Bridges Open
Despite rumors, Town councilman Bruce La Monda pointed out Tuesday night that should bridges be closed for repairs over the 2005-2006 school year, an existing agreement between the town and New York City, which still has rights to 28A, requires that one lane always be kept open. That’s some good news, eh?

Legal Positions!
Irregularities of procedure seem to mark the path of the Large Parcel Law in each stage of its history.
Peter Kraft, an Ulster County District 3 legislator representing Hurley, Marbletown and Olive, sits on the seven-member General Services Committee which oversees real property tax services in the county. Last year, when the Large Parcel Law came up for review by the GSC, Kraft notes, it was rejected by a 4 to 3 vote. Then some unusual things began to happen.
There's a back door through which a defeated bill can be revived and presented for a vote by the Ways and Means Committee to prepare its way to a vote by the full legislature. "That's exactly what (Woodstock Legislator and Majority Leader) Mike Stock did, along with (Woodstock Legislator) Brian Shapiro," Kraft said, indicating that the Woodstock-based legislators from District 2 shuffled the law around the customary channels. "The thing that upset me was that the committee process was then circumvented because it did not allow us, then, to have residents or even elected officials from Olive have the opportunity to come and speak before the legislative committee."
Fellow District 3 Legislator Robert Parete verified Kraft's account, adding that it was all on record. "Stock contacted committee chair, Alice Tipp, and asked her to hold another meeting" after the bill's defeat, observed Parete. "She decided not to but then they had a phone poll, where the committee chair calls up committee members and asks how they want to vote. That was done. First of all, phone polls are illegal. There's no minutes, no public record, no information from the meetings kept. The interesting thing is that Stock and the Committee chair decided to call only Republicans. No Democrats were called. That's on record."
This kind of stealth treatment was also exampled in the minutes of a meeting discovered by John Tisch of Shokan, who is a member of the Olive Matters committee opposing the law. Tisch says that methods to introduce the bill so that the involved communities would not be informed of the pending legislation was actually part of a discussion of the bill as it was being formulated.
Charles Blumstein of Olivebridge, who is filing a suit against the law, charges that the voters in the state senate and assembly were deliberately misinformed about key details of the bill's purpose and projected impact. There are even claims that the Onteora School Board vote to adopt the law locally did not follow the laws established concerning such votes.
Blumstein, who is calling for a boycott of major advertisers in the Daily Freeman because of what he calls a "gross imbalance in coverage" of the issue, also claims the law illegally "immunizes" New York City as a local taxpayer in a way which denies Olive due process of law. He is racing a statute of limitations date to file his suit.
Olive councilman Bruce LaMonda also has questions about the legality of the law. He calls it "discriminatory," noting that no one seems concerned that Shandakan hasn't done a reval in over 30 years.
"It's discriminatory against a small town," LaMonda observes. "The State Office of Real Property Services told us when (Supervisor) Brendt (Leifeld) and I met with them in Albany two years ago that there would never be a time when the apportionment (tax) rate and equalization rate would be within 5% of each other (to negate the Large Parcel effect) because the residential market escalates so fast and the reservoir doesn't increase. If the reservoir was in a metropolitan area, like Buffalo, it wouldn't even be 5% of their total assessed value. The smaller the town, the larger the impact one large entity has on that town. In Olive, a small town with a small tax base, the impact is huge. Why would a small town welcome a big industry or a reservoir anymore?"
LaMonda noted that Olive has always paid its share of the school budget in past decades. "If Olive is responsible for 35% of the school budget, it should be none of the school district's business where that 35% comes from as long as it's paid," he declared.

Averting Tragedy
A pair of Ulster County politicians recently suggested that the sale of ammunition like that used in the Hudson Valley Mall shooting should be restricted. Bill Reynolds, majority leader of the Kingston Common Council noted that although he wouldn’t advocate strict gun control, stemming the availability of ammunition for semiautomatic assault rifles at Wal Mart, where authorities say 25-year-old Robert Bonelli Jr. of Glasco purchased three boxes before firing 50-60 shots inside the Hudson Valley Mall, wounding two people, might not be a bad idea.
Ulster County Legislator Brian Shapiro, who represents Woodstock and Shandaken, added that he may ask the county Legislature to approve a resolution in support of reinstating the Brady Bill, the federal ban on assault weapons that expired last September.
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., also has called on Bush to reinstate the ban on assault weapons.
Eric Howard, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, praised local lawmakers for their efforts. “It’s definitely a good place to start,” he said. “We need comprehensive laws on this across the board, on the federal, state and county level.”

