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Changing
The Changes
The plan recommends
two Kindergarten-through-grade four elementary schools,
one five-through-eight middle school and one nine-through-twelve
high school. Unsaid is the common belief that under such
a plan, Phoenicia School would be the third school closed,
due to the current board configuration with a solid Olive
majority.
“I would like to request that what the architects
are doing along with Plan A, that we add Plan C and get
a cost analysis and compare this in Plan C,” said
O’Connor.
KSQ have recommended “Plan A” with the consensus
of administrators, teachers, principals and staff. The plan
includes three Kindergarten-through-grade five elementary
schools, one six-through-eight middle school and one nine-through-twelve
high school.
At the recent meeting Board President Dave Patterson said,
“Cindy and I had a conversation earlier today and
it is not meant to point the architects in a different direction…we
(the school board) gave them the collective head nod last
week that we thought we would go with the Plan A recommendations
and Cindy is asking to see if Plan C is somewhat viable
from a cost perspective, simply just asking the questions
as why it is not as good as plan A.”
Responding to Patterson, O’Connor said, “Exactly
and I think we owe that to the taxpayers, to look into that
plan.”
Board trustee Rita Vanacore said she would like to see deeper
financial comparisons between Plan A and C.
Board member Marino D’Orazio asked, “Would that
mean only two elementary schools... what would happen to
the third building then?”
Patterson replied, “We do not have that information.
Cindy is just asking for a cost comparison between Plan
A and Plan C.”
D’Orazio noted that the community, Future of the District
committee and administration needs a voice for what ultimately
could be a very decisive issue.
School board trustee Herb Rosenfeld agreed that Plan C should
be explored and asked for input from educators.
“Plan A” does not give a positive or negative
cost affective analysis. It notes that the elementary schools
can still maintain a “neighborhood” region.
Plan C notes that it could be more economical to operate
but “at least one of the ‘regional neighborhoods’
within the district will not be directly served by an elementary
school.”
KSQ plans are posted on the school website at www.onteora.k12.ny.us.
In ongoing budget discussions, it was announced that the
district will once again ask voters to approve two new busses
to replace eleven-year-old vehicles with high mileage during
school voting season this spring. A thirty passenger wheelchair
accessible bus is needed and a 66 passenger bus, at a total
cost of $156,000. The vehicles in need of replacing are
a 29-child, 19-adult wheelchair accessible bus with 161,541
miles and a 66-passenger bus with 178,572 miles. Although
the vehicles pose no safety risk, there is more maintenance
needed.
The proposed transportation budget includes district owned
busses, staff and garage maintenance at a total cost of
$1,004,299. The fleet of private busses contracted by the
district was not included. The administration is currently
going through a re-bid process with all contract busses
in an attempt to come up with a better price. Business Administrator
Victoria McLaren explained that the contracts have been
rolled over for many years and they wish to review their
bids hoping to come up with better cost effective measures,
but this does not affect any changes with district busses.
There are 32 runs by district employees and 33 by contract
drivers. The district owns a total of 16 vehicles.
The 2006-2007 BOCES budget was presented with an increase
of 5.25 percent or $130,888.00. Most of the additional cost
is coming from instructional support and McLaren noted that
the high school is currently going through a population
“bubble” causing services in this area to increase.
During public be heard, Jean Rose, a twenty year director
of theatrical productions at Onteora voiced concern about
the state of the auditorium at Onteora high school. “I
find it not only embarrassing but a safety hazard, when
you look at the seats and you physically do a count, it
is between thirty and forty seats that have been chopped
out of the auditorium,” said Rose. “The remaining
seats are a safety hazard; I have had students, parents,
guest instructors sit on chairs and injuries where they
fall and get bruises…I am concerned with the state
of the seating in the auditorium.”
She also complained about the rigging equipment to the stage
that was removed for safety concerns and nothing was replaced.
