Follow Up on the News

What’s The OCS Effect?

On Tuesday night, November 18, Assistant Superintendent for Business Victoria McLaren described State funding for the Onteora School district as being in a “holding pattern.” She explained that the district would not see 2008-2009 mid-year cuts at this time since the State Senate could not agree to Governor Paterson’s proposal.
The district receives $9.4 million in State aid and could have seen a $582,000 mid-year cut.
District Superintendent Leslie Ford said that the district should be prepared for any reductions.
“Neither Victoria or I feel comfortable with just saying-well we’ll see what happens.”
They hope to come up with a plan that will not effect affect instruction in the classroom, “but everything else around it,” according to Ford. As examples she mentioned field trips, conferences, late bus runs, and tighter energy conservation.
School board trustee Maxanne Resnick asked the board to think about the Middle School options based on conversations from the Strategic Plan Committee. At the last meeting she said,, “There was some expression or concern by the Middle School staff on what was the board’s intent with respect to tackling the middle school configuration issue.” Trustee Donna Flayhan suggested using Middle School curriculum as a foundation. Trustee Richard Wolff said declining enrollment needed top priority. Michelle Friedel said the board should wait for Strategic Planning committee suggestions.
At the board’s November 3 meeting at Woodstock Elementary, it was noted that because of the bleakness of State aid’s future, the district is gearing up for what will be a very tight budget for next year. Assistant Superintendent for Business Victoria McLaren presented a history of State Aid factors revealing how wealth and property value have a disproportionate calculation when it comes to aid. She pointed out how Assemblyman Kevin Cahill had successfully lobbied for more state aid on the district’s behalf in recent years, but also added out how she wanted to educate new school board members on what they are going to be facing in the current financial crisis… stressing that additional State aid may no longer be available with cuts imminent.
“In our district, income wealth is very close to the State average,” said McLaren, “but the full property value is seemingly well above the state average.”
She explained that the district pupil count is divided by the total relative wealth value made up of a combination of income and property wealth. In 2005 the average relative income per pupil was $144,674 in the district, while the State average was $143,000. But in 2005 property wealth per pupil was valued at $1,221.218 compared to the State average of $453,100. McLaren said because the district’s land value increased so significantly over the years, State aid no longer reflects actual income. In 2002, total pupil wealth in the district was $102,621, compared to the State average of $118,500. Property wealth per pupil in 2002 was valued at $621,194 compared to the State average of $346,400.
To show how these numbers work, McLaren showed how, since 2002, transportation department aid went from 40 percent down to 19 percent. BOCES also dropped from 56 percent State aid in 2002 to 36 percent currently.
She pointed out that no further aid increases can be expected over the foreseeable future, now.

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Wood Costs Are Rising...