Revised Hikes?
Speaking at the Onteora School District board meeting of February 15, OCS President Marino D’Orazio went out of his way to try correcting figures in this newspaper that have characterized the percentage of tax hike landed on Olive residents as the result of Onteora’s enactment of “Large Parcel” legislation last year as being “55 percent and up” instead of a “more factual 26 percent net effect.” Asked to back up that statement in greater detail, D’Orazio later pointed out that had Onteora NOT chosen to enact the Large Parcel legislation last summer, which ostensibly removed the huge Ashokan Reservoir tax property that had been paying taxes only to Olive and spread its payments equally across the school district’s four towns, Olive’s tax load would have still risen by at least 29 percent. That, the Kingston attorney and Olivebridge resident added, was due to the Olive Town Board’s decision earlier last summer to fight for, and finally be granted, a higher assessment for the New York City-owned reservoir.
Last August, the state Office of Real Property Services (ORPS) raised the value of the Ashokan Reservoir from $119 million to $340 million. Simultaneously, Olive town supervisor Berndt Leifeld announced that the Town of Olive had approved the Connecticut-based Cole Layer Trumble company to start conducting property reappraisals throughout the town under a contract in the $200,000 neighborhood. Leifeld said at the time that the combination of tax valuation changes had been undertaken as a way of hopefully avoiding the “Large Parcel” tax load redistribution, by removing the Ashokan parcel from charges of being in “major” dispute, one of the prerequisites for implementation of the new legislation.
“Just by changing that valuation, Olive’s portion of the pie went way up,” D’Orazio said, noting that he was bringing up the point as a means of lessening the town’s anger at the school district, and hopefully keeping it from being instrumental in voting down another Onteora school budget. “All I know is that what they’re angry about regarding the school board’s actions is inaccurate.”
Leifeld, presented with D’Orazio’s comments, agreed with the Onteora Board President’s assessment of the final tax hike split, although he added that his final addition resulted in a final tax hike figure of 61 percent for the town.
“That seems about what it should be,” the longstanding Olive superintendent said, noting how a 29 percent tax hike had resulted from his push to change the reservoir valuation, part of his attempt to avoid any Large Parcel action on the part of the school board. “But that doesn’t change the fact that they voted for Large Parcel.”
Leifeld added, in further discussion, that revaluation of parcels, be it the city’s giant reservoir or privately-owned homes and land throughout Olive, always raises taxes.
“You get hit, no matter what,” he said of the process, whose private re-val component is expected to start by the end of March. “You end up at a higher rate no matter what. But it’s a one-time sort of thing.”
The problem at Onteora, Leifeld added, came when the school board didn’t drop the Large Parcel issue, and succumbed to what he termed “political pressures” from Woodstock and Shandaken, after all that Olive had already done to rectify the tax load distribution situation.
“Now, from the sounds of it, they’re just trying to ease the pain on themselves and show us all in Olive that they do have consciences,” he said. “That did what they did. That’s it.”
Would Olive’s taxes likely go up even further once the new reval becomes reality? And could the combination of two hikes at once, instead of just an Onteora/Large Parcel-fueled 26 percent hike, have been avoided?
Leifeld said that yes, taxes would go up again as a result of bringing the town’s valuation to current levels. But he added that he had no regrets about having fought “Large Parcel” by trying to remove its raison d’etre. And, he noted, the reason Olive hadn’t actually started a reval project for so long was not his fault.
“We couldn’t do it, legally, for fifteen years,” the supervisor said, pointing out how the dispute with New York City over valuation of the Ashokan had resulted in a court order against any further re-evaluations of its properties for one and a half decades of litigation. “We didn’t feel it would be fair to re-evaluate the town’s private properties and not the city, too. Why evaluate one shoe and not the other?”
“It’s all gotten worse instead of better the longer it’s been,” Leifeld said of his town’s current attitude towards bringing down another Onteora budget. “A lot of people here have taken the school board’s assumption of the ‘Large Parcel’ legislation as a personal threat. And even if I believe what the school board says about wanting to stay out of such decisions, the fact is they didn’t. And whether the school budget’s for the kids or not, it’s still a political thing and people are now beating on other people because of all this.”
“The sad thing is,” Leifeld concluded, “that Shandaken hasn’t done any reval in 30 years now and is awaiting its own big problems… We were all friends once, town to town. Now, no one’s talking to each other. It’s just sickening.”