“I would like, on behalf of the students, to implore
you to please look at this seriously, it should be an operational
concern and not a capital concern.”
Patterson and D’Orazio both stated that they have
made complaints in the past, and that they fully agree with
her and would like the auditorium problems resolved. Rose
suggested that the school look into purchasing used seats
for the auditorium. Patterson requested that she send information
she may have to the administration and school board.
In other news… Superintendent Justine Winters introduced
Christine Downs, the new lunch manager that will be replacing
Gary Ecklund.
The school board unanimously approved the 2006 foreign language
exchange program with Germany, which will see fifteen German
students and two teachers at Onteora from March 27 through
April 15 and Onteora students travel to Germany June 26
through July 17. Students raise all funds, with additional
chaperone stipends and transportation allotments included
in the 2005-2006 budget.
Reval
Impacts Going Out
But don’t
expect to question the impacts this week. Informal meetings
on the tax impact statements, which will show how much last
year’s taxes would be given new valuation, with equal
numbers going up as go down, proportionally, are currently
set to take place March 6 to 18, with appointments made
via the Olive Assessor’s office at 657-8137.
On Tuesday, February 28, reval manager Steve Beccio and
town Assessor-in-Training Bill Cook were going over veterans
exemption letters to point out to those taxpayers, among
the town’s 3115 or so property owners, who will be
available for tax exemptions of 15 percent if served during
a war, 25 percent if seen combat in a war, and up to 75
percent if disabled during a war.
Moreover, everyone was on pins and needles awaiting tax
impact figures from the county, which were not to be available
until after Thursday’s meeting, along with an analysis
of what, overall, has gone up, gone down or stayed basically
the same, tax-load wise.
Beccio and Cook joked about how neither would show up AFTER
impact statements. Beccio added an acedote about having
done such a thing once, following a reval in neighboring
Sullivan County, and having to answer tax questions from
individually angry residents for hours.
He pointed out on Tuesday that what he does is not about
amounts of taxes, a situation that only a town board can
determine, but the manner in which tax loads are distributed
between properties.
He said the most important information property owners have
received to date were the property descriptions they were
asked to look over and comment on in recent months. It was
on such information, based on past descriptions, many of
them handwritten, as well as outside site visits and a few
times when actual entry was allowed into homes, that the
town’s new values were set… along with recent
sales figures for homes throughout Olive.
Beccio said that since the town’s previous values
were at approximately 1/182 of full value, it will be hard
to compare properties based on prior tax information once
grievances start coming in in lieu of the town’s annual
tax grievance day, set this year for May 24. Starting that
morning the town’s five-person assessment review board,
made up of Paul Maloney, Claire Collins, Ron Bergeron, Bert
Ketchum and Doris Blakeley, will hear and judge complaints
from local residents who feel their assessments are too
high.
Beccio said that impacts will be grouped into increments,
from tax hikes or losses of less than $100 per year to those
between $100 and $300 a year, between $300 and $500 a year,
and over $500. He noted that he would not, and could not,
go into specifics about impacts. Previously, town assessments
were at under 1 percent of actual value, rendering comparables
difficult to make.
He said residents should remember that for every assessment,
or tax hike, there is an equal tax drop. He added that the
reval process has indicated “quite a bit of difference”
in how local properties are valued.
“People have to remember this is not about taxes.
All I can do is discern value,” Beccio said. “People
can try and demonstrate their ideas about such things by
grievance day.”
The informal meetings in March, he added, will be to answer
specific questions about values and property descriptions.
“What we did here was develop a model based on sales
over the last three years, adjusted for inflation, and apply
it to the properties in town,” Beccio said.
Asked whether an artificially high market would effect values,
he said not, as is the case, is all values go up or down
depending on that market.
