News Briefs 10/23/2008

Catskills Future
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is co-hosting a “Catskills Environment and Economy Day” along with the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, Open Space Institute, Watershed Agricultural Council, the Region 3 Forest Practice Board and the Catskill Landowners Association at the Belleayre Mountain Ski Center’s Overlook Lodge from 8:30 am – 4:00 p.m. this Thursday, Oct. 23. The event is part of the two-day Catskill Summit, which kicked off on Wednesday, Oct. 22, with the Catskills Local Government Day at Frost Valley YMCA and Conference Center in Claryville.
The Catskills Environment and Economy Day will focus on ways to balance a healthy environment while encouraging sustainable, community-based, natural resource dependent economies. The morning session will focus on the status of the environment in the Catskills and will include presentations and discussions about the many environmental issues facing the region including climate change, acid rain and invasive species. The afternoon session will focus on ways to foster sustainable, community-based natural resource dependent economies.
“This year’s two-day Catskill Summit we will give participants an opportunity to discuss the overall health of the Catskill environment and identify important issues that we can work on together,” said DEC Region 3 Director Willie Janeway from his New Paltz offices..
We’ll give you a report on what happened next issue…

Onteora Sports?
A chorus of complaints from parents and students in the Onteora district Middle/High school, have resonated over the past year or so concerning the athletic department. It finally reached a peak when, to the surprise of the athletes who run on the Cross Country trail discovered at the beginning of the season that the track was closed because of safety concerns with no word on when it would re-open.
The problem, everyone was told, was with a lack of wood chips to provide a safe surface on unstable terrain. After a great deal of complaining and action taken from parents it has since been repaired and the first home match that was moved to another school was rescheduled back to Onteora.
After all was said and done, this left parents who had kids on the team, demanding answers, angry over lack of communication from Interim Athletic Director Joe DiGiovanni. Parents also contacted the school board and voiced their complaints.
This resulted in board president Ralph Legnini proposing a temporary committee to review the problems and come up with solutions. But the majority of the school board shot down the idea at a recent meeting, stating that it was an added committee when the department already had organizations like the sports fan club.
The athletic department boasts over 600 student participants, with 36 different seasonal programs.
At the September 23 school board meeting, Trustee Donna Flayhan said, “We have two big problems right now, one that we don’t have a full time athletic director and two is that we have a phys-ed teacher transfer and those two issues are causing all of the phone calls I am getting, all the emails…so I don’t think a committee can solve the problems.”
High School Physical Education teacher Patrick Burkhardt will be transferred to Phoenicia elementary once he returns from maternity leave in the spring. He has been a much beloved Cross Country Coach since 1998 and once transferred, he will no longer be able to coach.
The girls and boys high school teams have enjoyed a solid record of wins over the years he has been head coach. Currently Burkhardt said the teams are doing “excellent,” with girls ranked in the top 20 in New York State. The girls are eleven-to-one, while the boys have won eight-to-three.
Burkhardt said he appreciates the support coming from the parents and said he loves teaching High School Phys Ed. He could not comment on whether he would contest his transfer, a process that can only take place once he returned full time.
Superintendent Leslie Ford said in a phone conversation that the decision to “assign,” Burkhardt to Phoenicia Elementary was done through a process.
“Any placement of any teacher anytime is through discussion of an administrative cabinet,” she said, noting that such a cabinet includes principals and the athletic director… although ultimately she makes the final decision. Ford said Phoenicia elementary deserves the best teacher.
DiGiovanni was a high school physical education teacher and athletic director working 30 plus years in the district. Following his retirement in 2002, the district had three directors with the last director on the job for four months before he was fired. In November 2007, DiGiovanni was brought back at $400 a day. In a phone conversation, he said that it was the athletic department’s responsibility to oversee field conditions along with communication from the coach. He said from June 30 to August 6, he did not work for the district, believing there was some sort of break down in communication causing the cross-country track to go un-repaired.
“Had I known,” he said, “I certainly would have addressed it.”
The State mandates a new position for Onteora of a Director of Physical Education. The administration advertised it twice but there have been few takers.
Ford added that she is now looking to share a Director of PE with other districts through BOCES.

