Follow Up on the News

Onteora’s Budget...

After board discussion and adoption (or mitigation), the spending plan will go before Onteora voters on Tuesday, May 19, when an election will also be held for three school board seats, including three-year posts currently held by Board President Maxanne Resnick and Vice President Laurie Osmond, as well as the vacant seat once held by former Board President Ralph Legnini, who resigned this winter and was recently replaced by Mt. Tremper resident Dan Spencer.
Ford presented her budget, $88,000 over the district’s contingency figures, at a March 17 board of education meeting at the Middle/High School after an earlier trial run on March 3 where she explained how most of the cuts involved personnel and reflected needs from use of various means to keep the tax levy rise low last year.
“What I would suggest is running with this budget,” said Ford, “It is so close to contingent because if the vote goes down and we go to contingent budget we would be looking at removing the equipment amount and if we move that, we are below contingent.”
“Our (tax) levy increase is 9 percent,” Ford said, explaining how the Consumer Price Index combination of last year’s 3.08 percent and this years 3.97 percent has forced shifts in how budgets are valued, as well as the fact that the district will most likely see a two percent loss in state aid and a one percent loss in interest income.
The budget-to-budget increase is projected to be 4.15 percent, from $48,215.077 in 2008/2009 budget to $50,129,886.
Osmond said she would like to see more from individual district departments on potential cuts.
“What we are getting here is very few menu items and we have the entire budget to go through,” she said. “I think to look at the significant categories would be very helpful.”
She also asked building administrators to look at an additional five percent reduction, on top of an existing ten percent reduction figure, and suggested that the district’s BOCES contract be reduced by keeping kids in the district.
Resnick noted how, during a series of recent visits to town board meetings throughout the district this month, people had mentioned the closing an additional elementary school.
“Some say we should close a school to achieve some reduction, but I want to stress that closing a school will not solve the problem, it will help in reducing some of the operating budgets,” she said..
Osmond agreed, noting how expenses continued rising at Onteora despite the 2005 closing of West Hurley.
Later, Resnick noted how, “We as a community need to better understand the choices ahead regarding our school district. The question is what the community’s priorities are against the associated tax levy which occurs.”
“As we go forward, the district needs to articulate, and the community needs to better understand the array of choices that they might support,” she noted. “Examples of the considerations are the retention of a community school; our Middle School grade configuration; the sizes of our classes, some of which are well below are district class size caps; the variation we are able to offer in high school electives, as well as after school programs; and the allocation of monies to improve our current buildings, once a plan has been established.”
At the recent meeting and in a flurry of letters sent to local newspapers and the Board since, the chief element drawing fire with Ford’s proposed budget has been the proposed changing of how the INDIE program operates, cutting its budget line from $120,000 to $50,000.
“We are looking at an after school program of some nature, we don’t really have it defined yet, but we moved some money back into that so that’s a change,” noted Ford, after making some shifts from an earlier March 3 budget presentation.
She was followed, March 17, by the presentation of a student-made documentary and INDIE Director Russell Richardson’s attempt to make a case that his program ultimately saves the district money since it reduces the dropout rate and keeps at risk kids from being sent to programs out of the district, which inevitably drops aid funding. Specifically, he noted how if dropped, INDIES 70 students would have to be absorbed back into the curriculum or sent to BOCES.
“Sending a kid to BOCES for alternative programming is expensive, the cost per year is $12,000 per child,” he said, noting that INDIE’s cost currently averaged out at around $1,700, and could be dropped to $1,200 with increased enrollment.
Later, High School Principal Lance Edelman warned of cutting BOCES while retaining INDIE.
“I hear alternative education be synonymous with INDIE and I keep hearing filmmaking,” said Edelman. “Not all of our alternative education students are interested in filmmaking; you have to remember BOCES provides a wide range of programming.”
As an example he listed, cosmetology, auto repair and culinary arts.
In other budget talk on the 17th, the school board approved a ballot measure that will ask voters to purchase two buses for the coming school year. The request was approved 4-1, with Osmond voting no based on her request that all departments make sacrifices, including transportation.
