Onteora Votes In 'Large Parcel' Rates

          The school board's newest member, David Patterson, who cast the only dissenting vote on the option, complained about a "cowardly legislature" which put pushed the dirty work onto local school boards but Onteora, critics point out, is only one of two boards out of scores of eligible districts in the state which choose to adopt the plan and the other was in an industrial district for which the large parcel bill was actually fashioned.
            Olive representatives have always maintained that the law was not designed to make every neighborhood's taxes equal regardless of other factors but for special circumstances in industrial districts which are utterly different than those which prevail in Olive. They have a right to feel scammed, they say quietly, because they, unlike Shandaken and Woodstock, were left "out of the loop" when the bill was in assembly and learned of it only after its passage. They also question the mysterious disappearance of certain lines in the bill during this period which would have clarified its intentions in regard to reservoir properties- details which Olive officials say would clearly have exempted their situation from the bill's purpose.
            Representatives of Olive point out that, in a time of soaring property values, Woodstock's property re-evaluation of 2004 lowered the town's worth from $1,035,000,000 to $945,000,000, giving itself a 10% reduction in its taxes. Meanwhile, Olive's successful press on ORPS for a new assessment on reservoir properties gives Woodstock another 40 plus% reduction while raising Olive's taxes substantially.
            "New York City has been filing legal claims against the Town of Olive since the reservoir was completed- the first on record being (in) 1917," Olive Supervisor Brendt Leifeld said at the meeting as a pair of New York State Troopers looked on from the back of the room, as if expecting trouble.
            Leifeld continued by noting that after all of the ensuing decades of a profoundly undervalued assessment from ORPS, a more realistic figure had finally emerged to allow Olive "to move forward as it has wanted to do for many years..." with their own new re-val (to be conducted by the specialty firm of Cole Layer Trumble) which is expected to hike taxes yet higher.
            "If this board adopts the large parcel option," reads a missive from Olive's law firm to the school board, "Woodstock will see another 3% reduction in its taxes, while...Olive will see an additional 27% increase." The memo asks what was "fair and equitable" about that?
            Board member Neil Eisenberg, at the meeting, said he thought the notion of the LP option "taking money from one pocket and putting it into another" was "ridiculous" but Olive residents insist that is precisely what is happening under the law and that Woodstock officials are snickering behind their hands about it.
            "New York City took our land and now Woodstock is going to take the taxes that the City pays on it! How is that fair?" asked an Olivebridge resident.
            A consensus of opinion among Olive residents after the vote seemed to be that, once adopted, the large parcel tax shift, like the reservoir itself would be forever in place or, at least, in place as long as the present school board sits. Not only that, someone added in the hallway during the recess between the large parcel vote and the rest of the day's business, a serious look at how the board has been administering the funds is long overdue.
            Olive Town Clerk, Sylvia Rozzelle, numbers herself among those disaffected by the school board's position. She recounts her recent attempts to obtain contact numbers for school board members being rebuffed by a woman at the school snarling "Well, if you folks in Olive have to pay the taxes we do in Woodstock, you'd..."
            "Well, what did that have to do with getting phone numbers for publicly elected officials?" Rozzelle wondered and tried again on another day. On this occasion, she reached a business administrator who told her that the numbers weren't public information and "If you and the Town of Olive had done a reval, you wouldn't be in this situation!" Huh?
            Rozzelle was made to file a written request for the numbers and make another phone call a week later when the promised fax wasn't forthcoming.
            "I wasn't asking for home phone numbers, just contact numbers for public
officials," she says shaking her head in amazement. "But that's what I got-home numbers with their business numbers blacked out."
            An alternate strategy, which began forming immediately after the vote, incorporates New York City into the mix. The City, it is observed, has had no say in the large parcel option and isn't it, after all, THEIR money which is being shifted about by the option?
            "There's a lot of people in town, right now, who want to secede from the Onteora School District," Rozzelle observed. "That would give Olive its OWN option and people want to look into those aspects of it... New York City can spend $2.8 million for a new police barracks here, they may very well entertain the idea of building us some new buildings so they wouldn't be paying as much taxes to the Onteora School and subsidizing Woodstock and Shandaken. Years ago, we would contract to send our kids to Kingston High School if they wanted the sports activities or other things not provided here. So, there's a way to contract per child and send them to other districts. Meanwhile, both New York City and Olive would benefit enormously by having our own system."