Happy 25th!
"Bread doesn’t make itself!” say the owners of one of the first artisanal bakeries in the country that just celebrated its 25th Anniversary. In 1983, Daniel Leader built a small, wood-fired, brick oven bakery in West Shokan, then later moved to Boiceville to become one of Olive’s individualistic business successes. With his business partner, Sharon Burns-Leader, Daniel Leader has expanded the operation to three bakery cafes along with the main bakery which bakes organic artisan breads and hand made pastries for distribution to health stores, gourmet markets and restaurants as well as over 50 local Farmers Markets. Additionally, Daniel’s three cookbooks have received major awards and accolades for the contributions they have made to bringing the joy of baking to the home as well as to the profession.
In celebration, Bread Alone has launched a new website that, in addition to offering over 20 different breads and numerous “Sweets and Treats”, features a program called the “Gift of Bread” which lets customers provide monthly shipments of breads to their family, friends or business associates. Gift baskets are also available such as “Bread and Chocolate” or “Savory Picnic” using additional products from other Catskill purveyors in an effort to provide a true “shop local” experience.
For more information visit www.breadalone.com

Major Charges…
The New York State Attorney General’s Office has filed a major lawsuit in the Ulster County Supreme Court against the not-for-profit corporation Lower Esopus River Watch, Inc. (LERW) and members of the Environmental Management Council (EMC) and LERW Board of Directors Rick Fritscher, R. Dixon Onderdonk, David Straus, Bruce Duffy, Jennifer Mcleroy, and Joel Schuman. The lawsuit was filed on Friday, October 10, culminating an investigation by the Attorney General’s Charities Bureau of the activities of Fritschler and the interactions between LERW and the EMC.
The Attorney General’s investigation was initiated as a result of an almost unanimous January, 2007 resolution of the County Legislature which directed the County Attorney to request that the Attorney General look into the operation of the EMC and, in particular, its relationship with LERW — with which the EMC had contracted to administer some of its environmental programs. The Attorney General was also asked to look into possible conflicts of interest on the part of Fritschler in his capacity as Chair of the EMC.
The current charges stem from a January, 2007 audit of the agency’s books and the legislature’s belief that the entities were operating without proper, and legal, oversight.
NYS Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is charging that through the concealment of their interests, Fritschler, Onderdonk, Strauss, and Duffy surreptitiously transferred control over EMC’s assets to LERW, thereby causing the County to suffer significant financial losses. In addition, the lawsuit charges the individual defendants other than Fritschler with “abdicating their fiduciary duties to LERW by failing to oversee Fritschler’s use of LERW’s charitable assets.”The period covered by the complaint began as early as 1997 when, as the complaint states, “Fritschler had identified LERW as a small charity he could use to divert County funds earmarked for the EMC program. And having joined the LERW Board he then proceeded to “funnel large portions of the EMC budget to LERW by causing the EMC to enter into contracts with LERW and by concealing from the County Legislature his dual roles of EMC Chairman and LERW Board member. “
The complaint goes on to state that Fritschler effectively controlled every aspect of LERW’s financial affairs, and that control was well known to the other individual defendants.It further states that since the EMC’s environmental programs were “largely carried out by county employees and officials on County property,” and thus offered no value.
From January 1, 2002 through December 31, 2006, LERW received more than $1.7 million through its contracts with the EMC. And although Fritschler represented that most of the monies would come from grants from the federal and state governments and other not for profit agencies, these grants were in many cases not awarded, requiring the County during those 5 years to use $339,096 of additional taxpayer funds to cover EMC’s contractual obligations to LERW.
The Attorney General is seeking the repayment by the individual Defendants to LERW of a large quantity of LERW funds.
The complaint specifically charges that during the time period in question Fritschler made over $800,000 in “unsubstantiated purchases” and that he used the LERW bank account and credit card as he saw fit; that during 2002 through 2006, he used the LERW checking account and American Express credit card at least 950 times at delis and restaurants, spending over $48,000 on meals for himself and others – said payments being without any apparent valid charitable purpose.
The complaint further states that of the approximately $250,000 in cash in LERW’s bank account as of the beginning of 2007, Fritschler , during the course of that year, mismanaged those monies, drawing down the amount to $6453 and paying over one-third of that original amount to himself.
The complaint also notes that he used a substantial part of the County money (almost $300,000) to purchase both land and various items of equipment, placing them in the name of LERW and then removing them when the County terminated its relationship with LERW at the beginning of 2007.
County Republicans have meanwhile rushed to the defendant’s defense, calling the charges politicized in nature.
Stay tuned…

