Value Problems
Ulster County property values have continued to climb in recent months, particularly in the southern part of the county. The total value of properties in the county stands at $14.25 billion this year, 16.3 percent higher than the $12.25 billion recorded in 2003 and 72.3 percent higher than just five years ago. According Dorthy Martins, who overseas valuation in the county for tax purposes, Woodstock, Marbletown and the Olive area have been growing at a steady pace with prices advancing faster than the rest of the county. Downsides to the county’s property value growth include a growing gap between county incomes and home prices. The median sale price of a single-family home in Ulster County is around $220,000, according to officials, while the median family income is just under $57,000 a year. Depending on a home buyer’s debt and credit history, he or she may be able to secure a mortgage in the $130,000-$160,000 range at that income level, but not the $200,000.

More Casinos?
Gov. George Pataki is so optimistic about land claim negotiations with two Wisconsin tribes that he is now proposing an expansion of casinos in the Catskills. Currently, three casinos are authorized for the Catskills. Now the governor is talking about raising the number to five.
“I think five makes perfectly good sense,” Pataki said Monday. “It’s something I would consider.”
Deals with the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans and the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin were announced recently, giving the tribes the rights to gambling compacts in the Catskills in return for their dropping lawsuits over the state’s illegal taking of reservation land 200 years ago. The deals also come with the tribes promising to share gambling revenues with the state and agreeing to either pay taxes on cigarettes and gasoline or to price products sold at stores at off-reservation rates.
Pataki would need legislation amending a law that was hurriedly passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, when the state was hit with multibillion-dollar budget gaps. That law allowed for up to three tribal gambling halls in the Catskills plus three in western New York operated by the Seneca Indian Nation. The Seneca have since opened two, but nothing has happened in the Catskills.
Pataki is making some headway now with five tribes looking to build large casinos in the Monticello area. The governor has secured a tentative land claim agreement with the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, which still needs tribal ratification. More recently, he reached deals with the Cayuga Nation of New York and the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma.
Two weeks ago, Pataki denied he was looking at such an expansion. His turnaround this past week points to how close he is to sealing more deals, a source close to negotiations said.
Lawmakers were unenthusiastic this week about amending the casino laws. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said he would first like to see movement on the three casinos authorized three years ago. Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno said his chamber is “going to wait and see what’s in the best interests of people in the Catskills and in New York state.”
Lawmakers from the Catskills were also less than supportive. Sen. John Bonacic said Catskills residents should have a say in any expansion beyond three casinos. The economy isn’t as bad in the region as it was in 2001 when the three were authorized, he added.

Press Power!
A 3 inch by 3 inch advertisement announcing the availability of some long-boarded-up old storefronts on Kerhonksen’s Main Street in another local newspaper, The Blue Stone Press, recently pulled a major story in the New York Times when its taunting local vs. newcomer talk turned out to be written by a top national advertising firm. Describing Kerhonkson as a “real town - not like some of the other quaint towns around these parts” the ad warned potential takers, “If you want to open a coffee shop, don’t make us learn new words for small, medium and large is all we’re saying.” “Jews, Blacks, Italians (and all others) Welcome,” it supposedly added, according to the Paper of Record, “No Artists or Canadians.”
It later turned out that the company that placing the ad, which generated local complaint, called itself Kerhonkson General, which was really a pseudonym for Harris
Silver, the president of a New York City advertising agency called Think Tank 3, which has created sleek campaigns for products like Georgi Vodka and several environmentally friendly causes. Silver, who owns a weekend house in Kerhonkson for years, had gotten together with some friends to buy the three empty stores and some vacant apartments as part of a plan to revive the town. Silver later said he was trying to take a swipe at New Paltz.
“Do your brothers-in-flannel up here who read these ads realize that your thinly veiled ‘Think Tank’ is really a N.Y.C.-based ad agency with a slick and pseudo-intellectual Web site peddling freshman philosophy about, among other
things, art?” the Times reported an irate e-mailer writing. “Get real, you
self-important fakes. I’d be willing to bet you drink fancy coffee drinks every day. In short, you have no authority to speak as one of us, and no business pretending to be from
the other side of the tracks.”