That, the industry’s logger men are saying, is because in addition to demand being much, much higher than usual, some recent state laws inaugurated in recent months have started effecting supply.
“Business is up this year, definitely,” says Mark Anaust, who draws most of his clientele from the Woodstock area (and advertises in these pages). “I’m way ahead of where I was last year.”
He noted that many he knows working the firewood business have been hard hit by a new state Department of Environmental Conservation ruling from set into place June 4 that forbids the movement of logs beyond a 50 mile radius, as a means of curbing the spread of various pests devastating Northeast forests. But then adds that, drawing most of his own supply from local forests, some of which he owns, his supply hasn’t been effected all that much.
Former Hurley town supervisor Mike Shultis, whose made his own living from firewood for 33 years now, says he HAS been hit by the new DEC regs because he tends to buy bulk wood from suppliers, which has forced him to set up new purchase arrangements.
“Last year I’d buy wholesale log lots at between $65 and $70 a cord,” he said of his process, which sees him preparing firewood for delivery through splitting and cutting, drying and measuring. “This year, that cost’s gone up to $100 to $110 a cord.” And there’s a shortage of it. There’s a shortage of wood pellets, too, with most folks only able to buy directly from whomever sold them their stove in the first place…”
He said there’s an opening for wood moved over 50 miles… but it involves heating firewood to over 170 degrees in its center to kill off any pests.
“I can’t afford that,” Shultis said. “This has been an absolutely crazy year.”
He noted that he’s had to turn away over 100 potential customers in recent months, and has limited his dealings with new clients to e-mail, just so he can keep ahead of the 300 to 400 customer base he’s maintaining. Shultis added that he’s also working harder to shift more of his clientele from a September through Christmas buying season to ordering in the Spring, when he’s offering cut-rate specials.
“Smart people buy then,” he said. “Procrastinators buy now.”
Anaust similarly explained his business as being “a bit funny” in the way “it involves an expense people put off to the last minute. They tend to want a superior product next Wednesday at the latest. They just don’t buy it until they need it.”
He says one of his considerations has always been regarding the number of times one handles the stove wood he’s selling… the more times, the higher the price. Dry it too much, the cost goes way up. As a result, he says, he and others in the business for some time tend to, “give people exactly what you say you’re going to give them.”
Shultis noted that, with wood use expanding, the business has been pulling in some neophytes and even crooks. He’s been getting calls, he said, from folks getting half cords instead of full, or wood that’s too green to burn.
Neither man has seen that much of an increase in the use of wood furnaces to date, partly because of the local outcry and increasing number of local laws piling up against them. But they do believe folks are using their woodstoves more because of the rising costs of oil and natural gas, as well as financial worries that are pushing folks towards stockpiling things they can’t have taken away from them. Especially when it comes to stock comforts, like food… and heat.
“Wood heat is still a bargain,” said Shultis, who noted that a cord of wood ran about $40 when he started business in 1976. “One cord equals about 180 gallons of home heating oil. That’s quite a savings, even if you didn’t lock in at over $4 a gallon, as a lot of seniuors I’ve been speaking with did.”
Anaust added that he knows things have been rough by the number of jobs he’s been paid for with singles and five dollar bills.
“Price is a big consideration for these things,” he said.
“It’s taken me a lot of hard work to get caught up,” Shultis added. “I’m only thirty to forty orders behind now and expecting to be all but done by the holidays. I had to go to e-mails only when it got so I’d come home to 30 phone calls needing returns. I haven’t seen anything like this since the early 1980s, and even that pales in comparison.”
He added that, given the way things are going, he suspects the fuel of the future, at least in the local area, will end up being pellets… both wood only, and combined with grasses and other biomass materials.
Anaust added that he always tries to keep something aside for deep winter, when folks start running out of what they have. Although like Shultis, he’d like it if people started taking their heating needs, especially involving wood, more serious as a long term investment, and not something that’s always rushed at the last minute.
“I guess in the end,” he said, “It all comes down to the fact that wood is just something that the government can’t take away or the power company shut off when you need it most.”
Good point, that.

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Albany’s Razor Dance

Then again, the senator — who will be shifting from a majority to a minority member of the body he’s been part of for nearly a decade now – admitted that there hasn’t been an economic crisis quite like that being faced by New Yorkers in memory. Maybe ever.
Although by the looks of things in the gilded Senate chambers Tuesday, and later in the more tattered and plebian Assembly quarters across the capital, no one seemed to be in crisis mode.
Bonacic gladhanded Democrats from the city as well as fellow Upstate Republicans after the body’s gaveling in and immediate move to recess during the lunch hour, as snow started to fall in fast flurries outside.
What was going on?
Gov. David Paterson had proposed $1.5 billion in new spending cuts for the remainder of the current fiscal year to help hold off a nearly $20 billion and fast-rising deficit being caused by hits being taken by the state’s leading revenue source: Wall Street. Yet the 90-minute meeting closed-door meeting between he and legislative leaders Shelly Silver of the Assembly and Dean Skelos of the Senate was reported to have been filled with accusations, name calling, several new alternatives not heard before… and no cuts, or agreement.
According to Bonacic, all that was accomplished was an agreement that everyone would go back to the drawing boards and return December 16, when Paterson would also produce a 2009 spending plan to center further discussion.
Which, he added, meant that any further cuts were ostensibly off the table for the remainder of this fiscal year.
At least until the GOP loses control of the Senate for the first time in decades on New Year’s Day.
The governor’s proposed cuts, released in draft form over the past week, had drawn crowds of protesters to the back lawn behind the capital Tuesday because of threats against education, health and social services spending. Signs and placards identified various unions, interest groups, as well as many asking for “Better Budget Choices,” as well as hand-lettered calls to, “Tax The Rich.”
Prior to Tuesday’s sessions, Senate Republicans, angry over Paterson’s part in their electoral defeats two weeks ago, had been expected to simply refuse to take up the governor’s bills. And Assembly Democrats, meanwhile, were rumored to be favoring a tax hike on those earning more than $1 million as a way to help balance the budget, as well as simply waiting until they have power of the entire Capital in less than six weeks.
The cuts for next year’s budget floated by Paterson to date have included major hits to hospitals and insurance companies, rises in state college tuitions, and added burdens for richer districts (see Onteora story). Also being hit, and responded to in great flurries of press releases over the past week, have been everything from libraries to the state arts council, as well as the possibility for further reductions at Belleayre Ski Center, including an indefinite suspension of a private/public partnership for a resort approved in principle by Paterson’s predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, who left office in disgrace last March (see Briefs inside).
In separate news this past week, a local press release battle erupted when resort opponents at the Catskill Heritage Alliance addressed the governor, suggesting formal cutting of the Spitzer proposal. Resort developers, Crossroads Ventures, countered by noting the need for their project’s economic development promise while longstanding Belleayre Ski Center supporter sided fully with the developers.
Bonacic, speaking from the Capital Tuesday afternoon following the Special Session’s adjournment, said that as far as he knew, no decision, up or down, would be made regarding the Belleayre Resort project and state funding for it pending resolution of litigation brought against the state by the Sierra Club challenging the Spitzer agreement.
“This is a typical legal strategy for fringe environmental groups trying to deplete deep pockets; a fly in the ointment,” the senator said, noting the dangers of such national and international groups. “We’re still pushing forward for approval, feeling it is instrumental to economic development in the Catskills.”
Bonacic added that funding for a proposed Catskill Interpretive Center, as far as he cared, was “on ice,” and that he was waiting to see what the governor was planning for the ski center, apart from what he termed “light cuts so far” come December 16.
He said that he wished he could have saved more of the ski center’s budget this year but feels it fared better than many other state-owned entities. He said that the major shift will be from a majority of the slopes’ snow being man-made to a greater reliance on Mother Nature.
As for the coming year under Democratic control, the senator spoke about how he felt it boded bad for Upstate, because of the downstate city-based power of the Democratic caucus. He also derided the governor for what he termed, in a long diatribe, as his “weakness” in not bringing a bill forth to be voted down in his chamber.
“It looks like he caved in,” Bonacic said of Paterson. “We were prepared to vote today. It costs money to bring us all to Albany for something like this.”
“It’s going to be a painful year,” he added. “I’m hoping the challenges will make us all more bipartisan.”