Tax Inequities
The Center for Research Regional Education and Outreach (CRREO) at SUNY New Paltz, whose founder and director Dr. Gerry Benjamin has just been honored as an Ulster County treasure, has released the first of a planned series of discussion briefs on regional issues that takes a close look at property taxes in Ulster County, and, in the process, highlights valuable data that explain problems with the property tax that less frequently receive attention.
For the study, “Equity and the Property Tax Burden for Citizens in Ulster County,” the Center sought to understand why people with properties of similar value in Ulster County pay widely different levels of taxes. For example, property taxpayers living in the village of Ellenville and the Ellenville School District make almost three times the tax effort (how much property tax is paid per $1,000 of full value of real property) as property taxpayers living in the Town of Marbletown and the Onteora school district.
“This and similar inequities outlined in the report are as much a problem as the property tax level and the rate of tax increase,” said Benjamin, director of the CRREO and the college’s associate vice president for regional engagement.
The study showed that a variety of reasons cause these inequities:
Too many overlapping taxing entities. Ulster County alone has 55 distinct tax burdens.
Too many tax exempt properties. The areas in Ulster County with some of the highest tax burden, Kingston and the villages of Saugerties, Ellenville and New Paltz are also the areas with the highest value of exempt properties.
Both places with concentrated populations (our three villages and Kingston) and very rural, geographically big places must make more tax effort than the average tax effort in the county.
Places with the highest concentration of poor people require higher property tax efforts.
While the CRREO study does not offer a single solution to the problem of real property tax inequity, it does suggest many things should be put on the table for discussion by the residents of Ulster County, and the region:
Some states have found ways to share property tax receipts among local jurisdictions.
The NYS Office of Real Property Services is seeking to ensure that properties are assessed on the same basis.
Lawmakers are discussing a “circuit breaker” to link a homeowner’s tax bill with their ability to pay.
One key aspect of CRREO’s mission is to bring key regional concerns to the attention of citizens and policymakers to support their informed discussion of the public policy problems facing the Hudson Valley. Quality information will help us to work together to develop our own, local solutions and advance the need for changes at the state level.
This is the first of several discussion papers on the property tax and other issues that we believe will help citizens and policymakers make informed decisions.
For more information, visit www.newpaltz.edu/crreo.

The Early Bell!
Public schools throughout Ulster County will release students approximately 15 minutes early on Thursday, November 6. Students will be sent home early on this day as part of an annual drill that tests the evacuation procedures of each district’s Emergency Management/Disaster Preparedness Plan. The Commissioner of Education has mandated that this drill be conducted annually in all New York State Public Schools. Local Ulster County schools ask that parents make appropriate arrangements for the early arrival of their children the afternoon of November 6.
All Ulster County public schools are participating in the drill, including Onteora and Ulster BOCES student programs.

Child Violence
There is no difference between a coward and a killer to Dave Grossman, an expert in human aggression and author. Grossman talked about killers during a recent lecture at SUNY Ulster titled “Violence in Our Schools.”
“They have never taken a tackle, hit or punch,” said Grossman, of a killer’s propensity to avoid pain while painlessly inflicting carnage with a gun or other weapons.
Grossman, a retired lieutenant colonel, spoke to students, both secondary and college, police officers and law enforcement supervisors, and zestfully described the macabre reality of understanding the moment by moment ambush of deadly incidents like the one that happened at Virginia Tech or of that on the airliners hijacked on September 11 and how to respond.
“We’ve got to deal with violence like the firefighter deals with fire,” he said. “In the last 30 years across all of North America, how many kids killed by school fire? Zero. How many kids killed by school violence? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. Your kids are literally hundreds of times more likely to be killed by violence in the school then they are by fire,” Grossman said. “We have fire exits, fire alarms, fire sprinklers, fire drills, fire extinguishers. We’ve got to prepare for violence like that firefighter prepares for fire. And nationwide we are doing that.”
James Truitt, associate professor of nursing and public safety, who coordinated the event, said Grossman was invited to help citizens, Ulster County law enforcement officers and supervisors understand the makings of violence and how to prevent that.
“This is to really understand the nature of violence and human aggression, so they can take proactive role in protecting their schools and their workplaces and their communities from these violent acts,” he said.

