Our Police Controversy

            The two member election board differed on their interpretation of the legitimacy of Schanck's address for voter registration. One of them, Harry
M. Castiglione, a Democrat, accepted Schanck's notarized letter as sufficient proof while the other, Thomas F. Turco, a Republican, felt that a "deputy sheriff's report" demonstrated that the address did not represent Schanck's "primary residence." In this case a tie passes muster and Schanck was advised that his registration remains valid.
            Although the term "primary residence" contains different shadings under the laws of different states, it seems to generally represent the address upon one's driver's license and voter registration card.
            Chris Johansen, who insists that Schanck is registered to vote and has voted in Venice, Florida, presented the town board with a packet of document copies which he claimed proved that Schanck was a Florida resident. The deputy sheriff's report mentioned in the Board of Elections letter was not among the papers given to the board.
            Olive Supervisor Brendt Leifeld, who had pronounced prior attempts by Johansen to discredit Schanck "political BS" at a previous meeting, said the matter would be referred to the town's attorney.
            On the surface, this would seem to shuffle the matter out of public view at
least for the time being but, behind the scenes, the affair has far more intrigue than Leifeld's comment suggests.
            Johansen's cover letter to the supervisor suggests that "rather than continue to expend town's money on attorney review of this information," Leifeld should consult District Attorney Donald Williams, Sheriff J. Richard Bockelmann and Thomas Turco on the matter- a gesture which might suggest that political motivation is indeed a factor in the accusations. But, as Schanck himself points out, he is, in fact, a Republican, himself.
            Johansen alleges that several of the documents provided show "fraudulent
statements have been made to Florida Voter Registration and other Florida agencies over the course of the last 10-plus years" and cites a Tallahassee elections official whom he claims had confirmed that Schanck has been registered to vote in Florida since 1999. Curiously, Johansen included Olive voter records which seem to back Schanck's claim that he has cast his ballot here since 1975. While we cannot rule out the possibility that Schanck voted early and flew immediately down to Venice to vote there, these inclusions would appear to support the police commissioner.
            More potentially damaging, perhaps, are "Declarations of Domicile" dated
1993 and 1999 which appear to bear Schanck's signature. How these may differ from "primary residence" is, for the moment, uncertain but the page is headed with an announcement that "This is not an application for Homestead exemption."
            Johansen's statement notes that, as a former Florida resident, he was aware that the Homestead Act provides a sizable tax exemption on primary residences. A page in the packet highlights an active Homestead exemption on a property in Venice registered to Robert and Nancy Schanck.
            According to Schanck, what's missing is an addendum which specifies that he was registering for his son, also named Robert Schanck, at that address. It is his son's name that is listed on the Florida voting rolls, he insists.
            "Why isn't there a voter's card in their documentation?" Schanck asks. "My
son Robert Schanck is registered to vote down there and lives in my homes down there. He was a student for years and now he's a permanent resident of Florida. There's nothing inappropriate in that. This group's obsession to discredit me uses selected information and draws false conclusions from it. They've gone one step too far. Now it involves my family. I'm a public official. They're not!"
            Although he stopped short of saying so for the record, Schanck seemed to
imply a power play to steer the local Republican policies when he stated angrily that "(t)his kind of action should be a real wake-up call to Olive Republicans to take back their party. These people have no accountability to the majority of Republicans in town. They just go off on tangents and do whatever they want. At every town board meeting, these people are somehow able to use the meeting as a forum for their issues."
            "I don't think he's a good police commissioner," said Johansen, who operates a pest control service. "He hasn't lived here. Nobody in the town office has
an Olive phone number for him. If you look at the county directory, he's got a 246 number in there."
            "The Olive Police Department, until recently, had nobody who had a basic First Aid certificate," he added. "Because people like me or Richie Ostrander objected and brought it up, there was no Policy Procedure Manual. A police officer could take the car and go to Lake George for the weekend if he wanted..."
            Johansen refers to an accident which occurred on Route 28 in West Hurley when an Olive officer responded to a call outside of his jurisdiction.
            "That happened because there was no Policy Procedure Manual saying you don't leave the town line unless you're dispatched by the State Police," Johansen
said. "I stopped objecting (to Olive police policy) when they appointed Richie Ostrander to the Police Commission. Now, they have a police officer that they can bounce something off of and he's just a phone call away. He's local. Bob Schanck lives half the year in Florida and the other half in Saugerties."
            Ostrander, a former Woodstock police chief and Sheriff's Department member resigned his position in January at a police commissioner's meeting, citing political harassment, and was replaced by Vincent Bruck. Ulster County Democratic Party Chairman John Parete admits that he contributed to the pressure on Ostrander because he felt the former commissioner, who organized for Sheriff Bockelmann's campaign, was politicizing the police department.
            Johansen insists it's a matter of integrity in office and bristles at Leifeld's lowering the issue to a matter of political "BS."
            "I worked with Bob Schanck when I worked up here," Johansen said. "I got along good with him...And I've known (Supervisor Leifeld) since I was a kid; a good family friend of my family's. Berndt's always had a Conservative endorsement with my help, going back to the '70's. I just won't believe that Berndt would point a finger at me- that I was doing something wrong- when everywhere you look this man (Schanck) is not telling the truth... You could do a lot of digging in my background and I sign my name an awful lot - especially when I was a cop- and you won't find anything there that I didn't believe when I wrote it."
            Neither side would go on record with their ideas about the motivations of their opposition. Schanck merely says he wishes to keep the nonpaying police commissioner's post as a service to the community he worked in for many years. Town officials are concerned that, while the commissioner's position might be easily filled, the role of police chief, which Schanck also fills without compensation, would be more difficult to fill. The town's police budget remains the lowest in the region because Schanck is the only unpaid part-time police chief in the county, according to some observers. His departure could force a change in that situation.

