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This Is Just The Beginning, New Ommegang CEO Says
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Thorpe: Focus On Quality Positions
Brand Superbly To Outpace U.S. EconomyBy JIM KEVLIN COOPERSTOWN ‘The philosophy across Duvel” – Brewery  Ommegang’s parent company – “is you get the right thing. You pay the price for it, but you get the right thing.” Simon Thorpe, Ommegang’s new president, was enthusing over a beer-and-wire topping machine, top of the line, imported from Italy, that was being installed in the Medieval-style Town of Middlefield plant the other day. “This is a big day for us,” said Thorpe. “Investing in little things makes the difference between great quality and really good quality.” Ommegang’s goal: “The top of the pyramid for super-premium quality.” “The right thing,” “top quality,” “the best.” These are the types of phrases you hear if you spend much time with the 47-year-old Brit who arrived in Cooperstown via a 25-year career that ranges from Brussels to Battle Creek, Mich. Listening to Thorpe, you can imagine how the scene behind the brewery’s neat facade you see from Route 33 must pick at him: Kegs are stacked here, pallets there, crates over there. But not for long. Accompanied by brewmaster Phil Leinhardt, Thorpe strides toward the frame of an 8,000-square-foot warehouse that is rising to the north of the main building. By March, the building should be finished and a storage “pinch” that has been slowing Ommegang’s production should be eased. In addition to providing a home for all that material out back, the warehouse will contain an expanded “warm cellar” – the Belgian-style brews are further bottle-aged after the regular brewing is complete – that doubles the current space. This is part of the effort to expand the 36-hectoliter capacity – a hectoliter is 100 liters or 26 gallons – to 45-50 hectoliters. The need to expand is an outgrowth of success: In the past year, the Dow went up 2.2 percent; Ommegang’s volume rose 11 percent, and its revenues, 20 percent. Thorpe sees the brewery’s success as a byproduct of the Europeanization of Americans’ approach to food and drink – a heightened interest in flavor and quality. “We are in the perfect place at the perfect time to grow with that trend,” he said, perhaps to even 100 hectoliters in five years. Grow where? “We have 148 acres here,” he said, with a nod out back. He anticipates the brewery, which employs 30-some people now – several of the new people are in sales and marketing, spreading the Ommegang word to all but four of the 50 states – could double in size in a decade. Thorpe was raised in Southhampton, England, on the Channel, won a scholarship to a good secondary school and studied engineering at the University of Birmingham. During a five-year stint with Unilever in the manufacture of margarine in London’s east end, he discovered his real interest was marketing and strategy. He spent nine years with Tambrands in Belgium and Germany, then joined Kellogg’s in fabled Battle Creek, just as the company was discovering a market in convenience foods like Pop Tarts, Neutrogena Bars and Rice Krispie Treats. He joined Hallmark just as people were shifting to e-mails, and found himself responsible for strategically retrenching Crayolas in the Binney & Smith division. The link in all this: “I’ve always wanted to run companies that have beautiful brands, real high quality brands with growth potential.” (Hold that thought.) Then, beer, and it gets a bit complicated. Thorpe joined InterBrew; the Belgian beer company had established “flagship local brands” in Korea, China, the U.K. and elsewhere. His first challenge was to merge InterBrew with AmBev – its South American equivalent – and create InBev. After a stint in Belgium, he returned to the States as InBev’s U.S. CEO, responsible for such brands as Labatt, Rolling Rock and Beck’s. Foremost, he oversaw the rise of Stella Artois. Innovation One: Every available billboard in the top 30 U.S. cities was obtained for Stella. Innovation Two: The company provided “millions” of chalice-like glasses with the Stella logo on the side to bars that served the beer. So when you got a Stella, it was in a Stella glass, something that’s become a staple for quality beers. Itchy to run his own company, Thorpe put together a private equity fund with some friends, but when the market collapsed in 2008, he reconnect with Michel Moortgat, president of Ommegang’s parent, Duvel Moortgat. From what you’ve read so far, you can see how this would have been an ideal match. In addition to ramping up production and sales, one of Thorpe’s novelties – he said he’s leaned heavily on brewmaster Leinhardt and Larry Bennett, director of marketing – has been the four specialty brews announced last month. Only six weeks’ supply of each will be produced, and a different beer will be released quarterly. Ommegang has caused a splash in beer circles nationally, but, Thorpe said, everything gets old; this is an idea to keep the brand fresh. Plus, “there’s competition down there,” said Thorpe, his head inclining toward the French doors at the end of the second-floor offices that look out to where the brewers concoct their potions. “It’s created a buzz in the brewery.” Meanwhile, Thorpe is settling into Cooperstown, which he’s found he likes quite a bit. He’s met a lot of people. There’s a vibrant social life. His wife Julie and son Robert, 17, who have followed him back and forth across the Atlantic several times, remain in Brussels for now until the son graduates from high school. Labels: 02-04-10, Front Page |
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Local P&C In Limbo For Another 30 Days
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By Benjamin Deer
HARTWICK SEMINARY
If it keeps its local supermarket open, Tops Friendly Markets – the U.S. Bankruptcy Court Thursday, Jan. 28, approved its purchase of 79 P&C store – may not only be the newcomer in the market:
It is looking to be a good neighbor as well.
“We’ll be giving to local food banks and donating our products to food drives and local area hospitals,” said Kate McKenna, Tops spokeswoman, adding the company donates $10 million annually to charity. “We really do a lot in the community. It’s very exciting.”
But first, the Buffalo-based full-service grocery retailer has launched a 30-day evaluation process to measure the economic viability of each store and ultimately decide whether or not the location will be profitable. The specific date representatives from Tops will be visiting the P&C in Hartwick Seminary is not known.
“Unfortunately, a very small handful of stores will close, but we want to operate as many as possible,” McKenna said.
According to McKenna, the signage and the look of P&C will not change for three to six months.
“We’re not going to just come in there and slap our corporate name on the place. We want this to be a smooth and easy transition for the employees as well as for the customers. We’ll give it three to six months after the evaluation. That way, the community can get comfortable with Tops,” she said.Labels: 02-04-10, Front Page |
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6-Home Chestnut Crossing Application Due Soon
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Village Planning Board
Expects Paperwork On Feb. 23By JIM KEVLINCOOPERSTOWNMoney isn’t everything, but $5,600 is $5,  600. That’s the amount JGB Properties’ six-home “cluster” development – the first of its kind in the village – would generate annually in property taxes. (Don’t take our word for it: $2.5 million market value, assessed at half, $1.25 million; apply the 4.6 per $1,000 village tax rate. The school district and county t  ake additional pieces.) Chestnut Crossing, as the developers call it, would consist of six, two-story, stand-alone houses, priced at an average of $400,000. It would be the first housing development of any size since the 12-home, plus garden apartments, subdivision on Estli Avenue, developed for Bassett Healthcare some 20 years ago. Doug Beachel, JGB’s director of real estate, appeared before the village Planning Board Jan. 25 for a second preliminary conversation, and plans to submit a formal application at the board’s Tuesday, Feb. 23, meeting. At that time, a public hearing could be scheduled for the next meeting, March 23, and the Planning Board could grant approval any time after that. Beachel, based in Syracuse, said he hopes to get a spec home completed in the upcoming building season. Chestnut Crossing – the idea surfaced more than a year ago now – would stretch between Chestnut Street and Pine Boulevard, just north of the Inn at Cooperstown. It will require demolition of the former Smith Ford site, a low-slung one-story building that once was a meat cooler. One home would front on Chestnut, one on Pine, and the other four on Stagecoach Lane, a public right-of-way. There is actually room on the parcel for seven 5,000-square-foot lots – the village minimum – according to Tavis Austin, village zoning enforcement officer. However, the developer chose to go with just six lots and the cluster process so as to fit the development on the site in a more “harmonious” manner, he said. For his part, Beachel said JGB went the cluster route because it allows the development to be planned as an entity and approved in advance, which assists with the marketing. Labels: 02-04-10, Front Page |
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COOPERSTOWN AND AROUND
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Leak Requires CAA To
Move Quilts UpstairsCOOPERSTOWNBeginning with the Fenimore Quilt Club show, which opens 11 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 6, extensive damage from a steam leak is requiring all Cooperstown Art Association exhibits to be held until further notice on the second floor of 22 Main. “We are taking this unfortunate circumstance as an opportunity to re-assess the use of our space, to make it better and more professional as we go forward,” said Janet Erway, CAA executive director. CAPITALISM LIVES! 48 middle school student-entrepreneurs will demonstrate products they developed through the new “TREP$” program at a marketplace planned 10 a.m.-noon Saturday, Feb. 6, in the CCS cafeteria. The public is welcome.
FRICK WINNER:
The National Baseball Hall of Fame has announced that Jon Miller, the voice of ESPN’s national Sunday Night Baseball telecasts for 20 years, is 2010 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award.
The National Audubon Society’s 13th annual Great Backyard Bird Count is Friday-Sunday, Feb. 12-15. To participate locally, contact the Delaware-Otsego chapter’s John Davis at davi7js4@hughes.net or 547-9688.
NEXT BROWN? Time magazine has listed Republican Richard Hanna of Cooperstown and Barnevelt, who is running again against U.S. Rep. Mike Arcuri, D-24, as one of its 10 best prospects for pulling another “Scott Brown,” the upset in Massachusetts’ U.S. Senate race.
Labels: 02-04-10, Front Page, Glimmerglass |
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Freeman’s Journal Now Available Earlier
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Friday, January 22, 2010
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Friends,
Beginning with the edition you hold in your hands, The Freeman’s Journal is shifting its publication day from Fridays to Thursdays.
That means it will be available on newstands Wednesday afternoons and should arrive in local subscribers’ mailboxes on Thursdays.
Our hope is this change will allow you to better plan your weekend activities via our “Happenin’ Otsego” calendar and related advertising.
This shifts our production schedule from Wednesday nights to Tuesday nights. If you can, plan on getting news and advertising copy to us by Mondays or first thing Tuesday mornings. However, as always, we continue to be flexible and will accommodate you to the degree possible. If you’re unsure about an insertion, call 547-6103.
We will continue to update our Web site 24/7 when news happens. Check www.thefreemansjournal.com and sign up to be alerted by e-mail when that happens.
Any inputs you may have on these changes are welcome. Call me at the above number or e-mail jimk@thefreemansjournal.com
JIM KEVLIN
Editor & PublisherLabels: 01-28-10, Front Page |
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GOP Acclaims Booan As Mayor Stays Mum
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2 Trustees Face Off For Cooperstown Mayor Post By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
After all the support she’d voiced for her Democratic deputy mayor, Mayor Carol B. Waller sat mute as the village Republican Party, chaired by her husband Bill,  nominated its own candidate, Trustee Joe Booan, by acclamation. While she kept her counsel during the best-attended GOP village caucus in memory, perhaps in history – it packed 70 people into the 22 Main meeting room on Thursday, Jan. 21 – the mayor hadn’t changed her mind. “I’m supporting Jeff Katz for mayor,” she repeated earlier this week, saying she believes his longer tenure on the village board better qualifies him. Village Democrats, as anticipated, had nominated Katz at their own caucus, in the same room 24 hours earlier, attended by two dozen of the party faithful. They also nominated Trustee Lynne Mebust for a second term, and village Democratic chair Richard Abbate for the seat now filled by Trustee Eric Hage, an independent who decided not to run again. Over the weekend, however, Abbate had second thoughts and withdrew. He was replaced by Sally Eldred, retired executive director of the Greater Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, who moved to the village five years ago. For the two trustee vacancies, the Republicans nominated Doug Walker, proprietor of 2 Chestnut B&B who also ran two years ago, and Alton B. “Chip” Dunn, III, a Laurens Central School teacher long-active in the Cooperstown fire department and EMS squad. Democrats nominated Leslie Freedman and Republicans Mike Molloy for the village justice position being vacated by Enid Hinkes. Mayor Waller had announced last March that she would be supporting Katz, who she’d designated deputy mayor, to replace her in village elections now upcoming on Tuesday, March 16. Her husband, as Republican chairman, when questioned about the potential conflict of interest, had insisted everything would be above board. Still, as of Monday, Jan. 18, three days before the GOP caucus, he had recruited no one to run for mayor or trustee. That evening, Joe Booan, a BOCES administrator elected village trustee last year, announced he would seek the top job, and his supporters sprung into action to forestall what they feared was an impending Waller coup on Katz’s behalf. Throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, Booan supporters manned the phones, urging Republicans to attend Thursday’s caucus and vote their views. It later circulated that Bill Waller had been lining up proxy votes that he would then cast on Katz’s behalf. Whether he was doing so or not – Waller denies it, saying proxy votes aren’t even allowed in a caucus – a push for Katz never materialized. The Democratic caucus went forward routinely – Katz cited his longer tenure on the board in his acceptance remarks – but by 7 p.m. the next evening, every seat in the 22 Main meeting room was taken, and attendees were backed up into the hallway. County GOP Chair Sheila Ross nominated Bill Waller as caucus chair, and he was approved. When he called for nominations for mayor, Helen Chetner, Booan’s Irish Hill neighbor, nominated him; Lee Malone seconded. Addressing the caucus, Booan, who was recently promoted from Milford BOCES principal, recalled finding old equipment – training vehicles, on average, were 26 years old – a deteriorating plant and a fragmented staff on arriving there nine years ago, (issues that, to a degree, parallel current municipal challenges.) It took a while, but all of those issues have been resolved, he said, in particular “getting everybody on one bus going in one direction.” Any more nominations? Waller asked. “There being none, I cast one vote in the affirmative for the nominee.” The room burst into applause. Bill Waller said the caucus was the best attended in his 30 years involved in local politics. He researched earlier village GOP caucuses in The Freeman’s Journals, going back several decades, and hadn’t found one to match this one. Asked if the local Republican Party would be giving this year’s slate the same kind of support given to past candidates, Waller said he didn’t know and that the decision would be made by committee; he didn’t know when that committee might meet. The backdrop of last week’s events was a year of transition on the village board, and two new trustees – Booan and Willis J. Monie, Jr. – discovered they were of a mind with two other trustees, Hage and Neil Weiller, in their concern about the village’s declining financial picture. The four found themselves voting as a bloc on numerous questions, with Waller, Katz and Mebust in opposition. Some see the March election as a referendum on the two approaches. Katz, 47, a retired trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, moved to the village a half-dozen years ago with his wife and three sons. In addition to elective office, he published “The Kansas City A’s & The Wrong Half of the Yankees,” a history of New York’s use of the A’s as a farm team. Booan, 44, is currently one of two directors at ONC BOCES, seconds-in-command to Superintendent Nick Savin. A fourth-generation Cooperstownian, he was a school counselor in Virginia, where he met his wife, Lisa, before moving home. The couple has two children. Labels: 01-28-10, Front Page |
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Housefire Ignited Bill Elsey’s Commitment To Community
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Bookseller’s New Chapter
Full Of Plans For SpringfieldBy JIM KEVLIN
SPRINGFIELD CENTERThe date is burned in memory: Nov. 15, 2005. And the time: 2:03 a.m.  Bill Elsey and his wife Violetta were asleep upstairs in their Bartlett Road home when one of their cats – the one that would survive – awoke them. “When I sat up in bed, I couldn’t see anything, the smoke was so thick,” the new Town of Springfield supervisor recalled recently on a one of those cold, sunny and clear, very clear, winter days. The Elseys had only been in town for a few years and didn’t know that many people. Nonetheless, even before the fire was out – the house was destroyed – people began driving up. “Clothes, food, they brought everything,” said Bill. “People we’d never met before.” That night changed Elsey, who until then had been something of a wanderer, raised in Chicago, living and working in Florida and California. He’d found a home. Soon, he was a member of the fire department. A year later, he was chief. In 2007, he was elected to the Springfield Town Board. On Election Day in November, another chapter opened for the proprietor of Leather Stalking Books: He was elected supervisor, narrowly defeating Tom Armstrong, who had held sway for a quarter-century. Elsey assumed the town’s helm during a calm in a particularly unusual stormy period in this serene, scenic town. First, a group of downstate businessmen/motorcycle enthusiasts had sought to build a track near the Warren town line. Then, Chicago-area investors began exploring a sizeable youth baseball park – complete with a mini Wrigley Field and Fenway Park – near the Richfield town line. Last, and the opposite of least, Madison Square Garden Entertainment proposed a three-day, 75,000 fan annual music festival at the East Springfield end of the 1,200-person town. “I just felt it was time for us to change in the town,” said Elsey, “and start planning for the future. I just didn’t see that going on.” The new supervisor was sworn in Jan. 4, and by month’s end found himself in an optimum situation. Town Board member Dan Rosen and Elsey had been allies, but another like-minded individual, Fred Culbert, was elected in November. Since Elsey’s elevation created a vacancy, he had a say in his successor, who ended up as Bill Freeland, who operates an organic grain and cattle farm on Hoyer Road. The fifth board member is Richard Rathbun, whose Rathbun Road farm dates back to the town’s founding. On the split Armstrong board, Rathbun was the swing vote with the reputation of someone who could be convinced by the facts. If, for a freshman supervisor, Elsey is in a pretty good position to get things done, and he’s not wasting any time: • Highway Superintendent Jeff Miles and Rathbun are exploring what regulations the town might adopt to protect its roads from heavy-truck traffic that would occur if natural-gas drilling happens. • Town Clerk Jeannette Armstrong, and Planning Board members Rosemary Harrison and Maureen Culbert are identifying which high priorities in the recently completed comprehensive plan to pursue first. • Elsey is looking into how to speed broad-band Internet access to the town. “If we have it, people are more likely to start their own businesses here.” • Rosen and Planning Board chair Dave Staley will be recommending how site-plan review must be changed to reflect the comprehensive plan. • $50,000 in NYSERDA and other funding is being sought to make the Springfield Community Center energy efficient. It still has single-pane windows, but Elsey’s discovered just adding energy-efficient light fixtures and a furnace could save significant money. • Finally, he’s putting together a committee of citizens to identify “low-impact companies” that might want to relocate here: back offices for an insurance company, perhaps, or an assisted-living facility, much lacking in these parts. “Springfield is pretty easily accessible,” Elsey noted. The new supervisor asked that this article not dwell on his personal story, but some of it’s too good to let slide. Both raised in Chicago, Bill and Vi met at the University of Illinois, Chicago campus; both are Chicago Cubs fans. He was a wildlife biologist for a while. He spent 20 years in Mountainview, Calif., running his own medical-transcription business. Then the couple moved to Florida for 3-4 years. Summers were so hot there, they would travel north to escape the heat, and eventually visited the Baseball Hall of Fame. They liked the area. The couple had been buying and selling books, and figured they could do that anywhere, and so bought a century-old home on Bartlett Road (since the fire, replaced with a ranch.) The Elseys’ Leather Stalking Books specializes in mysteries. Conan Doyle, Hammett and Chandler are the gold standard, but Bill’s had some luck with lesser lights. For example, he discovered a first edition of Cormac McCarthy’s first book, “The Orchard Keeper,” and bought it for 63 cents. He’d rather not say what he got for it. Labels: 01-28-10, Front Page |
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COOPERSTOWN AND AROUND
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TO ACADEMY: Christopher Michaels, a CCS senior from Mount Vision, has been offered an appointment at the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, U.S. Rep. Mike Arcuri, D-24, has announced.