28’s Ready?
The state Department of Transportation says state Route 28 could handle 18,000 vehicles a day, or 1,800 an hour (thirty vehicles a minute), and was designed for such when built more than 40 years ago. But many are now saying that if traffic ever got close to that level, the result would disastrous, with the corridor taking on the feel of Route 17 in Paramus, N.J. With Route 28 now being used at about half its rated capacity, according to data, local residents have asked to have recently hired consultants preparing a comprehensive plan for the town to consider how bad traffic could become along the corridor with new development.
Traffic currently reaches about half the maximum capacity in the eastern end of town, with about 8,000 vehicles per day coming as far as Phoenicia. West of the hamlet, traffic drops substantially, to 4,000 vehicles per day at state Route 42 and about 2,500 per day at the Ulster County/Delaware County line in Highmount.
Paula Benway of Stantec Corp., the firm hired to prepare Shandaken’s comprehensive plan, has said there are state Department of Transportation benchmarks used to determine if the time it takes to get onto Route 28 becomes unacceptable. If it does, she said, the agency would install traffic-control devices to correct the problem.
Benway is expected to address the potential problem when she returns for her next local meeting with the Town of Shandaken Comprehensive Planning Committee in February.

CWC Growth…
The Catskill Watershed Corp.’s board of directors recently approved a $27.93 million budget for 2005, a spending increase of 36.7 percent, or $7.5 million, over the current year, mostly for sewage treatment projects and various programs related to water quality improvements. Funding is primarily through the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, with additional funds from state and federal government. The CWC uses the funds to manage a variety of programs and special projects to protect water quality in the New York City watershed west of the Hudson River, and to assist residents and communities within the region.
The agency was born on Jan. 17, 1997 with the signing of the landmark Watershed Memorandum of Agreement, a watershed land use pact between New York City, state, federal and local governments. To help offset the costs and restrictions of increased regulations and land purchases by the city, the Watershed Corp. was charged with developing and implementing several city-funded programs, including residential septic rehabilitation, economic development, education, stormwater controls and salt storage improvements. In 2002, the federal government reviewed the first five years of the watershed protection effort, and agreed to allow the city to continue to avoid building a multibillion-dollar water filtration system in exchange for more funding for existing Watershed Corp. programs and for new programs.
Yet while funding is up, the CWC’s economic development fund has stalled at millions of dollars below anticipated amounts, leading the corporation to suspend the grant portion of the fund until interest rates start allowing it to grow at a higher rate. With interest rates starting to creep up, the grant program may be reactivated, CWC executive director Rosa has said.

Trash Talk!
The Ulster County Legislature is seeking to replace the longstanding director of the county Resource Recovery Agency board on December 13, aiming at removal of three board members who have supported local “trash czar” Charles Shaw, who has served for 15 years. The bi-partisan move comes after years of runaway cost increases hit a nadir this past year. Shaw’s contract expires Dec. 31, 2007. County lawmakers have been wrestling with ways to cut the county subsidy to the trash agency since September, when it requested $3.21 million, an increase of $713,176, or 28.55 percent. Other resolutions the county is looking at include the exploration of “options” for the trash agency that include privatization, a joint venture with the private sector, or “reduction or elimination of taxpayer funds” for the agency. Legislators have said they are not impressed with the agency’s efforts to control costs. Under the charter establishing the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency, a five-member board is appointed by the full Legislature and approves a contract for an executive director. The agency, established by the state Legislature in 1988, moved to consolidate landfills and set up a countywide trash-collection operation.

Smaller Growth
A decade after IBM left the area as part of its controversial downsizing, Ulster County is being urged not to go looking for other “600-pound gorilla” type economic fixes in the form of large companies or development projects, choosing instead to foster small businesses and entrepreneurs through technical and financial support, the Special Commission on the Economic Future of Ulster County, formed by the Ulster County Development Corp., has concluded. The commission recently released a 255-page transcript of an October 5 public hearing it held on local development at the Community College, along with copies of comments submitted following the hearing. “The key is going to clearly articulate what it is the communities would like to see happen,” said UCDC Director Chester Straub of the commission’s findings. “There are going to be locations in the county where you cannot or should not develop. Additional information on the commission and the Ulster County Development Corp., along with a copy of the transcript and report, is available at www.ulsterny.com.