All The Town Business...

  On the same evening, the town was presented with a new budget proposal for the coming year with overall hikes, in both the General and Highway funds, equalkling just over 3 percent.
            The  depletion of funds from the reservoir properties owned by New York City, comprising tracts which represents more than half of Olive's land area, places the burden of making up the difference in tax increases imposed upon
the remaining property owners.

            The letters, including those with many years of residence in the town, described the anticipated financial hardships as forcing many families to consider leaving town for more affordable areas. They also urged the town board to take measures toward seceding from the Onteora School District and
founding an Olive school system apart from the existing one.
            Another action called for was the filing of lawsuits against the Onteora School District and its school board as well as against those individual members of the board who voted to enact the law.
            "We will be happy to take an active part if you need us to do so," offered the authors of one of the letters. "It would be so helpful if a special meeting could be held for all Olive residents to attend. Some new ideas as well as some action could be the result."
            Although a special meeting for purposes proposed in the letter was not
arranged before passing on to other matters, Leifeld did reveal that someone
he declined to identify had been contacted to pursue inquiry into the possibilities suggested by the letters.
            Leifeld announced a budget workshop for Thursday evening on October 14th.
            A tentative figure of $3,223,689 was offered as a preliminary sum for the
budget of 2005. The general fund was expected to increase $22,153, or about 1..5%, Leifeld said. That includes a three percent raise for all employees and represents a decrease in the amount to be paid in taxes of $119,597 due to a projected unexpended balance from the current fiscal year of $250,000, as well as an increase in projected revenues, primarily from mortgage taxes and sales taxes.
            The town highway fund will see a $21,810 increase in expenditures, representing a 1.73 percent rise, and including another 3 percent pay raise. The amount to be raised by taxes for the Highway budget will increase by $43,810 due to a decrease in the fund's unexpended balance from the current fiscal year and a decrease in interest income revenue.
            The Olive Fire District is showing a rise of $3,431.
            A total of $2,399,939 will be raised by taxes for the coming year.
            "It looks good. Looks wonderful, in fact," Leifeld said.
            "This will become our preliminary budget after the workshop on the 14th," Leifeld said. He added that he started putting together the budget six to seven weeks ago went he sent a letter to department heads, and has been working at it ever since.
            A public hearing on the budget will take place on November 4 at 7:30 p.m.
            The Olive Press will try and publish the full budget in its next issue.