CONGRESS RACE: Republican Richard Hanna of Cooperstown and Barnevelt, who was narrowly defeated in his 2008 race against incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Arcuri, D-24, has announced he plans to run again this year. The election is in November.
ROTH JAMS: Arlen Roth, world-renown guitarist and investor in the prospective Guitar Hall of Fame, jammed for 90 minutes Saturday, Jan. 23, at the Hoffman Lane Bistro. He was in town as a judge of the first annual Choir Challenge at The Otesaga.
PUBLIC INPUT: The Coopertown Central school board’s Public Relations Committee has scheduled a second “You Have Our Ear” session at the end of its Wednesday, Feb. 3, meeting at the middle/high school cafeteria. The topic is “Possibilities for District Collaboration: Maximizing Services While Saving Money.” BOCES Superintendent Nick Savin will attend.
Labels: 01-28-10, Front Page, Glimmerglass |
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Mayor’s Effort To Crown Katz Now In Doubt
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Joe Booan Enters Race
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
Saying he’s received “a tremendous amount of support,” Village Trustee Joseph J. Booan, Jr., is running for mayor of Cooperstown.
“I want to be part of solutions here,” said Booan. “And I think residents deserve a choice in the upcoming election.”
His nomination by the Republican village caucus, which convenes at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 21, at 22 Main, would foil plans to throw GOP backing to Democratic Village Trustee Jeff Katz. The Democrats were expected to nominate Katz at their caucus, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 20, also at 22 Main.
If that double-endorsement plan, crafted by retiring Mayor Carol B. Waller – her husband, Bill, is GOP village chairman – were to succeed, there would be no choice for mayor in the Tuesday, March 16, village elections.
Asked if he intended to back the Democrat in favor of the Republican, Bill Waller said Tuesday, Jan. 19, “that changes right now.
“When Katz was the only person interested in running for mayor, naturally I would support him,” he said. “Who am I supporting? I won’t make that decision before the nomination. If he’s decided to run, I have to think it over.”
Would he follow his wife’s lead? “A number of people have made a number of very, very incorrect assumptions,” was his reply.
Recounting what usually happens at a caucus, the GOP chair said he’ll name a temporary chairman, who will seek nominations for a caucus chairman; last year, it was Waller.
The chairman will name a caucus secretary and treasurer, and will then ask for nominations for mayor. If there is more than one candidate, there will be a secret ballot, and the candidate with the lower vote will drop out.
The chair will then do the same for the two trustee vacancies, then the village justice vacancy.
Asked about a Booan candidacy, Village Democratic Chair Rich Abbate mused, “This could be a very interesting race, I can see,” adding, “I think our candidate (Katz) is more qualified.”
At the Democratic caucus, he expected county Chair Ed Lentz to nominate the temporary chair, probably Hank Nicols, Abbate’s predecessor, and the same process will ensue.
Abbate thought he had two candidates for trustee – Shelby Cooper and Steve Mahlum – but both pulled out. As of Tuesday, he had none other than incumbent Lynne Mebust, who plans to run again. Waller said he had no candidates for trustee.
For village justice, Leslie Friedman, who has been appointive village justice under Enid Hinkes, is seeking the Democratic nod. Two local lawyers are reported interested in the Republican nod.
Asked about a Booan candidate, Katz said, “The idealist me believes democracy is always better with competition,” adding, “I hope the populace believes I’m the better candidate.”
He said he doesn’t plan to attend the Republican caucus, saying, “It’s not my business.”
“The Republican nomination is nothing I’ve been involved in other than I know I have a pretty strong group of Republican supporters,” he said. “It’s up to the caucus to decide who runs.”
For his part, Booan said he sat down with Nick Savin, the BOCES superintendent, who is “completely in support of what I’m doing.”
Booan, former principal of BOCES’ Otsego Area Occupational Center, was recently appointed to one of two directors, one for curriculum, one for administration, Savin’s right-hand people
Since he has only served as trustee for a year, he had been reluctant to run.
“But a lot of folks came to me and said, please reconsider,” Booan said. “I’m going to make this work. I want to be mayor. I want to be part of a solution.”Labels: 01-22-10, Front Page |
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Pedestrian Bridge Will Reconnect Hyde Hall Through Tin-Top Gate
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SPRINGFIELD
Hyde Hall may be reconnected to the outside world through its traditional Tin-Top gateway by year’s end.
Bids on the $800,000 job should be let in early summer, with construction to begin in August, according to Wendy VanDerBogart, state parks spokesperson.
The long-awaiting project would put a pedestrian bridge over a gully to the east of the neo-classical mansion. It will replace an automotive bridge washed out in the floods of 2006.
Also, water, electrical and sewer lines will be connected to the Tin-Top building, allowing a handicapped restroom to go in there.
The sewer line will continue, hooking up the National Historic Landmark with nearby Glimmerglass State Park’s system.
The plans were outlined at a hearing Thursday, Jan. 17, at the Springfield Community Center.Labels: 01-22-10, Front Page |
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Governor Adds 35 Jobs To Oversee Drilling
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Governor Paterson is acting like hydro-fracking is a done deal.
His proposed budget released Tuesday, Jan. 19, includes funding for 29 DEC positions “to process natural-gas permits and oversee drilling activities,” according to Environmental Activities of New York. This, while cutting 54 positions elsewhere in DEC.
Another six related positions would be added in the state Health Department and PSC.
The budget also includes a 3 percent production tax on natural gas, projecting $1 million in revenues in the 2011-12 year.
All local environmental groups are opposing hydro-fracking in the Marcellus Shale formation, saying it’s a threat to water supplies.
Labels: 01-22-10, Front Page |
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COOPERSTOWN AND AROUND
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 HELP HAITI: St. Mary’s “Our Lady of the Lake Roman Catholic Church” will hold a special collection the next two Sundays to benefit Haitian earthquake victims. The first collection, Jan. 17, raised $4,100, according to the Rev. John P. Rosson.
STUBBORN COSTS:
Bassett President/CEO Bill Streck told Cooperstown Rotary Tuesday, Jan. 19, he supports passage of the pending health-insurance reform bill, but doesn’t expect it to lower costs.
‘KEEP GOING’:
Gretchen Sorin, Cooperstown Graduate Program director, will preview her Ph.D. thesis, “African Amercians on the Road in the Era of Jim Crow,” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28, at the Village Library of Cooperstown.
ON COUNCIL:
Bill Freeland, organic grain and beef farmer, was appointed to the Springfield Town Board Monday, Jan. 18, replacing Bill Elsey, elected supervisor in November.
DRILLING FOE:
Mayor Calvin Tillman of Dish, Texas, who has been challenging hydro-fracking in the Barnett Shale Formation, will speaking about gas-drilling challenges 10 a.m.-noon Tuesday, Feb. 16, in the Board of Representatives meeting room in the county building.
ALBANY RALLY:
A bus is leaving from Oneonta Monday, Jan. 25, for the 10:30 a.m. “Stop Toxic Gas Drilling Rally” at the state Capitol. Register at www.actionotsego.org.
Labels: 01-22-10, Front Page, Glimmerglass |
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Things That Go Bump In An Otesaga Night
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Friday, January 8, 2010
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PATTY FURLAN
GUEST COLUMNIST
Sometimes it turns out to be a banging pipe, or old floorboards  opening an off-center door.
But some things can’t be explained easily. Some can’t be explained at all, according to ghost-hunters from TAPS, the Atlantic Paranormal Society, who plumbed the mysteries of Cooperstown in a three-day conference Friday-Sunday, Jan. 8-10, at The Otesaga and The Farmers’ Museum.
Present were TAPS’ stalwarts Jason Hawes, Grant Wilson, Britt Griffith, Chip Coffey, Amy Bruni and Rob Jones from the SyFy Network’s “Ghost Busters.” The next season starts Feb. 24.
The conference was a brainchild of Jim Johnson of Fly Creek, the county representative who is also publisher of TAPS Paranormal, the organization’s magazine.
“I wanted to share our area’s great history and the historic locations,” Jim explained. “I also wanted to help increase our tourism, and I saw a chance to do this with the ‘Ghosts of Cooperstown’ event.”
The Otesaga’s Bob Faller and Farmers’ Museum’s Garet Livermore co-organized with Johnson. The event attracted 120 people at the slowest time of the tourism year.
In an interview, Grant Wilson said what viewers see on the TV show is just preliminary investigations, a small part of what The Ghost-Busters do.
Yes, it takes multiple shooting to capture the sounds on each episode, but the team doesn’t just say, “OK, you have a ghost,” and depart.
There’s followup and support, which can take weeks or months.
Jason Hawes, one of the team’s leaders, said he would prefer that more of the moments of debunking would appear on the show.
The TAPS approach to ghost hunting is skeptical: The team doesn’t try to prove a place is haunted, just to figure out what is really causing a disturbance.
Saturday featured a full day of lectures, starting with the history of the Ouija Board by Bob Murch. Nick Redfern from the Centre for Fortean Zoology, which pursues things like Nessie and Big Foot, discussed monster hunting. Adam Blai discussed demonology from the Roman Catholic perspective.
At The Farmers’ Museum that evening, Ted Stuart reported noises in the blacksmith shop, like chains being dragged across the second floor.
Participants took digital pictures in hopes of catching a ghost. And an EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) session was conducted. No one got to bed before 1 a.m.
Sunday started with a gallery reading by Chip Coffey. Rob Jones discussed the paranormal. Scotty Roberts lectured on the Nephilim, beings mentioned in the Bible purported to be offspring of fallen angels.
To learn more about TAPS, visit www.theatlanticparanormalsociety.com
Labels: 01-15-10, Front Page |
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C-V Launches Film Festival
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By: GREG SORIN
You don’t have to go to Tribeca or Sundance to find an independent film festival. Next week you can go to Cherry Valley.
Thanks to the impressive ingenuity of Omonike Akinyemi – the award winning director who took on the roles of writer, producer, and director of Nelly’s Bodega – a local film festival is coming together. Her slogan is “Experiment, Relate, Create.”
The Director’s Sennight – a Middle English term meaning week – is a new kind of festival that Akinyemi is bringing to Cherry Valley in an effort to inspire and aid budding local filmmakers and to draw out the local talent.
For a week the filmmakers, actors, and crews will gather and learn from each other as they create new short films.
The eight-day festival, running Jan. 16 -23, will feature previous shorts made by the directors, shown before full-length films (ranging from Tableau Feraille to Tim Burton’s Batman) during the first seven days.
The eighth and final day of the festival is the major attraction: the presentation of the films created during the week.
The “struggle in this area is that filmmaking is stymied by two things: going to another city to get equipment and lack of actors,” Akinyemi said.
This event will bring many filmmakers together in this rural area and harness the talents of actors brought in by statewide casting calls.
Akinyemi hopes “to expose [the area to] new film making and to help film makers make extraordinary stuff without restrictions.”
Not only is it local, but Akinyemi’s own project is worthy of respect. She will present a film about Lady Ostapeck, the colorful local Victorian photographic portraitist.
Akinyemi, who attended Yale University before graduating from the MFA film production program at the University of Southern California, has run a production company, the Image Quilt, from 1 Main Street Cherry Valley since Jan. 2009.
Through this project she can set her own rules and bring a “great education” in filmmaking to Cherry Valley.
The feature films of the festival will be shown at 7 p.m., Jan. 16-22 at various locations. The Old School Café at 2 Genesee St..is the location of the final night’s attraction, beginning at 3 p.m. on Jan. 23, and featuring all of the completed Sennight Films.
