No
Action
Committee Chairperson Joan Every (R-Rosendale) and
Legislator William Calabrese (R-Pine Bush) voted against the
resolution, while Legislator Mike Stock (R-Woodstock), who
would have cast the deciding vote, was absent from the meeting.
Stock, who is up for re-election, said he missed the meeting
because of a prior campaign commitment when reached by telephone
earlier this week. But had he been there, Stock said,
he would have voted against Parete’s resolution.
“This is the first time as legislators that we have
the opportunity to correct a problem that has been existing
for a long time,” said Stock, who in August urged the
Onteora school board to enact the large parcel law. “It’s
a county wide problem, and [although] it will affect Olive,
some of the town of Hurley and Warwarsing (which is home to
the Roundout Reservoir) in a negative way, the surrounding
towns and the city of Kingston all get a little break.”
Adopted by the state legislature last year, the law allows
large properties that make up more than 5-percent of a town’s
total assessment, are valued at minimum of $5,000,000,
and have local equalization rates that differ by at least
5-percent to be separated from the municipality in which they
lie for the purposes of levying school district and county
taxes. Had the Onteora school board decided to enact the law
this year, Olive residents would have seen school taxes rise
approximately 56-percent. And if the county should decide
to opt into the law this year, according to Parete, county
taxes for an Olive property assessed at $100,000 could rise
as much as $200.
Despite the outcome of the General Services Committee meeting,
however, any legislator has the ability to bring a resolution
in support of enacting the large parcel law to the floor for
a vote during the county Legislature’s next meeting
scheduled for Oct. 9.
And Parete said he believes Stock will do just that if Stock
thinks he has enough support from other legislators to pass
such a resolution.
Asked if this was indeed the case, Stock replied: “I’ve
discussed it with some Democrats already… and we’ll
be discussing it at the next Republican caucus. If I test
the waters and see if there is not enough support then I would
not put a resolution forward.”
If Stock or another legislator does put the large parcel law
up for vote during the Legislature’s October meeting
(the county has until Nov. 1 to opt into it for this year),
Parete said he will issue an amendment reversing its meaning
that would need to be voted on as well.
“I am going to definitely amend it if they bring it
up, but I think more people want to make like the [Onteora]
school board and put things off for a year and give [Olive
officials] the chance to fix it.”
Parete was referring to the widely divergent views of the
Ashokan reservoir’ s assessment between the town of
Olive and New York City. Olive’s claims it to be worth
$393 million, while the city maintains a value of $115 million,
a difference that satisfies one of the criteria for the large
parcel legislation. If the town of Olive does a revaluation
of all properties – something it has not done in decades
– and can negotiate a settlement with the city that
resolves the discrepancy and satisfies the state Office of
Real Property Services, the reservoir could avoid meeting
the criteria for the large parcel law.
A revaluation would raise the taxes of many Olive citizens,
but would, some advocates say, accomplish a more equitable
distribution of taxes throughout the school district and county
in a more measured way than the large-parcel legislation.
Town Supervisor Berndt Leifeld told legislative committee
members that ongoing discussions about the reservoir property
values are being conducted between attorneys representing
the town of Olive and ORPS. Town officials, he said,
are also scheduled to meet and discuss the matter with New
York Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Christopher
Ward in October.
“We will do everything we can to prevent us and you
form being in this position next year,” Leifeld told
legislative committee members. “All we ask is for extra
time to do what is right.”
After the meeting, Leifeld said he and town board members
plan to attend the Oct. 9 meeting of the county legislature.
“We are going down to the meeting when they vote on
it. We won’t be making speeches, but we will be
there to answer their questions, if they have any, and just
to stare them in the face when they are making their decision.”
Sparring
With The City
The letter was published in a paid advertisement that appeared
in the Daily Freeman on Sunday and appears in this week’s
issue of the Olive Press.
“Local officials have been fully briefed on the findings
of the study, as they pertain to the Town of Olive, in private
meetings with the DEP,” Ward wrote. “Despite requests
to keep details of the study confidential, so as not to help
those seeking to do us harm, this vital information has been
discussed in public.”
Stating that “the threat from terrorists to the Olivebridge
Dam is very real,” the letter also defends the DEP’s
decision toclose Monument Road in March. “While we have
been reluctant to highlight this information,” Ward
wrote, “the security agencies that have been charged
after 9/11 with protecting our country’s infrastructure
have proof that Al Qaeda and other terrorists have studied
utilities, including the New York City water system, for vulnerabilities.”