Actual impacts, Beccio added, will be very iffy until the
county sets final figures for the massive Ashokan Reservoir
that is the town’s largest property sometime right
before May 1. At the moment, the assessors could not discuss
such assessments other than to note that the figures reached
two years ago in a settlement between New York City and
the town were only for Large Parcel valuation and do not
apply to town revaluation. A newly hired firm, Empire State
Appraisal Consultants, is currently going over such figures
in tandem with hired attorneys for the town.
“The number we’re using for the impact statements
going out later this week was put in by the county, based
on last year’s figures and inflation,” said
Beccio. “It’s all going to turn out to be relative,
excepting the general information regarding whether one’s
value has gone up or down.”
More on actual impacts when we come back March 30.
During the interim, feel free to let us know at olivefreepress@aol.com
just how your impacts have gone and whether the current
process has seemed fair or not.
Good luck!
It’s
On To Albany Now
The matter was
brought before the coalition by town of Olive officials,
who saw school taxes for the rest of their town skyrocket
in 2004 when the Onteora school district decided to enact
what is commonly referred to as the "large parcel"
law and remove the Ashokan Reservoir property from the town's
tax base. At the time, school officials argued that non-reservoir
properties in Olive had been paying proportionately less
than similarly valued properties in other towns within the
school district, like Shandaken and Woodstock.
Olive's taxes more than doubled while increases were minimal
in Shandaken and Woodstock after the law’s implimentation.
But the Board of Education reversed the decision in 2005
after a change in board personnel.
Olive Supervisor Berndt Leifeld, along with Deputy Supervisor
Bruce LaMonda, is trying to get the reservoirs removed from
state law so the school district would no longer have the
option of enacting it.
On Monday, LaMonda, a member of the watershed coalition's
Executive Committee, moved one step closer to that goal,
but committee Chairman Patrick Meehan made it clear that
the coalition was only asking state lawmakers to amend the
law. The final decision, Meehan said, is up to the Legislature.
Of the 10 members that voted, only Shandaken Supervisor
Robert Cross Jr. opposed the measure. Cross told the committee
it was making a mistake because, even though they believe
they are acting to protect the towns that host reservoirs,
called impoundment towns, they are also hurting the towns
that border them. The result, he said, could be that the
coalition may suffer an unraveling, as he believes some
of the member towns may choose to drop their membership.
"I know there's a couple towns that will be hurt by
it greatly," Cross said.
Coalition member Len Utter, the supervisor of the Delaware
County town of Middletown, said he wants the city's reservoirs
removed from the law because, if it's unchanged, the law
will lead to battles throughout the watershed, similar to
what was seen in the Onteora school district.
Olive residents were furious about the Onteora's 2004 decision
to use the large-parcel law, so much so that the Town Board
considered seceding from the school district. Instead, Olive
residents elected some of their own to the school board.
A
Jar Of Olives... High Wire Maestro
“For me, it is safer than daily life,” he says
of his exploits on the wire, which have brought him to crossings
in or over the Cathedrals of Notre-Dame and St. John the
Divine, the Pompidou Center, the Javitz Convention Center,
the Louisiana Superdome, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and
innumerable other sites. “I have designed everything
carefully and installed the cable myself,” he muses
in his French accent. “I love the process. It is the
safety net of wisdom, stronger than any nylon net. I never
take a risk on the wire. On the ground, I am clumsy. I break
glasses, I sprain my ankle, but when I am juggling or on
the wire, I am pretty clever. It has to do with concentration.”
Petit taught himself magic at the age of six, juggling at
13, tightrope walking at 14, and he left home and family
at 17 to travel the world, having been expelled from five
different schools for practicing magic, juggling, and stealing
the teacher’s wallet. He was, in fact, a pickpocket
for several months, until he decided he did not want to
spend his life in jail. “Now I do it onstage, and
people applaud,” he says. Petit is currently at work
translating his sixth and most recent book, “The Art
of the Pickpocket: A Primer”, not so much a guide
to thievery as a philosophical contemplation of his poetic
approach to an art that he calls “a magnificent ballet
of the hand.” Two chapters address methods of protecting
oneself from pickpockets, and the book is illustrated with
Petit’s drawings and examples from his collection
of pickpocket art.
