his part, Miller said he has simply handed out applications, same as he would for any applicant.
News began surfacing a month ago around the rural town, population 1,396, at the north end of Otsego Lake, but details have been sketchy.
The situation has been discussed in two public forums.
The first week in January, the town Planning Board, which is involved in preparing the town’s first Comprehensive Master Plan – the current plan is just one sheet of paper – agreed to ask the town board to declare a one-year moratorium on development while the plan is completed.
At a testy meeting Monday, Jan. 14, the town board, by a 2–3 vote, rejected a moratorium, but agreed that town board members Richard Rathbun and Bill Elsey will meet with Planning Board chair Mary Clarke and her designee to try to reach a middle ground.
Rathbun voiced opposition to the Planning Board’s term “unprecedented” in defining the kind of major developments that would be stalled.
The partners, Wright said, envision a kid-friendly facility – “no cars, so kids are safe” – that would include year-’round components. For instance, a mini Wrigley might be surrounded by a “mini Chicago,” houses that echo the ambience around the Windy City ball park.
Given the rural nature of the town, the goal would be to apply the most up-to-date “green” technologies. For instance, those pavers that allow grass to grow up through the gaps might well be used instead of asphalt. By allowing drainage, the pavers would minimize runoff issue and, during the off season, would blend in with the meadows around it.
The partners also looked at the Springfield site, owned by Paul Stitzel, a tractor and farm implement dealer from Pennsylvania who now lives near Allen Lake, because “Cooperstown in the summer is abysmal.”
Wright said the idea might be for the ballplayers families to warehouse their cars at the Continental Road site during their visits; if they wanted to visit Cooperstown, they would be ferried up and down Route 80 by non-polluting electrical-powered buses.
The housing component, and related shops, might create a pleasant destination point for townsfolk to visit on-season and off.
The Mini-Fenway project, the prototype of the local one, has been in the works since 1997, but picked up momentum two years ago through a new partnership with the Boston Red Sox and MLB licensing.
The plan is to build a $2 million half-size stadium, complete with a mini Green Monster, on 12 acres of state-owned land in West Quincy, the Boston suburb. The mini park would seat 5,000, although Wright said the local concept is considerably smaller.
If this park were to happen, it would be the fifth youth-tournament park in the county, after Dreams Park, Cooperstown Baseball World in West Oneonta, Cooperstown Diamonds on Route 20, Town of Warren, and a camp associated with SUNY Oneonta.
Eddie Einhorn, the Chicago White Sox vice president who owns Cooperstown Baseball World, had been mentioned as one of the possible investors. But he called Wednesday, Jan. 16, from MLB meetings in New York City to say he’s not involved in this new effort.
Cooperative Extension Faced Financial Crisis
 When Dinnie Sloman was interviewing to become executive director of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Otsego County, he was told the Cooperstown-based agency had a $40,000-$50,000 budget gap.
“You don’t have a budget gap,” he told executive committee members interviewing him. “You have an unrealistic view of what your budget really is.”
That wasn’t the only bad news – or reality gap, if you will.
Cooperative Extension headquarters at Ithaca told him that this agency was among the five “most critical situations” among New York State’s 57 such agencies.
For instance, the annual report that was supposed to be submitted to the county Board of Representatives had not been submitted in three years.
Still, while working in Delaware and Schoharie counties, he’d lived in Otsego since the early ‘90s – in Oneonta, where he and wife Lisa are raising two daughters – so he felt he had a vested interest. He was intrigued by the challenge, and Cornell encouraged him to try it.
So when he arrived in the summer of 2006, part of his mandate was to prepare a five-year plan to put the troubled agency back on a firm footing, financially, but also program-wise.
The plan he unveiled to the full Cooperative Extension board – a year ago Jan. 18 – was a year-by-year detailed blueprint to do just that. (To review the plan, follow the link from www.thefreemansjournal.com) The directors approved it.
Controversy Explodes
The next morning, two extension agents, including one with 33-year tenure, and two educators were told they were losing their jobs. They were escorted from the Lake Street offices and the locks were changed.
And the whole situation exploded.
By the time the dust began to settle months later, confrontational meeting had followed confrontational meeting, and veteran board members had resigned in protest. In the fall, friends of the people who were let go mounted a campaign that some credit with the defeat of county Rep. Nancy Iversen, D-Pierstown, who appeared blindsided by the fallout.
At the Jan. 2 reorganizational meeting of the county Board of Representatives, a majority of the representatives – Republicans and Democrats alike – voted against a $20,000 increase in the county contribution to Cooperative Extension, from $175,000 to $195,000.
But when the weighted votes were tallied – the representatives’ votes are tailored to reflect the varying number of people in their districts – the higher allocation had squeaked by.
“I felt I had turned the corner on Jan. 2,” said Sloman.
However narrowly, the representatives had agreed to move forward. Now, the executive director had another year to prove his concepts will work.
Man From Texas
Richard “Dinnie” Sloman is a Texan, raised in Dallas, who ended up in the northern Catskills by a circuitous route.
He came north to attend Williams College. After graduation, he returned to SMU – Southern Methodist University – for a law degree. He missed the Northeast, so he joined the Boston law firm of Testa Hurwitz & Thibeault, where he practiced corporate and commercial real estate law for a few years.
But something was missing. When he began thinking of what he liked to do – he had been a Boy Scout, all the way to Eagle, and was an avid back-packer, canoeist and camper – he enrolled in the Yale School of Forestry, and worked his way to a master’s.
By then he’d met his future wife, so he followed her to Oneonta, interned for a year with the DEC, then joined the Catskill Forest Association as executive director, where he spent the next nine years. A self-defined “change agent,” that aspect of Sloman’s personality began to come to the fore.
He helped develop an Americorps adjunct that grew from three young people to 33 in three years. He introduced Soren Eriksson’s internationally embraced “The Game of Logging” training program to local woodsmen. He helped develop the Catskill Institute for Teachers, where 25 teachers from New York and 25 from Upstate would spend a week together each summer learning how to introduce forest ecology to the classroom.
In 2000, when he began to look for a next step, the Cooperative Extension executive director’s job in Cobleskill was open, and it looked like an opportunity to build on the experience he’d had so far.
He had discovered that change works best when it bubbles up. Top down? “That’s not the way I run things,” he said. When the people working for him realized he wasn’t kidding, his approach began to work.
One of his educators, Jan Ryder, took the initiative in transforming what had consisted of handing out pamphlets at health fairs into the Diabetes Prevention & Control Program, which sought to find people who were at-risk to contract diabetes and train them to halt the deadly disease before it developed.
Demolish ‘Silos’
In Cooperstown, Cooperative Extension staffers were in three “silos” – 4H, agriculture and nutrition – with a director, educator and staff in each. One of his goals, reflected in the five-year plan, is to demolish those silos, so agents can help each other, and educators can participate in all three disciplines.
Bubble-up things are already starting to happen. Picking up on a 4H-er’s question about hydroponics, educator Jano Nightingale arranged for her charges to get a tour of SUNY Cobleskill’s such facility, where vegetables are grown in nutrient-rich liquid, not soil.
A 4H pilot project is now in the offing, using equipment on loan from SUNY to see if seeds that have been shot into outer space – provided by NASA – can still be grown into plants.
As the Cooperative Extension board came to grip with its financial challenges, the budget dropped from the upper $900,000s in 2006 to $857,000 in 2007. This year, it’s up to $905,000. With the new collaboration, staffing has dropped from 14 staffers to 11, and eight of those 11 were among the staffers who were there when Sloman arrived.
The controversy of the last year hasn’t been easy.
“It’s been very difficult,” he said. “Nobody likes to have this kind of thing going on all the time.” But, he says, he has “the best board of directors I’ve every worked with anywhere. They backed me 100 percent.”
What would he have done differently?
“The only thing I would have stressed more,” he recalled of that Jan. 18, 2007, meeting, “is what (was to) have happened in the morning. Tomorrow morning, THIS is going to be implemented in my office.”
What has he learned?
Everybody has a point of view, many of them equally legitimate.
“Other people can speak their truth,” said Sloman. “All I can speak is my truth.”