Trustees Michelle Friedel and Donna Flayhan were absent.
Director of Transportation Dave Moraca said that with the exception of last year, voters have consistently refused the purchase of new buses and they have a backlog of old, high mileage buses in need of expensive repair.
On the ballot voters will be asked to vote on a 65-passenger bus at a cost of $100,000 and the purchase of a 28-passenger bus at a cost of $50,000. Moraca said the 65-passenger bus would replace a 1999 bus with over 200,000 miles on it, while the smaller vehicle replaces a van with 216,000 miles, at present.
On March 3, the board approved the extension of Mulligan bus contracts for the 2009/2010 school year, with Trustee Donna Flayhan the only no vote, feverishly still supporting the re-bidding of contracts.
In other recent matters, OCS Trustee Anne McGillicuddy asked if the board could explore the possibility of having coffee chats with the public as a means of better reaching out to the community, based on a protocol set up in Kingston in recent years.
Trustee Rick Wolff said he was uncomfortable with the idea because of the way misinformation moves around the district during annual election cycles.
McGillicuddy said she perceived the chats more as a means for the board to listen to community input and listening than getting info out.
Superintendent Ford, for her own part, suggested having talking points in order for the board to stay consistent.
Spencer, who was elected to fill the board seat left vacated by Legnini on March 9 by a 5-1 vote, with only Trustee Rick Wolff not supporting his candidacy, made suggestions on how the district website can be better for public use at his first official meeting on March 16. He said information does not get out to people, leaving the general public attitude towards the district negative, and noted that the creation of an automated email response system, along with an email distribution list and direct links, would help solve the problem.
“I think we have a lot of good ideas, but we are not getting it out quick enough,” he said.
The district now has a public comment phone line. The communications committee organized this as an extension of the public-be-heard format. Anyone can leave a district related message at 657-2677. Once you hear, “Onteora faculty mailbox,” press extension 490.
Spencer was one of four candidates who made statements and answered questions from board members in a recent interview process for the vacancy, where he primarily addressed budget and enrollment conflicts within the district with a calm, politically neutral sense of style. Voting was done alphabetically, with he the definitive winner over former board candidate Tom Hickey, who gained only four votes, and two others, Rita Vanacore and student William Melvin, who received one and zero votes, respectively.
Spencer is a Senior Applications Engineer and Project Manager at Ametek Rotron. He lives in Mt. Tremper and is guardian to a child who attends school in the district. He is a member of the Woodstock Rescue Squad, has a Bachelors of Science in Electrical engineering, with a minor in computer science and an Associates degree in Civil Technology.
He has said that he pondered running for school board in the past, but was unsure how much time was involved in the volunteer job. He will hold the seat through May and said this will give him opportunity to decide if he can handle the time committed to run for a seat.
In other news since our last issue, the board rejected all contract bids on the high school auditorium renovation project at a special meeting on February 27, where they also re-authorized a re-bid due to cost overruns. It turns out that with money approved for the project by voters in 2007 totaling $1.862,711, partly from an EXCEL State Grant stalled for two years, final bids ened up coming in $160,000 over what was budgeted.
McLaren said there was a shining ray of hope, besides the possibility of a new low bid. The Onteora auditorium job, she said, is currently on a State-approved list of shovel-ready projects and could qualify for stimulus money to make up for the shortfall.
Finally, Corey Cavallaro of the Onteora Teachers Association has continued to address the school board and administration in public forum on contract negotiations. He noted that the district has stalled in bargaining negotiations for over 250 days and offered to meet in executive session and answer questions the board may have.
So far, though, Cavallaro says he has met with no response except a memo seeking a fact-finding request through a third party.
“The board of education and the superintendent have firmly established the un-written policy of abdicating any responsibility for negotiations and would rather hire consultants at taxpayer expense than do the work they were hired and elected to do,” he stated.
The board’s next meeting is at Bennett School on March 31, the same day the long-awaited state budget is officially supposed to be voted on.