Anyone interested in attending the week’s events should visit www.imagequilt.com or purchase the $7 tickets at the door.Labels: 01-15-10, Front Page |
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For Dubben, It’s All In The Family
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Dubben Sees Family As Model For His New Job
By JIM KEVLIN MIDDLEFIELDWhat better way to raise a family of five than the way Sam and  Marjorie Dubben did on their farm along Cherry Valley Creek? Morning and night, the Dubbens were together. Tim, Edward, Theresa (now Adams), Sherri (France) and Susan (Hugick) had morning chores with their parents, and came back from school for evening chores. Dad, who excelled at basketball (and played baseball) at Cherry Valley High School, encouraged the kids to participate, too. And the family would come along to watch dad play with the town team. It must have been a positive experience, since his grown kids all coach today. “We shared a lot of laughter, and we shared tears,” Dubben recalled on a recent blizzardy day in the cozy kitchen of the home he and Marjorie built in the 1960s from wood harvested off their property. Two of their 11 grandchildren, shy Amelia Dubben and not-so-shy Tori Elizabeth France were cheerily underfoot, the way their grandparents like it. That sense of family, of working together, of getting along, is what Floyd Samuel Dubben, Jr., 65, hopes to bring to his new responsibilities as chairman of the Otsego County Board of Representatives. The veteran Republican, raised on Dubbendale Farm at the start of Dubben Cross Road on the Middlefield-Roseboom town line, was elected to replace another dairyman, county Rep. Jim Powers, R-South New Berlin, at the reorganizational meeting Wednesday, Jan. 6. “My goal,” he said, “is to bring a dialogue, not only between board members, but between department heads and employees. I want everyone to feel like they’re part of the picture. “That doesn’t mean you, me and everybody has to agree. We just have to talk about it. Then, the solution will take care of itself.” Dubben’s grandfather immigrated from England to Schenevus around the turn of the 20th Century. His father, Floyd Samuel Dubben, Sr., established Dubbendale Farm in the 1930s. When the son came along, his family called him “Sam” to avoid confusion, and the name stuck. He had a sister, Ann Lennebacker, now a retired teacher. The father set his son on the path to succeed him early on. By age 5, Sam had cattle of his own. At age 11, he sent his first shipment of milk – two cans – to the Dairylea creamery in Cherry Valley. About that time, a signature event transpired: The Middlefield school closed and he was transferred to Cherry Valley. Quarters were cramped and Sam’s new teacher asked the kids to push their desks together in a long row, to create more space. “I pushed my desk over,” Dubben recalled. “And this young lady pushed her desk over, and I saw the biggest brown eyes I had ever seen in my life.” He was immediately smitten with Marjorie Thompson; the two would marry right out of high school. “I’ve looked at those brown eyes every day now for 47 years.” Dubben was already showing signs of the leader he would become. He was point guard on the Cherry Valley High School team that went 9-1 in the regular season in 1962. Active in the Future Farmers of America, he competed his way to national Star Farmer of the Year, the FFA’s top honor, in 1965. (He credits Jim Rose, the vo-ag instructor at Cherry Valley for many years, with helping him get there.) After graduation, the newly married Sam went on to SUNY Cobleskill, and by age 21 he had a degree, two children and a job with Farm Credit Services, (now Empire Farm Credit.) He continued to farm, and he got a real-estate license. Life went on. More kids arrived and began to grow. When the old Board of Supervisors became the Board of Representatives, Dubben threw his hat in the ring, but nothing came of it. He was elected Middlefield town justice – justices also served on town boards then, duties he preferred to the “thankless job” of meting out justice. One evening in 1990, he was walking up the driveway toward the house when Marjorie called out, “There’s a call for you.” It was Dora Moore, the former county treasurer. County Rep. Joe Franzese had died recently, and there was a vacancy. “How would you like to be county representative?” she asked. “Can I think about this and call you back?” he replied. “She was point blank,” Dubben recalled the other day: “’No.’” “Dora, are you at a meeting right now?” “Yes.” So he accepted, and got his first introduction to partisanship. The county board had been split, eight Republicans, six Democrats. With Franzese’s passing, the Republicans lacked the eight votes necessary to install Dubben. So he waited around for the next election, won a three-way race and finally took his seat during the waning years of the formidable Carl Higgins’ long-time tenure as board chairman. “I was probably known as the quiet one,” Dubben said. He was assigned to the Meadows Committee, then chaired by Cy Lord of Unadilla – “I had the utmost respect for him.” The decision to build Otsego Manor had only just been made, and Dubben was soon elbows deep in the planning and construction decisions, something that he remembers with satisfaction. “I’m totally in support of Otsego Manor,” he said. “It’s a wonderful place. It does wonderful things. It treats people the way people should be treated. And it’s a great place to work.” No sooner was Otsego Manor complete, then the state began delaying the anticipated hike in reimbursement rates. Over the next few years, the county lost $18 million, spurring discussion – Dubben opposes the idea – of privatizing the facility. Finally, three months ago, the higher rates came through, and Dubben expressed some satisfaction that $3 million has already been recouped. Along the way, Dubben hit a bump in the political road. In 2005, Democrat Phil Durkin, the Milford Central School librarian from Cherry Valley, narrowly edged him out of his seat. Two years later, Dubben – with Marjorie charting the course – stopped by all 1,400 homes in his district where voters lived, and he narrowly reclaimed his seat. “I don’t like to be beaten,” he said, but added: “It didn’t hurt me to be off the board, either. You have to remember who put you there and why they did it. It was a reality check.” Labels: 01-15-10, Front Page |
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Tops Buys P&C
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The Buffalo-based Tops Friendly Markets is bidding to buy bankrupt P&C’s remaining stores, although no decision on the fate of the Hartwick Seminary outlet has yet been revealed.
A Jan. 8 Tops’ press release announced that Penn Traffic, P&C’s parent company, had accepted its bid to acquire 79 stores and was awaiting U.S. Bankruptcy Court approval.
Employees at the local store say they’ve been told P&C will close the location Feb. 15 if no decision is forthcoming by then.Labels: 01-15-10, Front Page |
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Hage Won’t Run Again For Trustee
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COOPERSTOWN
With caucuses coming, Trustee Eric Hage has announced he won’t seek a second term.
Trustee Lynne Mebust, also a Democrat, does plan to run again.
Trustee Jeff Katz has announced he is running for mayor. He is a Democrat, but has the support of Republican Mayor Carol B. Waller to succeed her.
Waller’s husband, Bill, the village Republican chair, wouldn’t say if the GOP plans to endorse Katz as well.
The Democratic caucus is 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 20; the Republican, 7 the following evening. Both are in 22 Main.
Elections are March 16th.Labels: 01-15-10, Front Page |
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Andre Dawson HoF Induction Class of One
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COOPERSTOWN
The Baseball Writers’ Association of America hit another single this year: The last  eligible Expo, Andre Dawson, will be the sole player inducted into the Hall of Fame on July 25.
Manager Whitey Herzog and umpire Doug Harvey, selected by the veterans committee, will also be inducted.
While Dawson’s career peaked with Montreal – the team is now the Washington Nationals – he also played for the Chicago Cubs, Red Sox and Florida Marlins, which may draw additional fans to Cooperstown.
The 292nd honoree, Dawson was listed on 420 ballots (77.9 percent; 75 percent is needed to be inducted), but two other players, pitcher Bert Blyleven (74.2) and second-baseman Roberto Alomar (73.7) narrowly missed being selected.
Slugger Mark McGwire, who broke Roger Maris’ 70-home-run record in 1998, garnered only 128 votes, or 23.7 percent. In the days since the Wednesday, Jan. 6, announcement of balloting results, McGwire confirmed long-standing suspicions: the he used steroids for 10 years of his pro-baseball career.Labels: 01-15-10, Baseball Hall of Fame, Front Page |
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Paterson Pleas On Drilling
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DSGEIS Process Will Go Forward By JIM KEVLIN
Despite pleas from dozens of environmental groups statewide, at least four in Otsego County, Gov. David Paterson is standing firm.
In a statement issued to The Freeman’s Journal, Paterson said he will not derail the dSGEIS process to create regulations for horizontal hydrofracking for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale Formation that undergirds the county and much of southeastern New York.
"More than 10,000 comments were filed with the DEC from stakeholders on both sides of this issue," Paterson stated, "and the DEC should have the opportunity to review those comments and issue a final GEIS."
Some definitions: dSGEIS is draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement. DEC is the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The horizontal hydro-fracking method would pump millions of gallons of often-toxic chemicals into the ground to break up the shale and allow the gas to surface.
Locally, Otsego 2000, the Otsego County Conservation Association, the Butternut Valley Alliance and Trout Unlimited are among the groups concerned hydrofracking could taint aquifers and wells.
They – and other groups and individuals statewide – have been asking the governor to throw out the dSGEIS process and start again; some have called for an outright hydrofracking ban.
Concern reached a crescendo in the days leading up to Dec. 31, the deadline for comment on the dSGEIS.
Just before Christmas, New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection issued a report recommending no hydrofracking be allowed in the Catskill counties where the city’s reservoirs are located.
Upstate groups – Otsego 2000 notable among them – is questioning why precautions applied to the city’s water supply shouldn’t apply to everyone else.
Two days before the deadline, PEF Encon, which represents DEC workers, took the unusual step of breaking with the department on a policy issue and asked that the dSGEIS be thrown out.
In his statement, Paterson pointed out that, in response to public concern, he had already extended the comment period 90 days.
He said he is "fully committed to protecting New York’s environment and its drinking water, and the state continues to have some of the strictest environmental regulations in the nation." Labels: 01-08-10, Front Page |
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Foothills Scales Back In Face Of State, County Cuts
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Grants Loss Causes Foothills To Brake
By JIM KEVLIN & LAURA COX
ONEONTA
acing a $100,000 reduction in state and county grants, the Foothills Performing Arts Center plans to "slow down, take a breath and move forward at a slower pace," according to the chairman of its Board of Directors.
Douglas Reeser gave that assessment on emerging from a morning-long board meeting Tuesday, Jan. 5, that followed its dismissal of Jennifer McDowall, the executive director since March, and the resignation of key staffers, including business manager Tina Costa.
But they didn’t go quietly, convening a press conference in the Clarion Hotel that same morning, where McDowall, formerly NYSHA’s interim director of marketing, released a letter from the staff to state Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, calling for the board’s executive committee to resign "to salvage this situation ... before irreparable damage has been done."
Despite this week’s events, Foothills plans to continue "scheduled programs" through the winter – they include this weekend’s Bridal Show, the first of the year, Sunday, Jan. 10 – and to bring aboard an "interim director" until matters can be stabilized and a course charted.
Talk had circulated in recent weeks that Foothills might face a restructuring. A $75,000 state grant it had anticipated had disappeared, and the county Board of Representatives had eliminated a further $25,000 in bed-tax money.
But the first indication something immediate was in the offing came Sunday, Jan. 3, when McDowall issued a press release announcing the state Labor Department had approved Foothills’ participating in the Shared Work Program, allowing arts center staffers to cut back to 60 percent of the work week and receive partial unemployment.
At 4:51 the next afternoon, another release from McDowall announced the Tuesday morning press conference.
Tuesday morning, however, a press release arrived from the Foothills board saying McDowall "had departed from her role," and that four other staffers were also leaving. In addition to McDowall and Tina Costa, John Costa, Jessica Mackey, Geoff Doyle and Christina Hunt departed.
"We have accomplished a great deal in the past two years," Reeser said in the release. "We need to ensure that our management team is able to sustain the momentum and work in partnership with the board."
He expressed disappointment with staff’s management of the organization, particularly "fiscal accountability," adding, "Many choices were made without consulting and advising the board."
"We plan to continue with the programming schedule we have in place for the coming months," he said. "However, our main focus will be strategic planning and completing the main theatre space."
At the press conference, McDowall also released a report from Bill Lelbach, former managing director, Chenango River Theater, identifying what he considered flaws in the new theater’s construction.
They include insufficient incline in the seating, problems with the stage floor and too-small dressing rooms. Reeser said his priority is completion of the stage floor and installation of sound-proofing, so the 650-seat theater can be put into use.Labels: 01-08-10, Front Page |
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‘Friends Of Hawkeyes’ Organizing
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COOPERSTOWN
"Friends of the Cooperstown Hawkeyes" organization is being planned, Tom Hickey, owner of the New York State Collegiate Baseball League, has announced.
The organizational meeting is planned for 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 17, in the meeting room at Cooley’s Stone House Tavern, 49 Pioneer.
The idea is to give local fans of the prospective team, due to play at Doubleday Field next summer, a chance to help the effort.Labels: 01-08-10, Front Page |
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Merry Christmas
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Saturday, December 26, 2009
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Region Dances To The Jingle-Bell Rock
  Labels: 12-25-09, Front Page |
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It’s Revolutionary: They Ask Questions; Seek Answers
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Friday, December 25, 2009
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4-Trustee Majority Looking To Put
Village On Firmer Financial Foundation
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
There is no conspiracy.
“We’re trying to get answers,” explained Willis J. Monie, Jr., one of the four trustees who transformed the Cooperstown Village Board in 2009. “When we don’t understand things, we keep asking.”
That spirit of inquiry, by Monie and his fellow freshman Joseph J. Booan Jr., plus veterans Eric Hage and Neil R. Weiller, has set “America’s Most Perfect Village” on a new course.
It’s a course built on facts, not politics or pique.
It’s built on an understanding of the village’s true and precarious financial position – all four mention $20 million in delayed maintenance must be underwritten by a $5 million budget; and that, when the Brooklyn Avenue project is done, the village’s streets reserve will have disappeared.
It’s built on looking ahead to a happier time – based on a happier time the four remember from local boyhoods – and planning for it, rather than being buffeted by every passing storm.
The new wind through 22 Main prompted The Freeman’s Journal & Richfield Springs NEWSPAPER to select Trustees Booan, Hage, Monie and Weiller as its four Citizens of The Year for 2009.
What are the flashpoints that brought us to today:
• March 2007, Hage was elected as an independent with bipartisan support, but as he began to question village finances, found himself shunted aside. “I wasn’t going to change my beliefs just to get along with people on the board,” he said.
• November 2007, public anger over paid parking proposed for downtown erupted, as 300 citizens harangued the village board for three hours at a hearing at CCS’ Sterling Auditorium.
• March 2008, Democratic Trustee Grace Kull, rattled by the parking dispute, declined to run again. Republican Weiller, identified as a public advocate in the parking dispute, led the ticket. Democratic Trustee Jeff Katz, identified as pro-paid-parking, barely squeaked back on.
• March 2008-2009, both Hage and Weiller were shunted aside by Mayor Carol B. Waller, assigned to low-priority committees and often gaveled out of order. “They only made me stronger,” Weiller said recently. “And they only made me stronger in the eyes of the public.”
(Weiller, however, did succeed in getting a Sustainability Committee approved, and one accomplishment of that period was forward movement in returning mini-hydro to the Susquehanna at Mill Street.)
• March 2008, two Republicans, Booan and Monie, won election in the midst of the trustees preparing what appeared to be an austerity budget.
• May 2008, in the 11th budgeting hour, Village Treasurer Mary Ann Henderson discovered $400,000, and the trustees shoveled in additional spending at the last minute.
Monie and Booan, however, in addition to Hage and Weiller, were troubled by what had happened. “She was trying to be forthright,” Monie said of Henderson. “We just didn’t get it, and we just kept at it.”
Meanwhile, Mayor Waller’s fairly dependable five-person majority had disappeared, with the four finding themselves voting in a bloc frequently.
• June 18, the trustees convened for the first time as a Long-Range Planning Committee – a Hage idea – to try to discover where village finances are headed.
• August 2008, Hage, after consulting with the village auditor, Moore & Hart of Utica, announced the discovery that the trustees and Henderson had been looking at the wrong number: cash flow, rather than “net equity.”
While $400,000 had turned up, the budget actually drained the village’s net equity from $1.8 million to $1.3 million.
Also that month, Police Chief Diana Nicols and Mebust, Police Committee chair, began agitating for an additional $38,000, removed from the budget, to ensure 24/7 patrols in the village.
• November 2008, after being berated by Nicols, the trustees emerged from executive session and Booan proposed adding $6,000 to ensure 24/7 coverage until a new officer returns from the academy at the end of January. The motion was passed with rare unanimity.
What now?
The new bloc intends to pursue the professionalizing of village government.
In interviews, streamlining the trustees’ 24 committees was frequently suggested.
So was pro-active budgeting, where the trustees set priorities and prepare a budget reflecting those priorities, rather than simply slashing department-heads’ proposals. (“To me,” said Booan, “the process is backwards.”)
So was the idea of recruiting a professional village administrator, a form of government that had lapsed in the mid-’90s.
“I want to have a plan that guides our decisions,” said Booan. “There’s not a clearly defined plan now.”Labels: 01-01-10, Front Page |
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Locals To Governor: Scrap Gas-Drilling Rules; Start Again
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Governor Told: Scrap Gas Rules
By JIM KEVLIN
With the deadline for comment looming, local environmental groups are asking Gov. David Paterson to throw out proposed regulations of natural-gas drilling in Otsego County then start again.
The deadline is Thursday, Dec. 31, on the DSGEIS – the draft supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement – governing horizontal hydro-fracking.
It’s a new technology that could extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation that undergirds the county.
But horizontal hydro-fracking requires the use of unspecific toxic chemicals to break up the shale and allow the gas to come to the surface.