Please click here to read more on the Five Year Business Plan
‘Mockingbird’ To Be Staged At Courthouses
All the world’s a stage including, occasionally, a courthouse.
During “The Big Read,” to be launched Mother’s Day, a play based on “To Kill A Mockingbird,” the Harper Lee novel, will be performed in the courtrooms of the historic county courthouses in Cooperstown, Norwich and Delhi, according to Sam Goodyear, who is coordinating the effort for the Foothills Performing Arts Center, Oneonta.
“The Big Read,” funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, will organize a series of readings, plays, discussions and other events in Otsego, Chenango and Delaware counties to raise interest in reading.
Tompkins Supervisor Eyes Rare Challenge To Seward
State Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, hasn’t been challenged since 1996.
But he seemed in fighting trim when word surfaced Wednesday, Jan. 16, that Don Barber, Democratic supervisor in the Town of Caroline, Tompkins County, is thinking about taking him on.
The challenge, the senator said, is part of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s stated goal of turning the state Senate Democratic, which would give one party control of the governorship, the Senate and the General Assembly.
Seward said constituents in his 51st Senatorial District, one, know how hard he works on their behalf and are generally satisfied with him and, two, are not interested in single-party rule in Albany.
If the Democrats had control, said the 22-year incumbent, “illegal immigrants would have drivers’ licenses right now.”
Barber had sent out a press release earlier in the day reporting he has raised $126,400 so far from 750 individual donors to finance his campaign in a 10-county district that stretches from the west side of Tompkins County, to the Hudson River, north to Old Forge in the Adirondacks.
“They’ve told me they want change,” Barber said.
He said he hasn’t officially announced, yet, since the big district requires painstaking preliminary work to build an organization in each county.
Sally Barlow, Milford, secretary of the Otsego County Democratic Committee, is his point of contact locally, he said. (Also, one of his daughters, Cara Rosenberg, works in the Hartwick College admissions office; his two other daughters live in Amherst, Mass., and Poughkeepsie.)
Barber said he was prompted to run for higher office by, among other things, unfunded state mandates that are a burden to towns. “I’d like to work on it,” he said, “but I can’t through a town supervisor position.”
Seward said he’s been aware of Barber’s interest for some time, since the Caroline supervisor had first considered making a run for the seat the last time around, in 2006.
As for Seward, he said his official duties are keeping him occupied in the state capitol for the time being, but he expects to announce in the spring that he will run again.
His last challenger was also from Tompkins County – Beverly Livesay, who ran against him in 1996, 1994 and 1992.Labels: 01-18-08, Archives |
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January 4 2008
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Friday, January 4, 2008
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Konstanty’s Return Splits County Board on 1st Vote
 Any thought that a 10-4 majority can reimpose peace on a fractured Otesgo County Board of Representatives flittered away with the first few minutes of its organizational meeting Wednesday, Jan. 2.
Jim Powers, the veteran representative from Butternuts, had been anointed the new chairman by the Republican caucus. But four stony-faced Democrats emphatically voted “nay” when, minutes into the meeting, his nomination was placed before the full board.
Approved 10-4 nonetheless, Powers took the chair and declared that, despite the reception, he would “extend the olive branch, and hope we can work together.”
Rep. Greg Relic, R-Unadilla, faced a similar vote for vice chairman.
It was unclear to the general public what was going on until, a couple of resolutions later, the motion was made to once again appoint Oneonta lawyer and Republican warhorse Jim Konstanty as county attorney.
Rep. Catherine Rothenberger, D-Oneonta, made a motion to take the “personnel matter” into executive session, but her motion was defeated.
Then Rep. Marti Stayton, D-Oneonta, was on her feet, questioning “a selection process that excluded all Democrats.”
When in the just-ended two years of Democratic control, the county board had questioned County Treasurer Myrna Thayne’s accounting of public funds related to resolving estates, Thayne hired Konstanty as her attorney to challenge the board. “To appoint him puts him squarely in a conflict of interest, according to the New York Bar Association,” Stayton said.
Under Konstanty’s oversight, the Workman’s Compensation fund deteriorated, she said, further alleging that, while he was last county attorney, the county contracted with him for $200,000 in additional private services.
“It is troubling to see the opportunity to move forward, with so many new representatives, turned backward with this choice,” Stayton concluded.
In the vote that followed, Konstanty just squeaked in, 7-6, with county Rep. Steve Fournier, R-Milford, abstaining.
Rep. Donald Lindberg, R-Worcester, who had made common cause with Democrats to give them control of the county board in the past two years, joined them in voting against bringing Konstanty back, and Rep. Keith McCarty, R-Springfield, joined did too.
Konstanty was waiting in the hall and, as soon as the vote was announced, he entered the chamber and took his seat at the head table to Powers’ left.
During a break, Stayton said she voted against Powers because, since he planned to bring Konstanty back, she couldn’t support him “in good conscience.”
As for Konstanty, he said he was first appointed county attorney in 1987 by an 8-6 margin, but every time but once after that – until the Democrats replaced him with Rodney L. Klafehn of Laurens in the past two years – he was reappointed unanimously by Republicans and Democrats alike.
Laura Childs, long-time clerk of the board, was unanimously reappointed, as were IT Director Brian Pokorny, Public Defender Richard Rothermel and Veterans Services Director Tex Seamon. McCarty voted “nay” on Hank Nicols’ reappointment as Democratic election commissioner.
At the meeting, Cooperstown’s new legislators took their seats for the first time. Jim Johnson, R-Town of Otsego, represents the village on the west side of the Susquehanna. Floyd “Sam” Dubben, R-Roseboom, represents the village on the river’s east side.
The Freeman’s Journal Begins 200th Year
Look at the folio line at the top of this page: Volume 200, No. 1.
With this edition, The Freeman’s Journal marks the beginning of its 200th year as chronicler of Cooperstown in the making. Very few newspapers in the U.S. have made it so far.
For two centuries, this newspaper has been Cooperstown’s companion, creating a record of our common life, some of it statistical – births, deaths, the annual date of Otsego Lake’s freezing – some of it high drama, much of it of high literary merit.
Tongue in cheek, Tom Heitz, Otsego town historian and long-time compiler of our Bound Volumes feature, likened 200 years of Freeman’s Journal accretions to guano deposits that were mined from South Sea islands and brought back to Upstate New York and elsewhere as fertilizer.
So be it. Our goal this year will be to mine the rich deposits amid the fading ink and powdery paper – to celebrate not this newspaper, but this community as reflected in this newspaper’s pages.
Tom Heitz will begin that process at 7 p.m. next Thursday, Jan. 10, with a presentation, “Buy A Revolver; Shoot The Tramps,” a look at Cooperstown through 200 years of advertising. (As it happens, the first ad ever was run by our founder, Judge William Cooper; he was trying to sell a slave.)
Over 2008, The Freeman’s Journal will be reprinting original reporting from years past, reproducing historic front pages and sponsoring further lectures based on the aforementioned rich deposits.
Past owners – we’ve tracked down a half-dozen – will be writing reminiscences of their toils. The first reading of an original play about Judge Cooper is in the offing. And a celebration is being developed for Oct. 23, the day when the first number of The Impartial Observer, our parent, appeared in 1808.
Let the celebration – of our Cooperstown, as reflected in Cooperstown’s Freeman’s Journal – begin.
JIM & M.J. KEVLIN
Proprietors
Historic Toddsville Bridge Sold, Saved
It took a year, but 65 Toddsville neighbors have saved a 19th-century Pratt-truss iron bridge over Oaks Creek from demolition and plan to begin fundraising to preserve it for walkers, anglers and other recreational uses.
Attorney Bob Birch, whose wife Marcy was among the neighborhood leaders in the effort to protect the bridge, said deeds were filed with the Otsego County Clerk’s Office on Friday, Dec. 28. One transferred ownership from the county to the towns of Hartwick and Otsego; the other transferred it to the Hartwick Historical Association.
“It was a long process,” said Birch. “But ultimately it all came together.”
The bridge had originally been owned by the two towns, but they abandoned it 12 years ago, and – under New York State law – ownership reverted to the county, which closed it.