This letter comes on the heels of a demonstration held at
the reservoir on Sept. 15 to protest the March closing of
Monument Road which road runs across the top of the dam that
is largely responsible for containing the waters of the Ashokan
Reservoir. Demonstrators voiced their opposition to the road's
closing saying it does more to jeopardize the safety of those
forced to use the alternative route, a windy 2 1/2 mile stretch
of state route 28A, than it does to prevent a terrorist
act. Among the approximate 150 residents from Olive and other
watershed communities who attended the event, were Town Justice
Vincent Barringer and Councilpersons Bruce LaMonda and Linda
Burkhardt. Other local politicians included Ulster County
Democratic Chairman John Parete, his sons, county Legislators
Richard, (D-Accord) and Robert, (D-Boiceville), and
county Legislator Robert Wilkins, (R-Shokan).
“I am really annoyed about the letter,” said La
Monda earlier this week. “No member of the town board
has ever been briefed about information in the report from
the Army Corp of Engineers. We only know there was a report,
but we have no idea what was in it.”
As reported in the last two issues of the Olive Press, La
Monda had asked DEP Police Chief Ed Welch for a copy of the
report during an Olive Town Board meeting in August that Welch
and three other DEP officials, including Deputy Commissioner
Mike Principe, attended in order to answer residents’
questions about the closure of Monument Road. Welch, however,
refused the request, saying the information was “classified.”
When pressed by La Monda, Welch said he would make the report
available to Ulster County Sheriff J. Richard Bockelmann,
who could then decide whether to share the information with
Olive town police and officials.
“The sheriff never received a copy of the report, and
as of noon [this past] Monday, he still hasn’t,”
said La Monda.
La Monda said he and Town Supervisor Berndt Leifeld did participate
in a private meeting with DEP officials about a week prior
to the town board meeting that Welch attended. “Berndt
and I were at the meeting at the watershed offices in Shokan
along with Sheriff Bockelmann, Mike Principe and Chief Welch.
They said there was a letter from the Army Corp of Engineers,
but the contents of the letter was never discussed.”
Reached by telephone Tuesday, Bockelmann confirmed La Monda’s
claim. “That’s true,” Bockelmann said.
“Not in that meaning were details ever discussed,”
he said.
Bockelmann also said that some time after the August Olive
Town Board meeting Welch called the county Sheriff’s
office and told George Wood, the county’s Under-Sheriff,
that he would personally deliver a copy of the US Army Corp
of Engineer’s report to the sheriff’s office.
“But he never did,” said Bockelmann. "We
never receiveda copy of the report."
Although he finds the commissioner’s letter that appeared
in the Freeman extremely frustrating, La Monda said he does
not blame Ward for its contents. “I think Ward is getting
erroneous information. I don’t fault him as much as
the person, whoever that may be, who is giving him information
that is not accurate.”
As one of three Olive police commissioners, however, La Monda
does take issue with the fact that DEP police have not shared
any information about a potential terrorist act with the Olive
Police and Ulster County Sheriff departments.
“If the DEP has some sort of information about some
sort of definite threat that could pose a danger to the community,
they should share that with the local police departments because
not knowing could put our officers in danger,” he said.
Welch could not be reached for comment.
Larry Brown’s
Life On Screen
Larry had a group of friends in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
that he played basketball with, grew up with, experimented
and traveled with. “It was a very powerful time for
a lot of us. We shared adream. I wonder how much everyone
continued to attempt to fulfill that dream, and how much fell
by the wayside for a car, a house, money in the bank, the
whole consumptive American program that doesn’t fulfill
you.” What happened to that gang of friends?
A phone call from out of the blue gave Larry a chance to find
out. His old friend Dan Klores wanted to bring the gang back
together 30 years later and find out how their lives had changed.
The resulting documentary, made by Klores and Ron Berger,
The Boys of 2nd Street Park, was just featured in the 2003
Woodstock Film Festival, with Larry as one of the subjects.
Filled with moments of hope and sadness, the film is one that
anyone can relate to, as there is something quintessential
and universal about a look back at the path one’s life
took.
“I hadn’t seen much of these guys I played ball
with, experimented with,” Larry explains, “but
Klores rekindled the old relationships. He came up, filmed
me for seven hours, I gave them some archival photos, and
they went away. Then, we all met on the court for a memorial
game, in Brighton Beach, right on the ocean. We all crawled
out of the woodwork. I saw 40 or 50 people that I hadn’t
seen in 30 years.” Was it odd to see what is essentially
“a home movie,” but for public consumption? “The
movie is welldone, it’s nostalgic, it’s interesting
to see and remember places you’ve been. And to see what
happened to everyone, to see how they let things influence
them. It’s a film of tragedy, humor and pain.”
Larry came of age in the 1960s, a time of extraordinary counterculture
turbulence and questioning of established norms. “We
looked at the Vietnam War, we marched, protested, we came
together at an incredible time in history. What did you do
with what you knew at the time?” he asks. “Did
you move on with it or abandon it? Somewhere in that era I
had a glimmer of a vision, an insight, and that’s been
a sustaining factor in my life. I’ve never felt alienated
from life.” Was the promise of that infamous decade
too high? “It was different from, say, the promise of
the 1950s, which were a time of conservative planning for
the future. In the 60s there was a lure for something else.