            Rozzelle harkened back to the "old days" when the Onteora District was first
centralizing and "Olive was the only school district operating in the black." In the years between 1947 and 1952 when Olive voted to take in Shandaken and Woodstock, who were both financially in the red and needed a wider and stronger tax base, it was the neighborly thing to do. Those days may be numbered, however, according to a distinct rumbling through the hills of Olive carried on the voices of many irate citizens.

A Pause In The Permitting Process  

           Whether and which issues will be explored in that setting is up to DEC Commissioner Erin Crotty, based on rulings expected early next year by presiding judge Richard Wissler, who explained that the record will remain open until all closing arguments and subsequent reply briefs have been received. Alluding to the volume of material he anticipates, Wissler, jokingly and amongst counsel, referred to the to the briefings period now beginning as "the issues conference that follows the issues conference."
            The issues, in many cases, hinge on what exactly is required both of the applicant and of DEC under SEQRA and elsewhere under New York State's broader Environmental Conservation Law. Both were subjects that often drew widely differing opinions from counsel and which will likely be determined, after briefings, almost entirely on their legal merits. Dynamically however, Crossroads counsel Dan Ruzow, a co-author of The SEQRA Handbook, generally sought  the last word on what SEQRA doesn't require, while Catskill Preservation Coalition counsel Marc Gerstman, a former lead counsel for DEC,  generally aimed for the last word on what it does. Their exchanges, polite but sometimes charged, seemed heightened at times by occasional condescending reference from the Crossroads' table, as when Ruzow referred to CPC as "supplicants" in the process, to which Gerstman responded by asking the judge whether any special liturgical procedures should apply.
            On substance however, the issue of community character was revisited on two of the conference's three closing days. Olive Supervisor Berndt Leifeld spoke of three letters sent to DEC, none responded to, seeking traffic studies on behalf of his town in connection with the project. "We'd heard about increases of 300-400 cars per hour. If that's true we're going to need some kind of traffic control."  Leifeld also referenced a 1990 DOT report that included feasibility studies for 4 lanes of traffic on Route 28 through the town's principal hamlets. "You'd have to take half of Boiceville's business district out of there," he said.    
            CPC witness Dr. Nicholas Miller, whose work includes studies for the National Park Service, testified that the DEIS contains "no evaluation" of the project's noise impact on the forest preserve, which he said "would be intrusive." Miller said that actual sound audibility is its "real measure of impact," and that current DEC policy "is not the appropriate approach." 
            "Our site is zoned for development and use," responded Crossroads' Ruzow, calling Dr. Miller's testimony "another novel approach to analysis that we find objectionable."
            Perhaps the most surprising witness to speak, called on behalf of Delaware County, was Hardenburgh's Kingdon Gould, the Catskills' largest landowner and one of the original founders of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development. Gould's unprepared remarks, both quiet and passionate, seemed to capture a measure of the emotional struggle surrounding the issue. "I see our community being driven apart by the proponents of this project and the contestants of it," he said. I hope that conciliation will take place. "
            Gould generally spoke favorably of the project, calling it "restoration- surely not radical change," though he also called it "overly ambitious" from the standpoint of its environmental impact.
            Catskill Watershed Corporation Chairman Alan Rosa, speaking personally and as a former Middletown supervisor, spoke of changes over time in the region, about how "the second-home industry tears our mountains all to pieces," and about the need as identified in two 1990's studies for a destination resort in the area. When Gerstman raised the issue of Crossroads' managing partner Dean Gitter's role in those studies, Ruzow said that "the records speak for themselves" and that "it's inappropriate to suggest those reports were somehow biased in favor of the project." CPC co-counsel Cheryl Roberts responded by placing into evidence a May 22, 2003 Phoenicia Times article, indicating Gitter had actually chaired both committees and selected the consultants used, many of whom have also played central roles in the preparation of the resort's DEIS.