A year ago November, a county crew began tearing up the decking, preliminary to taking the bridge down, but residents of nearby Greenough Road and the west side of Oaks Creek objected; neighbors on the east side favored the demolition, as it would have converted Lower Toddsville Road into a virtual private thoroughfare.
Birch estimated the bridge can be redecked for $15,000.
CCS Board President Ponders 12 Years Of Education Battles
Mark Rathbun, who grew up in Cornwall on Hudson, remembers high school fondly. He was on the student council and the National Honor Society. He played football, basketball and – his favorite – baseball. He was Orange County Player of the Year twice. He was on the New York Daily News’ All-Stars Team three times. But the Cooperstown Central Board of Education president – he plans to retire after 12 years when his term ends in May – remembers one moment in particular from all those years ago. “A ball was hit into the gap. A real shot. Very, very deep.” Rathbun played center field. There was no fence; if the ball was gone, it was really gone. He ran. He ran. He ran. He lifted his glove in the air. “It was a joyful feeling to be able to run down that ball and make the play.” When you think about it, that’s what Mark Rathbun has been doing for the past
Cooperative Extension Funding Hike Blocked
By a bi-partisan vote, the county Board of Representatives reduced a $195,000 allocation for the embattled Cooperative Extension of Otsego County to $175,000, the same as it received last year. Cooperative Extension of Otsego County, under fire since letting four long-time employees go last January, had a $20,000 additional county allocation lopped off after a revolt from the floor of the county Board of Representatives Wednesday, Jan. 2.
The extra money was intended for a livestock specialist, but Rep. Donald Lindberg, R-Worcester, objected, and soon had company.
Rep. Steve Fournier, R-Milford, said he had attended many meetings where the public was questioning the Cooperative Extension board, and “I never heard him once publicly defending himself or his program.”
The “him” was Dinnie Sloman, Cooperative Extension executive director and architect of the five-year business plan that led to the layoffs.
Rep. Marti Stayton, D-Oneonta, who heads the committee that recommended the increase, said the intent was to “separate the concerns (about the layoffs) from the mission.”
Other representatives, who voted to reduce the county’s allocation from $195,000 to the same $175,000 it was last year, took pains to emphasize they don’t oppose farming; they just continue to be troubled by what happened.
The layoffs, of one 33-year extension agent, one five-year crop specialist and clerical help led to months of angry meetings where members of the public confronted the Cooperative Extension board.
County Board Chairman Jim Powers, R-Butternuts, said the money had been included in the budget by the last board, and he was reluctant to reopen the door.Labels: 01-04-08, Archives |
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December 21 2007
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Friday, December 21, 2007
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'Mitchell Report' Puts HoF In Midst of National Debate
If you don’t think there’s any connection, just Google “Mitchell report hall of fame.”
As of Wednesday evening, Dec. 19, you would have come up with 295,000 matches.
In fact, “Cooperstown” – The National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum, baseball’s Olympus – is the point on the horizon everyone sees when they raise their eyes from former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s expose of what he termed the National Pastime’s “Steroids Era.”
The national debate, centered on 25 Main St., has been furious since Senator Mitchell released the 400-page document at a Thursday, Dec. 13, press conference in New York City that implicated dozens of ballplayers, from also-rans to Hall of Fame contender Roger Clemens, in the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Despite the adrenalin in the debate, there is little consensus. Opinion runs the gamut, even within the ranks of the Baseball Writers Association of America, whose members annually vote the most deserving – in their view – into Cooperstown’s hallowed hall.
Paul Hoynes, the Baseball Writers’ immediate past president and a Cleveland Plain Dealer baseball reporter, said he would not vote right now for either Clemens or Barry Bonds, the home-running hitter suspected of using steroids for more than a decade.
“It’s put us in a tough spot,” he said into a cell phone while driving through a snowstorm near Ashtabula en route to the city room. “You can take the moral high ground and say, ‘I’m not going to cast a ballot for 10 years, when the steroid boys have come and gone.’
“I’m going to vote,” he continued. But he’s not convinced by the argument that “because steroid use was so rampant there was a level playing field. I don’t agree with that either.”
But Hoynes’ successor, Bob Dutton of the Kansas City Star, uses the very argument Hoynes rejects.
“Either you don’t elect anyone from that era,” he said, “ or you have to look beyond the drug use. You should look for the best players in that time frame. I don’t like that choice, but I don’t know a fairer way to do it.”
Both Hoynes and Dutton pointed out that Mark Maguire, suspected of steroids use after his “home-run chase” with Sammy Sosa in 1998, was only on 22 percent of the ballots last year, the first year he was eligible for admission into the Hall of Fame.
“If he gets that once again,” said Hoynes, “he’ll be doing good.”
To gain entrance, a player must get 75 percent of the ballots cast.
According to the eligibility rules, the sportswriters should base their decision on a “player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”
So far, the Hall of Fame hasn’t appeared eager to get in the middle of the discussion.
A two-paragraph statement posted on its Web site, baseballhalloffame.org, affirms the Hall of Fame Museum’s dedication to recording the history of the game, but nothing more.
“The Mitchell Report is an important historical document that researchers and historians will study for generations,” the statement reads in part. “Our role as a history museum and educational research center is to make this document available to researchers and fans, and, over time, exhibit the impact of the findings in a manner appropriate to its place in the game’s history.”
Jeff Idelson, the Hall’s vice president for communications and education, tried to keep the discussion focused on that statement, but finally acknowledged, “This institution feels there is no room at all in the game for performance enhancing substances.”
Steroids, Human Growth Hormone and the like “create an uneven playing field,” he continued, and also are “unhealthy unless prescribed by a doctor.”
Idelson acknowledged that in 1991, in the Pete Rose case, the Hall barred anyone on MLB’s permanently ineligible list from being inducted, but said “the board of directors simply formalized what had been an unwritten rule.”
Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey has said, “They (the baseball writers) elect; we induct.” And that seems to be the operational statement for now.
And that’s completely within its prerogatives, said Lyle Spatz of Boynton Beach, Fla., who heads the Records Committee for SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research.
“Theoretically, the Hall of Fame is a private organization,” Spatz said. “They can make whatever rules they want. They could have a character clause, or not have a character clause.”
(Intriguingly, he said the Hall could also go back and remove players whose reputations haven’t withstood the test of time. “There are some players that don’t belong there,” he said. “Tommy McCarthy and Babe Ruth don’t belong in the same Hall.”)
As SABR’s records guru, Spatz took a hard line. “There are no asterisks,” he declared, referring to Mark Ecko, who paid $750,000 for the ball Bonds used to break Hank Aaron’s home-run record and is donating it to the Hall with a damning asterisk. “You have to have the records as they are.”
But, he said, fans visiting the Hall of Plaques will look at the placards honoring steroids-tainted inductees and “make mental adjustments.”
Spatz echoed the opinion of the others interviewed: The steroids scandal and Mitchell Report don’t seem to be deterring many fans.
After the baseball strike in the mid-‘90s, the Hall of Fame saw its gate drop by a third, until the Sosa-Maguire contest revived fan interest. No one sees that happening yet as a result of the Mitchell Report.
“I think we’ll lose a few fans,” Spatz said. “I don’t think it will have a long-term effect on baseball.”
He, Hoynes and Dutton, however, view the paltry support for Mark Maguire last year as a sign of things to come. “If he does the same next year,” said Hoynes, “he’s done.”
He went on to muse that, if neither Bonds or Clemens plays again, they both will be eligible for election to the Hall of Fame at the same time, in five years.
“That will be interesting,” he said.
'20-25' Effort To Plan Village Future
Mayor Carol B. Waller wants the Village of Cooperstown to start making New Year's Resolutions of its own, going out five and 10 years into the future.
At the next village board meeting -Jan. 21, the third Monday of the month- the mayor will announce creation of a village Planning Commission, charged with moving America's Most Perfect Village from a "reactive" to a "proactive" stance.
"We're a beautiful little community and I want to keep it that way," said Waller. "We need to control our destiny."
Job one, she said, will be for the commission to review the sample master plan graduate students from the Notre Dame School of Architecture presented at a public meeting at the county courthouse on Dec. 12.