“Our groups are concerned, not so much with contamination that may occur thousands of feet below, but the cumulative impact of a series of small spills impacting the surface water,” Bob Eklund, chairman of the recently formed Butternut Valley Alliance.
He was interviewed Monday, Dec. 28, the day before a 10 a.m. press conference four environmental groups planned in Oneonta City Hall to detail their letters to Paterson.
“There are far too many loopholes, weaknesses and inaccuracies to allow for safe drilling within the borders of the state,” Oneonta Alderman Erik Miller, who is also Otsego County Conservation Association executive director, said in a letter he planned to read at the press conference.
“The state is looking at short-term financial gains to rebound from a billion-dollar budget deficit and not the long-term financial impacts this industry will have on the state,” Miller said.
Lou Allstadt, the former Mobil executive vice president, on behalf of Otsego 2000, declared: “The current GEIS should be scrapped.”
A “totally rewritten document” should require “ultra-safe setbacks” from critical areas, public disclosure of the contents of hydro-fracking fluids, provisions to control wear and tear on local roads, the posting of performance bonds, and imposition of a severance tax.
In recent days, New York City authorities have declared their opposition to any natural-gas drilling in the vicinity of the city’s Catskill reservoirs.
The groups – the fourth is the state chapter of Trout Unlimited, represented locally by David Brandt, Oneonta – are unsure DEC has the staffing and capacity to monitor hundreds of wells statewide, Eklund said.Labels: 01-01-10, Front Page |
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Village Blaze Leaves 9 Homeless For Holiday
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Friday, December 18, 2009
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Blaze Leaves 9 Homeless
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
The Cooperstown Fire Department donated $500 raised as its Sunday, Dec. 20, breakfast, to the nine people left homeless after a fire the week before at 35 Elm St.
But the occupants, lacking any rental insurance, will likely need much more to get back on their feet.
The fire broke out at 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 15, in the tan five-apartment building at Elm and Susquehanna, owned by Ed Weidner.
Firefighters declared the blaze under control at 2:30 a.m., but remained at the scene until 4:30 a.m. to ensure there was no rekindling, according to Fire Chief Paul Bedworth.
Butch Jones, the county’s emergency services director, conducted the investigation, and determined the fire was caused by an oven mitt left on a burner in a back apartment of Alyssa Hanby.
Before Hanby’s boyfriend, John Carnicelli, discovered the fire, it had spread into the cabinet above the stove and into the apartment above.
Hanby’s apartment and the one above it, occupied by Ian Hruzek and Sharee Barsby, suffered major water and smoke damage.
The other three apartments, which suffered less damage, were occupied by Ron Apman, Barbara Cadwell and Cindy McLaughlin and her daughter, Katie.
It was a cold evening, and the renters were housed at the Cooperstown Fire Station until the Red Cross arranged rooms for them at the Best Western.
Fly Creek and Hartwick Seminary fire companies also responded, and Chief Bedworth said he and the other two chiefs, Mike Thayer and Mike Basile, followed a military protocol put in place two years ago.
Under the protocol, Bedworth, as host chief, was in charge of the scene; he directed Thayer and Basile, who in turn “tasked” their teams.
The protocol, the chief said, allows a chain of command that can be expanded and contracted, depending on the size of the fire.
Jones said renters insurance is relatively inexpensive – $75 to $100 a year – and should be more widely considered.Labels: 12-25-09, Front Page |
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Historical Review Board Dust-Up Raises Questions About Its Future
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Kuhn Quits After Deadlock Over Susquehanna Avenue Windows
A dust-up on the village’s Historic Preservation & Architectural Review Board has prompted the suggestion that perhaps the future of the fledgling entity should be reconsidered.
Trustee Eric Hage suggested that the board’s first annual review, scheduled for March, be moved up. He made the suggestion at the village trustees’ monthly meeting Monday, Dec. 31, where former Village Trustee Paul Kuhn’s resignation from the H-PARB was accepted, and village Zoning Enforcement Officer Tavis Austin said the board is getting a “NO aura” among contractors. That prompted Village Attorney Martin Tillapaugh to come to the H-PARB’s defense: “I find this to be a very knowledgeable board.” Besides, he said, if the H-PARB wasn’t reviewing historical and preservation issues, the village Planning Board would have to, as it used to; the issues wouldn’t go away. The root of the H-PARB unhappiness is 8 Susquehanna Ave., purchased last summer by Dr. Fred and Margaret Kaplan, (the same home where 80-foot-tall Norway firs were felled in
September, to neighbors’ consternation.)
Now, the H-PARB learned, the Kaplans had installed 29 replacement windows without a permit. Mrs. Kaplan, who was at the Dec. 8 meeting, offered to write a check to cover any fine.
The board chair, Theresa Drerup, said since only one permit was required, there was only one violation. However, Kuhn, who lives next to the Kaplans, argued since there were 29 windows, there were 29 violations. After further debate, HPARB member Dr. Roger McMillan made a motion that the Kaplans met “the criteria” of the law. Hugh McDougall, the village historian, seconded. However, Drerup, Cindy Falk and Kuhn abstained, and the motion failed.
Tillapaugh advised the trustees that, since the HPARB failed to reject the window replacement, he was dis-inclined to pursue the matter in justice court or state Supreme Court.
However, he said, if the trustees wished, he could seek “injunctive relief” in Supreme Court, asking a $250 fine for each window. Mayor Carol B. Waller suggested any decision wait a month so matters could be clarified. Labels: 12-25-09, Front Page |
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COOPERSTOWN AND AROUND
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 Bassett, Fox Affiliation Set On 1st Of ’10
The boards of Bassett Healthcare and A.O. Fox Memorial Hospital have signed the papers that finalize the affiliation of the two hospitals Jan. 1. Attorney Michael Getman, Fox board chair, will serve on the Bassett board; Bassett CFO Nick Nicoletti and Walter Franck, former director of medicine, will serve on the Bassett board.
THIS IS IT: The applauded “America’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City, 1800-1900” and “Walker Evans: Carbon and Silver” may be seen at The Fenimore Art Museum only until Dec. 31.
STATE OF STATE: The county’s Albany delegation are featured at the Otsego Chamber’s annual State of the State Luncheon 11:45 a.m. Monday, Jan. 4, at the Holiday Inn, Oneonta. For
reservations, call 432-4500.
FOOD GRANT: The Scriven Foundation has provided a $5,000 grant to the Cooperstown Food Bank to be matched with money donated during the holiday season.
Labels: 12-25-09, Front Page, Glimmerglass |
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Opera Budget Pared
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7 Staffers Let GoAt GlimmerglassBy JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
After a round of cuts six months ago, the Washington National Opera announced eight layoffs recently, including the executive director.
The Los Angeles Opera is $20 million in debt and, threatening to close, gave City Hall one week to come up with a $14 million loan.
The Atlanta Opera, the Baltimore Opera, even the fabled Met are facing unprecedented financial challenges.
So it should come as no surprise that Glimmerglass Opera is feeling the pinch as well, announcing in recent days that, through measures that included seven layoffs, it had achieved a balanced budget for 2010 at $5.6 million, a million less than in recent years.
“I think we are behaving totally responsibly,” Michael MacLeod, general & artistic director, said in an interview. “Instead of just keeping the status quo and racking up a bigger deficit, we are cutting our cloth accordingly, without compromising artistic quality.”
The 2010 festival will go forward as planned, July 9 through Aug. 24, with four fully staged productions, including such perennial favorites as Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” and Puccini’s “Tosca.”
Despite the general economic picture, individual contributions are rising, but a $100,000 annual grant from New York State didn’t materialize this year, and the opera was told not to budget it in 2010 either.
While ticket sales, which account for 35 percent of income, have dipped, MacLeod said his board is committed to a strategy of audience over dollars.
“As an example,” he asked, “do you think Glimmerglass should sell 80 tickets at $100, or 100 tickets at $80? You want to sell 100 at $80. We lowered all ticket prices” – at the low end, from $58 to $26 – “for 2010, which I think is going to be a sensational season.
“We want to pack as many people into the theater as possible. More people in the theater, more buzz, more excitement,” he said. Plus, bigger audiences increase the base of opera fans.
Also new this year, MacLeod said, the first two operas will open in the second week in July, and the second two the third week in July.
“We can offer six weekends of all four operas instead of four weekends of all four operas,” he said, a move designed to attract more opera-goers over a longer period.
The outlook does make the annual fundraising drive – $750,000 is being sought by the end of the year – just that much more important, said MacLeod, who has been calling donors nightly.
He’s found “a wonderful sense of pride and ownership by the community in Glimmmerglass Opera, and people are responding in an extraordinarily generous way.
“People know they are not baling out a sinking ship; what they are doing is contributing to artistic excellence.”
Labels: 12-18-09, Front Page |
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CV Board Grills DEC On Drilling
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Roads, Wells At IssueBy JIM KEVLIN
CHERRY VALLEY
You might expect Otsego 2000, the OCCA and Sustainable Otsego to oppose drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation, given the potentially devastating environment impact.
But the Cherry Valley Town Board, meeting Dec. 10, unanimously passed a resolution that questions whether proposed state egulations sufficiently consider potential pollution of water supplies or damage to town roads.
And the following Monday, the 14th, the Springfield Town Board adopted a similar resolution.
“DEC is asking for comment,” said Cherry Valley Councilman Mark Cornwell, “and we commented.”
The resolution may be viewed in full at www.thefreemansjournal.com.od in which it is proposed.”
Cornwell, a SUNY Cobleskill wildlife and fisheries professor, went through the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s DSGEIS – the Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement – page by page.
He observed that while hydrofracking – the burrowing out of horizontal drills from a vertical shaft – can extend 10,000 feet from the center, the provisions to protect water supplies only apply to wells within 1,000 feet of the center.
Further, according to the resolution, the DSGEIS provisions would allow up to 17,000 truck trips per multi-well pad over town roads.
Labels: 12-18-09, Front Page |
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COOPERSTOWN AND AROUND
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“Somewhere In Time”
COOPER CD: “The Last of the Mohicans” and “The Deerslayer” have been released by Typecast Audiobooks and may be downloaded at www.typecastaudiobooks.com
DREAM MOTELS? Word has been circulating that Cooperstown Dreams Park is planning two 50-room motels at its Hartwick Seminary property, but the town Planning Board has yet to receive an application.
BIRD COUNT: The National Audubon Society’s 110th annual Christmas Bird Count will be marked locally on Saturday, Dec. 19. To participate, call Bob Miller at 432-5767.
FIRST EDITION: A first edition of Washington Irving’s “Knickerbocker’s History of New York” is on display through February at the NYSHA library to commemorate the 200th anniversary of its publication. The library is open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday.Labels: 12-18-09, Front Page, Glimmerglass |
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Cornell Students Suggest Median, Trees To Ease Drivers Into Village
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DesignConnect Team: Next Step, DOT Funds For Professional StudyBy JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
Imagine entering Cooperstown from the south though a corridor of leafy trees lined by horse fences, protected from oncoming traffic by a landscaped median.
In season, black-eyed Susans and other pastoral blooms will be evidence. In the evenings, subdued lighting from below will light the leaves above.
That was the pictured painted Tuesday evening, Dec. 15, at 22 Main, by the DesignConnect team of Cornell grad students who have been brainstorming for a semester about how to enhance the “Cooperstown Corridor.”
The idea would be to slow traffic along a non-descript and occasionally scrufty stretch of Route 28 entering the village from the south, diverting it as appropriate into the long-awaited Gateway project – a proposed Welcome Center and parking lot – just off to the east.
Two dozen residents listened to the presenters, which included retiring Otsego Town Supervisor Tom Breiten, who is studying for an advanced landscaping degree at Cornell, and resident Chuck Hage, who proposed the idea and has been nudging it forward.
The next step, said Breiten, would be to present the student’s findings to the DOT to help convince them to take the next step – a professional plan that would answer questions beyond the scope of the grad students’ intent.
Initial estimates, which would include rebuilding the half-mile stretch of state highway, would cost $2.6 million. The Gateway project is in the $4 million range.
Jim Tallman, whose home is on the steep rise to the west of the “Corridor,” and Don Hoag, Kirn’s Auto Body manager, raised some concerns, but Breiten assured them the project is in the very preliminary stages.
Labels: 12-18-09, Front Page |
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IT’S A WONDERFUL...
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Friday, December 4, 2009
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‘Wonderful Life’ Director Keeps Audience On Toes
By LAURA COX
CHERRY VALLEY
Dorothy Reiberg wasn’t about to let the audience sit back and relax.
“When people think radio play, they think of people sitting on stools reading,” said director Reiberg. “But it developed into much more of a ‘stage radio show’.”
As she’s experienced as a murder-mystery dinner-theater actress, Reiberg added interaction with audience members to the radio-show script of “It’s A Wonderful Life,” which premiered last weekend at the Old School Café and returns for a final performance at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 12.
Before the show and during intermission, the actors mingled in character. For instance, Dorothy wasn’t Dorothy, but stage manager Estelle Bainbridge, pacing around the room, checking the set, making sure all the props were in place.
Esther complained the theater was too small, and talked about what her players might do in a larger venue. She hailed radio actor Mitch Mitchell (played by Dennis Laughlin) as a great actor. She even remarked about how awful director Reiberg is.
The play, funded by an Otsego County bed-tax grant, came together over the last three months, though it had been initiated immediately after last year’s show.
Reiberg is not a fan of the well-loved “Wonderful Life” film; she says she finds it sappy and overdone. She tried to convince Artworks director Jane Sapinsky to change her mind about the choice.
In June, she found the script online, read it through and found she loved it.
The cast was selected in September, and rehearsed twice a week, working right through the H1N1 virus, which closed Cherry Valley-Springfield Central School.
The cast and crew designed the set, and provided their own costumes and sound effects.
In true radio fashion they were supported by “Lux Soap,” with its own jingle and dancing, singing children to promote it throughout the show.
The kids choreographed their own dancing with direction from Rieberg.Labels: 12-11-09, Front Page |
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Ball Team’s New Name: ‘Hawkeyes’
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Cooperstown’s PearlmanSuggested Winning TitleCOOPERSTOWN
Three people suggested the name “Hawkeyes” for Cooperstown’s prospective baseball team, but Dave Pearlman of Leatherstocking Street suggested it first.
So the Pearlman family will enjoy a free pass next summer when the New York Collegiate Baseball League team comes to Doubleday Field, owner Tom Hickey of Fly Creek announced this week.
Other names included the Leatherstockings, Barrelmakers, Mohicans – “a lot of Mohicans” – Ghosts, Trappers and Phinneys, for the family that owned the land where Doubleday Field is located.
The furthest entry came from Austin.
“The Hawkeyes, said Hickey, “is consistent with Cooperstown history. It has the association with Fenimore Cooper and his books. We also thought about the possibility of logos and mascots, how it would translate.”
Labels: 12-11-09, Front Page |
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Burgling Duo Heard About Policing Gap
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Burglars Knew Of Gap In 24/7 Coverage
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
Police Chief Diana Nicols said she has had “second thoughts” when a rare rash of burglaries broke out after it was publicly revealed in August that budget cuts might eliminate the midnight police shift.
But, she added, “I don’t think there was any way to prevent announcing to people we would not be available 24 hours a day. That would not be fair to our people.”
Village trustees in October added a $6,000 allocation, which again allowed police shifts to be revived 24-7.
Trustee Lynne Mebust, who chairs the village’s Police Committee, said Nicols reported an increase in break-ins at last month’s committee meeting.
Asked about cause and effect, Mebust said, “I don’t really know that we have any evidence that that’s true.”
In August, according to published reports after their arrests, Mark A. Clark, 23, Oneonta, and Lawrence D. Littlehale, 26, Unadilla, allegedly performed a series of “cat burglaries” in those two communities last August.
In late August, news articles surfaced quoting Nicols and Mebust saying that, due to budget cuts, the midnight shifts or half the midnight shifts and public-service appearances (parades and the like) would have to be eliminated.
In September, the pair allegedly broke into 20 homes and 30 cars in Cooperstown after “they heard” that the village would be unprotected at night, Nicols said.