Gambling Rift?
A number of anti-casino activists and New York tribes are complaining that the State Senate is excluding them from ongoing hearings on a massive expansion of gambling in the state. The groups were denied to have speakers at Senate hearings that started last month on Gov. George Pataki’s bill to settle Indian land claims and allow five Native American casinos in the Catskills. And they question whether they’ll get to have their say at any follow-up hearings.
“This is a stacked hearing,” said Rev. Duane Motley, a casino opponent who asked to be on the speaker’s list but was turned down by Sen. John Bonacic, who is leading the Senate sessions. “They don’t want to hear anything that would make them wiser to the downside of gambling.”
“We’re disappointed the senator doesn’t want to solicit the views of all parties concerned,” said Eric Facer, a lawyer for the Oneida Nation of New York. He said the Oneidas, who oppose Pataki’s plans to allow out-of-state tribes to open casinos, sought to be invited but didn’t make the list.
Langdon Chapman, a spokesman for Bonacic, said the speaker’s list had to be narrowed to about 20 from a field of more then 100 who asked to make remarks during the three-hour hearing. He said three major pro-casino labor groups are invited to discuss job opportunities. Three other speakers are expected to be critical of Pataki’s plan, he said. Others will testify on tribal histories and the impacts of having up to five casinos in the Catskills.
Assembly Democrats plan three hearings on March 11 in Syracuse, March 30 in Albany, and April 7 at Monticello.
“There’s no one there whose going to be free to attack the governor’s plan,” said Joel Rose, chairman of the Coalition Against Gambling in New York, referring to the recent Senate sessions.
“We feel that the so-called hearings are just another example of the powers shoving through their agenda without any sort of realistic consultation with their constituents,” said Lee Karr, an opponent suing Pataki over his gambling expansion plans.

Rural Roads…
The good news is that fewer people are dying on America’s roads. The bad news is that mile-for-mile, you’re 2.73 times more likely to be killed driving a rural road than any other kind. And that’s despite the fact that fatality rates on rural roads went down 21% between 1990 and 2003. Those are among the conclusions of a study released last week by The Road Information Program (TRIP), a nonprofit group funded by insurance companies, unions and businesses involved in road construction and engineering. The report also found that 52% of the country’s 42,000 annual traffic deaths happened on rural roads, although travel on them only represented 28% of the miles Americans drove.

County Taxes!
Ulster County officials recently noted that the final sales-tax figures for 2004 have revealed a $1.5-million shortfall from what had been anticipated, a problem compounded by a possible $1.5-million shortfall in the controversial restored hotel-motel tax budgeted for 2005, which has started drawing ever-louder complaints from local lodging industry owners, including many in the Belleayre area. And worsening the situation is the growing probability that the combined $3 million shortfall in anticipated revenues will be augmented by yet another large reduction in the county surplus likely to occur over the coming year. The estimate is the county will have had a roughly $18-million surplus for 2004, of which $14.9 million has already been pegged as revenue in the 2005 budget to hold down a tax levy that, without it, would have ballooned even larger than the double-digit increase that occurred, resulting in 90 percent hikes in the Town of Olive.
The emerging problem is that, with only $3.1 million in reserve, and revenues looming short, the county will be hard-pressed to come up with another $14.9 million to apply to the 2006 budget to hold down the tax levy. A surplus of some sort will likely be accumulated, and measures such as personnel freezes or program cuts can be taken during the year to hold down expenses, but they won’t easily add up to $18 million at the end of this year.
County Republicans currently hold a 17-16 advantage in the legislature and the 2006 budget is due to be released only a few days before all 33 county legislators face an election in November.
In the absence of new revenue streams, politicians have started saying that the county must seek to cut programs. It has thus far managed to navigate fiscal shoals without resorting to laying off county workers. But that option may be ending.
Democrats are seeking a “revamping of the budget process,” asking that the county’s tentative budget be delivered to legislators in mid-October instead of mid-November, to allow lawmakers more time to shape the spending plan.
The renewed hotel-motel tax, meanwhile — approved as a relatively painless way to raise revenue from the wallets of visitors instead of residents — called for a two-percent flat tax on the price paid for a room in local lodgings to be imposed from March 1 through June of this year before shifting, as of July 1, to a flat fee of $5 per night per room. But the tax plan appears in trouble. The county’s hotel industry has argued that from its perspective the $5-per-night room fee would be disastrous, particularly for smaller establishments such as those in the Belleayre area.
A concerted effort by local lodgers is expected to be underway over the coming weeks…

