Still Reeling From It All

The petition, containing around a thousand signatures, was mailed to Senator John C. Bonacic, Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, Trustees of the Onteora School District and Senator Larkin, himself.
An attached letter asks the cooperation of all parties in amending the law to its original intent, pointing out that "school taxes in Olive ROSE HUNDREDS TO THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS in an instant. The result of this divisive legislation is seen in the defeated school budget, in the animosity among towns within the Onteora School District created by this ger and frustration of a town that has had over half of its tax base taken away."
In reference to the complex factors which structure the concerned evaluations which the town feels has been ignored, the letter stresses that, "Instead of equalizing a tax base, the legislation has created wide swings in assessment based on antiquated assessment records."
Without mentioning other methods to address the situation being pondered by
town officials and energetically urged by residents, the letter proposes that "the only way to equalize assessment is to have a total DISTRICT reval."
Anecdotal information, meanwhile, shows that many Town of Olive residents are hurting since the receipt of Onteora Central School District tax bills early in September, incorporating a 59 percent tax hike for the town due to the school board's decision to invoke the large-parcel tax legislation for this year.
            "It's very difficult here," said Olive town council member Linda Burkhardt. "There have been a lot of phone calls to the town clerk, people calling in tears, afraid they're not going to be able to live here any more." Despite letters in local newspapers from Olive residents calling for a tax revolt, Burkhardt said, "That doesn't make sense. It's not going to help, so we're telling people to pay, or it will end up costing them more. I'm recommending they write on the bill 'Paid under protest.'"
            According to Onteora's tax bills, an Olive homeowner who paid $635 last year had to pay $1022 this year, on a house whose market value was estimated at $86,000, while the assessed value was $950. Onteora treasurer Bill Thornton cautioned that both values would go up once Olive does its planned reval, which will probably not be completed until 2006.                Added Burkhardt, "The people I'm worried about are the young families who are just getting by. You hit them with a tax bill that is doubling, and where are they going to get the money? They have to stop spending on something else, and what's it going to be? Food? It's created quite a hardship. It makes you wonder, is this what they wanted? For the amount people are saving in other towns, is it worth it?"
"We're all very upset," continued Burkhardt. "We're doing everything they asked us to do, and to no avail. We met with ORPS and got them to raise the assessment on the reservoir, not as high as it should be, but it's a step in the right direction. We're in the process of doing a reval. But they still hit us with this."
Olive deputy supervisor Bruce La Monda feels that the school board made an error in caving in to pressure from Woodstock. "There's a lot of resentment in town. If you weigh their decision, in what they gained in being the tax equalizer versus what's going to happen to school budgets, it seems like a mistake." This year's defeat of the school budget was attributed partly to Olive taxpayers disgruntled about the impending large parcel vote or fearful of a substantial tax hike.
 La Monda said, "When we won the ORPS appeal to get the reservoir value increased, that made Olive a richer town, so we picked up a share of the school tax, going up 49 percent." La Monda was frustrated that the board was not satisfied with this increase but went on to apply the large-parcel law, upping Olive's taxes another ten percent.
Conducting a reval is a slow process in a town that hasn't seen one in decades, and the contracts with the firm doing the assessment were received on Tuesday. "We had the idea the reval was well accepted within the town," observed La Monda. "People were ready for it. Now people are saying, 'Why are we doing a reval when our taxes just went up 59 percent?' We have to start the public relations aspect of the reval all over again."
On a hopeful note, La Monda said he had just come from a meeting with ORPS regarding changes in their procedures for overall assessments of watershed towns, and he was pleased with a new willingness on the part of ORPS to accept input from towns on the valuation of large properties like the reservoir. In the recent negotiations with ORPS over the reservoir, Olive officials were able to marshal extensive evidence from their lawsuits with New York City regarding the reservoir's value, including "things they had never considered˜roads and bridges." Apparently recognizing the validity of such data, ORPS is turning to a more cooperative approach to assessment.
"We'll continue with the reval," said La Monda, "and hopefully, with the new approach ORPS is taking, by 2005 we may see some results."