            New York City's DEP for its part, continued to maintain a fairly low profile at the conference, though it did re-call as a witness Jeff Donahoe, president of RKG Associates, on the subjects of secondary and induced growth, housing, labor,  and other issues. 
            "The conclusions in the DEIS defy reality," said Donahoe, who said the project would "cannibalize" the area's existing workforce, to which John Feingold of AKRF, responding for Crossroads, said that "we remain convinced there is an adequate labor pool within a commuting distance."  Donahoe also challenged the comparative relevancy of the three case studies used in the DEIS; Windham, Gore Mountain, and Greylock Glen in the Berkshires, which isn't actually built. Crossroads Ruzow however defended their choice, saying "in any case, SEQRA has no requirement for case studies."
            But it was on the issue of the Belleayre Mountain Ski Center, and of the resort's potential cumulative impacts that the most heightened dialogue of the closing sessions took place.  Since late July, Crossroads Ventures has issued two press releases on the subject, one of which appeared verbatim as a page1 news story in a Margaretville newspaper. But both, according to Gerstman, attributed fictitious positions to his group of 11 local, regional, and national organizations.
            "I want to make our position perfectly clear, "said Gerstman. "The CPC supports the Belleayre Mountain Ski Center expansion. I will not tolerate our position being mischaracterized in order to drive a divisive stake into this community. And that's the only reason why those press releases were issued by Crossroads Ventures."
            "We are concerned," he continued, "that the exploitation of resources by this project will leave little room for the future Belleayre Mountain Ski Center expansion; that the project may create conditions, may deplete water resources, or may have impacts on traffic which somehow will not allow the ski center to expand. The Belleayre Mountain Ski Center must be protected-The lack of analysis here represents a gaping hole in the evaluation of the cumulative impacts of this (resort) project."
            But Gerstman saved his most cutting remarks on the issue for his old employer:
            "I actually find it astonishing that DEC staff will not step up and protect the potential for its future project," said Gerstman, who introduced into evidence a March 2003 Powerpoint presentation given by Superintendent Tony Lanza at a well-attended public meeting on the ski area's expansion plans. "For (DEC Regional Attorney Vincent) Altieri to talk about (that) as if it were not a DEC record  "just defies logic," he said.
            "This is a project that was moving forward," concluded Gerstman, "that had the official imprimatur of the director of the Belleayre Mountain Ski Center, and the brakes were put on it; we believe as a result of the Belleayre Resort project. The DEC staff should be aggressively protecting its resource and the ability of that resource to expand, and they have not done so-This project is married to the ski center-to ignore the potential cumulative impacts of this (resort) violates both the spirit of SEQRA and the letter of SEQRA."
            Ruzow however, expressed a different view on behalf of Crossroads, essentially saying when the mountain's ready to expand, it'll just have to factor the resort in, but not the other way around.
            "We can't analyze the impacts of premature or speculative projects" said Ruzow-"The Belleayre Mountain Ski Center has not yet reached the stage of planning for any future expansion-Projects that are dormant or lack funding or are glimmers in somebody's eye do not belong in a cumulative impact statement-other developments have an obligation to take into account our project from a cumulative impact point of view. These projects came up after our scoping outline. We don't have an obligation to amend or supplement our environmental analysis every time somebody comes forward with a project."
            DEC's Altieri, for his part, maintained his position that there is no project or expansion slated for Belleayre, and that that "our vision of the future of this mountain" is contained in its 1998 Unit Management Plan.
            Reflecting on the conference as a whole, Crossroads' Ruzow said that it had been "run in a different way than other issues conferences, providing the prospective intervening parties essentially an unlimited opportunity to present their case. The decision as to which issues, if any, are appropriate to go forward is really a blank slate for the judge, because he has been so broadly informed about what they're saying. We think that many of the offers of proof submitted reflect an academic interpretation of what are regulatory requirements. They don't rise to the level of 'significance.' And so we feel confident that the judge will be able to dispose of many of the arguments without actual adjudication."