Hospital Help!
With the help of village, town, county, state and federal officials, as well as the greater Ellenville community, the 51-bed Ellenville Regional Hospital is nearing what could be the end of its bankruptcy, depending on a ruling by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Albany later this month. The hospital’s efforts were buoyed by state Assemblyman Kevin Cahill’s recent announcement of a $300,000 grant from the state Assembly’s Health Care Reform Act fund, which the hospital will use to fund its employee pension plan.
Hospital President and Chief Executive Officer Steven Kelley said not having a pension plan had made the hospital “much less competitive” as an employer and was something that the Civil Service Employees Association, which represents about 88 employees there, had pushed for.
Cahill said the recovery of Ellenville Regional Hospital is a testament to the strength of the community around it.

No Clean Up…
The Catskill Watershed Corporation will not coordinate a Watershed-wide stream clean-up this year, but will support groups and individuals who tackle litter on streambanks in their neighborhoods. Executive Director Alan Rosa explained that the organization’s mandated programs have become too cumbersome to coordinate volunteer activities. Yet he suggested that outside volunteer efforts might want to pitch in to clean up the banks of New York City’s reservoirs. The CWC will provide trash bags, gloves and tokens of appreciation for those who choose to serve their communities in this way. The NYC DEP is coordinating clean-ups at the Ashokan May 7 and 21; the Cannonsville June 11, the Rondout June 25; the Pepacton July 9 and the Schoharie July 23 and August 6. Call Amy Flavin at 845-340-7530, or aflavin@dep.nyc.gov for further information.

That Darn Jail
Ulster County’s new Law Enforcement Center, already a year behind schedule and $21 million over budget, has had its completion date pushed back again. The new target date for opening the facility is Sept. 21, six weeks later than the recently announced target date of Aug. 12 and 17 months later than the originally anticipated opening last April. Democratic Ulster County Legislator Richard Parete has said that the contractors and county officials have “totally lost control” of the Law Enforcement Center project. The jail was supposed to cost $71.8 million, but current estimates suggest a final price of around $93 million. Of the extra $21 million being spent, $4.7 million is to complete construction and the remainder is to settle claims related to the delays and pay consulting fees.

Deportees…
During the last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported a record 157,281 immigrants, a reflection of the agency’s emphasis on booting anyone with even a whisper of a criminal record from the country. But while ICE agents have pursued criminals who are in the USA illegally, they have also swept up record numbers of illegal immigrants who have committed no crimes other than violations of visa limits and other immigration laws. That helped increase the total number of deportations by more than 45% from 2001 to 2004.
Most of those deported — more than 70% in 2004 — have been returned to Mexico. Most of the rest have been sent back to Central or South America or to the Dominican Republic.
ICE expects the number of deportations to increase again this year. In his 2006 budget, President Bush has requested an additional $170 million above the $1.4 billion that ICE’s Detention and Removal program will get in 2005.
Meanwhile, another new survey shows international interest in studying at American graduate schools declining for the second straight year, a sign of the continued impact of visa delays and growing competition from foreign universities… in addition to our nation’s new aggressive deportation policies. In a membership survey being released last month, the Council of Graduate Schools estimates foreign applications to U.S. graduate programs for the upcoming school year are down 5 percent. That compares with a 28-percent decline in applications last year, the CSG said. Following that drop, about 6 percent fewer international students wound up entering U.S. graduate schools for the 2004-05 year, the CSG estimated.
The survey’s authors said a streamlined visa process has helped stem the decline in applications. But the CGS said challenges remain. Applications from the two largest source countries, China and India, are down 13 percent and 9 percent, respectively. Students from those countries are increasingly being lured by stronger domestic programs or by programs in Europe and Australia that are recruiting aggressively.
Universities have argued the trend is a threat not only to America’s research standing but its public diplomacy.

Faith-Based?
The U.S. House of Representatives has approved legislation on job training, despite Democratic objections, that would allow faith-based programs to use religion as a hiring criterion. The White House backs the bill and President Bush has spoken in favor of its faith-based language, which would permit groups to consider a potential employee’s religion. Most Democrats opposed the bill because of that language but a bid by Virginia Democrat Rep. Robert Scott to cut it out failed. Democrats said the measure was a step backward to an era of discrimination and was unnecessary as faith-based groups can receive federal funds for job training as long as they do not discriminate in hiring.
“Employment discrimination is ugly,” said Scott. “You can put lipstick on a pig but you can’t pass it off as a beauty queen and you can’t dress up ‘We don’t hire Catholics and Jews’ with poll-tested semantics and euphemisms and pass it off as anything other than ugly discrimination.”