A Slew Of New Committees

            "Everybody's very appreciative keep it up," said D'Orazio after hearing Winters speak about attending last weekend's October 2 homecoming game, a bit rain-drenched but "still full of enthusiasm" according to the superintendent.
            Winters, for her part, outlined meetings she has held, or will be holding, with town highway superintendents about the upcoming winter, and with fellow Ulster County school districts about seeking changes to the state's "Large Parcel" tax bill.
            D'Orazio summarized the first meeting of the new district-wide Commission on Long Term Facilities Use held September 30, which set an ambitious set of objectives including possible restructuring of district and a fresh look at class and school sizes and make-up.
            "The great hope is that by early Spring we'll have some sort of suggestion of where we should be headed," D'Orazio said, noting that since most suggestions will include "a huge expenditure of money" it will be important to have "the community buy in on whatever's planned."
            At present, the Committee is made up of seven parents, two community members, three board members, two elementary school teachers, two Middle/Senior High School teachers, two principals, the district's head custodian and Winters, the district superintendent. Future meetings have been set for Tuesday, October 19 at the Woodstock School, Thursday, October 28 at the Middle/Senior High School cafeteria, Monday, November 15 at the Phoenicia School and Tuesday, November 30 at the cafeteria again. Chairpersons for the committee will be voted on at the next meeting.
            The board also voted to begin work on a new District Wide Communications Commission, per the suggestion of new board member Dave Patterson, who noted how the implementation of such a committee in the South Colonie School District near Albany resulted in the passage of all the district's school budgets and funding propositions over the last 12 years. Patterson and the board will now work with Winters, as well as the Ulster BOCES communications department, to set parameters for such a committee over the coming weeks.
            Other resolutions passed Tuesday evening included the adoption of Local Assistance Plans designed to raise test scores for Fourth Grade English Language Arts at the Phoenicia School, as well as 8th grade ELA and Math test scores at the Middle School.
            Deborah Fox, the district's new Assistant Superintendent in charge of Instruction, noted that all Onteora teaching assistants will be given a day of training when school is closed for the Election on November 2. She also gave the first of what will be four presentations on Academic Intervention Services throughout the district, describing the state mandated (but not state-funded) need for schools to ensure that students failing, or in danger of failing standardized tests be given supplemental learning opportunities. The next part will be presented, Fox said, at the board's next meeting on October 19 at the Woodstock School, where she will talk about monitoring programs, counseling services and the district's FACETS Program.
            A presentation by the directors of Bard College's new Master of Arts in Teaching Program, started this past year, focused on efforts to involve area school districts, including Onteora, through involvement of local teachers in mentoring and discussion programs. To date, program director Ric Campbell said, four Onteora teachers have been involved in summer sessions and an upcoming late October follow-up seminar/discussion group. Board members and administrators all expressed great hopes for the program, which will  be outlined in more depth in a coming article.
            Public comment, with ensuing board discussion, focused on a growing number of problems with high school sports programs. Parent Trish Heller spoke about scheduling difficulties with girl's soccer that have particularly impacted JV teams. Board member Patterson also asked why boy's JV Football had been cancelled, while the district was still paying coach fees.
            Athletics Director Joe Ahouse responded that the problems with girl's soccer had to do with changes in Mid-Hudson League scheduling, and that he was working to solve the problem as soon as possible, suggesting that the board might start looking at alternative spaces for soccer fields, given the growing popularity of the sport, including use of the West Hurley firehouse field, shared use of the football field at the high school, and the possible construction of a new soccer pitch in Boiceville. He added that the JV football season is on hold, at the moment, because there have not been enough sign-ups to allow for the team to play scrimmages within its own ranks. He said the coaches have been retained so the program can continue to pick up speed, and because those JV players currently involved are being absorbed, as much as possible, into the Onteora varsity team.

Studio Stu!  

          He used to live in Manhattan's Midtown in a massive industrial loft. Was known as Stu Chernoff, the name he was given at birth, until his way of answering the phone at the various photographic studios he worked at, and then started as a top-notch photographer, led to what many consider his only moniker now.
            "Studio. Stu here," was how it all started.
            But that's before Studio, as we'll call him, had a kid and decided to move out of the city and up to the creative community of Woodstock which he moved out of, for a teaching gig in Puerto Rico, soon after finding that the so-called "artists colony" has more regulations than creativity these days.
            "In the neighborhood we were living," he says of what he left behind years ago, "I'd have had to wait until my son was 20 before sending him out for milk."
            So back to the story Studio moves up, eventually, to Boiceville. And then deeper into Olive in the Krumville area. But he finds that working as a photographer isn't that easy up here. He starts to think.
            "I had had this washtub bass - had been into music from an early age, but didn't follow it because I felt another guitar player wasn't what was needed back when I got out of college in the early seventies - and I ended up desperate enough to head down to the city to try playing in the subway"
            Studio picked a prime spot near the IND lines at 34th Street, where those coming into Penn Station catch the train. Started singing Duke Ellington's classic "A Train" and made a mint his first day. Became a hit with the tourists, averaging $30 to $40 an hour. And decided to build a new life to match, and help support, his family's new upstate existence.
            "I saw this cat in a cartoon playing a washtub bass, and the notes he was playing were the notes in my head," Studio says of his attraction to his trademark style after starting out, as a kid growing up in Coney Island, on the accordion. "They were jazz riffs, some out jazz, and he was singing some mammy/pappy thing, smokin' a cigar, it was crazy. And right then and there, I knew that's what I wanted to do."
            After a while, Studio hooked up with a growing number of local players, Gus Mancini in particular, and became a regular feature on Doug Gruenther's Sunday morning radio program on WDST-FM. Local gigs followed, and he started working at getting bookings. Hired an agent. Made a life and career of it all.
            Nowadays. Stduio Stu holds down regular gigs three nights a week in the area, with Saturdays and at least one week a month set aside for interstate touring. On Thursdays, he plays Gadaleto's in New Paltz. Fridays he's at Neko Sushi in Wappingers Falls. Sundays sees him at the Clove Café in High Falls for brunch.
            "I'm looking for a fourth gig locally," Studio adds.
            His outside-of-the-area gigs see him booking colleges and coffee shops from Maine to North Carolina, with increasing popularity. Much of what he does amounts to emceeing gigs, providing the 15 to 20-minute fillers between other acts.
            It's a true, much-valued niche that the former Mr. Chernoff says he wishes he'd searched out and found much earlier in his life.
            "I never get nervous going on stage," he says of his new life. "I love what I do."
            And does he miss Brooklyn?
            Studio guffaws.
            "You can't take it out of me" he says.
            For further information on Studio Stu, a true Catskills original (even with all the talk about that borough in the city), visit www.studiostu.com.