Backing Up On Dean's Call 

                                  The original resolution introduced by Democratic legislator Hector Rodriguez of New Paltz and passed on Thursday, September 9 recommended that the numerous issues which were the focus of three months of Issues Conference hearings before Department of Environmental Conservation Administrative Law Judge Richard Wissler all be treated to full adjudication because of the size of the project and the seriousness of the raised issues. Wissler is set to decide over the coming months, after legal briefs are exchanged between lawyers for and against the project, which issues should move to a full trial-like setting to decide whether mitigation is necessary. His decisions can be appealed to DEC Commissioner Erin Crotty.
            Language for the resolution was prepared with the help of Marc Gerstman, attorney for the Catskill Preservation Corporation, an ad hoc consortium of environmental groups that have been raising issues at the recent Issues Conference. Gerstman was formerly lead counsel to the state DEC.                                                    According to Republican legislator Wayne Harris of Clintondale, chairman of the legislature's Economic Development/ Education, Tourism and Cultural Affairs Committee, he decided to look into rescinding the resolution he originally okayed after he received a call directly from Gitter on Monday, September 13.                                        "I'd never heard from the man before," Harris said last week. "He described the impact his attorney had told him that full adjudication would have and asked if that was how I saw the case. What he was saying was that we were now asking for a trial on every single item'- and then he asked if he could address our committee."
            At the next meeting of Harris' Economic Development/ Education, Tourism and Cultural Affairs Committee on Wednesday, September 15, Theresa Bakker of Whiteman, Osterman Hanna, attorneys for Crossroad Ventures, Gitter's development company, addressed the committee's six members. But a vote to rescind the Rodriguez resolution stalled along party lines, 3-3.
            Harris later said that he would reintroduce the resolution for amendment at the next full meeting of the Legislature on Thursday, October 14.
            Oddly, the Daily Freeman ran an editorial asking for similar measures in an editorial on Sunday, September 19, even though it had never reported the story.
            Harris said he started re-thinking his vote on the Rodriguez resolution after speaking with Gitter. He said he immediately phoned County Attorney Frank Murray, who said he concurred with Gitter's point of view. A decision was made not to go back to the environmental organizations, and to seek a second opinion, in time for the next legislative meeting, from the DEC.
            "That was my misunderstanding," Harris, said about his initial okaying of the resolution. "I didn't realize that this term, full adjudication, had the significance of what was presented to us the other night, and to me, it seems like while we were trying to support the process, this kind of puts us in the process, and I didn't think that's where we wanted to be."
            "For them to have made such a determination would mean that each and every one of these issues are a substantive and significant issue that should to go a trial-type hearing ... and we believe that what the Legislature meant to say is what they've said before, that they want the process to proceed forward, and want the DEC law judge to make that determination, not that they want to tell him what to do," Bakker said of her presentation.
            The issues she was referring to include water quality, wildlife, pesticide use, visual impacts, noise, traffic, and community character, among others.
            The resolution originally passed by the Legislature on September 9 pointed out that the body, "will not take a position in favor or opposition to the project until a thorough review of all environmental issues has been completed," but adds that the resort's potential impacts on local community character, water quality, and other issues need to be fully addressed. It further noted the county's historical support for the protection of its open space and natural resources and supported full adjudication, "to ensure a thorough review that protects the quality of the Watershed drinking supply, the rural character of the Catskill region, and the residents of Ulster County and New York State."
            County Legislative Chairman Richard Gerentine, one of the three lawmakers who originally voted against the move, explained that "The resolution asks the judge to adjudicate all issues connected with the resort. That's something I would hope he would do; it's his job anyway. I agree that (DEC) should carefully adjudicate all of these issues, but I feel it was a little offensive to the judge."
            Legislative majority leader Mike Stock of Woodstock, however, voted in support of what he termed "a memorializing resolution."  But this past week, Stock was whistling a different tune.
            "This is a process we shouldn't be involved in. We support the economic development side of the project but shouldn't be giving the court any direction on this," he said.
            In December 2002, before legislative chairman Ward Todd resigned his position to become head of the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce, the Legislature passed a resolution in support of the Belleayre Resort project. Todd and his wife Jane, a Town of Shandaken board member, have since been accused by opponents of the project of having conflicts of interest with any review of it, due to land purchases made at the time the project was being put together involving possible rights of way tied to the development.
            "We never expected to get pulled into this thing like this," added Harris.

The Lark In The Park!