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A Jar Of Olives...
Holidays Collide

The one thing that these four holidays have in common is sharing. Halloween finds us giving out candy; Thanksgiving is the time to share a meal, and Christmas and Hannukah are celebrations of gift giving. If we look at the season in that way, we are less likely to sigh and moan about “all we have to do.” The ladies at the Town Office have the right spirit this year. Instead of exchanging presents, Susan, Sue, Jen, Sylvia, Brenda and Jan are adopting families in need and shopping for them.
I lament the fact that my grandchildren are old enough to request certain gifts rather than ask Santa for them. I feel fortunate enough to be content with what I have. I don’t need or want anything. It is a time in my life to share with others. Imagine what would happen if each family helped out another family? Mathematically, it could solve the stock market crisis and do wonders for world peace.
There are lots of events to get us into the giving season. On Sunday, December 14, from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m., there will be a benefit at the Boiceville Inn for Patty D’Errico to enable her to continue her treatments for Hep-C. There is good news there. The medicine is helping, but her prescription plan is running out for the year. Fred Perry of Reservoir Music is organizing the event, and Ben Rounds and his band have volunteered to play for the benefit.
The Christmas Fair season started today, November 15, at the Stone Church in Shokan. The Town of Olive Christmas Tree-Lighting Ceremony will be on Friday, December 5 at 7:00 p.m. Santa and his elf will be there, and will, hopefully, rest up to be at the Boiceville Inn for the Breakfast with Santa on Saturday morning of Dec. 6. The Library Fair is planned for December 13. The Shokan Fire Department has its annual Christmas Party on December 13 when Santa, if not too tired, will arrive by fire engine. Donna Van Kleeck, Santa’s sidekick, has asked that we all bring some food for the Food Pantry at the Olivebridge Methodist Church.
This season reminds us of the traditions that evolve in our homes and community. Ann Leifeld has already begun baking her cookies. Bev Stein will be sending a photo of her family, including Nell the Beagle, and it will be the first card I receive, sending us good cheer and a dose of guilt that I have not sent out my cards in years.
Yesterday I was singing a parody of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” as “The Twelve Bins of Christmas.” I have a bin of cards I bought at half-price after the holidays but have never sent. I have a bin of cards I received that are just too nice to throw away and might be made into a craft project that I will never complete. I have a bin of homemade ornaments that my forty-year old children made in kindergarten out of macaroni and paperclips. I have a bin of gift bags that I have accumulated from years of shopping at the Christmas Tree Shoppe in Cape Cod. There is another bin of bows and ribbons that I no longer use because I “bag” all the gifts these days. I have a bin of magazines with Christmas recipes that I won’t cook, and another bin houses special serving dishes and glasses that are so holiday specific that they get used just one week a year if I can remember to get them out in time. And on, and on, to the partridge in a green tree that I will purchase, decorate and defend from the assaults of the cat and the dog.
Speaking of the dog, even Diva the dog is being decorated for the season, the other season that is upon us. She is donning her orange, glow-in-the dark, dog collar and a red bandana to protect her from hunters.