Softening Other Blows

In terms of amounts per $1,000 of assessment, the General Fund dropped 12.1% to $134.59; Fire District upped .36% to $63.94 and Highway Fund rose 3.6% to $63.94 per thousand. Special Lighting District funds stood pat.
In other business, the Supervisor read a brief resignation note from former Olive Police Commissioner Robert Schanck, who stepped down on October 13th, and introduced a 3-0 vote to send a letter of gratitude to Schanck for his years of unpaid service to the community.
Olivebridge resident Ray Nichols was appointed by unanimous vote to replace Schanck on the town’s police commission. Nichols, who will assume the day-to-day duties of running the police department, was a constable in Olive prior to the establishment, with Schanck’s aid, of the present department. He then served with the New Paltz Police Department for over two decades before his retirement.
A workshop meeting was set for 6pm November 15 for town board members to discuss the upcoming town-wide reval with Cole Layer, a district manager for the Connecticut-based Trumble Company hired for the project. The price tag for the job registers around an estimated $195,000.

Percolating Rebuttals

The letter set the committee’s first public meeting at the school for November 10 at 7pm and town board members confirmed that they would attend.
Leifeld then announced that the town had contracted with Arthur P. Scheuermann, Director of Legal Services for the School Administrators Association of New York State (SAANYS), to study the situation in regard to Olive’s participation in the Onteora School District and lay the groundwork for the reformation of the town’s own school district. Scheuermann, who has experience in the dissolution and foundation of school districts in other
parts of the state, is based in Latham, N.Y.
Olive resident, John Tisch, addressed the meeting in regards to the formation of an Olive citizen’s committee to combat the Large Parcel Law and reported details of his research into the early stages of the legislation. He said he had already spoken with a number of potential committee members and received an enthusiastic response.
”The largest kick in the face in all of this,” said Tisch after the meeting,
”with gasoline at $2.11 per gallon and fuel oil at $2.19 a gallon heading into the dead of winter and people struggling big time with a 56% raise in school taxes, is how the county legislature can, with a clear conscience, approve another increase of 25% or 26% to save 2 1/2% or whatever it is for themselves. With the situation ongoing in this county, and this country, how
could you do that to another part of their county? I just can’t grasp that.”
Councilman Bruce LaMonda, who has complained about Olive having been kept in the dark about the bill during its formative stages, read a letter from the
board addressed to Senator Bonacic and Assemblyman Cahill. Requesting to be
informed as to any proposed amendments or revisions to the bill, the letter
added: “Our tax based is being divided among other towns, some as far away
as Lexington, while this physical entity, the Ashokan Reservoir, is within the political boundaries of the Town of Olive. We feel having to share the greater portion of our town’s tax base with other communities who do not have any portion of the facility within their political boundaries defies
any reasonable logic.”
”Anytime you tell towns to give up their tax base to other towns, they’re not going to vote for the school budget,” aMonda said at the meeting. “That’s the fallacy of this whole legislation. It doesn’t atter if the school board enacts it or the state legislature, whomever. Now that the school board has enacted this, it’s going to be very easy in their minds to do it again. The perception will be ‘they’ll get used to it’.
”This is called the Ashokan Reservoir,” LaMonda continued. “It’s not the
Woodstock Reservoir. It’s not the Shandaken Reservoir. It’s IN the Town of
Olive and that’s where the tax revenue hould go. No place else.”
A separate Olive citizen’s group concerned with the Large Parcel Law was
reported to be meeting with Assemblyman Cahill on Tuesday to demand ask what
role, if any, he played in the “assignment of New York City’s tax funds in Olive to the funds of other towns.” The NYC Department of Water Supply owns more than half of the property in Olive and remaining property owners are obliged to make up for taxes given to other towns by the law. It was planned for the group to visit Senator Bonacic and others involved in the bill’s presentation.

Hunting For Connection

“Hunting’s not just about hunting,” he began. “It’s more about a love for nature, a love for the woods, the wildlife, and the natural world we’re living in. My father was a real hunter, and he always tried to nourish that with me. From the time I was a kid I learned everything I could about the woods; the flowers, the birds. I cherish all the memories, every moment my Dad and I were in the woods together. Our relationship is so strong because of all the time we spent together.”
“For me hunting is an excuse to be out there,” Hinkley continued. “You’re not going to get up at 3 AM to watch the spring birds arrive. But if it’s turkey season that’s different, because when you’re out there and you get to see the scarlet tanager and everything else, you realize at the end of the season it’s not the gobbler that matters, it’s the spring birds. I know it’s hard for people to understand how you could love something so much and then shoot it. The killing part is the worst part. That’s no fun at all. Never was, never is. It’s something everybody fights with. I hate death. When I kill something I feel so bad. I just have so much respect for animals, and for what it takes for them to survive.”
“If you have it in your blood though, you do it. Hunters love to see wildlife, to feel that connection. You want to get closer to it..to touch it. But for most I think it’s really just to be out there and to see the stuff you see. And that’s the spiritual dimension. If you’re out there you see things. You know it was meant to be, and that you were meant to be there to see it.”
A native of Roxbury, Hinkley comes from a family where hunting’s always part of the fabric of life.
“My father was one of 12 kids, and we always went to my grandmother’s for Thanksgiving,” he said. “I remember the guys that had gotten their deer would always be ribbing the guys who hadn’t yet. I guess I’ve been hunting small game since I was 9 or 10, and deer from the day I could get my license. I hunted pretty steady through high school, then for a graduation present I got a camera and switched to wildlife photography for a while. But if it’s in your blood…”
Asked why he thinks hunting’s off so much locally in recent years, Hinckley says, “the deer population is down, they like open fields, edge habitat, and we just don’t have very much of it. And there’s another factor too,” he added. “Years ago, people had more time than they do now.” As for new management techniques like “quality” or trophy deer hunting, he thinks they might be worth trying though he’s concerned they might also bring “a bit of an ugly frame of mind” to the woods.
“But the bears are a perfect example of why we need hunting to curb the population” says Hinckley. “I think the turning point came a few years ago when we had a really dry summer, and the bears had to come down to the rivers. The cubs learned to feed around human habitation and now they’re conditioned to it and they’re teaching their cubs, same as they’ve been in the Adirondacks for years. I don’t think it’s going to change now and go back to being more of a wild population, unless you can eliminate the bears that are conditioned to garbage and to bird feeders. I think that’s something we need to do.”
“I thank God every day I was born here, raised here in this incredibly beautiful part of the world. I’m so thankful I got to take my boys out, hear the coyotes singing, listen to the owls. And yeah, I’m afraid about what could happen to these mountains because of all the greed, this huge development thing. I mean, what we have here is so unique; once the wildness is gone, it’s gone forever. I don’t hunt as much anymore as I used to. The older you get, the more you cherish every day there is, the harder it is to hunt, at least for me.”