Bad For Vets
Senators of both parties said recently that President Bush’s budget for veterans’ health care would not provide enough money to maintain services at current levels, much less care for thousands of veterans streaming back to the United States from Iraq and Afghanistan. Five veterans groups, including the American Legion, denounced a proposal in Mr. Bush’s budget that would double the co-payment charged to many veterans for prescription drugs and require some to pay a new fee of $250 a year for the privilege of using government health care. Among other items, The Administration is proposing to cut $293 million in payments to “state-run homes that provide veterans with long-term care.” They plan on saving another $100 million with a one-year moratorium in spending “for construction and renovation of such homes.”

Body Armor?
Nevada GOP congressman Jim Gibbons told a Lincoln’s Day dinner audience of Elko area business leaders that anyone who opposed the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq “ought to be used as human body armor.” His remark was first reported in the Elko Free Daily Press and later defended by Elko County GOP Commissioner John Ellison on Fox News. According to Ellison, Gibbons’ comment was not directed at all Americans who have private concerns about the war, but rather at “outspoken liberal celebrities trying to undermine the troops fighting for this nation.” But according to John Summers, a spokesman for Nevada’s Democratic Party, Gibbons’ comment had been plagiarized from comments made by Alabama State Auditor Beth Chapman. In recent months, Congressman Gibbons also received national attention by calling those that opposed corporate donations to the last presidential inaugural “communists.”

Deep Footings…
A letter opposing an adjudicatory hearing on the $300 million Belleayre Resort project proposed for the town of Shandaken by developer Dean Gitter’s Crossroads Ventures was presented to the Ulster County Development Corporation last month, in hopes that the UCDC would agree to sign on and forward the letter to Governor Pataki as its official position. The draft argues against a stringent environmental adjudication.
The letter was written by Ward Todd, president of the county Chamber of Commerce and was presented by UCDC president Chester Straub, acting in Todd’s stead. But after some discussion the letter was set aside and a resolution passed to draft the UCDC’s own letter on the subject, re-worked to not reflect what Democrats on the committee have called Todd’s “strong bias” in support of the controversial project.
County legislator Michael Berardi said he “spoke up and said it’s not in the mission statement of the UCDC to make a determination on how stringent an environmental review should be. I thought it [the letter] was really beyond where we should be going with this stuff.”
Todd said that he “respectfully disagrees” with Democrats who say that the UCDC should not be intervening in the matter… Whether it’s UCDC or the Chamber board, both organizations are pro-business, pro growth, and favor improving the economy of Ulster County so UCDC should be involved in all this. All we seem to hear is, where are the jobs? How are we growing our economy? And this is the way we have to improve our economy.”
Todd added that he did not recall whether the board of directors of the county Chamber of Commerce had authorized him to write and promulgate the letter, but said that “general discussion” of the issue convinced him he should proceed.
Berardi, however, said the UCDC should not simply adopt Todd’s opinion on the matter. “We feel the UCDC board should hear the other side of the coin on this, they should not just take Ward’s point of view on this, they should make a decision based on both perspectives,” said Berardi.
Todd countered that the value and benefits the project would bring to the county have been under-reported.
But Tom Alworth, executive director of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, disputed the range of benefits outlined by Todd. He said the construction jobs would not be filled by local workers, but by union members brought in from around the state. Neither would materials for the buildings be purchased locally. And he said the project sponsors have said they would import management staff from outside the region, because there is no local expertise in running large resorts.
Alworth said that opposition to the project is widespread and well organized and observed, “I think to ask UCDC to take a stand on this [adjudication] strikes me as desperation.”