The chief said her department only received two or three reports of breakins from homeowners and car owners, but that Littlehales, who is cooperating with authorities, was driven around town and pointed out properties to an officer.
Clark is in jail but, due to his cooperation, Littlehale – who allegedly drove, while Clark entered the homes – will not be charged and is at large, Nicols said.
Since this pair was apprehended, she said her department has received two more reports of burglaries in the village – one involving two houses.
Additionally, Otsego County Sheriff’s deputies are investigating a break-in last week on a River Road home, just south of the village.
While the homeowners were away, someone broke a pane on the back of the house and entered, removing a stamp collection and silver.
Nicols said would-be perpetrators and citizens should be aware that the midnight shift was never completely eliminated, only portions of low-incident midnight and evening shifts.
Mebust said the situation will likely be discussed again with the Police Committee meets at 10 a.m., Wednesday, Dec. 16, at 22 Main. The trustees meet the following Monday.Labels: 12-11-09, Front Page |
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Orthwein Saw ‘Big Baby Born’
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Ensign Orthwein Alerted
Brass To Attack On Pearl
By LAURA COX
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Adolphus B. Orthwein was in Washington D.C., 5,000 miles from the action, but still right in the middle of it.
The days leading up to Pearl Harbor had been busy ones, the Cherry Valley summer resident recalled Tuesday – the day after the 68th anniversary of the Date Which Will Live In Infamy – in an interview from his home in St. Louis.
As a newly commissioned officer at the time, Ensign Orthwein was in charge of the typists in the Naval Operations Command Center’s communications headquarters.
It was Friday night, Dec. 5. Orthwein was working the “lonely midnight-to-8 shift.” The communications staff had intercepted two messages, one sent to Japan, the other sent back to the originator.
“They sent a message to Japan asking if they thought ‘a child would be born.’ And they responded ‘yes, a very big child will be born,’” said Orthwein, who carried that message to be decoded.
“It didn’t make me think that a war was going to happen. But we sent them to be decoded anyway, in case there was anything in there that they could interpret as a code message.”
The next night, Saturday, Dec. 6, at the command center, the FBI reported intercepting radio messages that suddenly included numerous weather reports from Pearl Harbor being sent back to Japan. This was not usual.
The next morning, Sunday, Dec. 7, while Orthwein was still at the command center – his staff of young typists had been allowed to go home because it was Sunday – the first messages were received of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“I had to send out the first messages – without the typists – to captains and admirals. They kept dictating me the messages and I had a horrible time. I didn’t know how to type, I had to hunt and peck and the messages went out very slowly,” he said.
Later, the question was raised: How had the Japanese managed to sabotage those outgoing communications. “They weren’t sabotaged at all, I was the culprit that was unable to type any faster,” Orthwein chuckled.
In the days that followed, he remembers the anxiety as the five big ships from the Atlantic fleet crossed the Panama Canal to the Pacific. The blessing, he said, was that the Japanese did not know how successful their attack had been and did not try to invade California.
Orthwein, now 92, a member of the Anheuser Busch family, lives on a dairy farm locally in the summer months, St. Louis in the fall and spring, and West Palm Beach during the winter. He and wife Nancy have five sons, 14 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
He joined the Navy from Cooperstown during the summer of 1940 and says it took him exactly three days after the war was over to get out. He stayed in the inactive reserves and as a lieutenant commander through the Korean War, then received an honorable discharge.
His name was originally on the Cooperstown Honor Roll at 22 Main, but he later found it had been removed and added to one in St. Louis, since he was technically a resident of Missouri when he enlisted. “If I reenlisted in the service now, I would be a Florida resident, but I doubt they would accept me now,” he said.Labels: 12-11-09, Front Page |
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City Turns To Recycled Glass To Lessen Environmental Impact Of Road Salt
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City Hall has contracted with Andela Products, Richfield Springs, to use 100-percent recycled glass to lessen the impact of road salt on the environment.
The product, called Sunstone, is 100 percent recycled glass, will be mixed with salt – 75 percent glass, 25 percent salt – and spread on city roads this winter.
The glass reflects sunlight, helping melt the snow, and also provides traction. Not only will the impact lessen on the environment, but Sunstone is cheaper. And it’s locally made.
Anyone with questions should call the city Department of Public Service, 432-2100, or the mayor, 432-6450.Labels: 12-11-09, Front Page |
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SANTA...
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Friday, November 27, 2009
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...WELCOMED TO PIONEER PARK
 Laura Cox/The Freeman’s Journal & Richfield Springs NEWSPAPERRyan Hocker, 8, Boston, visits with Santa Claus after his arrival at his cottage in Pioneer Park. Ryan’s mom grew up in Cooperstown and they were back for the holiday.  CCS seniors Sarah Polus, left, and Elizabeth Szwejbka, sing Christmas carols.  Maya Hodgins, 7, Fly Creek, smiles for a picture with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Cooperstown Carnival Snowman.  The CCS band caught the spirit of the season. Labels: 12-04-09, Front Page |
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Community Acts To Help P&C Jobless
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Effort Aims To Help Out P&C Jobless
By JIM KEVLIN
HARTWICK SEMINARY
With 46 P&C employees possibly jobless by Christmas, Cooperstown’s Glimmerglass Creative Learning Center is taking steps to save their holiday season.
The center’s president, Jillian Bos, is appealing to the community to provide gifts, not only for the 46, but for their 23 spouses and 43 children.
“They’ve been there for us all these years for us,” said Bos. “We need to come together as a community for them.
Meanwhile, executives with P&C’s parent company, Penn Traffic of Syracuse, were due to meet Thursday, Dec. 3, with U.S. Bankruptcy Court officials in Delaware with a plan to sell all the stores to someone else.
Penn Traffic’s vice president of media relations, Terry Kushner, said the future of individual markets and their workers will depend on whoever buys the company’s stores.
A company press release said Penn Traffic, which filed for Chapter 11 reorganization on Nov. 18, had mailed “WARN” letters to all its employees, as required by federal law, indicating the stores would close in 90 days.
Meanwhile, Bos was asking people to donate “age-appropriate gifts” to the effort; the children are between 6 months and 15.
Unwrapped gifts may be dropped off 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 8, through Saturday, Dec. 12, at the Frugal Gugal, 59 Pioneer St.
Volunteers are being sought who would like to help wrap gifts, which will be distributed 1-3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 13, at Templeton Hall, 63 Pioneer.
Lucy Townsend, who operates her catering business out of Templeton Hall, will provide cookies and punch. The ACoopella singing group will perform carols.Labels: 12-04-09, Front Page |
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From Oneonta Roots, Brooks Aims To Grow
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Brooks BBQ Looking To Future
By JIM KEVLIN ONEONTA  When Ryan Brooks thinks about the future, he thinks about the whole United States of America, and Canada, and beyond. “It’s a dream that everybody has,” he said in an interview. The third-generation operator of Brooks BBQ knows his company will get there, but not tomorrow. “Baby steps,” is a term he uses. It’s a concept that brought his company this far, and he’s confident that should be the strategy going into the future. In recent months, you may have noticed Brooks BBQ sauces getting a higher profile; the display rack at Cooperstown’s and other Great Americans, for instance. A recently hired marketing consultant, Mark Joseph Kelly of Albany, piqued interest when he told a breakfast meeting of downtown businesspeople this fall of the company’s national – eventually – ambitions. Oneonta – “Smoketown USA,” the ad campaign might have it – would continue to be the hub of an ever-expanding wheel. Right now, Ryan Brooks said, the company is “a regional brand” that extends 200 miles in every direction. Because of SUNY Oneonta, Hartwick College, and such national draws as the two local sports halls of fame, there’s some demand in every state, he said. Beginning in the 1990s, the company’s Web site – brooksbbq.com – took the mail-order business (hand -filled quart bottles, beginning in 1988) to the next level. Today, sauces are being shipped far and wide every day, and not just in the U.S.: as far as Japan and Australia. The number of orders coming from the Gulf Coast – Tampa, Bradenton, St. Pete – makes it tempting to “stretch toward Florida” next, Brooks said. “The thing is, if we go national, can we keep up with it?” he asked. The first step was to assess the company’s strengths – Ryan can draw on a brain trust that includes his grandparents, company founders Griffin and Frances, and his parents and predecessors, John and Joan. The conclusion: One restaurant – 1,500 dinners a night, at peak, plus 600 catering jobs a year – was as much as he and his wife and partner, Beth – both are hands-on – could handle. “We wanted to focus on production and quality control,” but not be limited by that, Brooks said. A first step was to rachet up production. Then, an assembly line in one of the back buildings could fill 1,200 bottles a day. Now, a new production line, completed last year on the back of the Generations Gift Shop & Ice Cream Shop, behind the main restaurant, turns out 1,400 bottles an hour. A parallel challenge was lining up distributors, who won’t handle just any product. Brooks considered it a coup that Lomac Associates of Syracuse and Sysco, the national food mega-distributor, took on the Brooks line. And the Brooks line was expanded to five sauces, including teriyaki nad roasted garlice. “Wing sauces have really taken off,” he added. And there’s a sampler gift box. (A Rochester company had just ordered 215 to hand out as Christmas gifts.) “We know this restaurant,” said Brooks. “But when it comes to getting the product out there – marketing it – this is something we didn’t know.” Brooks is a regional landmark – talk to Ryan Brooks for long, and he begins telling stories about how customers love the place: One couple had their reception in the banquet hall, and come back every year on their anniversary. But it was only when Kelly began his marketing survey that the company’s reach became evident: It is a regional tourist draw, and the Otsego County Tourism Office views it as such. “How warm of a feeling does that give you?” Brooks asked. Labels: 12-04-09, Front Page |
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Last Of Hyde Hall Women Tells All – Well, Not Quite
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Last Of Hyde Hall Women
Tells All – Well, Not Quite
By LAURA COX
COOPERSTOWN
Hyde Hall, the neo-classical National Historic Landmark at the foot of Mount Wellington, was home to many women, but recorded history hadn’t shed much light on their lives. Until now.
Cooperstown’s Anne Logan, one of the last female descendants of George Hyde Clarke to live in the mansion and now in her 80s, and Karin Nelson, former Hyde Hall director of operations, have teamed up to author a book about the five women who presided there.
Logan, a member of that fifth generation, will autograph copies at 4-6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 11, during Hyde Hall’s Community Caroling & Holiday Bazaar.
“I wanted to write a cookbook for Hyde Hall” for 15 years, she said. But when she started talking to people about it, some thought it would be too boring. So instead, she developed her idea into “The Ladies of Hyde Hall,” a history from the women’s perspective, including recipes that have been served by the kitchen staffs over the years.
The two authors developed a friendship through their involvement at Hyde Hall, and when Nelson left the hall a few years ago to raise her children, Logan approached her about helping out.
“I was looking for something to do from home with my children, and then it became more than just help and I became co-author,” said Nelson.
The women started researching in October 2005, springboarding off an exhibit, curated Anne Norman and Roberta Wratten, that explored the generations who lived in the manorial home above Hyde Bay.
The women explored the family’s extensive records, including a scrapbook maintained by Ann Logan’s mother, Emily “Milly” Bone Ryerson.
“Anne is the critical link,” said Nelson. “In the past, the story has always been told from the male perspective; we tell it from the ladies’ perspective.”
The book debunks some community folklore about the family. There are murmurings about a tunnel from Hyde Hall, but the tunnel, she said, is not there; she would know, she lived there.
“We were careful to be accurate,” said Logan. “Everybody may say so, but everybody is wrong.”
She learned a lot about her own family as she researched, some things, she said, she would never share. “A few family secrets are best left in the past,” said Logan.
Many of the stories in the book center on the women’s roles with their husbands, children and domestic staff.
In trying to find recipes to include in the book Logan sought to find recipes that were actually served from their kitchen, as well as other recipes that might have been popular given the time period. There are around 100 recipes in total.
She has tried to cook many of them up over the years, and her suggested changes to the some of the recipes are noted in the book. Other she hasn’t tried like the squirrel pie and stuffed pigeon. The majority of the recipes are in her chapter.
“My mother didn’t know how to boil water,” said Logan. “I learned to cook from the cook.”
The book also includes descriptions on how to preserve foods; when canned food came out, it was a big deal.Labels: 12-04-09, Front Page |
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P&C Bankruptcy Leaves Local Store’s Fate In Air
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Friday, November 20, 2009
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HARTWICK SEMINARY
Anyone dragging an ear at the P&C these days will here someone talking about employees’ fears the supermarket will close.
As for its parent, Penn Traffic Co. of Syracuse, it’s not saying one way or another.
The company will only say that it has filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of U.S. Bankruptcy Laws "to facilitate an orderly sale of its stores and other assets."
Store Manager Kevin Roche would only say he is not authorized to talk about his market or the state of the company.
Penn Traffic issued a statement when it filed under Chapter 11 on Wednesday, Nov. 18, in the State of Delaware, quoting President & CEO Gregory J. Young: "Our P&C, Quality and BiLo supermarkets remain open for business to serve our customers and communities."
Company spokesman Meredith Dropkin said no one is authorized to expand on that.
Meanwhile, O’Hanlan’s Steakhouse, another anchor in the Cooperstown Commons plaza, is preparing to close.Labels: 11-27-09, Front Page |
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Hunter Shot In Stomach
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Sharon Springs Man
Crossed Posted Land
MIDDLEFIELD
37-year-old deer hunter is spending Thanksgiving in Bassett Hospital after he was shot in the stomach in the woods off Roscoe Jones Road, off Route 166, Town of Middlefield, Tuesday, Nov. 24.
Emergency units from Middlefield, Cherry Valley and Cooperstown were called to the scene at 10:27 a.m., and found Walter O. Rouse Jr., Sharon Springs, in a nearby field with a stomach wound.
Sheriff’s deputies identified the shooter as Lawrence C. Delaney, 68, of Cooperstown, who was in a hunting blind when the shooting occurred.
"The preliminary investigation shows that the victim Rouse was with a hunting party, ... became separated and crossed onto posted property owned by Delaney," police said.
"Rouse stopped to take a break in a wooded area while waiting for his other hunting partners to catch up" when he was shot.
No charges were filed, but deputies said the incident continues under investigation.
Labels: 11-27-09, Front Page |
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The 2009 Leadership Otsego class spent Thursday, Nov. 19, at The Otesaga, focusing on history and communications. Front row, from left, are Michael P
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Historic Brick Is Underneath Historic Aluminum
On Former Bresee’s Department Store, Oneonta
By JIM KEVLIN
ONEONTA
At this time of year for a century, Cooperstown families would be heading to Oneonta with anticipation to shop for Christmas presents at the former Bresee’s Department Store, an Otsego County mercantile landmark.
That ended for good a decade ago, but some of that old Santa magic was in the air on Main Street Sunday, Nov. 22, as the aluminum false front was removed from the four-story building to reveal the historic brick facade underneath.
It was a sight no one, from Richfield Springs to Unadilla, has witnessed for a half century.
It was also the beginning of a $9
ong with wife Michelle.
The crew included the Eastmans’ son, Nate, an OHS senior, who had to duck out at 4 p.m. for varsity basketball practice.
By mid-week, cinder block infill had been removed along the roofline. Bresee’s under the aluminum was actually two building: the main one and a smaller one to the east. About 4 feet of brick had to be removed from the second cornice.
Eastman said the facade had already been washed once but, once the front is repointed and upper windows sealed off with plywood, it will be washed again.
"There was just so much grit and grime on it," he said.
The next steps are to firm up the financing, complete the environmental clearances, and prepare for demolition of the back of the Bresee complex along Wall Street early next summer, according to Carolyn Lewis, county economic developer.
Rehabilitation will be continuous after that, she said, with the two penthouses, 20 apartments and ground-floor retail and commercial space ready for occupancy by fall 2011.
The project includes renovations along Dietz Street – the former telephone exchange, Teleky Jewelers and the building to its north.
"It’s very important for us to show physical, tangible progress," said Mayor John S. Nader of the first step.
"There are things happening here," reflected Joe Bernier, City Hall’s director of community and economic development. "There are not a lot of things happening in other places, but there are things happening here."