"I encourage all New Yorkers and visitors to begin planning now to participate in the many educational activities and outdoor adventures that are a fitting way to celebrate the centennial of this unique Park."
            Those options include more than 60 free guided hikes, walks, paddles, biking tours, and fly-fishing events, as well as exhibits, book signings and festivals. Co-sponsors range from The Catskill Center for Conservation and Development and Adirondack Mountain Club, to the Catskill 3500 Club, for all those who have had the stamina to scale the region's top peaks, and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.
            There will be fly-fishing lessons at Pine Hill Lake and the Frost Valley YMCA up past Big Indian and Olivera , as well as a spin-casting fishing derby for kids up at Lake Cole in distant Claryville. The Winnesook Club, a private residential community founded in 1886 as a gentleman's fly-fishing club, will open its doors on Sunday, October 3, for an illustrated program about the club's history followed by a walk around the lake near the range's highest peak, Slide Mountain. There will be tours of the Catskill Fish Hatchery at Mongaup Pond in Sullivan County, as well as the state Department of Environmental Conservation's spawning beds at Trout Pond in Delaware County.
            35 different walks and hikes are being offered, from a gentle, one-mile nature walk  around Alder Lake to strenuous hikes of several of the 98 Catskill high peaks over 3,000 feet, including a "triple header" over Slide, Wittenberg and Cornell Mountains. Sunday, October 10, is being termed "Catskill Fire Tower Day," with more hikes to all five of the recently restored historic fire towers on the summits of Overlook, Tremper, Hunter, Red Hill and Balsam Lake mountains.
            The City is leading special watershed and reservoir walks. There will be a trio of biking tours to choose from, including a 10-mile ride through the Bluestone Wild Forest, a 20-mile scenic pedal around the Pepacton Reservoir, and what is being described by organizers as, "the Catskill Park's version of the Tour de France," a 100-mile, 10-hour Centennial Century Ride led by DEC Region 3 Natural Resources Supervisor Bill Rudge.
            And then there's the historic and cultural side of things-
            For the former, there will be walk and talks illustrating the history of bluestone quarrying in the region, as well as the legacy of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps' (CCC) local efforts. The Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony in Woodstock, which celebrated its own centennial last year, will be offering a tour of its Arts and Crafts-style cottages and studios. The Second Annual Cauliflower Festival on Saturday, October 2, in the Route 28 Delaware County town of Margaretville, will celebrate those olden days when the flowering white vegetable was the reigning cash crop of the area. 
            On October 2, the Town of Lexington Historical Society in one of Greene County's more scenic western towns will be hosting a slide lecture and book signing to celebrate the release of "Cool Cascades: A Celebration of Catskill Mountain Waterfalls" from 2 to 5 p.m., a new book from Black Dome Press by author/photographer Russell Dunn.
            The weekend of October 9 and 10 will witness the 25th annual Belleayre Mountain Fall Festival, with sky rides and live music, crafts and fine food. That Sunday, October 10, will also witness the Third Annual Catskill Mountain Ginseng Festival, also at Catskill Point.
            For more information about the Catskill Park Centennial, go to:

DEC Website

or call 877-426-0323 (or e-mail CatskillLark@aol.com) for a free program guide with a listing of all Centennial events.

  Natural Beauty

           Luppino says her earliest memories evoke the abundance of her grandfather's garden in Brooklyn, where  figs ripened beside sweetly-scented yellow roses. At a point, she shifted her life to go back to school to learn horticulture. A career resulted. Then she realized she wanted a deeper education with more breadth to it. So she then went back again for a liberal arts degree from Bard College, where she started taking photography.
            Ever since, she's been mingling her two loves.
            "What I do in photography is all about revealing nature," she says. "It's the same when I am creating a garden. It's about educating the viewer to see."
            Just as she feels so many American yards have been overtaken by the idea of lawns, she works, in her art, to better portray the beauty of nature at its wildest. Like a means of preservation. As a result, she's gotten ever-more direct with her photography. And working, recently, in a new format that mixes traditional; means of shooting with new digital types of printing, she's been able to explore complex elements of subtle toning and texture that are lending her subjects both an added monumentality and a deeper sense of intimacy.
            "It's all felt like a natural process," Luppino says of the growth visible in the recent works. She speaks about her pleasure at seeing people really looking closely at the photographs during the new show's July opening. "People seemed particularly drawn to the more abstract pieces, working with them until they could see what they were."
            Now that the two halves of Luppino's creative and working lives have started to shape themselves so well, she's starting to think of ways of fusing them. As we all want to do with our lives, in the end.
            Although the sales from her new show, all primarily priced in the moderate $350 to $600 range, have been sparser than she might have liked, the artist is pleased to see some of her gardening clients starting to buy art. She's hoping now for the opposite to occur- for some of her art followers to change the way they approach gardening.
            But about that fusion?
            Luppino says she may work color into some pieces, albeit not via color film, but through surface manipulation. Maybe encaustics.
            She's also starting to dream of much larger works that mingle the two worlds she's been living in. The two dimensional work of photographs and the vibrant three-dimensionality of her gardening. Maybe a simulation garden. Or photos in the wild.
            "These images live within me," Luppino said, in her quiet, humble but ultimately strong fashion. "They match my inspiration, and the warmth I feel making them."
            In other words, they are as natural as her gardens. As well as being just as beautiful as the glory of weeds.
            For further information on Virginia Luppino's work, visit her website at www.vluppinophoto.com.