Job two, she continued, is to see what lessons may be learned from the public uproar over a paid-parking proposal.
The mayor said she can create the commission by appointment, but she unveiled her plan to village trustees at their December meeting, on the 17th, and received their support to go forward.
She envisions a six-person entity representing the spectrum of village life, from the Clark Foundation on down, and has already approach a couple of people; as of this week, one had said yes.
The mayor said she has never seen an outpouring like the one provoked by the idea of putting Pay & Display parking machines in the Doubleday Field parking lot and on Main and Pioneer streets. (The trustees have scaled back plans to a pilot project in the Doubleday lot next summer.)
Parking was a “catalyst” to bring out other issues, she said.
In thinking it over, it occurred to Waller that the village has been in shock since Cooperstown Dreams Park arrived on the scene in 1995; immediately, the nature of local tourism changed, and these days 55,000 players and their relatives come to the area each summer.
“We were putting out fires,” the mayor concluded.
As for the Notre Dame students, Waller said the village certainly would not want to adopt all of their recommendations – they ranged, for instance, from making crosswalks more pedestrian friendly to putting in a sizeable subdivision, “Brooklyn Heights,” on the hill above Brooklyn Avenue.
But some should be considered, she said, noting she was particularly intrigued by one to create cross streets between Linden Avenue and Route 28 and build modest single-family homes there.
Paid Parking OK’d for Doubleday Lot
Cooperstown village trustees at their Dec. 17 monthly meeting also:
• Voted, 5-2, to begin paid parking in the Doubleday Parking lot next summer, using two Pay & Display machines.
• Set a public hearing on developer Joe Galati’s plans for a 40-unit motel at Grove and West Beaver streets.
• Heard Bicentennial Chair Grace Kuhl’s final report on the village’s 200th birthday.
As the village trustees tried to close the door on the paid-parking controversy, the door opened on the next controversy, a 40-unit motel proposed for Grove Street.
At their monthly meeting Monday, Dec. 17, the trustees voted 5-2, with Mayor Carol B. Waller and Trustee Milo V. Stewart, Jr., dissenting, to implement paid-parking on the Doubleday Field parking lot next summer. A second 5-2 vote authorized the village to go out to bid on two Pay & Display machines to collect the money.
Earlier in the evening, a dozen residents from Grove, West Beaver, Chestnut and Maple streets voiced concerns about developer Joe Galati’s motel plans, which would require a special exception from the village board to move forward.
Paid parking, which drew a crowd of 300 angry objectors to CCS’ Sterling Auditorium in November, continued to provoke passions, with Stewart and Deputy Mayor Paul Kuhn jousting tartly.
Since the role of the Chestnut Street parking lot – a possible venue for downtown-employee parking – “hasn’t been decided yet, I’m not going to vote on it,” said Stewart.
“That’s your opinion,” replied Kuhn, who chairs the Police Committee that’s been developing the parking proposals.
Kuhn said later, “This is now the law” – it was approved, 4-3, at the Sterling Auditorium meeting – “and now we’re going to implement it.”
Trustee Eric Hage, an adherent of testing paid parking in the Doubleday lot, shifted his vote to expand the majority, saying, “If we need to get started, we need to get started.”
Said Waller, “I think we have the majority of the board. I don’t think we have a majority of the people.”
In the Galati portion of the meeting, Jim Lacava of Middlefield, speaking on behalf of his mother, who lives on Grove Street, voiced concerns that the motel would be noisy, cause traffic congestion and be subject to runoff from nearby West Hill.
The trustees said they and the Planning Board must review the concept, and they scheduled a public hearing on the matter for their January meeting, scheduled at 7:30 p.m. on Monday the 21st.
Red-Nosed Miniature Horse Fills In For Missing Rudolph
 Summer Silk the red-nosed miniature horse may lack the cadence of the better-known red-nosed Rudolph.
But while Santa and his reindeer are who knows where, Summer Silk, 27 inches tall and 85 pounds, was in the Otsego Manor lobby the other morning, complete with a bulb for a nose and antler-like headgear.
“I’ve always liked horses and always dreamed of owning one,” said Kathy Wallace of Springfield Center, owner of Summer and her older half-brother, Magic Mouse. “I never thought I’d end up owning two miniatures.”
But, she continued, “they give their love unconditionally,” which is just what she needed, as well as help geting around: When she goes shopping, the two haul her wheelchair.
The story goes back to April 2006, when Kathy – who, among other things, has arthritis in her lower back, a herniated disk and fibromyalgia, a diffuse pain – went to visit a friend near Richfield Springs.
Jack Gardner, who lived next door, was raising miniatures – these are actually regular horses, bred small, not a different breed – and Kathy was entranced.
Maggie, Magic and Summer’s mother, was pregnant, “and I asked if I could pamper her.
“Pampering mom is the best way to get her trust,” said Kathy. “Doing it, you’re also rubbing the baby in her stomach. I started talking to the baby.”
She calls it “pre-imprinting.”
“When he (Magic) was born, he went to the human voice immediately. I started working with him the day he was born. I put him in my lap, held him. A month later, I was taking him out in the car.”
Kathy was entranced, and began to train the small animal – Magic is 35 inches tall and 225 pounds – to pull her wheelchair.
“I had no intention of buying him in the beginning,” said Magic’s mistress. “But when Jack said he was putting him at the auction, I said I’d buy him.”
The next year, Summer came along.
It turns out miniature horses are intelligent, “house-breakable” and will live for 30 years if well tended.
When the two – or sometimes Kathy and Summer – go shopping, “believe me, we turn heads.”
It turns out that, under the Americans With Disabilities Act, miniature horses are considered the same as seeing-eye dogs, and can go wherever seeing-eye dogs can go.
“Some of the stores gave me a bit of a hard time until I gave them the paperwork from the ADA,” said Kathy, who took the horses to Sangertown Mall just the other weekend. “That’s all you need.”
Kathy Wallace grew up on what then was a quite rural Staten Island and, as it became more and more congested, she longed to move to the Cooperstown area, where she had visited an aunt and uncle when she was 12.
So 10 years ago, her children grown, she moved to Springfield Center.
Since, her various afflictions have worn her down.
But Magic and Summer have been her salvation.
“If i didn’t have them to go to in the morning,” said Kathy. “I wouldn’t get out of bed.”
New Bank Opens Doors In Village
 The Bank of Cooperstown opened its door at 73 Chestnut St. The Wednesday, Dec. 19, “soft openings” will be followed by a grand opening in January. The Bank of Cooperstown, a unit of USNY Bank, opened its doors at 73 Chestnut St. on Wednesday, Dec. 19. This “soft opening” will be followed by a grand opening in January.
“We are excited to bring a new locally managed bank to Cooperstown,” said Scott White, Bank of Cooperstown president. “Our strength will rest with our dedicated directors, local shareholders and an experienced bank team with a proven track record of providing an extraordinary level of customer service.”
The bank announced the names of its directors and the sectors they represent: Charles Keiler, securities; Marc Kingsley, inn keeper; Vincent Russo, business owner; John Lambert, attorney; Mark D’Amico, CPA; Lonnie Ridgway, appraiser; Andrew Blum, investment banker; Nicholas Laino, dean of administration, Herkimer Community College; Donald Snyder, attorney; Steven Smith, contractor; Jeffrey Haggerty, retail-hardware; Patsy Soule, accommodations, and Ellen Tillapaugh, art consultant.
In addition to White, the bank team includes Michelle Catan, vice president-commercial lending, and Jessica Baker, personal banker.
White said the team’s knowledge of the market will enable the bank to make credit decisions locally.
Local USNY Bank directors are Bob O’Neill, Michael Moffat and Bob Ranger. They are also Cooperstown bank directors.
USNY Bank President Mike Briggs was in town for an investors’ reception Tuesday evening and for the first day.
The Bank of Cooperstown describes itself as a full-service community bank, specializing in providing comprehensive banking services to individuals, small- and medium-size businesses, retail and hospitality businesses, agribusiness enterprises, professional practices and commercial real-estate owners.