Sunday, it was the best show in town, as after-church crowd gathered and the crew worked through a strategy to transform a recent landmark back into a less-recent one.
One highpoint came first – removal of the red scripted letters, B-R-E-S-E-E-’-S, of the front; it gave a pang to see them crumpled in a dumpster, but they could not be removed intact.
Then the peeling back of the first 25- by 16-foot piece of the false front, which happened at about 11:30.
How to achieve that was a bit of a puzzle, Eastman said.
Exploring the territory, he determined the false front was formed from 6-inch-wide aluminum slats that ran vertically from the marquee at street level to the roof line.
The slats were attached to aluminum crossbars attached horizontally above and below the windows. The crossbars, in turn, were attached to aluminum brackets driven into the brick facade.
Eastman determined the 25- by 16-foot sections were sufficiently manageable to be detached, swung away from the building and lowered onto the street, where they could be cut in three pieces and trucked away.
Once the strategy was decided upon and the first piece removed, the rest went pretty easily, he said.
Eastman praised City Hall’s cooperation.
Patrolmen were on hand to direct traffic and keep the curious behind the police tape and out of danger.
Firefighters doused the building in the morning before work began, to protect it from sparks from torches. Halfway through the day, they went through the building with heat-detectors to make sure all was well.
"I guess the biggest surprise was what good condition the brick is in," said Eastman. "For the majority of the building they are in pretty good shape."
Labels: 11-27-09, Front Page |
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BRESEE’S UNVEILED
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Gary Herzig, Curious For Years, Maximizes Photography Opportunity
By JIM KEVLIN
 Like a lot of people who came to Oneonta in the past 50 years, Gary Herzig was intrigued by the Main Street mystery. What was the aluminium shell on Bresee’s Department Store hiding? "I always wondered what was under that facade and always wished it hadn’t been put up to hide the original brick building," said Herzig, the Opportunities for Otsego chief operating officer, who came to Oneonta from New York City in 1975 and stayed. A few days ago – Sunday, Nov. 22 – he finally got the chance to find out, as the aluminum front was removed as the first stage of a $9 million renovation of the downtown landmark building. And he was determined to make the most of it: He got permission from the owners of Sport Tech to use a window in their third-floor storage room. Then Herzig – photography is his hobby – mounted his Canon D30, using a 17mm wide-angle lens, on a tripod, snapping the first image at 7 a.m. Then, every hour or so that the unveiling ensued, he’d scoot back upstairs to his camera and snap another shutter, capturing a historic day in the city’s business center. For the final photo, taken at 12 noon Monday, Nov. 23, the sun accommodated the photographer and came out from behind a cloud for just five minutes. "I think it tells the story for anyone who wasn’t there that day," he said with some satisfaction when the project was done. Labels: 11-27-09, Front Page |
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Frequent Fires Made Way For Modern Downtown
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By JIM KEVLIN
ONEONTA
century ahead of federal Urban Renewal, Oneonta had a similar downtown renewal.
They called it fire, said Loraine Tyler, retired SUNY Oneonta Human Ecology chair, Greater Oneonta Historical Society director and resident expert on downtown architecture.
The GOHS’ History Center, 183 Main St., was erected in 1865, and was the downtown’s first brick building – one side a hardware store; the other a grocery.
"Its construction marked the shift to a more permanent downtown," said Tyler, interviewed in Latte Lounge as Bresee’s aluminum storefront was being removed across the street.
"Can you imagine all these short wooden buildings?" she asked. "The three-story brick structure: It must have made quite a statement."
In 1881, however, the wooden Ford Block burned, and was replaced within a year with today’s brick building, home to Key Bank’s local office.
In 1882, the north end of the block where Bresee’s was later built burned, from Chestnut to Deitz to Main.
In 1886, the wooden building to the Ford Block’s west burned, and was replaced by the brick structure that would house Sisson’s, another department store.
In 1888, a fire destroyed the South Main Street neighborhood from Main to Market, making way for a new city hall, (now the county annex.)
"Once a fire started, you couldn’t put it out," said Tyler. Limited to horse-drawn engines and hand-pumps, the most firefighters could hope to do was limit a blaze’s spread.
The good news: "Because we had the railroad, there was money to rebuild." And when that happened, Tyler said, firewalls were usually installed between buildings.
The early downtown architecture reflects that prosperity.
While the History Center building, later Laskaris’ ice cream parlor, is a simple brick cube with stone lintels, things quickly got fancier. One architectural feature that’s everywhere is corbelling, small tooth-like brick buttresses that Tyler believes served a structural purpose as well as a decorative function.
The old city hall is Beaux Art, among the most exuberant architectural styles.
After World War II, aluminum storefronts were embraced as adding "a clean, fresh look to the building, and easily done."
Ruffino’s first floor was redone at that point. So was the future History Center. Bresee’s – its brick storefront was characterized by corbels – was caught up in the craze: Its redo was the largest and most dramatic.
Labels: 11-27-09, Front Page |
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BRESEE’S UNVEILED
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Gary Herzig, Curious For Years, Maximizes Photography Opportunity
By JIM KEVLIN
 Like a lot of people who came to Oneonta in the past 50 years, Gary Herzig was intrigued by the Main Street mystery. What was the aluminium shell on Bresee’s Department Store hiding? "I always wondered what was under that facade and always wished it hadn’t been put up to hide the original brick building," said Herzig, the Opportunities for Otsego chief operating officer, who came to Oneonta from New York City in 1975 and stayed. A few days ago – Sunday, Nov. 22 – he finally got the chance to find out, as the aluminum front was removed as the first stage of a $9 million renovation of the downtown landmark building. And he was determined to make the most of it: He got permission from the owners of Sport Tech to use a window in their third-floor storage room. Then Herzig – photography is his hobby – mounted his Canon D30, using a 17mm wide-angle lens, on a tripod, snapping the first image at 7 a.m. Then, every hour or so that the unveiling ensued, he’d scoot back upstairs to his camera and snap another shutter, capturing a historic day in the city’s business center. For the final photo, taken at 12 noon Monday, Nov. 23, the sun accommodated the photographer and came out from behind a cloud for just five minutes. "I think it tells the story for anyone who wasn’t there that day," he said with some satisfaction when the project was done. Labels: 11-27-09, Front Page |
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A LITTLE SONG AND DANCE...
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Friday, November 13, 2009
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 When Cooperstown Rotarians sang “Bye, Bye Blackbird” at their Tuesday, Nov. 17, meeting, Rotarian Margaret Savoie – a new Springbrook board member, she was about to introduce Patricia Kennedy, that children’s home executive director – remarked her first tap-dancing routine, at age 7, was to that same tune. “I’d pay to see that,” a fellow club member said. “For Springbrook?” Margaret replied. Springbrook fundraiser Mike Stein anted up $20, the club sang “Blackbird” again, and, yes, Savoie remembered the routine from, after all, not so many years ago. In the background of main photo are club President Bill Glockler, left, and treasurer Jake Majaika. After Kennedy spoke about Springbrook’s $5 million fund drive, Chad Welch, Rotary allocations chairman, presented her with a $1,000 check and announced the club has committed to donating $5,000 over three years.Labels: 11-20-09, Front Page |
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Horse, Buggy Posed
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2 Carriages Would Serve Tourist TradeBy LAURA COX
COOPERSTOWN
It’s not hard to imagine Cooperstown traversed by horse and carriage – or horse and sleigh.
It was once, and soon may be again, given George and Elinor Poole’s plan to bring the Cooperstown Carriage Company to town.
The couple – from Truxton, in Cortland County – own seven Haflinger draft horses and two carriages, a nine-passenger surrey and four-passenger Vis a Vis.
The Pooles asked the village trustees Monday, Nov. 16, for permission to operate a livery from Mike Manno’s 21 Railroad Ave., using the former Sage Center as the lobby, and keeping the wagons in the garage out back.
The horses would be lodged outside the village, and – equipped with the the equine equivalent of diapers – come to work daily during the summer months, carrying tourists around the sights.
“It started as George’s dad’s retirement hobby, and he just brought us into it,” said Elinor.
She, a program analyst at Cornell, and George, who is retiring from a telecommunications career, live next door to her in-laws’ family farm, where the horses were raised, and have exhibited their teams at state and county fairs in New York and Pennsylvania.
The carriage business has been a long-held dream.
Summers, Elinor can tele-commute to her job, and children Jessica,19, and Nathan, 16, and help out here. Both have been driving horses since age 8, but Nathan, due to his age, will probably just take care of the horses while his sister drives.
Why Cooperstown? “We thought it would fit in,” Elinor said.
She and George have researched similar businesses, and found the turn-of-the-20th-century atmosphere here is just the thing.
Their application, now under consideration by the trustees, says the business would run 11 a.m.-6 p.m., seven days a week, May 1 to Oct. 30, providing 45-minute historic tours departing on the hour. The 15 minute lag would give the horses a rest.
The teams would also be available by appointment for private tours, and for weddings, anniversaries, proms, festivals and other special occasions.
Because of safety concerns about busy Main Street, the couple plans to avoid it, and have mapped three routes: One goes out to Brooklyn Avenue and back by Bassett Healthcare; another down Nelson to Lake and the museums; the third would circle up Church and back along River and Lake.
In his presentation, George Poole said the couple is looking to work with the village to fine tune the routes, and Trustee Jeff Katz, who was presiding as deputy mayor, suggested they talk with Police Chief Diana Nicols.
If the trustees approve the concept in December, the Pooles will line up insurance, find a place to board the horses and begin making contacts with other businesses.
Labels: 11-20-09, Front Page |
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Vigorous Listserv Connects Gas-Drilling Foes
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300 Debate, Share Data, Debate Daily Via Internet Tool
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
Maybe it wouldn’t have been to others, but “it seemed obvious to me,” said Adrian Kuzminski, recalling the founding of Sustainable Otsego in the spring of 2007.
“It” was a listserv, an e-mail fueled program that allows multiple members to communicate with each other via the Internet.
At one of Sustainable Otsego’s early meetings, he asked attendees to provide their e-mail addresses, and they became the first members.
For a year or so, it moved sedately along, with earnest members discussing energy conservation and wind turbines.
Then, it erupted.
Last spring, Sustainable Otsego partnered in three forums with other groups opposing hydro-fracking for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale Formation that undergirds Otsego County.
More than 500 people attended the sessions, and Kuzminski passed around his clipboard for e-mail addresses.
Listserv membership leaped, and continues to grow, reaching almost 300 members today.
“It’s a very vigorous listserv,” Kuzminski, a retired professor, agreed the other day. “There are a lot of dead listservs.
“It’s the content. This is a forum for discussing issues that there’s no where else to discuss, where people can exchange ideas in a sustained way.”
Before, people worried about the gas-drilling industry’s incursion felt helpless and isolated; the listserv changed that, Kuzminski said.
Take Sunday, Nov. 15: There were 37 postings that day.
One hot topic was whether participants should support Governor Paterson withdrawing his request to the DEC to update regulations governing gas drilling, or whether to seek an outright ban on hydrofracking.
An aspect of that debate was whether to sign the e-petition, floated by Walter Hang, the ecological strategist from Ithaca, (the one who raised the flag on continuing underground pollution from that former gas station on lower Chestnut in Cooperstown.)
Another alerted folks to a report on syracuse.com on “Endicott’s Plume,” vapors from underground that roiled that Binghamton suburb.
The listserv can also mobilize like-minded people, as it did in filling the atrium at Foothills Performing Arts Center on Monday, Nov. 8, for a public hearing on the proposed regulations.
Kuzminski moderates, making sure participant eschew personal attacks and maintain a certain level of “decorum.” He’s had to kick three or four folks off for not doing so.Labels: 11-20-09, Front Page |
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60 Years Later, Dorothy Weir Still Milford Church Organist
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60 Years And Going Strong As Milford Church Organist
By LAURA COXMILFORDThe first time she visited Milford United Methodist Church, Dorothy Weir was a student at Oneonta High School, tagging along with her pastor father on church business. Little did she suspect that, 10 years later, she would be organist here. Or that on Sunday, Nov. 8, 2009, she would be honored for 60 years as church organist. “I was here, and my father was here,” Mrs. Weir said the other day as she walked into the wood-trimmed sanctuary, light filtering in through the stained-glass windows, “and I remember looking up at that organ. I would have never thought I’d be looking at it again.” But so it was. In honor of the occasion, she was asked to pick the final hymn. Then, Cindy Seward, state Sen. Jim Seward’s wife – they live across the street – presented her with a framed photograph signed by members of the congregation. Mrs. Weir’s father, Rev. Joseph H. Smith, moved his family from their native Binghamton to Oneonta when she was in high school. The pastor of Centenary United Methodist Church was then promoted to superintendent of the church’s Oneonta District. The moved worried young Dorothy that her musical studies would suffer, but she continued to study with Jay Emery Kelley in Binghamton, driving back and forth every couple of weeks. She remembers being giddy with excitement about getting her license and being allowed to drive by herself. “I was fascinated by the harp, and my mom told me to pick an instrument I could carry around – and look what I picked,” Weir said, pointing to the organ. As a young girl, though, she always lived next to a church and could go there for practice. She played her first church service at Centenary in December 1936. Her knees were shaking. She still has the music she played. As she’s done with all the music she’s played since, the date is neatly written on the front of the score. At Oneonta High School, she met her husband, Richard, whose family owned Weir’s Restaurant & Hotel on the old Broad Street. When they graduated in 1939, she went to Syracuse to study the organ, but she returned after two years. They married and moved to Massachusetts, where he was working in a airplane factory. After World War II, the couple moved to Milford Center, living across the street from a church. Why don’t you attend that church, she was asked. There’s no organ, she replied. In 1949, Edith Sherman, the organist at Milford United Methodist Church, up Route 28 in the village, wanted Mother’s Day off, so Dorothy substituted. She took over regularly that fall, and has been playing since. Since then, she’s played through six hymnals and at least as many pastors, and there are still songs she said she has never played. In addition to hymns, she loves to play Bach, although she’s been doing it less as her feet and fingers have slowed down. At 89, Weir plans to continue playing for her church until she can’t anymore. Labels: 11-20-09, Front Page |
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COOPERSTOWN AND AROUND
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Crowell Lead Maintained, Not OfficialCOOPERSTOWN
A recount expanded Democrat Dan Crowell’s lead over Republican Ed Keator Jr. from five on Election Night to 6,304 to 6,149, but the victory won’t be official until election commissioners meet Tuesday, Nov. 24.
Meanwhile, the Friday, Nov. 13, recanvass ends an era in the Town of Springfield, where Democrat Bill Elsey edged Republican incumbent Tom Armstrong, a veritable legend.
County Rep. Betty Ann Schwerd, R-Edmeston, kept her seat, as did Hartwick Supervisor Pat Ryan with a 14-vote margin over Dave Petri.
SUPER SUPER: Help the CCS school board identify desirable attributes/qualities for the next superintendent of schools by filling out a survey at www.cooperstowncs.org by Dec. 31. NEW AT MARKET:
Danny’s Market’s Alice Gaveria will cook a Farmers’ Market Melange Stew at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 21, at The Cooperstown Farmers’ Market, the first in a series that seeks to connect local restaurants with local farmers. Labels: 11-20-09, Front Page, Glimmerglass |
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Absentee Votes May Change 10 Contests
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Friday, November 6, 2009
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By JIM KEVLIN
The squeaker – Democrat Dan Crowell and Republican Ed Keator Jr.’s razor-thin margin in the county treasurer race – is just the start of it. Nine other races – one for county Board of Representatives, eight for town offices – are still too close to call.
"In don’t know if we’ve ever had this many," said Cindy Jarvis, deputy elections commissioner.
That means the county Board of Elections at The Meadows, Town of Middlefield, will be jammed this Friday, Nov. 13, as two two-person teams – one member a Republican, the other a Democrat – will recanvas all votes cast in the Nov. 3 elections, add in some 600 absentee ballots, and declare the outcomes final.
All 17 candidates in the disputed races have also been invited to the attend the recount, which begins at 9:30 a.m. Any interested member of the public can show up as well.
"We’ll start in Burlington and work out way through the alphabet," said Jarvis.
