Follow Up on the News

Big Cuts At Onteora...

All this came up when the Onteora district board of education held a special workshop meeting in the central office conference room on Friday, January 9 to discuss the 2009/2010 budget.
Although figures are still prlimianry across the board, the board is anticipating a combination drop in state aid, interest rates and a possible freeze on state owned land tax revenue somewhere between $2.5 and $3 million dollars.
In order to keep a tax levy at no more than a 3.5 percent increase, reflective of a contingent budget, the board will need to cut around $1.5 million in spending.
Superintendent Leslie Ford provided the board with sheets of budget breakdowns, suggestions on where to cut, while the school board presented a few ideas of their own. This included eliminating the high school assistant principal, field trips, cutting back on the district calendar, newsletters, and consultant fees, and asking the principals to reduce supplies.
Until the board gets feedback from building administrators and has a better idea of what the state plans to do, they stressed that nothing is written in stone and all could change.
At an earlier January 6 school board meeting in Woodstock, Assistant Superintendent of Business Victoria McLaren read a Pyramid Brokerage company brokers report on salable or rental market value prospects on the district’s two closed buildings at West Hurley.
The Town of Hurley has the property assessed for $3,799,400, but after the equalization rate, the full tax value listed it at $4,221,556.
However, at the recent meeting these figures were explained as being for reference use only, with Pyramid pointing out that the market value was “significantly less.” The broker put the buildings condition as very good, and based a square foot value of $17.17, listed the West Hurley School’s overall value at $747,650 as the high end of their market price.
They compared their assessment on value to similar schools in the area that have sold in the past couple years. Schools listed at a higher market value have been on the market for over a year indicating. “an asking price higher than the market will bear.”
To lease the building would be more difficult than selling it, according to the report. It listed rates based on the two buildings as a whole or parceled out. Annual rent of the entire campus would have a market value of $217,720. The smaller Ryan building could lease for $56,410 and the larger Levins building for $161,310. The Beacon school district has been leasing classrooms to artists and crafts people, but the rental space becomes complicated since bathroom and other common areas are not considered rentable space. Pyramid suggested a lease rate between $5 and $10 per square foot, depending on if the entire building is used or not.
School board president Ralph Legnini looked at the viability of leasing to artists.
“That may be something to explore; it might benefit the community,” he said. “There are a lot of artists, musicians could give something like guitar lessons, and if managed correctly it might be something financially feasible.”
He said if the value to sell it ranges from a low end of $650,000 to a maximum of $750,000, than “it doesn’t seem like that much money.”
Trustee Laurie Osmond suggested combining ideas that trustee Michelle Friedel had at a previous meeting on moving administration to the West Hurley site and providing a board room.
“Couldn’t we have a combination of all of that plus leasing space to individual artists, studio space or rooms to non-profits,” said Osmond, “as a sort of a creative patchwork and still get district use out of it?”
Trustee Maxanne Resnick speculated on the previous board’s capital project proposal that would consolidate the district and close an additional elementary school.
“I think I would be reluctant to sell the property without answering the larger question on how does it fit in with all of our building uses and if we have to think about Woodstock versus West Hurley,” said Resnick. “I recognize that people are very devoted to the school, but I have always been under the impression that this school (Woodstock) does not have any possibility of expansion whatsoever.”
The capital plan project listed Woodstock elementary as not having any room to grow if the population were to increase after the district was consolidated.
Resnick added that it cost the district $36,000 yearly to maintain the West Hurley buildings. She also asked if they would need major improvements to turn a profit.
McLaren said if the building were rented to anyone else, “That would change the use as far as SED (State Education Department) were concerned if in the future we ever wanted to go back to saying this is a school building.”
“Down the road we’re going to have to look at the capital project and what to do,” said Trustee Rick Wolff, who was also on the previous board. “It’s inevitable.”
Friedel said she liked Osmond’s idea, but “I don’t think we can do anything as far as upgrades or capital projects at this current point in time, but I also hold hope that the federal government will have aids or grants coming down for building repairs.”
The district has approached BOCES about the West Hurley buildings but they are not interested due to their non-central location.
District voters would need to approve the sale of West Hurley elementary. It is zoned residential and therefore could not be sold or leased to commercial business.
West Hurley School closed in 2004. In 2005 it was rented for a short period of time to the West Hurley library. Since that time it has remained empty.
On January 6, beginning the budget talks they continued on Friday, and will be filling numerous meetings with over the coming months, the board noted how last year’s budget had a low tax increase due to money returned from the litigation between the town of Olive and New York City over a tax dispute with the Ashokan Reservior.
The district is slowing it’s spending for this year so it will have district money left over to add to next year’s budget pool.
Friedel noted, at that time, that the state may ask districts to contribute to pre-kindergarten programs.
“Looking at Universal pre-K, that money is going to be frozen,” she said. “So these programs that we always relied on the aid of the state may not be there.”
In a separate conversation, Friedel asked about the $300,000 earmarked to purchase lockers. Superintendent Leslie Ford said it is on hold until the budget unfolds. Trustee Donna Flayhan requested a cost analysis on science equipment for the high school as a possible earmark, noting that the equipment is outdated. The board decided to seek teacher input, but stipulated that no decision on purchasing equipment will be made until the budget is ironed out.
After tempers flared at the previous board meeting over an audit committee report, Flayhan requested discussion be again focused on transportation. She made a motion on the floor to give the report, but board members would not approve a second.
Flayhan believes that if the district’s transportation contracts were re-bid and divided out, the district could save up to one-million dollars. She stressed that discussions must begin soon if changes need to be made.
A heated discussion continued not over transportation, but over Flayhan’s use of the district’s audit committee as a platform.
Later, Osmond addressed Flayhan, saying, “I would like to request that the information you have, pass it out to the board and we will place the discussion on the agenda. I need to read it and digest it.”
Flayhan grudgingly agreed and passed out the transportation information to board members for future discussion..
In other news…
Legnini updated the board on the new water filtration system to the Boiceville site. He said the engineer’s drawings would get to the State Education Department for approval by late January, taking three to six months to review and approve, followed by a six to eight week bid process and two to four weeks given to initial set up. The final instillation will take two to three weeks.
The board also authorized the “sale or disposal” of the high school’s auditorium chairs and reminded parents that school closing and delays can be emailed directly to their home computer by signing up at Cancellations.com.