            "The simple fact is that our experts have repeatedly and consistently revealed the shoddy analysis and incomplete assessment put forth by Crossroads Ventures." said Gerstman. "SEQRA and the hearing process require full disclosure of the significant impacts, reasonable alternatives, and even the benefits of the project so that the Commissioner can make an informed decision. Thanks to CPC's independent, nationally-renowned experts, the Commissioner will have that record."
            Notwithstanding Middletown supervisor Len Udder's view that the project's  impacts "don't amount to a pimple on an elephant's ass," "This is only a hotel project," concluded Ruzow. "Not a nuclear site."
            Fallout from the conference isn't expected to be measurable for a number of months.

       Actually, in my case it did inspire some feelings. Like dread, and the desire to be unavailable for "the term of service."  A term of service consists of "one trial or one week."
            Regardless of my reservations, I called in to find out when I had been called to appear and went to the Ulster County courthouse on the specified date to perform my honorable civic duty.
            Some 200 potential jurors were seated in a courtroom, being processed in a classroom style roll call. To say that some of the juror group held disgruntled dispositions would be an understatement. Everyone had a generally displeased appearance, ranging from "resigned to hours of inescapable boredom" to "hostile and looking for an object of blame."  I was almost certainly the youngest person in the group, and certainly the youngest in appearance. A few minutes late, I took a seat between a man who was clearly running on a short fuse, and an older woman who appeared prepared for a state of deep sleep just a few minutes into the process.
            After the clerk had finished attendance, Commissioner of Jurors Richard
Mathews addressed the group, explaining the process and fielding questions. After patiently answering a few combative, pointed questions from the more belligerent jurors, he split us up for the trials we could be potentially seated for.
            It had barely been 20 minutes before we were informed that our trial had settled and that we were dismissed. We were thanked, and assured that it was our presence that had caused the settlement. It was fairly painless, compared to what most people seemed to be gearing up for.
            Still, even after appearing once, each juror is required to call in each night of the week they serve to find out if they are to appear the next day.
            Of course, once wasn‚t enough. I was called back three days later, and three
days later I was sitting among the same group, albeit a slightly angrier and more impatient group.  This day, one tardy gentleman was asked for his juror number, which he confidently proclaimed to be 210.
            "We called up to 200," said the clerk. "I‚m number 210...ohhhhhh. That‚s bad," said the man, clearly embarrassed.                         The discourse was met by a wave of laughter from the juror group, who seemed cruelly amused. After all, the next worse thing to showing up for jury duty when you have to is showing up for jury duty when you don‚t have to.
            To his relief, he was informed he could stay and would receive credit for his service.
            Within ten minutes of roll call, we were informed that we were supposed to
be seated for a criminal case. This plan was facing one minor roadblock: the plaintiff was on the run. Apparently, to the bewilderment of his attorney, and everyone else, the plaintiff had neglected to show up and now was presumably in hiding. The judge had issued a  bench warrant for the
plaintiff, meaning the police were to search for him. This meant we were done for the day.
            This time, we were done for good.
            Now it will be another four years before I’m eligible for service again, without ever having been interviewed for a jury. Pretty easy this time around.
            Getting called for jury duty is surely an inconvenience. People have jobs, and children to take care of, and their time is valuable to them. This time seems to creep by at a crawl even for short stints at the courthouse. The unhappiness at getting called for jury duty is tempered by the patience and understanding of people in charge of the jury process, who no doubt
routinely face the rancor of belligerent unwilling participants.
            I was truly impressed by the juror staff and Commissioner Mathews. We were treated like the only jury pool to serve for the court, though clearly the same speech is recited to a new jury every week, and the same questions fielded. They consistently went to lengths to assure us the importance of our participation.
            As Commissioner Mathews puts it on the letter accompanying the summons, "Your participation in the jury process is crucial as it helps to insure the individual rights of everyone in the community."
            After all, if I were wrongfully tried for a crime, I would want a jury of reasonable people to help acquit me. Wouldn’t you?

 Mr. Rights...