One high-profile race still in doubt is that of incumbent Republican county Rep. Betty Anne Schwerd of Edmeston, who led Democrat Keith Carpenter by only 16 votes in District 10 on Election Night, 458-442. There are 27 absentee ballots submitted from that district.
Other town races in northern Otsego County that could be changed by absentee ballots are:
• Hartwick, with 23 absentee ballots: Supervisor candidate David Petri is in reach of Pat Ryan, the incumbent. While Town Board member Fred Fields is assured a seat, the second seat is in play between Anita Briggs Jones and Julianne Sharrat.
• Springfield, with 23 absentee ballots: Incumbent Supervisor Tom Armstrong is leading, but challenger Bill Elsey is within striking distance.
Races could also be changed by absentee ballots in New Lisbon, the Town of Oneonta and Worcester.Labels: 11-13-09, Front Page |
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Coyote Attack On Fallow Deer 1st In Herd’s 71 Years Locally
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No More Animals Lost;
High Fence Will Go Up, Says Jane Forbes Clark
By LAURA COX
& JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
In 71 years in the meadow between Brooklyn and Susquehanna avenues, the Clark family’s fallow deer have never been attacked by predators, according to Jane Forbes Clark, whose great-uncle Ambrose brought the herd back from Europe in 1938.
That changed in recent weeks, as a dozen of the animals were bitten in the neck, possibly by a coyote, and either died or had to be put down.
"We are going to put up a bigger fence and hope that does it, said Miss Clark, adding, "We’ll keep fingers crossed."
An e-mail sent by Bassett Healthcare to its employees – many walk along that stretch of Susquehanna Avenue from the Clark Sports Center parking lot to work – caused
some concern about public safety, but that seems to have calmed.
Still, according to DEC Wildlife Technician Gary Golja, an air of mystery still surrounds the episode.
"The most unusual fact is that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of feeding on them. They have been killed efficiently but not fed on," said Golja, who first investigated the scene Thursday, Oct. 29 and followed up on Friday, Nov. 6.
"This type of attack would lean toward domestic dogs, but they are usually fairly ineffective and rip apart the hind quarters, where this is more of clench to the throat," he said.
While unsure at first what exactly was attacking the deer, cameras installed along the perimeter fence taped a large coyote inside the pen. There are a handful of spots where the animal could have squeezed into the pen, Golja said.
The deer have been moved to a smaller yard while Ray Key, Pierstown, who operates a wildlife control service, set traps, but he said – as of Tuesday, Nov. 10 – he hadn’t caught anything.
"There haven’t been anymore sightings," Key said, although, generally, he’s responded to several coyote spottings lately.
For time being, people should keep small pets inside at night, when coyotes are most active, he said.
The attacks on the deer, Golja said, were predation, not aggression: Healthy coyotes will not typically attack humans, but people should beware of wild animals that don’t seem afraid of them.
Since the news spread, there has been one coyote sighting near the village – at 12:47 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, on River Road, said Police Chief Diana Nicols. There have been no reports of missing pets, she added.
Miss Clark said her great-uncle saw fallow deer herds in Europe, "thought they were pretty, and wanted to see them from the house."
The house was the 40-room Iroquois Mansion, demolished in 1983, which was located across from the Clark Sports Center, behind where that stone wall lines Susquehanna Avenue.
At its peak, the herd had 60 animals, she said.
The fallow deer have been a part of the scene all of her life, Miss Clark said, recalling times when village residents would regularly walk out to observe the animals and feed them. Labels: 11-13-09, Front Page |
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CCS Soccer Team Wins 1st Sections
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CCS Redskins Win Soccer Title
By LAURA COX
 COOPERSTOWN
They are the champions, friends. And wearing the first Section III, Class C Championship laurels won by a CCS Boys Varsity Soccer team since 1991, the Redskins were awaiting word on whether they would be playing Marathon in the first round of the regionals either Friday or Saturday, Nov. 13, 14. "As far as our victory, it centered around a team approach not one or two individuals," said Coach Frank Miosek the day after his team’s 1-0 win over Bishop Grimes, East Syracuse, Monday, Nov. 9, for the sectional title. CCS played 16, using five subs; Grimes only used two. Miosek thinks this strategy contributed to the win. "The game could have gone either way, but we out-shot them. We had one or two more chances than they did. We had five they had three; fortunately, we were able to score and they were not," he said, adding that Bishop Grimes had a shot bounce off the crossbar that could have easily gone in and changed the dynamic of the game. Miosek is hoping to play Marathon Saturday, because of the late notice and the students having Wednesday off for Veterans Day. Playing Saturday, the team wouldn’t have to miss classes or play in the dark. Supt. Of Schools Mary Jo McPhail said the time of the game will be posted on the school Web site as soon as she knows. In Miosek’s 23 years of coaching, the team has never played Marathon and he said he knows "little to nothing about their team." The coach will continue to use the same strategy that has been successful for him throughout his career. This includes using substitutes in certain positions and not in others. "Each game is a little different, but our approach from the beginning is to keep fresh people in the mid and striker positions, and we do not like to mess around with defense and the goal. We have a set group and make little or no changes. It’s worked well for me over years, especially in our sectional game," Miosek said. Miosek never looks ahead, but he said his athletic director did and after this weekend’s game for regionals, there would be a semi final and a championship game for state. The championship game is scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 22. The Redskins are 16-3 so far. Referring to anything past this as icing on the cake, Miosek said that, win or lose, his team will play with class and leave the fields with heads held high. There are approximately 24 on team, and 17 of them have scored or registered an assist this season. Labels: 11-13-09, Front Page, Sports |
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GOP Legal Beagle May Be Called In
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In Races Like Crowell-Keator, Ciampoli Strategizing Valued By Republican Party
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
Democrats say attorney John Ciampoli, the Republican heavy-hitter in recent election challenges across the state, may be coming to Otsego County to scrutinize the tight race for county treasurer.
For their part, some Republicans are being coy; others say, not yet.
"I guess we’ll all have to be surprised, won’t we," said county GOP Chairman Sheila Ross, Fly Creek.
"I don’t know, I don’t know," is all Tony Casale of Cooperstown, the Republican
strategist and retired Herkimer-Otsego county assemblyman, would say in response to questions about what outside help might be brought in, given the tight race between Democrat Dan Crowell and Republican Ed Keator Jr.
"The best person to contact would be Sheila Ross on that," said Jeff Bishop, spokesman for state Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, when asked for details from the senator.
Given the number of tight races being contested across the state right now – Essex County district attorney, five in Columbia County, four each in Dutchess and Westchester, plus the razor-thin margin for Nassau County executive – it’s unlikely that Ciampoli will come here in person for the Friday, Nov. 13, recount at the county’s Meadows Building, Town of Middlefield.
But if the other races resolve themselves and the Crowell-Keator contest is still in play, others say a Ciampoli visit is possible.
Meanwhile, by Tuesday, Nov. 10, the margin had grown from 5 to 146 in favor of Middlefield’s Crowell against West Oneonta’s Keator.
Crowell, who planned to observe the validation of absentee ballots on Thursday and the final count on Friday, said he will be guided by what can be determined to be "the intent of the voter."
"We have full confidence in the election commissioners and deputy commissioners on both sides of the aisle," he said.
Ciampoli’s most high-profile involvement lately was in last fall’s recount in the race for the 20th Congressional District, where Democrat Scott Murphy eventually edged out Jim Tedisco, the state Assembly’s Republican leader.
Murphy – his district includes eastern Otsego County, where Crowell was his campaign chair – eventually won.
More notorious was a smaller-scale case in the Village of Irvington, Westchester County.
Ciampoli was representing Republican Dennis Flood, who lost by one vote to Democrat Erin Malloy in the March 15, 2005, village mayoral election.
After six months of legal challenges, Ciampoli succeeded in having an absentee ballot thrown out, bringing the outcome to a tie.
In a coin toss, Flood unseated Malloy, who had been serving as mayor, and was immediately sworn in.
Election Night, Nov. 3, tally was 5,869 for Crowell to 5,864 for Keator.
When non-automated voting machines in seven towns were rechecked Nov. 5, Crowell gained 44 votes and Keator 10, bring the Democrat’s lead to 59.
Election night, a machine had failed in one district and votes needed to be cast by "emergency ballot." Those 21 votes went 7 for Keator, 14 for Crowell, bring the lead to 66.
Finally, it was discovered that, in one Town of Otsego District, Keator’s independent votes had been miscounted as 85 but actually were 5, bringing Crowell’s lead to 146, where it stood before Friday’s anticipated final count.
The statistics concept – The Law of Large Numbers – suggests the 639 uncounted absentee ballots will break along the lines the electorate did in general, Crowell said.
Absent a challenge, the results of the race should be clear by early next week at the latest.
Keator did not return a call to discuss the status of the race.
Labels: 11-13-09, Front Page |
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Help Name New Baseball Team
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COOPERSTOWN
With village trustees ready to ink a contract to bring a New York Collegiate Baseball League team to Doubleday Field next summer, team owner Tom Hickey is asking for help with a name.
Hickey and Village Attorney Martin Tillapaugh met in recent days and, with the change of a word or two, agreed on the final document the trustees tentatively approved at their October meeting.
The November meeting is 7:30 p.m. on the 16th.
Meanwhile, see the top of this page for details on the Name The Team Contest.Labels: 11-13-09, Front Page |
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Just 5 Votes Separate
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Friday, October 30, 2009
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600 Absentee Ballots May Decide Outcome
By JIM KEVLIN
It’s a razor-thin margin. 
In the race for Otsego County treasurer, only five votes separate Democrat Dan Crowell of Middlefield (5,869) from Ed Keator Jr. of West Oneonta (5,964).
That’s 4/100ths of 1 percent of the votes cast.
With 600 absentee votes out, Crowell wasn’t claiming victory Tuesday evening, Nov. 3, saying, “I’d say it’s still 50-50, really.”
It will at least be a few days before the picture comes into focus, as machines are recanvassed and the absentee ballots counted.
If elected, Crowell would be the first Democrat to win countywide office in 75 years: since county Sheriff George Mitchell, who served one term, 1933-35, during the Eva Coo prosecution.
In other county races, there were five contested races for the county Board of Representatives – in the sixth, Democrat Irving Hall had pulled out of the race against Jim Powers, the board chairman, in District 2.
The only incumbent unseated was freshman Republican Rep. Scott Harrington, in Oneonta-area District 13. He was defeated by Democrat Linda Rowinski, 298-217.
That shifts the balance toward the Democrats, but the Republicans still hold a strong majority.
Republican County Rep. Betty Anne Schwerd proved to be a cat with nine lives, turning back a challenge from Democrat Keith Carpenter, 458-442, in the Edmeston-based District 10.
In the Worcester-based District 6, Don Lindberg, who had served as board chair in the past with Republican and Democratic support, handily defeated Democrat John Imperato Sr., 927-351.
In the two other Oneonta seats, veteran Cathy Rothenberger, District 12, and freshman Richard Murphy, District 4, turned back Republican challengers.
As the tallies went up in the Autumn Cafe in downtown Oneonta, the Democratic gathering place, Crowell led soon after the polls closed by as much as 150 votes.
But as the evening wore on, Keator continued to close the gap.
He was three dozen votes ahead when the final towns – Pittsfield and Unadilla – reported their tallies, tightening the gap.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Incumbents Keep PostsAcross Northern Otsego Election Night was a night for incumbents across northern Otsego County Tuesday, Nov. 3. • In the Town of Otsego, Republican Town Clerk Pam Deane turned back a challenge from Democrat Rich McCaffery, 703-306. • In the Town of Richfield, Republicans Laurie Bond (314) and Bonnie Domion (265) turned back independent challenges from Bethann Hammer (184) and Frances Enjem (94). • In the Town of Cherry Valley, Republican Town Clerk Mary Beth Flint rebuffed Democrat Patricia Seybolt, 213-159. Flint had narrowly defeated Seybolt last time around. Also in the Town of Otsego, incumbent Republican Anne Geddes-Atwell and newcomer Carl Wenner, also a Republican, won the two seats. Rosemary Craig, the former CCS school board president, running as an independent, trailed.
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STATE WIDE RACES
STATE PROPOSAL #1
Use of Forest Preserve? Yes 3675
Use of Forest Preserve? No 3534
STATE PROPOSAL #2
Authorize Legislators? Yes 5160
Authorize Legislators? No 2309
OTSEGO COUNTY RACES
COUNTY TREASURER
Vote for 1
Edward Keator Jr. 5864
Dan Crowell 5869
COUNTY REP, DIST 4
Vote for 1
Richard A Murphy 703
Janet Hurley-Quackenbush 527
COUNTY REP, DIST 6
Vote for 1
Donald L Lindberg 927
John J Imperato, Sr. 351
COUNTY REP, DIST 10
Vote for 1
Keith A Carpenter 442
Betty Anne Schwerd 458
COUNTY REP, DIST 12
Vote for 1
Catherine Rothenberger 250
Craig B Gelbsman 145
COUNTY REP, DIST 13
Vote for 1
Linda Rowinski 298
Scott D Harrington 217
TOWN OF ONEONTA RACES
ONEONTA SUPERVISOR
Vote for 1
Robert T Wood 762
Anthony Natalini 445
ONEONTA JUSTICE
Vote for 2
Philip S Hosley 568
Andrew J Liddle 572
Bruce A Smith 755
ONEONTA
COUNCILMAN
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John G Frisch 607
Scott Gravelin 623
William Mirabito 679
CITY OF ONEONTA RACES
ONEONTA CITY MAYOR
Vote for 1
Dick Miller 1078
Jason G Corrigan 177
Erik A Miller 894
ONEONTA CITY JUDGE
Vote for 1
Lucy Bernier 1259
Michael Getman 811 Labels: 11-06-09, 2009 Elections, Front Page |
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Bassett’s Hartwick Clinic First Step
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Allying Dermatology, Plastic-Surgery Divisions Offers Benefits As Well
By JIM KEVLIN
HARTWICK SEMINARY
 You drive right up, park and walk in the front door.
Yes, it’s Bassett Healthcare, with parking, the first step in the eight-county health-care system’s new, non-Cooperstown approach to growth.
As of Oct. 19, the grey, low-slung building on Route 28 – the former Corvette Hall of Fame – is Hartwick Special Services, location of Bassett’s dermatology, pain management, plastic surgery and advanced skin-care offerings.
Listening to Dr. Steve Resnick, the medical director, you can see how the combination makes sense.
Standing by a Mohs cryostat – it will be operational by year’s end – Dr. Resnick outlines what sounds like a multi-appointment process to remove skin-cancer lesions and repair the damage.
Now, Resnick, a dermatologist, can do what he needs to, then send patients down the hall for plastic surgery.
Previously, plastic surgery was in Bassett’s department of surgery at the main campus in Cooperstown; dermatology was in the medical department.
The new proximity allows physicians in the two specialities to easily confer, and the new equipment "allows the surgeon the luxury of removing as little as possible," said Resnick.
"There’s a huge overlap," added Dr. Kevin Maguire, the plastic surgeon standing next to Resnick in one of the brightly lit treatment rooms. "We both take care of the skin, and that’s a huge overlap."
Maguire is one of two plastic surgeons – the other is Dr. John Russin – recruited by Bassett in the past year to implement the new concept.
Holly Morgan, Oneonta, who has 20 years in the health-care field, 12 in management positions, is the facility’s manager.
There are 16 people at the new facility, Morgan said, including five plastic surgeons, four physiatrists and a neuro-surgeon.
When the health-care system considered moving specialities out of Cooperstown, this was a logical first step, said Frank Panzarella, Bassett’s vice president, operations.
"We don’t have a lot of hospital-based activity happening here," he said.
The cosmetic piece of the plastic-surgery operation, he acknowledged, is a revenue-generator, contributing the "operating margin" necessary for non-profit Bassett to continue innovating and expanding.
That would include breast augmentation, breast lifts, facelifts, liposuction and tummy tucks.
Because of resistance by neighbors and Village Hall to further Bassett in-village expansion, the system sees the Hartwick Seminary facility as the kind of thing it will be doing in the future.