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Gauging Cutbacks?

The gauges can be seen all over the region. At first glance they might resemble an old fashioned outhouse on steroids. Built out of steel with large padlocks on the doors, these structures contain sophisticated monitoring technology to measure the volume, height, temperature and cleanliness of local waters - waters that have caused millions of dollars of flood damage to the region, while also bringing millions more in tourism and recreation.
According to DEP spokesman Michael Saucier, the city agency currently provides funding to the United States Geological Survey for an extensive network of approximately 100 stream gauges within and outside of DEP's watershed area. Of those, he said, DEP will no longer support 24. The cost to operate each gauge is about $17,000 a year.
“As a result of the need to reduce expenditures during this difficult economic time, DEP is reviewing all aspects of its budget, including the support it provides for the gaging network,” Saucier said in a prepared statement. “The results of this analysis indicate that many of the gages no longer serve the purpose for which they were originally intended.”
Only one gauge in Shandaken is slated for shut down. It is at the Panther Mountain Tributary to the Esopus Creek in Oliverea. Three others in Ulster County - at the Beaver Kill Tributary in Lake Hill, on the Roundout Creek at Peekamoose and on the Wallkill River in Gardiner, are set to be shut down as well.
In nearby Greene County the gauges on the Sugarloaf Brook in Tannersville, the Schoharie Creek near Lexington, and the Batavia Kill near Maplecrest and also in Hensonville will have gauges shut off.
State Senator John Bonacic, who called the DEP’s plan “inappropriate,” met with New York City Department of Environmental Protection Deputy Commissioner Paul Rush earlier this week to demand that stream gages in the watershed area be kept open.
The Senator later said he asked the DEP to give him an answer on the gauges later this week. But Bonacic added that if he did not receive a satisfactory response he would introduce legislation to require New York City, as part of their ongoing water supply responsibilities to monitor the tributaries.
Hard hit, he and others noted, would bewill be Delaware County, where over 11 gauges are scheduled to be shut down over the next two years
Middletown Supervisor Len Utter talked about the importance of the gauges during flood events, saying that watershed dwellers can go onto a website and see precise and up to the minute flows and elevations of the many creeks monitored by the gages, which feed the data to satellite. Utter said such data is an invaluable resource for a host of emergency service agencies during flood events.
Rafael Rodriguez, Director of the USGS New York Water Science Center, said that although the City plans to pull out on funding, it remains unclear whether that would mean the gauges actually get turned off.
“Data collection at the streamgages may be discontinued due to funding reductions from partner agencies,” he said. “Although historic data will remain accessible, no new data will be collected unless one or more new funding partners are found.”
Meanwhile, Hudson Valley Congressmen Maurice Hinchey and John Hall recently announced final congressional approval of $331,000 for a pending flood mitigation study in the Upper Delaware River Watershed and for the enhancement of the existing flood alert system for the region. The two Democratic lawmakers also worked to secure $96,000 for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to provide additional support for the pending comprehensive study to mitigate future flooding in a number of areas within the Upper Delaware River Watershed. Hinchey also obtained approval of $235,000 for the development and implementation of a Delaware River Enhanced Flood Warning System, which will be done along with the Delaware River Basin Commission.
Hinchey and Hall obtained $700,000 for the study last year, to which this funding will be added.
Unknown is how such funding could help out with the city and USGS program’s funding.

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Waiting On The State...

First off a recent Washington Post article noted a particularly scary trend, given the growing number of layoffs starting to move through the region, by pointing out how, “More than a quarter of people applying for unemployment claims have their rights to the benefit challenged as employers increasingly act to block payouts to workers.”
“Under state and federal laws, employees who are fired for misbehavior or quit voluntarily are ineligible for unemployment compensation,” the piece continued. “When jobless claims are blocked, employers save money because their unemployment insurance rates are based on the amount of the benefits their workers collect… Many seem surprised to find their benefits challenged, their former bosses providing testimony against them.
This phenomenon, it turns out, has created an industry of ‘third-party agents’ - companies that specialize in helping employers deal with the unemployment insurance administration by representing them in disputes with former employees.
Why this is happening, beyond employers’ own financial protection, was open to several interpretations, including systematic automation of the process, and court rulings that have enlarged the definition of employee misconduct.
We checked with the state to see what was up here in New York, in general, as well as in Ulster County.
Labor Department spokesperson Karen Williamson began by sharing new unemployment figures for the state that showed a jump from 6.8 percent in December to 7.6 percent for January. During that same time, Ulster County saw its rate rise from 6.5 percent to 7.8 percent for January, while neighboring Greene County went from 7.6 percent to 8.5 percent, Delaware County went from 7.6 percent to 9.5 percent, and Sullivan County surged from 8.4 to 10.2 percent.
“People I spoke with in our unemployment insurance claims offices said that the numbers of claims being challenged by employers have risen,” Williamson said. “But the numbers of claims have also risen drastically, so it hasn’t looked out of line here, at least to our people.”
We asked about how much people could make on unemployment and Williamson went on to note that the range was between a low level of $64 a week, plus an additional $25 per week in new federal stimulus dollars, to a high of $405 per week, plus that same $25.
So what about the other news, we asked, about states refusing those federal stimulus funds because they would skew their payment schedules. How big was the discrepancy between Unemployment benefits, state to state.
She said she and others in her office working on the problem could find no centralized information comparing state’s payments. She just knew it was a lot...
So much for bad news. Has there been any good, on a financial level?
Shandaken Supervisor Peter DiSclafani said he is looking to federal stimulus funding, recently forgotten in all the hallabaloo about bank bailouts, for $1 million to go toward the proposed Phoenicia sewer project plus additional funds for a wastewater retrofit project in Pine Hill. He also hopes to secure money to rehabilitate the crumbling Town Hall.
“I heard the DOT wants to use the stimulus money to pave portions of the Ulster County section of 28,” said Peter Manning, who serves as facilitator for the new regional group, the Central Catskills Collaborative, as well as Planner for the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development. “As you probably know, several months ago the Town of Shandaken raised awareness of the deteriorating road conditions.” Also, Manning said, he’d heard that there’d been a push to get the feds interested, via Governor Paterson’s office (who oversees stimulus funding in New York), in doing something to get the long-pending Catskill Interpretive Center up and running, even if only in a vacant building on Route 28.
And hey, gas is still cheap (even if you have to drive a distance to get it). And Spring’s starting to hint at bursting forth one of these days.
Not all bad, in the end. At least while we keep waiting on the state…