Like the lectures he gives to students and businesspeople
around the world, the book is a means of sharing his unique
way of thinking, creating, and living. Petit explains, “I
try to broaden people’s horizons.” When a self-taught
man who has walked a quarter-mile in the air without a safety
net tells people anything is possible, they tend to believe
him.
He was recently invited to address a religious group in
Italy. In To Reach
the Clouds, his book on the World Trade Center walk, “I
talk a lot about the god in the wire, the god in the shoes,
the god in the wind, the god in the towers, although I don’t
believe in gods. They wanted to know, what do people who
don’t believe in gods believe in?” The answer,
summarized briefly, is that “I have a kind of faith
in ‘secret lives’ inhabiting objects we take
for inanimate. Actually, I’m sure it’s us human
beings who insufflate our own energy into certain inanimate
things that we link ourselves to. Such communion can only
happen if one is ‘possessed’, passionate about
the linking with the thing in question. As a wirewalker,
passionately in love with the wire, I see in the steel cable
a live animal, a soul-carrying object with which, with whom
I must communicate.”
This winter he was awarded the prestigious Chevalier des
Arts and Lettres by the French Minister of Culture. “It’s
a big deal over there, but I took it with a smile,”
he comments. He and the French Minister are currently planning
two events, a high-wire walk in the steel and glass dome
of the renovated Grand Palais in Paris, and a hurricane
benefit in New Orleans. Meanwhile, Petit is studying Spanish
so he can give a lecture to CEO’s in Spain. He could
have an interpreter, but he is drawn to the challenge of
speaking to them in their native language.
Yet another project in the works is a documentary about
the World Trade Center walk. Although he has had multiple
offers for the rights to his story from film companies over
the years, he felt it was too personal to hand over. Now
he has found an independent company, Red Box Productions,
that will allow him to be intimately involved in the film
and is about to sign a contract that will immerse him in
filmmaking for a couple of years.
Then there’s his plan to do a show in Easter Island
with Saugerties artist and inventor John Kahn, who spends
several months a year there and wants to mount a benefit
to help the residents. Petit visualizes a high-wire walk
in which the islanders will participate by helping to set
up the rigging, chanting as they walk along on the ground
beside him, and creating an event that will draw media attention
to the isolated island..
Locally, he would like to work with Olive resident Valerie
Fanarjian, whom he calls “an incredible artist—she
constantly creates. At dinner, she scribbles all night on
the napkins, makes collages, folds them up. She used to
have an art center on Route 28. Many local artists would
come and meet each other, and they had model drawing classes.
I would like to associate myself with her and create something
for artists.”
Life is not simple for a man with so many ideas and ambitions,
particularly when they are coupled with high ideals and
limitations of time, space, and money. “Ten days after
the World Trade Center walk, I had so many offers to appear
in ads, I could have been a millionaire, but I didn’t
take any of them. It would have killed my soul,” he
says. His paying work takes him to many parts of the world,
and he maintains an office in the Cathedral of St. John
the Divine, where he is artist-in-residence, and a room
in Paris that is too small to be a legal residence. “It’s
really a large broom closet. I’ve had it for forty
years.”
Behind his little house in Shokan, he is building a barn
by hand, using eighteenth-century tools and methods. He
uses the barn to store his high-wire equipment, and in winter
he practices there for three hours a day, juggling and walking
the tightrope, since the high wire in the garden ices up
in cold weather. There are still two windows and a door
missing from the barn, and he looks at it every day, thinking
how quickly he could finish it with modern materials, but
he can’t bring himself to do it. “It’s
going to have hinges of wood and will hang slightly askew
so the door will close by itself, a little trick I learned
from a book. I love this dialogue with matter, although
it makes an absurdity of my life.”
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