But in his December 15 decision, Acting State Supreme Court Justice Henry Zwack wrote, “The Court has considered the context and content of this letter and finds that it is an assertion of opinion only and therefore the complaint must be dismissed. The Court finds that the average reader of this letter, while they may be initially drawn in by the provocative opening sentence (“Dean Gitter Paid Off the DEP”), will soon come to realize upon reading the first paragraph in full, that the writer appears to be stating her belief …” Zwack said that it was clear that the writer was equating lobbying fees paid by Gitter to a payoff of governmental officials. “It is clear from the context and tone of the entire letter taken as a whole that any allegation that plaintiff had bribed government officials is purely the opinion of the writer, based upon the fact that plaintiff paid lobbying fees…”
But the judge did not see fit to make Gitter pay the court costs nor lawyer’s fees for the paper, Powers and Smart, saying that these provisions are not applicable.
Gitter was out of the country and unavailable for comment. Space will be available for him to comment on his return. His attorney, Paul Gruner, did not return a phone call but later said that he was preparing an appeal against the decision.
Powers intimated that he might seek remuneration for court costs and attorney’s fees through an anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, in which a corporation or developer sues an organization in an attempt to scare it into dropping protests against a corporate initiative) suit.
In a written statement, Powers said “The court found that Mr. Gitter had no legitimate basis for his complaint, and that people do have a right to voice their opinions in their local newspapers.
“Mr. Gitter was quite clear about why he filed a lawsuit against us. His lawyer in fact explained it twice to make sure people would understand his motivation, and what he said was ‘This is about money.’ In our view that’s another way of saying I’m doing this to try and financially hurt these two people and their families and put these community newspapers out of business.
So Gitter’s counsel has already clearly explained that they’ve used the courts both to try and silence and to inflict financial pain against those he sees as critics of his proposed resort. So far he’s been successful in that he’s forced us to spend a lot of money to defend ourselves against nothing. We think that by itself, his counsel’s own admission proves the suit was an amazingly clear violation of New York’s anti-SLAPP law.
At this point we’re discussing our next steps with our families and our lawyers. For us the central issue is our obligation to help protect everyone’s right to voice their opinion without fear of intimidation. So if we’re ultimately awarded damages by the courts beyond our legal costs, we’ll give that money, all of it, to local organizations helping people here in our communities.”
Zwack also chose not to deal with, nor comment in his decision about the point Gitter brought up in the suit that the defendants “failed to confirm the existence of the author of said letter to the editor or the truth or falsity of the facts contained therein.”
Gitter’s attorney, Paul Gruner, in an earlier interview, said he believed that it was an important point. “It contributes substantially to the validity,” he said, “the fact that they took no steps whatsoever to determine if this person in fact exists.”
He has since said that he and Gitter know for a fact that the letter was not written by any Bonnie Grant, who they have insisted does not exist.
And while the attorney for the defense Rod Futerfas acknowledged, also in an earlier interview, that the defendants didn’t know the actual writer. “…the law does not require that this person be verified,” he said, and apparently the judge agreed.