There were no rules. No guidelines. The temptations were too
high. Drugs, sex, whatever your appetites allowed, the temptation
existed to go overboard. But we were a tribe. An extended
family. There was a possibility for change, and we came together
to celebrate that. Our visions were similar.”
The film’s director, Klores, who went on to become a
very successful businessman, was part of the gang but left
himself out of film. It’s easy to see which of the subjects
did well in life, but the heart of the movie clearly lies
with the one with the most tragedy, Steve Satin. He became
addicted to drugs, lost the woman he loved, lost his child,
and ended up homeless for a while. “It was a time of
incredible intensity, how Steve chose to heal the wound is
a lot of what that film’s about,” says Larry.
Larry Brown lives his quiet life in Samsonville, with his
wife Jean Duffy, an artist and silversmith, in a way that
shows he held on to the dreams of his youth. “I wandered,
traveled, learned how to garden, build, how to make apple
cider, maple syrup, learned homesteading skills. But most
importantly, I learned that we need to live in partnership
with the natural world.” Larry now builds sustainable
housing and solar electric systems. “My wife and I live
simply. Money is not our god. Possessions are not our god.
The great teachers are the rivers, the animals, the seasons,
and we have time to watch all that.”
In 1979 Larry was part of the Innovative Studies program at
the environmental site at the College at New Paltz. The program
designed and built state of the art environmental houses,
including a passive solar house that recycled gray water (water
from showers and sinks), and had a green house. “We
used CETA workers. It was typical of the times—we had
a Vietnam vet, an ex-alcoholic, an ex-drug addict, a few blacks,
a woman, and the token white boy,” he laughs.
Larry spends many hours teaching people about solar energy,
and he just finished a six-day workshop for Solar Energy International.
Solar has always been the proverbial pie in the sky; an awesome
nuclear generator with enough free power to fuel the needs
of the entire planet. But it is commonly believed that solar
energy, especially photo-voltaic cells, are not cost-competitive.
As Larry explains, “That’s because there is a
bigger picture that is often not factored into the cost. There
are ethical, moral, health, and long-term considerations,
other costs that come into play. Spent fuel rods, radioactive
waste, coal burning pollutants, the resulting acid rain, then
there’s all the money to protect oil reserves. There’s
what you pay out of pocket, and then there are the true costs
of how we generate electricity. One solar panel may be expensive
but here are no hidden costs, no potentially detrimental side
effects that have to be dealt with for thousands of years.”
How does a homeowner figure out if solar is right for them?
“First thing I do is an energy audit. You can reduce
your need for electricity. Number one is efficiency. Bring
the cost of the system down. Number two is phantom loads,
the appliances in your house you think are off, but are actually
using power. The TV, the VCR, I plug them into a meter and
show you how they are using power, even when off. Get yourself
a power strip and shut it, so those appliances are truly off.”
“Incandescent bulbs are so inefficient, they’re
90% heat, only 5% light. Compact florescents are four times
more efficient, and they make full-spectrum ones that have
no weird glow or flicker. And make sure you get energy-rated
appliances. So, those are the first things I do when looking
at a home. Solar panels are expensive, but solar is reliable.
And it’s everywhere; the merge left signs and phones
along the highway, railroad switches, the marker buoys for
boats, even The White House and The Pentagon have huge solar
arrays. It’s amazingly reliable technology. And you
can tie it to the grid, the net-metering laws allow you to
make energy and put it back out on the grid. You gain credits,
then you can draw on that credit at night. You can turn your
electric meter backwards! You could, in effect, zero your
electric meter out. And there’s no maintenance, and
there are incentives to install solar, and rebate programs.
Go to www.nyserda.org to find out more. (New York State Energy
Research Development Authority)
“It all comes full circle. Do we really need all the
stuff we have? We’re using so many resources to maintain
our lifestyles.” What can one person do? “Turn
off the light of when you leave the room,” says Larry.
“Use less power. Make your own power. New York State
law says the power companies have to buy it back for the same
price they sell it for. This is very empowering. You can make
power and put it out on the grid! You can turn your electric
meter back! It’s almost subversive. If everyone did
it? Revolutionary.”
Hmmm. Sounds like Larry Brown still has a dream.
Park Plan Draws Fire
Speaking for the Coalition of Watershed Towns at last Saturday’s
public hearing on the plan at Belleayre Mountain Ski Center
was Dr. Richard Craft, Supervisor of the Town of Wawarsing
and the group’s newly designated vice-chairman. Craft
read into the record a resolution approved by the Coalition
last week to a largely appreciative audience of about 100
people, including many recreational mountain bikers. According
to the Coalition, DEC’s new plan will “restrict
current recreational uses of state land”, “adversely
impact” tourism and the second-home market, and “contradicts
the letter and spirit of the (1997) MOA” between the
Cityand the watershed towns, to which DEC is a signatory.