Jail Delays!!!
For the second time in two months, the completion date for the already much-delayed “new” county jail has been pushed back by the construction management firm overseeing the project several more months… with indications that not even that new date is realistic. In a letter to county officials, Dick White of Bovis Lend Lease said the facility won’t be ready to accept prisoners until Aug. 12, 2005 - two months later than the June 7 completion date announced in October and 16 months later than the original target date of April 2004. But even the August 2005 target seems tentative, according to White’s letter to county Legislature Majority Leader Michael Stock, who chairs the Law Enforcement Center Project Committee. According to the most recent schedule, the building will be fully enclosed by Dec. 10; roughly 95 percent complete by June 10; have all systems complete, tested and approved by the state Commission on Corrections by Aug. 10; and be ready to accept inmates from the current jail on nearby Golden Hill on Aug. 12.
But some members of the Law Enforcement Center Project Committee doubt the Aug. 12 forecast. The new Law Enforcement Center, which will house the jail and the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office, originally was to cost $71.8 million but could cost up to $21 million more: $4.7 million to complete construction and the remainder to settle claims and cover related legal fees.

Food Waste!
A new study from the University of Arizona in Tucson indicates that forty to fifty percent of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten. What researchers found was that not only is edible food discarded that could feed people who need it, but the rate of loss, even partially corrected, could save U.S. consumers and corporations tens of billions of dollars each year. These losses, the report says, also can be framed in terms of environmental degradation and national security.
Research included archaeologists measuring garbage from the 1970s on to see what was being thrown away and discovering that people were not fully aware of what they were using and discarding. On average, households waste 14 percent of their food purchases. Fifteen percent of that includes products still within their expiration date but never opened. Researchers estimate an average family of four currently tosses out $590 per year, just in meat, fruits, vegetables and grain products.
There are three simple ways most people can significantly reduce their own food waste. One is careful purchase planning: devise menus and make up grocery lists accordingly. Another is knowing what lurks in the refrigerator and pantry that needs to be used while it is still useable. And understand that many kinds of food can be refrigerated or frozen and eaten later.
Nationwide, household food waste alone adds up to $43 billion, making it a serious economic problem.

AIDS Crisis
China, India and Russia are on the brink of an Africa-style Aids epidemic that could devastate the global economy and international security, the head of the UN Aids project has warned. Peter Piot, head of UNAIDS, said that the three countries are “perilously close to a tipping point” that could see localized outbreaks explode into national epidemics. Aids in all three countries was on the verge of breaking out of high risk groups made up of prostitutes and drug addicts, and into the general population, a situation mirrored in Africa 20 years ago. The condition could then spread “like wildfire” and “no country on earth will escape the impact,” he said.
People worry that the global resources now available for Africa could easily diminish, perhaps even vanish.
The HIV infection rate among adults in China, the most heavily populated country in the world, is 0.1 per cent, compared with 7.5 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa. Infection rates are also relatively low in India, the planet’s second most populated state.
Drugs companies have little incentive to pursue an Aids vaccine because the poorer countries that need it most cannot realistically afford to pay for it.
Although the US Government has spent money in the three risk countries highlighted by Mr Piot, including $50 million in India, none of them is among 15 “focus countries” targeted by President Bush’s $30 billion emergency Aids relief plan that includes 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Haiti, Guyana and Vietnam.