The new bank’s phone number is 547-2210 and its Web site is www.bankofcooperstown.com.Labels: 12-21-07, Archives |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:17 AM |
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December 14 2007
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Friday, December 14, 2007
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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 � 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 |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:14 AM |
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December 7 2007
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Friday, December 7, 2007
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Johnson’s Business Savvy Coming To County Board
 Just listening to Jim Johnson recount his life is exhausting to most mortals.
In high school in Oneonta, Johnson – as of Jan. 1, he will represent Cooperstown on the Otsego County Board of Representatives – leaps from flipping burgers at a Burger King into radio, and in three weeks has a late-night, on-air shift.
Crazy about the radio business, he goes to SUNY Oneonta so he can keep working at WDOS.
He graduates, joins The Curpier Co. in Cooperstown as a publishers’ representative, selling ads for magazines across the country.
In a couple of years, he breaks away when colleague Angus Mackie forms Mackie Marketing Associates, and before long he’s running his own agency, J.V. Johnson & Associates, out of his home in Laurens, with 30 magazines on his client list.
Two days after going out on his own, wife Amy discovers she’s pregnant with their first child, Alex, now in eighth grade, but there’s no turning back.
Through all this, Jim Johnson has held on to a dream hatched on those late-night gigs.
“I knew what I was trying to do was to – eventually – buy a radio station,” he said. “And now I was ready. I felt I could make a radio deal happen.”
Now things really start to accelerate.
It was 1995, Jim is 30-ish, and the Norwich Group becomes available – WKXZ-94 (Hot Adult Contemporary), WBKT-95.3 (Country) and WCHN-9.70 AM (Nostalgia.)
“It was almost as if it was meant to be,” he remembers.
He had a plan, and he immediately began to implement it.
One, adopt the best technology. For instance, new transmitters could reduce power use by 70 percent. “These types of investments, I made right away.”
Two, WKXZ broadcast at 50,000 watts; all other stations around here were 3,000 watts. “I thought of it as a regional, Central New York radio station.”
Adding Oneonta’s WZOZ in 1999, Jim found he had four signals and four distinct formats – he could deliver a regional buy, hitting a wide range of demographics.
During his years in magazine advertising sales, he had dealt with the big agencies in New York City. Contrary to most radio executives from country towns, he could walk into a Young & Rubicam, and he did.
Creative entities like radio stations have relatively few concrete assets. “The assets are what you’re able to generate in revenue,” he said, and generate he did.
And he centralized everything he could. When he started, he had 14 employees in three radio stations. By the time he was done, he had 12 employees in eight radio stations.
All this was accomplished through several years of 16-hour days, seven-day weeks.
For better and for worse, he knew all the jobs associated with radio.
So, “when I lost my morning man on WZOZ,” he said, “I did it myself for nine months.”
By time he sold what had become Banjo Communications to the high-flying Pilot Group in 2003, Johnson’s company was claiming more than $9 million a year in revenues.
Phew.
By this time, Jim’s bought The Vines restaurant in Oneonta from actor James Gandolfino of “Sopranos” fame, but he and Amy decide within a year it isn’t for them.
In 2006 he invests in a Rock & Roll musical, “Once Around the Sun,” which opens off-Broadway to good reviews, runs six months, but isn’t able to make the leap to Broadway.
Along the way, the Johnsons had acquired a house on Otsego Lake. When a downstate buyer made them an offer they couldn’t refuse, they sold it, then found there was simply no more property available on Glimmerglass.
About this time, the “old Ralph Chamberlain place” came on the market.
(During the recent campaign, when people talked about Jim Johnson, they’d say, “You know, he’s the guy who bought the old Ralph Chamberlain place.”)
Jim and Amy had looked at the rambling, resort-like property on Bedbug Hill in the Town of Otsego, but decided against it. Too big. One Saturday, though, Jim went up to the auction; when he returned, to Amy’s surprise, they owned what they would call Fly Creek Stables (and, for a while, they operated The Inn at Fly Creek Stables, a B&B, there as well.)
To fill any free time, Dad had taken up coaching youth soccer and Little League. And he’s a horror-movie buff: “The older, the more black and white, the campier, the better.” Oh yes, he plays in a rock band, The Pundits, occasionally at Hoffman Lane Bistro.
Jim Johnson’s been talking about an hour now, sitting on one of the plump black-leather chairs in the marble-floored livingroom of the old Ralph Chamberlain place. The fire is crackling in the fireplace.
Earlier, he and the kids, daughter Alex and son James, a fifth-grader – both are at Cooperstown Central – had gone out to the 31-stall horsebarn. The Johnsons have three horses, but are boarding a number more. Shades of that morning man, the barn manager they’d been depending on left, and Amy was shovelling hay with a pitchfork.
This is in addition to her full-time job as a first-grade teacher at St. Mary’s, Oneonta. Like husband, like wife.
So why politics?
Jim was on the county Republican committee. He was troubled by the financial fiasco of the past year. When it appeared no one would challenge freshman Nancy Iversen, 59, a retired school teacher who had been in the middle of the controversies, he asked for the committee’s endorsement, and got it.
On election day, Nov. 6, he discovered he’d won a seat, 689 to 502, and was part of a new solid Republican majority.
His goals? Improve accountability. Keep taxes as low as possible. Better identify the county’s assets, “right now, tourism assets.”
When a lad, he spent a lot of time with his grandparents, and granddad Pat Baldo impressed upon him that “hard work paid off. And how to be frugal.”
And how.
Given the record to date, District 8 voters don’t have to worry about getting their money’s worth.
By the way, Jim Johnson’s now 42.
County's $100,000 Makes Cooperstown's Christmas
The departing Democratic-controlled Otsego County Board of Representatives gave Cooperstown a fond farewell Wednesday, Dec. 5, a $100,000 fond farewell.
At the final meeting before Republicans resume control in January, the representatives approved allocating that amount from the county Occupancy Tax fund to help the tiny village cope with the expense of handling 450,000 tourists a year.
The Occupancy Tax is a 4 percent levy on lodging, up from 2 percent last year.
“I’m giddy,” departing county Rep. Nancy Iversen, D-Pierstown, who represents Cooperstown, said after the vote.
“Wow, great,” said Cooperstown Mayor Carol B. Waller, a Republican, on hearing the news.
The departing Democrats, who had gained control by allying with county Rep. Don Lindberg, a maverick Republican from Worcester, also tried to put $200,000 in the budget to hire a county manager next year, but that effort failed.
Iversen, who has been lobbying for county funding for the village for the past two years, made that motion, and it was seconded by county Rep. Ron Feldstein, D-Otego, outgoing chairman of the powerful Administration Committee.
Tellingly, county Rep. Jim Powers, the Republican from the Butternuts Valley who is expected to become chairman with the new year, and county Rep. Greg Relic of Unadilla, the other senior Republican, voted nay.
However, with Republican rising star Jim Johnson, who will replace Iversen, pledged to get more county money for Cooperstown, taking the $100,000 back may not be easy or desirable to the new majority.
In the end, Iversen said, her colleagues were convinced by a fact sheet that showed that upstate counties as a whole get 27 percent of their revenues from the property tax. In Otsego County, that number is 13 percent, because of Cooperstown’s sales-tax-generating prowess.
“That statistic alone made people understand that giving a little money over to Cooperstown isn’t giving money to Cooperstown – it’s investing in tourism,” said Iversen.
Chalets Rise On Route 28 In Hartwick
 When Sal Furnari was considering building 15-cottage Chalet Village, he didn't spend a lot of time on market research.
"Dreams Park being across the road from us was as obvious as it needed to be," said Furnari, a health-care consultant who is developing the summer weekly rentals community in the former Hartwick Pines mobile-home park at the corner of Route 28 and Seminary Road.
Since August, drivers-by have been asking themselves what's going on, as 36- by 20-foot plywood boxes began rising behind a line of trees, as they were sheathed with knotty pine, topped with peaked roofs, and Adirondack-style porches emerged on the fronts.
Furnari and two partners, brother Angelo Furnari and a longtime friend, James LaRosa both of Long Island, are riding what’s turning into another wave of development aimed at serving the 55,000 people who visit 12-year-old Dreams Park each summer – the players, plus an average of 3.5 family members.