Longer To Pay
Average life expectancy in the United States rose to a record 77.6 years in 2003 from 77.3 years in 2002, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although women on average still lived longer than men in 2003 — 80.1 years versus 74.8 years — the gender gap in mortality narrowed, continuing a 25-year trend, the CDC said in a report. The Atlanta-based agency, which is responsible for monitoring and responding to health threats, attributed the improvement in life expectancy to corresponding drops in eight of the 15 leading causes of death. Chief among them were significant declines in mortality from heart disease, cancer and stroke, the three biggest killers. Death rates for these conditions fell between 2.2 percent and 4.6 percent. Lower death rates from HIV, drug and alcohol abuse and use of firearms also helped boost life expectancy.
The CDC released its data amid rising concerns about a burgeoning obesity epidemic in the nation. Health experts have warned of an inevitable jump in heart disease, diabetes and other diseases if millions of Americans don’t lose weight. And the United States already is struggling with the challenge of caring for an aging population. Death rates from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, two diseases often associated with old age, rose in 2003, the CDC said.
The agency’s data also highlighted continuing racial disparities, with black men on average living 6.2 years less than white men and black women 4.4 years less than white women.
Meanwhile, the world’s population will increase by 40 percent to 9.1 billion in 2050, but virtually all the growth will be in the developing world, especially in the 50 poorest countries, the U.N. Population Division said. In a new report, the division said the population in less developed countries is expected to swell from 5.3 billion today to 7.8 billion in 2050. By contrast, the population of richer developed countries will remain mostly unchanged, at 1.2 billion.
The report reconfirmed many trends, including an increasingly aging population in developed countries. But it said immigration would prevent the overall population in richer countries from declining.
The United States is projected to be the major net recipient of international migrants, 1.1 million annually, with its population increasing from 298 million in 2005 to 394 million in 2050, the report said.
Between 2005 and 2050, population growth in eight countries - India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, the United States, Ethiopia and China - is likely to make up half the world’s increase, the report said. India’s population will surpass China’s in the coming decades because its fertility, currently at 3 children per woman, is higher than China’s, estimated at 1.7 children per woman.
In southern Africa, the region with the highest AIDS prevalence, life expectancy has fallen from 62 years in 1995 to 48 years in 2000-2005, and is projected to decrease further to 43 years over the next decade before a slow recovery starts, it said.

Matrix Not!
Michigan state police officials say they will drop out of a multistate data-collection system that came under fire as a potential threat to people’s privacy. The department said too few states are participating to make the project worthwhile. The project began in December 2003 with 13 states. Now only Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Connecticut remain.
State police also said they were concerned about future funding and unrealistic expectations to expand the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. The project collects data, including driver’s license and criminal history information, and shares access with participating states. Critics have argued the system gives law enforcement unprecedented access to details about innocent people.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued last summer to stop Michigan’s participation, complained the project violates state law prohibiting police from participating in interstate intelligence gathering without legislative approval or outside oversight.

Bad Gorilla
A third woman has filed a lawsuit claiming a caretaker for Koko, the world-famous sign-language-speaking gorilla, pressured the woman to expose her breasts as a way to bond with the animal.
Iris Rivera, 39 and an administrative assistant at the Gorilla Foundation until she quit last month, claims both the gorilla and its trainer told her last year that Koko was signing that “she wants to see your nipples.”
Two other former employees of the foundation, Nancy Alperin and Kendra Keller, filed similar claims in recent weeks. While Alperin and Keller refused to expose themselves to Koko, Rivera acquiesced, the lawsuit states.
An attorney for the foundation said the lawsuits had “no merit.”
The Gorilla Foundation was founded in 1976 to promote the preservation and study of gorillas. It’s best known for Koko, a 136-kilo (300-pound) simian who has mastered a vocabulary of more than 1,000 signs.

State Polling
A quarter of Republicans said they preferred New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani for the Republican nomination, with Sen. John McCain second at 21 percent. Neither Clinton nor Guiliani has indicated they will run in 2008.
At the state level, a separate poll found that New York’s Republican Gov. George Pataki is slipping farther behind Democratic state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in a possible 2006 matchup for governor. The Siena College Research Institute poll had Spitzer leading Pataki 53 percent to 30 percent, up from a 51-to-35 percent Spitzer lead in a Siena poll last month.
Spitzer has said he will run for governor in 2006; Pataki has not said if he will seek a fourth term.

4H Honors…
Local high school student Kacie Giuliano of Olivebridge was part of a delegation representing thousands of 4-H members in New York State when she arrived in Albany on March 7th and 8th for the 70th annual 4-H Capital Days event. As participants, they met with leaders in state government, members of the court system and officials from a variety of state agencies. Giuliano, age 14, attends John A. Coleman Catholic High School where she is a freshman. She started in 4-H as a Cloverbud at the age of 6. Kacie is the daughter of Marylou and Michael Giuliano.
The 4-H Capital Days program is sponsored by the New York State Association of Cornell Cooperative Extension 4-H Educators. For more information regarding 4-H call Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County at 340-3990.