Ulster’s 325th
Nina Postupack, Ulster County Clerk, and County Historian, Karlyn Knaust Elia will host a Pictorial Postmark Cancellation Ceremony on Friday, October 31 at 3:30 PM, on the 2nd floor of the Ulster County Office Building. The ceremony will commemorate the 325th anniversary of the County of Ulster, founded November 1, 1683. A United States Postal Service representative will be on hand to officially cancel postage with a special anniversary postmark.
The County of Ulster was formed November 1, 1683 at Fort James, New York during the first general assembly of elected representatives. Representing Esopus were delegates Henry Beekman and William Ashford. During the assembly, the province of New York was divided into twelve counties and Ulster was one. Ulster County is believed to be named in honor of James Stuart, the Duke of York, who held the Irish title of Earl of Ulster.
The Ulster County Office Building is at 244 Fair Street, Kingston. For further information call 340-3040.

Across The River
Representatives of the proposed Carvel golf, hotel and second home development across the river have outlined for their local Planning Board members a scaled-down version of the housing and golf community.
A concept for the development, a partnership between the Durst Organization and Landmark Land Co., initially was presented to the Pine Plains Planning Board in 2003 but has undergone a series of revisions after much scrutiny by project planners, town officials and local residents. Several new consultants have been working with developers with the goal of designing a plan that works for developers while addressing the environmental, social and cultural concerns of the community.
The original plan was for 951 homes divided between the towns of Milan and Pine Plains, but after recent revisions, the number of homes has been reduced to 648 and the planned golf course has been scaled back from 27 to 18 holes.
Edward Clerico, an engineer with the project, said the goal is to make Carvel “the most environmentally responsible” project of its kind.
Pine Plains Planning Board Chairman Don Bartles Jr. asked who would be managing the land conservancy on the site. Clerico said he was unsure.
Bartles added that a special meeting will have to be scheduled for the board and its consultants to review information provided by the developers and discuss how to proceed.

Murder’s End…
Former Samsonville-area resident Alexander Barsky was sentenced to up to 10 years in state prison for the 1996 bludgeoning death of teenager Joseph Martin last week.
Barsky has said Daniel Malak, who’s serving prison time for an unrelated murder, was the mastermind behind the plot that caused Martin’s death when the boys were all in their teens, though Malak has not been charged.
Barsky, now 27, apologized to Martin’s family for his role in the death.
“If there was one night in my whole life I could take back, I would absolutely undo that night,” he said.
Ulster County Judge J. Michael Bruhn said he “rarely, if ever” had seen a defendant turn to a victim’s family and make such a sincere apology for the pain he caused.
Martin, who was 15 at the time, left his family’s Samsonville home the night of March 25, 1996, to meet Barsky and Malak, who he knew from Rondout Valley High School, for a night of comet watching. But Martin never came home, and his disappearance remained unsolved until this past spring.
In early May, police revisiting the case went to Barsky’s New York City home to reinterview him. Barsky confessed, and he was arrested.
Barsky initially was charged with second-degree murder, though he was allowed to plead guilty in mid-August to the lesser charge of manslaughter - an admission that he intended to harm, but not kill, Martin. At the time of his plea, he also agreed to testify against Malak if the alleged co-conspirator is tried in the case.
Bruhn said on Tuesday that despite Barsky’s remorse, justice had to be served, and the judge sentenced the defendant to 3-1/3 to 10 years in state prison - the maximum allowed for a juvenile convicted of first-degree manslaughter. (Barsky was three months shy of his 16 birthday when Martin was killed.)
Following the proceeding, Martin’s mother, Cathaleen Martin-Lightstone, rejected Barsky’s apology as simply being designed to gain sympathy from the court.
“I don’t believe anything he said,” she said. “He just got caught.”
Martin-Lightstone said the family will hold a community memorial service for her son from 2-8 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Rochester Company 2 Firehouse on Samsonville Road in Kerhonkson.
Because Barsky returned years later to the wooded site where Martin’s body was hidden - to retrieve the remains and later dump them in garbage cans around Brooklyn - the family has no remains to bury, Martin-Lightstone said. Instead, they will have a memory box in which community members can place mementos.