So far, the youth-baseball facility has spawned three hotels affiliated with national chains – a Best Western, a Holiday Inn Express and a Howard Johnson’s. Construction is due to begin any day now on a Hampton Inn.
On a parallel track, almost every rental property in the Hartwick and Milford vicinity was set aside for Dreams Park families, pulling year-long rentals off the market and forcing year-’round residents out of the area, as landlords found they could generate more income in three months than 12 with a quarter of the effort.
This new wave, launched with the opening of August Lodge, efficiency units, plus a pool and spa a little further up Seminary Road, may erode that Mom-and-Pop piece of the market.
In addition to the cottages, a multi-purpose building – the reception area, a game room, laundry and meeting space, will rise at the Route 28 end of the property. Year Two, a swimming pool is planned.
Year One, a two-bedroom, one-bath unit will go for $1,450 a week; a two-bedroom, two-bath, for $1,550.
After college, Furnari and wife Abbe spent 10 years in the Chicago suburbs, but as their children – Jesse, now 6, Jason, 4 – began to grow, the couple began to think about moving back east.
The Furnaris had bought a farm in the Town of Exeter in 1999, but moved into Cooperstown because of the schools. (Since arriving a year ago, a third son, Joseph, now seven months, has joined the family.)
While the husband focused on his consultant business, couple bought the Major League Motor Inn, and the wife took that on.
“We found we liked the hospitality business,” Sal said.
Village, Hospital Await Decision In Parking Suit
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.
Notre Dame Students Due
The Fighting Irish are due back.
Not Notre Dame’s football team, but the team of grad students from its School of Architecture who have been studying Cooperstown since August.
An exhibit of their findings and recommendations may be viewed from 6 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 12, in the Otsego County Courthouse, with a formal presentation beginning at 7 p.m. The public is welcome.Labels: 12-07-07, Archives |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:12 AM |
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November 30 2007
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Friday, November 30, 2007
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Paid-Parking ‘Aye’ Vote Met With Insults, Hoots
The vote was taken, 4-2, and the boos and shouts rang out.
“Election’s coming!”
“How do you do an impeachment?”
“Go back to Chicago!”
And “Shame, shame, shame!”
Thus ended the latest stirring chapter in what’s grown into a seven-month saga.
The arena was CCS’ Sterling Auditorium, where for more than two hours on Monday evening, Nov. 19, 49 people, from Hugh MacDougall to Dan Naughton, held forth, all but a handful speaking against a proposal developed by the village trustees’ Police Committee to institute paid parking on Main and Pioneer streets, and in the Doubleday Field parking lot.
It was the best-attended trustees’ meeting in memory – perhaps ever. Mayor Carol B. Waller’s husband Bill counted 298 people; Police Chief Diana Nicols 301.
“So I’m saying 300,” the mayor said the next morning.
In the end, none of the people who had to make the decision had changed their minds.
The Police Committee – Deputy Mayor Paul Kuhn and Trustees Lynne Mebust and Grace Kull – joined by Trustee Jeff Katz, voted for the proposal. Trustees Eric Hage and Milo V. Stewart Jr. voted nay. Waller, who would have cast the tie-breaking vote in the event of a 3-3 outcome, was circumvented; she has come to oppose the proposal.
The vote approved two measures.
One is a law authorizing paid parking; it must now go to New York Secretary of State Lorraine A. Cortes-Vazquez for a routine stamp of approval. To change the law would now take a months-long process of preliminary discussions, public hearings, and another vote.
Two is associated guidelines, defining whether meters, Pay & Display machines or a kiosk will be employed; establishing a permit system, or not, and deciding other work-a-day issues. They can be changed at any trustees’ meeting by a simple majority vote.
In effect, that leaves the issue entirely open. The trustees can decide to do nothing. Or to limit paid parking to the Doubleday lot, which emerged as an option preferred to going the distance. Or hire an attendant instead of buying $8,000 P&D machines.
The day after the stormy hearing, what the future holds was unclear.
Kuhn and Mebust assumed the Police Committee would resume its deliberations.
But Waller said, “I haven’t decided” if that’s the route to go, adding, “it’s an issue the Board of Trustees should deal with.”
Another battleground will be the March village elections.
The morning after, Kuhn confirmed that – after 10 years in the service of the village, as Planning Board member, Planning Board chairman, trustee and deputy mayor – he will not seek another term.
But Katz – he moved here from Chicago, hence that catcall – and Waller are up for reelection.
The mayor has been saying she hasn’t made up her mind. It is known she had considered her former deputy mayor, Glenn Hubbell, as her successor, but he was forced to resign from the village board last December due to health concerns.
With Kuhn out of the picture, her bench is further depleted.
It is known that Katz, at some point, would like to reach the mayoralty, but Monday’s meeting, where he became a lightning-rod for criticism, can’t have helped in that ambition.
One of the cries Monday night was, “Milo for mayor, Milo for mayor,” since that trustee had come out early and strong against paid parking.
The morning after, however, Stewart said, “I wouldn’t commit to running for mayor at this point.”
If you think municipal governance is hum-drum, the meeting in Sterling Auditorium would have made you think again.
With a girls soccer banquet going on in the cafeteria, all lots around the high school were filled, and parking extended all the way to the gate.
Inside, both Police Chief Nicols and county Sheriff Richard J. Devlin – the school is outside village limits – were at the scene, and a handful of deputies and patrolmen were scattered around the venue.
In welcoming the crowd, the mayor advised that – given the large attendance – she would be limiting speakers to two minutes each.
Highpoints of the rhetoric included Fred Leminster, the downtown merchant and firefighter, echoing William Jennings Bryant: “Do not crucify merchants on the cross of paid parking.”
Ed Johnson of the Fly Creek Valley, a daily visitor to town, was among those who said the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Bassett Hospital and The Otesaga need to come to grips with a problem of their making. “This is their responsibility, not our responsibility,” he said.
“The last month has been a spectacular experience,” said Neil Weiller, the downtown merchant and “advocate for a balanced system” whose 11th-hour petition drive, assisted by fellow businessman Rod Torrence, caught fire.
Time and again, longevity surfaced as a qualification, as speakers spoke of the generations their families had been in town, and some, in identifying themselves, gave the year they graduated from CCS. (Of the village board, only Stewart is a native Cooperstownian.)
When all had spoken, Waller declared the public hearing at an end.
She asked trustees to, one by one, say their piece.
Kull read from a prepared statement, ending, “I see nothing to gain by putting this off and waiting to see what might or might not come along in the future.”
And the boos began.
Kuhn followed, recounting “the long trip” and concluding the village will never control traffic and capture tourism dollars “if we continue to give our best parking away.”
The mayor had to rap her gavel.
“There is a lot of opinion out there beyond this room,” said Katz.
More gaveling.
Stewart took a different tack: “We need to take the time to scrutinize this plan.”
Cheers, applause and a standing ovation. “Milo for mayor!”
Hage went with Stewart: “We all just have an honest disagreement of what’s right and what’s wrong.”
Finally Mebust settled the matter: “When does giving it more thought mean not doing anything for years?”
The outcome was now a foregone conclusion, but the mayor had her say: “I don’t think we’ve done enough here.”
She proposed a commission – trustees, citizens and others – to report back with a consensus in six months.
Before the vote was taken, Stewart surrendered the floor to his sister, Sarah, and realtor Donna Thompson, who read a list of more than 100 “proxies” – people who couldn’t make it to the meeting but opposed paid parking downtown.
Sarah Stewart bearded Katz: “If these aren’t your constituents, Jeff, where are they?”
The vote followed. It was peremptory, but the crowd leaped to its feet with a roar when Waller announced the result.
And the next morning came the post-mortems.
Waller: “I’m disappointed. I wanted to continue the work. I thought they spoke loud and clear. Ninety percent of the people who spoke last night had the same opinion.”
Kuhn: “If people came to that meeting without really understanding what it is they were voicing their objection to, then I guess we have to say it’s our fault. I got the feeling that people didn’t even read the law.”