Labels: 11-06-09, Front Page |
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‘Impossible,’ But Building Owners Must Provide Parking
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Scrap Regulations, Village Planning Board Suggests
COOPERSTOWN
arking-space requirements in the village’s zoning law are simply being ignored.
But there’s no alternative: Space for the required spaces simply doesn’t exist, so the Zoning Board of Appeals routinely issues waivers.
"It’s impossible to provide parking," said Planning Board member Richard Blabey, who has just completed a study of the matter.
"These buildings downtown don’t have property around them for parking," he said.
Acting on a initiative of its Sustainability Committee, the village trustees last summer asked the Planning Board this question:
"Can the village, through better zoning and parking policies, effectively address the parking problem and thus facilitate private-sector renovation of buildings downtown?"
Planning Board chair Charles Hill asked Blabey to do the study, and he identified 40 "mixed use" properties – excluding the Hall of Fame, CVS, the post office and banks, except for Key Bank – and spent August examining them and talking to owners.
He found that the 40 properties, under village law, are required to provide a total of 547 parking spaces. In fact, they provide 67, 480 less.
The related apartments require 61 parking spaces, but Blabey only found 19, a 42-space deficit.
He concluded that, since the parking requirement is being waived, the law itself is not an obstacle to downtown redevelopment and can be repealed.
Labels: 11-06-09, Front Page |
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Cooperstown AND Around
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Help Soldiers Abroad Enjoy Merry Holiday COOPERSTOWN If you have a family member serving in the Armed Forces overseas, please submit his or her current FOP or APO address to Lyn Weir, Box 962, Cooperstown NY 13326, e-mail lyn@lynweir.com, or call her at 547-8886 by Nov. 10.
The Ladies Auxiliary of VFW Post 7128, Cooperstown, will be sending holiday gift boxes to soldiers once again this year.
CAMPAIGN ENDS: The undefeated CCS Redskins football team lost a hard-fought contest, 31-6, in the Section 3 semifinals vs. Cazenovia Friday, Oct. 30, at Rome Free Academy.
TOP RETURN: Mohican VCA Fund, managed by Mohican Financial Management, Cooperstown, has received the 2009 Lipper Hedge Fund Award for Best Hedge Fund in Convertible Arbitrage for a three-year period ending June 30. Village Trustee Eric Hage is Mohican Financial’s chief investment officer.
PRICE DIPS: To broaden its audience, Glimmerglass Opera has reduced its minimum ticket price for the 2010 season from $58 to $26.
Labels: 11-06-09, Front Page |
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Watertown Treatment Plant Turns Back Ross #1 Tankers
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Friday, October 23, 2009
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Water From Drilling On Crumhorn Put In Tanks
By JIM KEVLIN
Tainted water from Otsego County’s first natural-gas well is being stored in steel tanks atop Crumhorn Mountain after it was rejected as too briney by the plant that had agreed to clean it up.
The City of Watertown’s Waste Water Treatment Plant had been processing the “inventory” since the Ross #1 well in the Town of Maryland began operating at the end of September.
“This time,” said Yancey Roy, state DEC spokesman, “the water - used by the operator during drilling operations - was higher in brine, leading the plant to ask for more tests before it would decide to accept it.”
In an e-mail, Roy said storing the water in steel tanks is “acceptable up to 45 days after the cessation of drilling operations, unless DEC approves an extension based upon circumstances beyond the operator’s control.”
It was unclear what the brine consisted of, or what is considered the “cessation of operations.”
Roy concluded, “We will continue to monitor the issue to ensure proper disposal of the wastewater.”
The DEC spokesman emphasized that Ross #1 is a vertical well, although horizontal fracking – requiring millions of gallons of water – could be done there if state regulations governing such operations are approved.
The water is mixed with chemicals, and also returns to the surface with pollutants from below.
In a related development, pressure is being applied to DEC – the state Department of Environmental Conservation – to hold a local hearing, in Oneonta, on the proposal draft SGEIS, for “supplemental generic environmental impact statement.”
The original GEIS was issued in 1992, before horizontal hydrofracking was developed as a method to extract natural gas from formations like the Marcellus and Utica shales that undergird Otsego County.
In Watertown, City Manager Mary Corriveau said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been monitoring the plant, and so the city is particular about what goes in there.
The city had issued a permit for “well-development water,” she said, and began accepting shipments.
Howevr, “we got a tanker load that, from our perspective, was ‘out of character’,” she continued, “because it was different from what we anticipated we would be getting.
“We wanted to check the characteristics. Before we could, two more tankers arrived, so they were rejected.”
Corriveau said the city is working with Covalent Energy, which is developing the Crumhorn Mountain well, and the DEC.
“We anticipate we will issue a consent order defining how we can continue to accept the water,” she said.
Orville Cole, president of Gastem USA, which is developing the well for Covalent, characterized the development as “a small wrinkle. It’s not a big situation at this point.”
The Watertown city manager said that, in the well-development stage, only 80,000 gallons of “inventory” is required per well.
The city’s plant has a capacity to process 16 million gallons a day, and is only processing 12 million, so it has plenty of room to accommodate Gastem’s shipments.Labels: 10-30-09, Front Page |
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MUD WRESTLIN’ TO VICTORY
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Victory v. Cazenovia Would Lead To Sectional Inside Carrier Dome
By JIM KEVLINCOOPERSTOWNCCS’ undefeated Redskins football team is just 48 minutes of play away from the Carrier Dome. “They are really excited to have made it this far,” said Jay Baldo, CCS athletic director and an assistant to Head Coach Steve Pugliese. “They know they’re one game away from playing the game in Syracuse, and that’s something a Cooperstown team has never been able to accomplish.” The 48 minutes of play will begin at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, at Rome Free Academy, where the Redskins face the Cazenovia Lakers in the semis. In addition to Cazenovia, General Brown and Utica’s Bishop Ludden have been considered the teams to beat, and they are playing each other the same evening, leading to the Section 3 championship game Friday or Saturday, Nov. 6 or 7, at SU’s legendary 49, 250-seat football (and basketball) mecca. The Carrier Dome is the largest domed stadium of any college campus and the largest domed stadium in the Northeastern United States. The Redskins have been used to carrying their own gear and changing in the girls’ locker room at away games. This will change at RFA, where attendants will carry the boys’ grips and first-rate changing facilities are in the offing. A taste of stardom. The Redskins head to Cooperstown from a mud-wrestling bout at Lambert Field Saturday, Oct. 24, playing Canastota in heavy rains on a field that turned to soup. Nonetheless, there was only one turnover. “It definitely played into the hands of Tanner (Niedzialkowski), being a good straight-ahead down-hill runner,” said Baldo. “With his speed, he just had a great day.” The Canastota Raiders scored first, and Cooperstown had only a 24-16 lead near the end of the first half. Then Luke Folts intercepted and ran the ball back to Canastota’s two-yard line. Alec Silvera ran it in, and the Redskins never looked back. Niedzialkowski took in three of the TDs. The Cooperstown players realize Cazenovia may be the biggest challenge to date to the Redskins 8-0 record. The Lakers shut out Sherburne-Earlville, Clinton and Mount Markham during the regular season. “They’re a very good team,” said Baldo. “They’re big. They’re very well coached. And they have some real good athletes. They’re a perennial powerhouse. They’re definitely the best we will have played to this point.” Labels: 10-30-09, Front Page, Sports |
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Cornell Team Expects Rt. 28 Report By May
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COOPERSTOWN
Cornell’s Design Connect Team expects to have preliminary recommendations on the “Cooperstown Corridor” for citizen review by early December.
And a final report by May.
That came out of a second tour of the village’s Rotue 28 entryway from the south that five graduate students – three in landscaping (including Otsego Town Supervisor Tom Breiten) and two from regional planning – Sunday, Oct. 25, according to ChuckLabels: 10-30-09, Front Page |
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Otesaga Prepares For Guests-Who-Love-Ghosts Gathering
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COOPERSTOWN
This in just in time for Halloween: Guests interested in ghosts will haunt The Otesaga this January for The Atlantic Paranormal Society’s (TAPS) “Ghosts of Cooperstown” Conference.
The conference – Friday-Monday, Jan. 8-11 – will include lectures on paranormal activity, Ouija boards, tarot cards and demonology, plus “Boot Camp Lite” a condensed training course on paranormal investigations.
Late nights Saturday and Sunday will be spent investigating unexplained – inexplicable? -- activities at The Otesaga and The Farmers’ Museum.
The SciFi Channel’s Ghost Hunters Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson be at the conference.
Labels: 10-30-09, Front Page |
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COOPERSTOWN AND AROUND
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NEW LINKS: Three diseases – B cell leukemias, Parkinson’s, and ischemic heart disease – have been linked to Agent Orange, county Veterans Service Director Tex Seamon reports. Vietnam veterans with those ailments may qualify for disability. Call (607) 547-4224.
FETTERMAN LAURELS: Brenda Wedderspoon-Gray, Clark Sports Center aquatics director, has received the Patrick C. Fetterman Award for service to youth. It will be presented Monday, Nov. 1, at a luncheon at The Otesaga.
MYSTERY SOLVED: The UFO that halted traffic on Lake Street Monday, Oct. 20, was actually a gold star-shaped balloon that escaped from a celebration on Nelson Avenue.
GREETINGS, SCOUTS: A fun-filled Girl Scout Appreciation Day is 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31 – Juliette Gordon Low’s birthday – at the Fenimore Art Museum. Girls wearing sash or pin get in free.
A REAL BLAST: More than 4,000 people — from all 50 states and 14 countries — have toured the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site near Cooperstown, N.D., in its first three months of operation.Labels: 10-30-09, Front Page |
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Teacher Cared, Molli Flourished
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Friday, October 16, 2009
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BOCES Hall of Famer Shines
By LAURA COX
A little determination goes a long way, and Molli McCarty proves it.
At 26, Molli is the youngest person to be inducted into the ONC BOCES Otsego Occupational Center Career & Technical Education Hall of Fame. She was inducted at graduation last June, and dad Keith and mom Janet McCarty of East Springfield are still delightfully in shock.
“It floored me when they called me and told me,” said Molli. “It’s an honor. But there are so many other graduates that deserve it too.”
A 2002 Cherry Valley-Springfield graduate, Molli attended the Otsego Occupational Center in Milford for two years, studying nursing one year, then and early childhood development.
Next, she earned an associate degree in applied science for early childhood at Herkimer County Community College, then a bachelor’s in childcare and development at SUNY Cobleskill.
“If you have a hard time choosing what to go to college for,” said Molli, who had worked with children in the Town of Springfield’s summer arts and crafts program, “pick an area of something you enjoy.”
Molli did just that. She is now working for Opportunities for Otsego as an associate at the Children’s Center in the Otsego County building in Cooperstown, caring for children whose families have business in family court.
“Everything about her qualifies her,” said Nancy Lutz, the BOCES teacher who nominated Molli for the honor. “She is hardworking, dedicated, conscientious and committed. She embodies all the qualities and characteristics that a teachers loves to see in a student.
“When you talk about students who give a 100 percent, Molli gave more.”
Labels: 10-23-09, BOCES, Front Page |
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Compromise Restores 24/7 Police Protection
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Booan Plan Adds Funds For Patrols
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
Hard words were delivered, but when the dust settled, Village Trustee Joe Booan had devised a cost-effective compromise that restores 24-7 police coverage to the village.
The trustees emerged from an executive session – Police Chief Diana Nicols was excluded – with an agreement to put $2,000 a month in the police budget through January – $6,000 total, more or less – when Officer James Cox will complete training at SUNY Oneonta’s Otsego County Law Enforcement Academy and be available full-time for patrol.
Booan made the motion at the Monday, Oct. 19, monthly trustees’ meeting, and the result was unanimous, a recent rarity.
“Yes, it’s satisfactory,” Mayor Carol B. Waller said the following morning. “I believe the residents want 24-hour coverage.”
“From where I sat, it’s better than where we were,” said Trustee Jeff Katz, the deputy mayor.
While she had been critical of the trustees the evening before, Chief Nicols was also conciliatory.
“I’m in this job for the people,” she said, “and they’re (the trustees) are in their job for the people. When we remember that, we can usually come to a resolution.”
The vote brings to an end a controversy that arose as the final decision on the village’s 2009-10 budget approached in May.
Expecting a challenging fiscal year, the former trustees – Booan and Willis Monie didn’t join the board until April 1 – had removed $38,000 from the $360,000 (plus benefits) police budget.
When Village Treasurer Mary Ann Henderson discovered revenues were $400,000 ahead of what she had anticipated, the new board added $100,000 for street repair. At that point, Trustee Lynne Mebust, Police Committee chair, asked that the $38,.000 also be reinstated.
That was voted down, and Nicols went public, saying the reduction would prevent 24/7 coverage that the village had enjoyed in recent years.
Early in Monday’s meeting, Ann Dickson, Chestnut Street, presented trustees with a petition with 80 signatures from homeowners in her neighborhood asking that 24/7 coverage be returned.
“I would not want America’s more perfect little village to become a sitting duck,” she said.
Labels: 10-23-09, Front Page, Police 24/7 |
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COOPERSTOWN AND AROUND
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Police Raid Village Home, Seize Heroin
COOPERSTOWN
A “large quantity” of needles, heroin packets and other drug paraphernalia were seized during at Saturday, Oct. 17, raid at 15 Walnut St., village police report.
Police arrested Melissa Alice Welch and Orin Lilienthal; the latter was wanted on a warrant issued by Utica police.
The raid on the home, a couple of houses down from Cooperstown Elementary School, resulted from a tip.
PARKING OK’D: The village Planning Board has given the go-ahead to a parking lot around Bassett Healthcare’s Harrison House and Bassett Hall, years in the making. Work will begin in the spring.
ALBINO SQUIRREL: A rare white squirrel has been spotted in the vicinity of The Freeman’s Journal offices, 21 Railroad Ave.
Labels: 10-23-09, Cooperstown and Around, Front Page |
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No Sound Of Music In Richfield Springs
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Opera Rehearsal Halls Yet To Find Favor
By JIM KEVLIN
RICHFIELD SPRINGS
A world-renown cultural institution is looking to put a seasonal 80-person satellite operation in northern Otsego County.
It’s pollution free, unless you consider opera noise pollution. (Scratch that: The only sound will be car doors opening and closing as singers come and go.)
Otherwise, the impact would be economic: For six weeks a summer, 80 people will fan out before, after and at lunchtime into the local retail community.
They will buy lunch at the Tally-Ho and New York Pizza, or toothpaste at Kinney’s, or nails for a home-improvement project from Aubuchon’s.
A million dollars in state Dormitory Authority funds OPERA/From A-1
are sitting in an account, waiting to be spent on contractors and labor, local it might be hoped.
Still, this project – two 60-by-60 rehearsal rooms, with restrooms and a lunchroom in the middle – has been a hard sell so far for Glimmerglass Opera.
First, the opera planned to put the facility on its Town of Springfield site alongside Otsego Lake. Everything was a go, except that the SEQR process would require “extensive excavations” to ensure no archeaological sites would be disturbed, according to Andrea Lyons, Glimmerglass director of operations.
So the planners shifted their sights to Main Street, Richfield Springs, across from Stewart’s, where the opera has owned a large boarding house, a smaller one, and a former motel, lodging summer staff there.
Last spring, the opera applied to the village’s Zoning Board of Appeals for a use variance.
“It’s like a keyhole,” explained Village Attorney Paris Cavic. The narrow part, on Main Street, is commercial; “the round part of the keyhole is all residential.”
When, in September, the ZBA rejected the application, Lyons appeared before the village board Wednesday, Oct. 14, requesting a zone change.
The village board took no action, and doesn’t necessarily have to, said Cavic. Whether to or not is “a political decision, like any type of lawmaking.”
Or, he continued, the village can reject the zone change, or approve it as it would any law, with SEQR review and a public hearing before action.
The trustees meet next at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28, in the Proctor Room behind the village library.
In an interview, Lyons and Abby Rodd, director of production, said local churches and schools have been very accommodating when Glimmerglass needs rehearsal space.
However, they said, Glimmerglass decided last October to compress its premiers: Inst | | |