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A Jar Of Olives...
Skimbleton
How About A Little Bit Of Good News?

This column will be dedicated to good news, the kind of good news that makes you want to shout, and jump and bang a pot or two like in a “Skimbleton.” A few weeks ago I wrote about Don and Bessie DuBois who celebrated seventy years of marriage. John Adsit called to tell me that he remembered when he and a few other young men gave a “Skimbleton” for the young newlyweds. A skimbleton is an old-fashioned custom to “ride skimbleton” on the honeymooning couple by shouting and banging pots to keep them from a romantic evening. John Adsit said that his group of hooligans brought shotguns to shoot up in the air outside Don and Bessie’s house. Trouble was they hit the telephone wires and disrupted telephone service from Shokan to Kingston. The sheriff came to investigate, found the shell casings, but “took it all in good sport.”
Maybe a variation of a skimbleton is a good way to celebrate, sans shotguns, the occasions of our lives. One worthy event would be Mike Ackerly’s completion of his teaching degree this spring. He is currently doing his student teaching in the Onteora school district he once attended.
Another skimbleton could be held for Brittany Alexander, daughter of Kim Krickhahn of Olivebridge, who was named to the Dean’s List at Russell Sage Graduate School in Troy with a 4.0 grade-point average. Brittany is a 2004 graduate of Onteora, a 2008 Psychology graduate of the College of St. Rose, and is pursuing her Master of Arts in Professional School Counseling.
Cathy Magielnicki also deserves one for being named a Kellas Scholar for being on the Dean’s List at Russell Sage for three straight semesters. Cathy is studying Creative Arts and Therapy.
Primo Stropoli, well named because he is “Numero Uno” in my opinion, was named to the Dean’s List of the University of Albany.
Another celebration should be scheduled for Alison Tosi who is doing a year’s internship at Rondout Middle School as the culmination of her Masters in School Psychology.
Honestly, I could go on and on about how these and other former students have carved out careers that started right here in Olive. I agree, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Olive has done well by its young adults.
Boy Scout Troop 63, sponsored by the Olive American Legion Post, has something to be proud of too. They are planning a very special Court of Honor to award Ace DiSiena, William Melvin, and Matthew Xavier who have completed the requirements for the prestigious honor of Eagle Scout.
There’s even some good news in the Ides of April duty of paying taxes. I had to do my aunt’s taxes, and the volunteers from the RSVP/AARP service made the task almost palatable. Volunteers Bob Hoffman from Hurley and our own Jac Conaway turned this dreaded task into a pleasant experience at the West Hurley and Olive Free Libraries. They possess the mathematical wizardry of Stephen Hawking, the patience of Job, the sense of humor of Dave Barry and the generosity of Mother Theresa. It reminds me that volunteering rewards both the recipient and the giver. Thank you for giving of your time and expertise. By the way, do you know what you get if you add the letters of “the and IRS” together? You get “THEIRS.”
Even though tax time approaches, it coincides with the non-taxable benefit of spring’s gifts. By the time you read this, daffodils will be poking up from the frozen mud. I personally will run outside, skimbleton style, and bang on some pots and pans at the first sign of a robin or tulip.