Stewart: “It was a poor example of government. The Participation in Government students (from CCS) must be very confused right now. (Other trustees) showed dictatorship qualities. Not listening to the residents was a poor mistake and they don’t realize it. It was an egotistical move for each of them.”
Kull: “”We have to move on and very carefully think through the regulations. And we will do it very carefully.”
Hage: “You’ve got to try to keep it business-oriented. It’s not personal. You have to try to take your emotions out of it, and reason through what you think is most logical for the town. I hope that we, as a board, could move forward to deal with the other business we have to deal with. Because, obviously, we have more to deal with than just parking.”
Mebust: “It just reinforces the lesson that you can’t please everyone.”
Bassett Medical School Given $1.3 Million
A medical-school campus in Cooperstown has received a $1.3 million boost, a gift from the Hannah-Lee Stokes Charitable Trust.
“A visionary gift of this magnitude from the Stokes Charitable Trust will significantly benefit Mrs. Stokes’ beloved Cooperstown community as well as the surrounding area,” Dr. William F. Streck, Bassett president and chief executive, said Tuesday, Nov. 20, in announcing the gift.
“The education of new physicians, many of whom will settle here, raise their families and participate in community life, will enhance our regional communities for generations,” he added.
Already, 50-some physicians trained at Bassett have settled in the area.
Mrs. Stokes, who died in 2001, had contributed $600,000 to the Friends of Bassett in 1994 to build the Hannah-Lee House, a residence for patients and family members.
Under the medical-school program, announced early this year, students would spend their first two years training at Columbia, Dartmouth and other partner medical schools, and their last two years in the Bassett system.
“Beyond academic excellence, Bassett’s medical school track will continue to imbue students with Bassett’s brand
of humanism, social responsibility and leadership,” the official announcement of the Stokes’ gift declared.
The medical-education program is now in a three-year development phase as Bassett works with the accrediting agency, the Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME) of the American Medical Association, and the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Laura Schweitzer, an administrator at SUNY Upstate Medical University and vice provost at Syracuse University, joined Bassett in February as its first chief academic officer. Dr. Henry F. Weil of Cooperstown is co-director of the Medical School Campus Initiative.
Mrs. Stokes was born Hannah-Lee Sherman, the grand-niece of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman.
She came to Cooperstown later in life on the retirement of her husband, state Sen. Walter W. Stokes, who had purchased the Woodside Hall mansion.
Although she came from a family of wealth, Hannah-Lee decided she wanted to work. She joined Vogue’s circulation department, but rose to one of the most famous models of her day, appearing on billboards throughout the country as “Miss Chesterfield.”
Later, she and her husband – chairman of the Senate’s Conservation Commission and a backer of conservation legislation – divided their time between homes in Cooperstown, Albany and New York City, settling her in 1991.
‘Dickens of Christmas’ A Story of Friendship
Peanut Butter Blossoms. Pecan Snowballs. Fruit Cake. Nutmeg Logs.
Barbara Bartow bakes all these cookies “from scratch,” and the delicacies have been bringing growing hundreds of Christmas enthusiasts back every holiday season to A Dickens of a Christmas, her and hubby Jan’s arts-and-crafts-packed little grey saltbox a half-dozen homes south of the crossroads here.
Which reminds Barbara and Susan Winnie, who have maintained a “33-year partnership of friendship,” of a story.
One year, Barbara made gingerbread-shaped Christmas decorations.
“We heard ‘crunch,’” said Sue.
They overheard one shopper say, “These cookies are awfully hard!”
“I think you’re eating the ornaments,” the other shopper replied.
Barbara and Sue broke out laughing at the memory.
“Something funny happens every year,” Sue said.
The cookies, coffee and malt cider are just the start of it. The low-slung home is packed with all manner of Christmas-related items, from jewelry to potholders to stuffed animals.
Like a lot of things, it just happened.
After Barbara sold Colonial Florists on Cooperstown’s Main Street (where Tin Bin Alley is today), she and Jan – a post office employee who for four years was president of the state Rural Letter Carriers Association – developed Cooperstown Originals, and sold her crafts at the two big shows a year at Hunter Mountain.
Meanwhile, Sue, a Bassett Hospital nurse for three decades, was developing Winnie Woman Originals, quilts, wall-hangings, potholders – anything involving needlework.
So seven years ago they created A Dickens of a Christmas, which they call “a craft show, not a business.”
Why?
“I love Christmas,” said Barbara.
“Christmas is my favorite season,” Sue chimes in seamlessly.
You’ll find the two of them carry on a two-part conversation, kind of like a round, filling in for each other and finishing each other’s sentences. The ladies met in the ‘70s at the bar in the Fly Creek Hotel, where Jan was bartending, and have been fast friends ever since.
“I’m not bossy,” said Barbara, who is the older and the senior figure in the mother-daughter relationship. “I just have better ideas.”
“Her ideas work,” Sue agreed. The two argue, she said, but never fight. There are never any hard feelings.
Sue and her husband, Lee, have two sons, Zachary, 23, and Michael, 14. But Barbara raised six children, Sherry Phillips, the Schuyler Lake postmistress; Sue Markusen, a pharmacy technician at CVS; Jenna Bartow, a fourth-grade CCS teacher, and three sons, Rae, Mark and Stephen Althiser.
Every year, they take Barbara’s daughters and go to quilting classes in Lancaster, Pa. Or they go to Vermont, shopping and looking for ideas.
While this conversation is going on, a couple of customers were wandering around the house.
“They’d been here a couple of hours,” said Sue, and the partners typically leave visitors alone, and people like that. “We don’t hover.”
Items in the store range from 50 cents up. The most expensive item is $89, a Santa in a train. (Each item sells separately for $89.)
“People come here because they want to be here,” said Sue.
“How you been? How’s the family?” Barbara chimed in. “You get to know them on an intimate basis.”
After the first season, calligrapher Kittie Johnson created a letter that Barbara and Sue mailed out to everyone who signed the guest book, and that annual letter has become a tradition, mailed out to addresses from Barnevelt and Albany to England and Japan.
If customers don’t come back for three seasons, they’re removed from the mailing list. Even so, 900 letters went out this year.
Editor’s Note: Atnas Sualc is a pseudonym for Mij Nilvek.
Conditions Ideal On Opening Day
Tom Titone, who was crossing County Highway 35 with a 270 Winchester Short Magnum under his arm on the second day of deer-hunting season, hadn’t even seen a deer yet.
But he was hardly discouraged.
Hunters in the Tabor Hill neighborhood, as well as his pal Jim O’Hagan, had spotted a five-pointer, a seven-pointer and even an eight-pointer.
“There’s more game up here than I’ve ever seen in my life,” said O’Hagan, walking up from a brushy area along Cherry Valley Creek where a four-pointer had strolled by.
Titone’s a crack shot, O’Hagan said, and can drop a buck at 300 yards.
It was Sunday, Nov. 18, and it was a beautiful day for being outdoors. The sun was shining, and temperatures were in the upper 40s. There was a dusting on the ground, ideal for tracking.
Titone and O’Hagan, who began hunting small game at age 8 on Long Island, weren’t alone in their optimism about the season.
Statewide, the deer harvest in the first two days of the hunting season was 29 percent higher than the year before, according to Gordon Batcheller, the state wildlife biologist in Albany responsible for keeping track of these things.
If anything, he said, conditions have been too good: “Hunting in bright sunshine, the deer are harder to see.”
This deer season is different because, for the first time, it coincides with the season on bear, which have been pouring over the border from New Jersey and thriving in ideal conditions in the Catskills Region, which includes Otsego County.
Statewide, Batcheller continued, more than 100 bear were shot in the first two days of the season, more than double the year before.
Hunters around here believe folks from New Jersey are trapping nuisance bruins and dumping them in this neighborhood, but the state biologist discounts that theory.
It’s simply that, despite pleading from New York State game officials, the Garden State refuses to institute a bear season, the equivalent of “pumping bears” into the Empire State.
Back in Middlefield, the two friends have taken a lunch break at Titone’s home in Westford, where two black Labs, one tan, one black, greeted them.
The knotty-pine walls in Tom’s basement den is full of trophies, including a 14-pointer his girlfriend Anne Carr shot the year before.