Danger Signs…
During a routine sale of U.S. Treasury bonds in early September, one of the essential pillars holding up the economy suddenly disappeared. Foreigners who have been regularly buying nearly half of all debt issued by the U.S. government suddenly stopped buying. The foreigners returned in force at the next Treasury auction, and the instance was quickly dismissed as an aberration. But the episode demonstrated how much the U.S. economy is dependent on other countries to bankroll its free-spending ways. That fragility is becoming even more precarious because of recent declines in the U.S. dollar to multiyear lows, some economists say. And many analysts don’t see anything that will stop the decline.
A cheaper dollar reduces the value of American securities, making them less attractive to foreign investors. That could eventually precipitate what some have called “the doomsday scenario” - Japan and China not only refusing to buy U.S. bonds, but selling some of their $1.3 trillion in reserves. The only way Uncle Sam could then find new customers for its IOUs would be by raising interest rates. And although higher rates are good for savers, they would be disastrous for a country weaned on cheap credit.
Ultimately, economists say, the solution is for the U.S. government to reduce its massive budget deficit. That would curb the need for Uncle Sam to issue so many Treasury notes. And the dollar would rise on its own, because the deficit is the main reason it continues to fall.

Stiff Armed…
A Pentagon spokesman said recently that Red Cross officials have “made their view known” that the indefinite detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amounts to torture, noting that “It’s their point of view,” but one not shared by the Bush administration. Lawrence Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, reiterated that the administration believes it has the legal right to detain such suspects until the end of the war on terrorism because they are unlawful combatants not subject to the protections of the Geneva conventions.
The New York Times reported recently that the International Committee of the Red Cross has accused the American military of using techniques “tantamount to torture” on prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo.

Guinea Pig?
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced plans to launch a new study in which participating low income families will have their children exposed to toxic pesticides over the course of two years. For taking part in these studies, each family will receive $970, a free video camera, a T-shirt, and a framed certificate of appreciation. The study entitled CHEERS (Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study) will look at how chemicals can be ingested, inhaled or absorbed by children ranging
from babies to 3 years old.
Talk about paying off one’s Holiday debts!

Neighborly?
Canada has started talking tough about a possible trade war with the United States over American duties which allows American companies to receive anti-dumping and countervailing reimbursal funds, a law that the World Trade Organization has ruled is illegal.
“Retaliation is not the preferred course of action, but this is about respecting international trade laws,” Canadian Trade Minister Jim Peterson said.
Canadian lumber exports to the U.S., worth about $10 billion annually, have been subject to heavy duties since May 2002. The U.S. maintains Canadian producers have an unfair advantage over their American counterparts through lower stumpage fees - the fee to cut wood on government land. Canadian producers have paid more than $3 billion US in cash deposits - mostly held in trust - and the Americans want to give that money to U.S. firms.
On Aug. 31, the WTO ruled that Canada, Brazil, Chile, the European Union, India, Japan, Mexico and South Korea could retaliate by up to 72 per cent of the annual anti-dumping and countervailing duties on exports disbursed to U.S. companies in a given year.
On Nov. 10, Canada joined in submitting to the WTO the final retaliation authorization request, which is required by the WTO before any retaliatory measures can be applied.

Right Victory
America’s religious scored a major legislative victory recently by inserting a clause into a spending bill to undermine state laws requiring hospitals to provide abortions. The provision, a last-minute addition to a $388bn budget bill, was approved by Congress without debate caps a two-year campaign by Catholic bishops and anti-abortion organisations to give legal cover to hospitals that refuse to perform terminations, or to even refer women to abortion providers.
After an uproar from Democrats, it was agreed that the Senate would hold a vote to repeal the measure in April. Until then women’s activists were trying to assess what impact the measure would have on those seeking abortions. Although US women have a guaranteed right to legal abortion under the supreme court’s landmark Roe v Wade verdict, hospitals and insurance companies are not compelled to provide the service, and individual doctors can refuse to perform abortions as a matter of conscience. But the law in some states does require hospitals and insurance companies to provide abortion services, and it is these legal requirements that are the target of the latest federal measure, officially known as the Abortion Anti-Discrimination Act.
Women’s activists fear that the sweeping language in the provision will discourage hospitals from providing information on abortion services, and also expose insurance companies to pressure from the Christian right, which has proved itself a formidable lobbying force.
The measure is the first of several provisions seeking to restrict abortion rights, due before Congress in the new year. Among them is a bill that would prevent minors from traveling outside their states to seek abortion counseling, as well as a measure that would require doctors to lecture patients on the pain felt by the fetus during an abortion, although scientists have not established whether a fetus does feel pain.