Tech Futures…
SUNY Ulster will host the Ulster County Technology Conference on Friday, October 24 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in Vanderlyn Hall, Student Lounge on the Stone Ridge campus of the college. The conference brings together business leaders and technical experts for a day of presentations, discussions and networking. The keynote speaker is Lance Matteson, the president of the Ulster County Development Corporation (UCDC), who will discuss the state of technology business in Ulster County, focusing on High Technology and Information Technology.
Three panels will be presented at the conference. The education panel features representatives of local college and universities, including Marist College, SUNY New Paltz and SUNY Ulster networking and computer science faculty. They will discuss the many educational options available for the study of computer science and information science in this region. A web technology panel of web development professionals will discuss their projects in Ulster County and the surrounding region and pinpoint the skills that technology professionals need for success now and in the near future. The business and technology panel consists of regional business owners and managers, who will discuss their web-based projects and the future of technology in business enterprises.
To register for the conference, call James Perry at 845-687-5252 or email him at perryj@sunyulster.edu.

Relocalize
What can a community do to rekindle optimism while we travel the corridors of uncertainty? It can meet and talk about these and other issues surrounding the newly formed re-localization movement on Sunday November 9 at 5pm at the Odd Fellows Hall on Rt. 213 in Olivebridge. Park around the corner at the firehouse. Wood fired pizza potluck starts at 5 PM followed by a screening of “The Power of Community,” which documents the change in Cuba to local organic food production in response to a severe change in the price and availability of petroleum products in Cuba due to the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991. RSVP about pizza toppings and other potluck needs. waverider75@earthlink.net or 657-2030. Come out, meet your neighbors and talk about what true security means to you.

Plame Game
President George W. Bush overstepped his authority by withholding an FBI interview of Vice President Dick Cheney from a congressional panel probing the leak of a CIA agent’s identity, a draft bipartisan House report is saying. The interview may shed light on who disclosed former CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity, the draft report said. The report was circulated by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, and Virginia Representative Tom Davis, the panel’s senior Republican.
The president’s decision to withhold the interview transcript from the committee in July, “was legally unprecedented and an inappropriate use of executive privilege,” the report said.
The committee is investigating what role Cheney may have had in the leak of Plame’s work in 2003. Her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had questioned evidence used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey had told the committee that Bush’s refusal to release the Cheney interview was within the president’s authority, under executive privilege, to keep his discussions with advisers private.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto has objected to the report and another one circulated by Waxman that said the administration wrongly asserted executive privilege regarding a separate panel investigation of climate change and Clean Air Act policies. Fratto said the committee received “upwards of a million pages of documents” from the administration and that recent reports were “partisan and unhelpful.”
Meanwhile, the Senate Intelligence Committee is examining allegations by two former U.S. military linguists that the super-secret National Security Agency routinely eavesdropped on the private telephone calls of American military officers, journalists and aid workers. NSA interceptors purportedly shared some intercepts of highly personal conversations, including “phone sex.”
If the allegations are true, they could re-ignite a political firestorm over the administration’s post-9/11 eavesdropping operations and its efforts to collect vast quantities of data about Americans’ tax, medical and travel records; credit card purchases; e-mails and other information.
President Bush and other senior officials have repeatedly asserted that after the 9/11 attacks; the NSA only monitored the private communications of Americans who were suspected of links to al Qaida or other terrorist groups without court orders.
The allegations follow the release of a study by a government advisory group that questions how useful communications intercepts and another technique known as data mining are at ferreting out terrorist plots.
Also of note to Bush administration followers of late has been a host of internal reports from the Justice Department calling for more investigation into cases of unethical, if not criminal, conduct on the part of lawmakers and the White House in regards to the politicization of the department in recent years. Just as the recent financial mess was heating up, the Justice Department released a nearly 400-page scalding indictment of the administration over the controversial firings of several U.S. attorneys in 2006.
Investigators from both the department’s Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility found that political pressure did indeed drive the dismissal action against at least three of the nine federal prosecutors abruptly fired. At the time, then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales insisted the individuals were all dismissed for inadequate performance, or failure to implement the President’s law enforcement agenda. But it appears the longtime pal and adviser to President Bush was lying. Turns out the real reason some of the top federal lawyers were removed from the job, according to the Justice Department report, was that either the U.S. attorneys had the audacity to prosecute Republicans or because they failed to aggressively prosecute Democrats.
Stay tuned, again…