She comes downstairs, and he’s right: The buck was bigger than she was.
What a hunter’s paradise.
Ten years ago, Titone remembers, he saw an unfamiliar animal in the back yard.
“A horse,” he thought to himself. “No, a donkey. My god … a moose!”
By the time the game warden got to the house, the animal had disappeared into the darkness.
A week later, though, Titone was listening to the scanner. A van had collided with a horse on I-88 toward Cobleskill, and the trooper was summoning a truck and a backhoe to remove it.
Silence, then the trooper’s voice crackled over the scanner again. “Correct that horse,” he said. “A moose.”Labels: 11-30-07, Archives |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:11 AM |
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November 22 2007
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Thursday, November 22, 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.
Like Chocolate? Beer? Here's Job For You
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 Labels: 11-22-07, Archives |
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November 16 2007
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Friday, November 16, 2007
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It’s All About Money, Crowd Told by NY-Focused Investor
For a wind-farm developer, Keith D. Pitman had a lot of horror stories to tell about his industry.
In the Town of Italy, Ontario County, for instance, a deep-pocketed developer threatened to sue the poor municipality if the town board refused to simply rubber-stamp wind-farm plans.
The profits from the $100 million projects – they can run as high as 27 percent on investment annually – are ending up in Italy, Spain and Ireland; no New York Power Authority here.
In some counties – Madison, for instance – early wind projects were so welcome they are paying no county taxes at all.Such projects often benefit, not communities, “but three farmers with 1,000 acres each.”
But Pitman, president of Tom Golisano’s Empire State Wind Energy, came to the Cherry Valley Community Center Tuesday, Nov. 13 – at the invitation of Supervisor Tom Garretson and the town’s Committee on Renewable and Alternative Energy – not to bury wind power, but to praise it.
And his humor-laced enthusiasm kept the crowd of 100 in the old gym engaged for more than two hours as he detailed his company’s goal of collaborating with communities that see benefits in wind-farm development.
“If I make a killing,” he said, “you make half a killing.”
The model – Golisano, the company’s founder, is billionaire founder of Paychex and three time candidate for governor – is in stark contrast with Cherry Valley’s experience: First, Global Winds Harvest sought to put a wind farm on Cape Wycoff, across from the Cherry Valley-Springfield Central School; then, Reunion Power sought approval of 25 turbines in the East Hills section.
A years-long battle ensued, pitting landowners who stood to benefit financially from newcomers drawn to Cherry Valley by its rural character.
Global Winds and Reunion dealt first with property owners, then with the municipality. Empire State’s approach is the opposite. It deals with the “taxing authority” first to determine if a community wants wind power, how much it wants, where it wants the turbines, and so on. Only when an agreement with the town has been reached does the developer canvas property owners.
So far, Empire State has contracts with four towns around Lake Ontario – Butler, Huron, Rose and Wolcott – and Benton in the Finger Lakes.
“We didn’t have any legal fights,” said Pitman, former manager of the Massena Electric Department. “We had conversations.”
Whereas secrecy characterizes most wind developers, Empire Wind tries to be transparent in discussing investment, construction and returns.
If landowners want confidentially, the company will respect that, Pitman said; if the landowner doesn’t care, the company will make those details public as well.
It was unclear by the meeting’s end how good a fit Empire Wind and Cherry Valley might be.
Pitman started talking about 24 turbines. Asked about smaller ones, he said Steel Winds, at the old Bethlehem Steel plant in Lackawanna, is successful with eight. Sodus public schools, near Rochester, are using state Education Department’s EXCEL funding to install mini-turbines on school roofs.
At the outset, Garretson’s concept was perhaps two turbines – one to supply power locally, the other to generate revenues to cover town operations.
But, at several points, Pitman was clear: The smaller the project, the less revenues to spread around. At some point, Cherry Valley might not be worth Empire State’s efforts.
When Andy Minnig of Advocates for Cherry Valley, began a slightly tough line of questioning, Pitman replied, “I’m not even suggesting we’re interested in coming to Cherry Valley at all.”
At evening’s end, the reaction was mixed.
“In the end,” said Erik Miller, Otsego County Conservation Association executive director, “we’re still going to have to look at the impact of industrial development in rural setting.”
But Garretson said, “I think we’re on the right track.”
“I don’t know,” said Cornwell. “Information – that was the good of tonight.”
He said his committee will take up the issue when it meets next, Tuesday, Dec. 11.
New Barn Built in Old Fashion
In 1883, Ingalls men climbed the hill to the east of today’s Route 28.
They felled hemlocks, milled them and dragged them down the hill.
The result of their labors – that big barn northeast of the Seminary Road intersection, now on Cooperstown Dreams Park property – is commandingly evident even today, 124 years later.
In the summer of 2006, new generations of Ingalls men, David and the third of his four sons, Peter, 24, climbed that same hill and cut similar hemlocks, straight, stable, disease-resistant.
Over the winter, father and son smoothed out the 26-foot beams with a motorized – some things do change – handmill.
And for the past few weeks a team of skilled carpenters – it includes second son Ben, Peter and John Edgington, a veteran of barn renovations at The Farmers’ Museum – have been building a very similar barn about a quarter-mile from the original.
(Neighbor Dwaine Sharratt, who runs Beaver Valley Campground up the road, and Ron Conger and John Craig of Cooperstown, round out the team.)
Father Dave (his other sons are Nate, 32, and Micah, 22) is proud there isn’t a single nail in the structure, just like the original – it’s all heavy timbers and wooden pegs.
This winter, he plans to hand-split black locust shingles to complete the roof next year. The shingles may very well be from the same stand of black locusts the 19th-century Ingallses used.
It was a beehive of activity the other afternoon on the summit above the Ingalls’ blueberry farm on Seminary Road.
The frame was up – six “bents,” Ben, 29, explained, a bent being the H-shaped configuration. Set side by side, they make up the wall.
The model was a type of four-bent threshing mill that’s common around here. “Six,” said Ben, “so we can put in a whole second floor.”
While timber-framing never disappeared, it did fall into little use, before experiencing a revival in the 1980s, Edgington explained.
Today, there’s a national Timber Framers Guild and other organizations dedicated to keeping the method alive.
“I like the ax work myself,” said John. “It’s not like cutting a whole bunch of 2x4s and same length and nailing them into a wall.”
In a few days, the roof will be on.
In the summer, Dave, a school counselor in Oneonta, and wife Darlene rent their home to Dreams Park families, so they’ll be moving into the barn and they’ll continue to move things forward.
Dave has few illusions, however. “It won’t be done for 10 years.”
Paid-Parking Foes Rally
Citizens gathered at anti-paid-parking advocate Neil Weiller’s house Tuesday evening, Nov. 13, and the next morning “No Paid Parking” signs – red letters on a white background – popped up all over the village.
Rod Torrence, the other businessman who with Weiller has been leading an 11th-hour effort to derail village trustees plans to charge for parking during the summer months, said the three dozen people at the meeting “opened their checkbooks.”
In addition to the signs and other placards, a flier is going out to all village voters, urging them to “make ourselves heard” at the monthly village board meeting, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 22. Because of the size of the crowd expected, the session has been moved from 22 Main to Cooperstown Middle/High School’s Sterling Auditorium.
The main objection, Torrence said, is not to paid parking in the Doubleday Field parking lot, but along Main and Pioneer streets.
Things have advanced to such a point, however, that the opponents believe the trustees should simply reject the proposal, restudy it and come up with a more appropriate proposal, he said.
“It’s not against paid parking,” added Weiller. “It’s about this proposal. Yes/no. Back to the drawing board.”
The Police Committee – Deputy Mayor Paul Kuhn and Trustees Lynne Mebust and Grace Kull – plus Trustee Jeff Katz, have favored the proposal as is. Trustees Eric Hage and Milo V. Stewart Jr. have gone against it.
If one of the proponents were to switch sides, the trustees would be split 3-3, and Mayor Carol B. Waller would then cast the tie-breaking vote. It couldn’t be determined at mid-week if any of the advocates were having second thoughts.
As of Wednesday, Nov. 14, Waller still had questions about who is parking in | | |