The resolution also demanded that DEC extend its period for
written comment on the document beyond its October 15 deadline;
Apparently the agency’s already complied, with the deadline
now extended until Nov. 14.
Less controversial than the mountain biking restrictions but
potentially significant for the long term is the proposed
increase by some 53,000 state-owned acres which under the
draft plan, would be newly administered as Wilderness. The
newly designated areas would increase the park’s total
Wilderness acreage to 143,000 acres, or 51 percent of the
State’s landholdings within it. Most of the balance
of public landholdings would consist of the slightly-less-restrictively
managed “Wild Forest” lands, 130,000 acres as
proposed. As both categories are constitutionally assured
of “forever wild” status, the principal difference
is functionally in the types of recreational uses permitted.
Although the Catskill Park includes portions of 4 counties
in its 1,100 square miles, almost 54% of the State’s
total landholdings in the Park are here in Ulster County.
At present, no restrictions apply to the use of mountain bikes
in either Wilderness or Wild Forest lands. In addition to
prohibiting mountain bikes in Wilderness areas, the new regs
would restrict their use in Wild Forest lands to designated
trails generally used for snowmobiling, horseback riding,
and other non-pedestrian use, with the possibility of some
new trails being built in the future, a slow process by way
of DEC’s “unit management” procedures.
DEC’s planned restrictions against mountain bikes in
wilderness areas are not unusual. Bicycles have
long been prohibited on the state’s Wilderness lands
in the Adirondacks, as well as on all federally managed wilderness
lands nationwide. In fact, our local Wilderness areas appear
to be the only ones in the United States where mountain biking
is actually permitted at present, and this unusual access
to the forest preserve has helped to create a large and growing
group of recreational trail bikers.
According to Billy Dentner, who owns Overlook Mountain Bikes
in Woodstock, the new regs however “clearly skew the
usage of the park toward hikers.” Dentner stressed the
importance of established routes such as the Platte Clove
and Mink Hollow Trails to the biking community, saying that
all the trails should be open to bike usage unless specific
reasons could be provided to justify their closure.
Not all the comments heard at Saturday’s public hearing
were negative. A number of individuals and representatives
local hiking groups spoke in favor of the proposed changes
at Saturday’s public hearing, including Jeff Hoberath
of the Catskill 3,500 Club. “The high peaks need serious
protection” he said “if they’re to retain
their wilderness character”, adding that praise for
the plan that he’s been hearing is “well deserved”.
Also speaking in support of DEC’s proposed revisions
were Andrew Mason of the Delaware Co. Audobon Society, and
Bob Saturn and Susan Puritz of the Saugerties-based Rip Van
Winkle Hiker’s club, both of whom voiced support for
the idea of separate trails for hiking and biking. A
majority of speakers however, stressed the idea that shared
or dual-use of the trails was working fine, with no reports
of conflict or safety problems, and no evidence of negative
ecological impacts from the bikes. .
Other comments, as from Jeff Sinquily of Windham, stressed
the growing importance of mountain biking to the Greene County
economy, and Ron Rausch of that County’s Soil and Water
Dept also expressed concern about “grave economic considerations”
associated with DEC’s proposed revisions. Similar concerns
were shared by David Slutsky of Hunter who expressed broad
opposition to overregulation, suggesting that “we can
regulate the forest preserve out of existence”.
As to why the agency is seeking to expand landholdings administered
as Wilderness at this time, DEC spokesperson Maureen Wren
explained that wilderness lands are managed to provide a unique
kind of experience for the visitor, where one “experiences
the natural environment without mechanical devices and their
impacts changing that experience”. According to Wren,
“ It is very rare that New York State is presented with
an opportunity to preserve the large amount of land needed
to meet the wilderness classification…this designation
will help provide future generations with the potential to
immerse themselves in a completely natural environment”.
She also noted that the current proposal essentially
“balances the amount of land classified as wilderness
with the amount classified as wild forest and intensive use”.
Saturday’s public hearing was the last of 4 held throughout
the park over a 12-day period. DEC staff are now reviewing
and evaluating all public comments received, and will be accepting
written comments through November 14. Comments should be addressed
to: Peter J. Frank, Bureau Chief, Forest Preserve Management,
NYS DEC, 625 Broadway, Albany, NY 12233-4254, or by email
to: pjfrank@gw.dec.state.ny.us. Copies of the plan are
available at www.dec.state.ny.us/website/dlf/publands/cats/cpslmp.html,
or at the agency’s regional headquarters in New Paltz
and Stamford.