Choco-Cough
An ingredient in chocolate could be used to stop persistent coughs and lead to more effective medicines says a new study which found that theobromine, found in cocoa, was nearly a third more effective in stopping persistent coughs than codeine, currently considered the best cough medicine. The researchers, from Imperial College London (ICL), said the discovery could lead to more effective cough treatments. It was also found that unlike standard cough treatments, theobromine caused no adverse effects on the cardiovascular or central nervous systems, such as drowsiness.

Good Days?
Having sex is the high point of most women’s’ days, while commuting is the low point. And most women like being with their kids less than they will admit, according to a new study. While the results may not appear startling, the method used to assess mood represents a new and more accurate way of figuring out how happy people are, the researchers report in the journal Science. They propose that their tool could be used to plan social policy.
“Current measures of well-being and quality of life need to be significantly improved,” said Richard Suzman of the National Institute on Aging, which helped fund the study. “In the future I predict that this approach will become an essential part of national surveys seeking to assess the quality of life.”
For the study, David Schkade of the University of California San Diego and colleagues at Princeton University, University of Michigan and elsewhere studied more than 900 women. Usually, people are asked about their feelings in general for questionnaires on mood. The new method, called the Day Reconstruction Method, involves breaking the day into a sequence of episodes and rating each activity or moment as a kind of snapshot.
“‘Think of your day as a continuous series of scenes or episodes in a film. Give each episode a brief name that will help you remember it (for example, commuting to work, or at lunch with B’,” the women were told. The women rated each activity for positive and negative associations, with 6 being the strongest and 0 the weakest. Then the researchers analyzed the numbers.
“Grocery shopping and cleaning the house were rated lowest among 28 activities,” the researchers wrote. On average, the 900 women gave “Intimate relations” a positive score of 5.10, compared to 4.59 for socializing. Housework scored 3.73, which was better at least than working at 3.62 and commuting with a lowly score of 3.45. As for who the women preferred to be with, friends clearly won out with a positive score of 4.36. Children landed in the middle, after relatives and spouses. The boss scored just 3.52.
Sleep quality had a large effect on the enjoyment of life, the researchers found. Women who slept poorly, on average, enjoyed their day as little as a typical person enjoys commuting. Women who said they slept well enjoyed their day as much as most people enjoy watching television. And women who earned more were not necessarily happier, the survey found.

Green Eyes…
New research provides further evidence that substances in kale, spinach and other green vegetables help protect aging eyes from cataracts. In an experiment, investigators found that human eye cells treated with antioxidants called lutein and zeaxanthin showed less damage after being exposed to ultraviolet rays, the sunlight ingredient considered a major contributor to cataracts. Cataracts occur when proteins in the eye’s lens begin to clump together, forming a milky cloud that obscures vision. Currently, around 20 million Americans have cataracts, and research suggests that the more sunlight you are exposed to in life, the greater your risk.
It’s hard to say how much of each antioxidant people should get in their diets, given that little is known about how antioxidants in the bloodstream reach the eyes, study author Dr. Joshua A. Bomser said. “While the specific experiments haven’t been done...we know generally: eat more fruits and vegetables,” he said.
Foods that contain particularly high doses of lutein and zeaxanthin include kale, collard greens, broccoli, turnip greens and spinach.

Flower Phones?
Researchers at a British manufacturing firm have devised a novel way to recycle discarded mobile telephones - bury them and watch them transform into the flower of your choice. The team have created a mobile telephone case or cover that when discarded can simply be placed in compost in such a way that just weeks later the case will begin to disintegrate and turn into a flower.
Mobile telephones are one of the most quickly discarded items of consumer electronics. Rapid changes in technology and taste means customers constantly upgrade their phones leaving behind more and more discarded phones. However there is increasing pressure on all manufacturers by policy makers to find ways of recycling discarded goods, and also pressure from some customers who want to feel they are making an environmentally sensitive purchase. This new research by engineers a novel way that a mobile telephone manufacturer can meet these demands. For the first prototype telephones they have used dwarf sunflower seeds.