Medicare Oopsy
Low-income beneficiaries in Medicare’s prescription drug program have fewer plans to choose from next year in every state except Wisconsin, raising concerns among advocates that millions will be forced to change plans - and may find skimpier coverage.
An analysis by Avalere Health, a for-profit research firm in Washington, found 308 stand-alone drug plans nationwide next year eligible to serve low-income residents, down about 200 from this year. Those beneficiaries are subsidized by the government. They pay little or no monthly premiums and generally have lower out-of-pocket costs, called deductibles, for drugs than do higher-income policyholders. They estimate 1.3 million low-income beneficiaries will be reassigned to new coverage, up from 1.2 million in 2008 and 250,000 in 2007.
“This continues the incredible disruption and access to benefits that low-income folks face in Medicare,” says David Lipschutz, a staff attorney with California Health Advocates, a non-profit that advocates for Medicare beneficiaries. The changes could mean some beneficiaries may have to switch prescriptions if their medications are not covered by their new plans, or face other changes, he says.
To serve low-income Medicare members, insurers must keep their premiums below a government-set median benchmark. Many insurers raised their premiums overall for next year, so they no longer qualify to offer the low-income coverage but will still offer policies to higher-income Medicare members.

Home Heating?
$538,243,391 in federal funds were released today to help low-income New Yorkers pay for home heating costs in the months ahead. The funds come from a bill that included $5.1 billion for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), of which New York received the most funds out of any state.
The bill that included $5.1 billion for LIHEAP also allocated $477.2 million for the Energy Weatherization Assistance Program, which pays for a variety of energy efficient upgrades and appliances for low-income households in order to help lower their monthly energy bills. New York is slated to receive an estimated $45.2 million from the program, but those funds have yet to be released. The new funds will help weatherize more than 190,000 homes across the country, including approximately 18,000 homes in New York, saving each household about $400 in energy costs.
Beginning November 3, low-income New Yorkers may apply for 2008-2009 LIHEAP benefits by mail, in person at their local social services office, over the phone, or online. For further information, members of the public may go to www.otda.state.ny.us/main/heap or call the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance toll-free hotline at 1-800-342-3009.

New Research…
The Catskill Watershed Corporation will fund a study by Cornell Cooperative Extension to explore the feasibility of producing and utilizing grass pellets as a bio-energy source for heating, spending up to $195,500 from the Catskill Fund for the Future for a three-year pilot project to examine regional production and pelletization capacity and to demonstrate the feasibility of using grass pellets for residential and commercial heating applications. The project will include purchase and installation of pellet-burning stoves in several locations in the Watershed, monitoring their operation and gauging air quality impacts.
The CWC has consulted with Cornell agriculture professor Jerry Cherney, an avid promoter of the development of grass pellets as a low-tech, small-scale, environmentally-friendly, renewable energy system that can be locally produced, processed and consumed.
Prof. Cherney spoke on this topic at the 2006 Catskills Local Government Day, when he noted that New York State has about 1.5 million acres of unused or underutilized agricultural land, most of which is already growing grass. Pelletized grass biofuel, Cherney says, has the potential to become a major affordable, unsubsidized fuel source capable of meeting home and small business heating requirements.
Along similar lines, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Dutchess, Orange and Ulster Counties is sponsoring an Alternative Energy Forum on Saturday, November 8 from 1:00pm to 4:00pm at Mount St. Mary’s College’s Hudson Hall Auditorium at 330 Powell Avenue in Newburgh. There will be several keynote speakers on hand discussing topics like saving money and energy conservation, the basics of geothermal, heating your home with bio-fuels, wind and hydropower and solar alternatives. This series of brief meetings will introduce attendees to several of the potential ways they can begin to reach energy independence. Some of the information provided may be put to use as soon this winter and others will be part of a long term plan for home, farm or business.

Open Bids
Lamont Engineering opened bids for the upcoming Boiceville Wastewater Treatment plant, with contracting to start next. With grants coming in for the project, and others pending to cover lateral hook-ups, expect major disruptions come the Spring... and better flushing and a hopeful economic boom with in a few years.