           Ratner, 61, initially dropped roots in the area with his friend, legal legend William Kunstler who died in 1995, the two first renting a house together in Olivebridge and later building on adjoining properties on South Hollow Road. "Bill used to defend everybody in Olive," Ratner laughed. And while he hasn't taken up his old buddy's mantle as the town's public defender, he and his wife Karen do host the annual Bill Kunsler Memorial Softball Game at Davis Park, where nobody needs to umpire and fairness always decides who's on first.
            Recently over a cheeseburger at the Boiceville Inn, Ratner talked about his latest high-profile case, successfully defending some of the 700 or so Afghans and others held by the US government, some since January 2002, at "Camp Delta," the military's maximum-security facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His new book, Guantanamo; What the World Should Know, has quietly become required reading in Washington, and may soon trigger a congressional investigation into the subject.
            "Guantanamo is something vastly different from what the average American would think of as a prison," Ratner writes. "It is a twenty-first century pentagon experiment that was, in fact, outlawed by the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It is an interrogation camp and interrogation camps are completely and flatly illegal-It has provided an opportunity for the US government to hold people outside any legal or moral system-where cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment ' even torture ' is practiced, and it is all utterly illegal-Guantanamo is like Dante's ninth circle of hell. Temperatures often reach 110 degrees-the place is infested with scorpions and banana rats, the detainees sleep on concrete floors with no mattresses and the toilet is a hole in the floor-it is a horrific situation from a physical, psychological, and legal point of view."  
            "Since 9-11," said Ratner, "one of the worst aspects of the 'war on terror' has been these indefinite detentions; imprisonment without hearings, no legal process, and on top of it, torture. The official line was that these guys were the worst of the worst, but actually many weren't guilty of anything. A lot of them of them got turned in for money. We were offering $5,000 - a fortune in Afghanistan or Pakistan - for 'suspects', and a lot of them were picked up for the reward, or to settle old grudges."  
            Ratner's victory in Rasul v. Bush will assure that these people can finally have access to counsel and to our legal system to plead their cases. And the court's 6-3 vote does affirm that their detention without hearings violates both US and international law, with its majority opinion citing as precedent and actually quoting the Magna Carta, the 800 year-old foundation of our Common Law with its basic guarantees of process, the right to trial, and its prohibitions against executive detention.
            "It just shows how far beyond the pale this administration really is," said Ratner. "It's really off the charts. What the Supreme Court said is that there's no place that's outside the law, everyone should get a hearing, and even the President is bound by prohibitions against torture."
            Those prohibitions do appear to figure prominently in the formulation of Bush administration policy, based on opinions from John Ashcroft's Justice Department and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales that prisoners detained in the "war on terror" overseas are not prisoners of war, and not entitled to protection from coercive interrogation, torture and other basic rights under the Geneva Convention. Central to their argument is that recognizing international law on this matter could result in the prosecution of the president and others for war crimes, in the event violations occur.  Within the administration only Secretary of State Colin Powell, opposes this view, saying amongst other things, that "it reverses over a century of US policy and practice in supporting the Geneva Conventions, and undermines the protections of the law of war for our troops."
            "Guantanamo has become THE symbol in the Moslem world for everything that's gone wrong with America," said Ratner.  "What really worries me is the message we're sending to the Moslem world, because to them Guantanamo and Abu Ghirab are pieces of the puzzle we represent, and inhumane treatment has become the order of the day. Do you think these people believe that torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners is something that's dreamed up by 20 year-old privates working in a Baghdad jail? No, the US military is a disciplined force. And do you think Al Jazerra didn't show the pictures of Donald Rumsfeld and a table full of generals, refusing to answer the simple question 'Who was in charge there?' They did show them, over and over."
            "So they must figure if we can do these kinds of things, why can't they? I'm not saying those beheadings and so on might not have happened had it not been for this climate we've created. But it used to be that the US really was a moral force in the world.  And right now the whole notion that we have any moral authority at all is just absurd to the rest of the world.  It's like we've precipitated an end to the Age of Enlightenment. It cuts at the heart of what freedom is in this country. It's made the world very unsafe. It's made our country very unsafe."
            "This election coming up is not about Republicans or Democrats, said Ratner.      "It's about getting rid of a clique of people who've run roughshod over our fundamental rights. I just pray people are going to get it before it's too late."