Follow Up on the News
“The number you’re giving is not right,” said Mike Ricciardella, insisting that a large number of those are proposed hookups to vacant properties which DEP won’t be subsidizing unless or until they come on-line. The actual number of hookups, he said, is 260. The town’s numbers, Ricciardella said, were generated by its wastewater committee and not the system’s engineers, and DEP will only be reimbursing the district based on the number of hookups listed on the tax rolls through the Assessor’s office. The difference between the two figures says Ricciardella, represents a major discrepancy in the system’s projected revenue which will raise annual Operating & Maintenance costs for its commercials users beyond the projected figures provided by the town. Those figures for commercial users appear generally accepted as extremely reasonable.
Ricciardella also raised the question as to whether the board would allow he and other commercial property owners to opt out of the system if they chose. Town attorney Kevin Young responded by explaining the hardship exemption application process. Pressed by Ricciardella as to whether he would support such an option, Cross said he couldn’t speak for the whole of the town board but that he personally would support it. “My word’s as good as I am,” said Cross.
The formal part of the meeting was cut short when a resident fell ill and was immediately attended to by former Ambulance Squad Chief Jerry Pearlman. Cross called 911 and soon thereafter the town’s temporary paramedic on call responded. By the time the meeting resumed in time to end it, little appeared newly resolved.
The referendum on the project for deeded property owners within the proposed sewer district will be held Saturday Feb 3. According to Frasier “I run the election” and poll workers will consist of two Republicans and two Democrats who live outside the proposed district. Voting will be at the Phoenicia firehouse from 7AM till 8PM.
Our Ambulance Blues
As of press time, things were supposedly settling down with the service, although repeated calls to the squad’s new administrator, Peg Vitarius, and town supervisor Bob Cross were not returned over a week’s time… meaning their released statements that things were okay again had to be taken at face value.
The current difficulties began when the Town Board stripped longstanding Chief Technician Jerry Pearlman, who had remade the squad in the mid-1990s after being appointed by the late Neil Grant, of his title and reduced his pay. They then hired Pearlman’s predecessor, Peggy Vitarius, as the squad’s new administrator for $15,000 a year, and agreed to pay longstanding squad member, and former town councilman Dennis Frano as Operations Manager at $5,000 per year.
Pearlman, a full-time paramedic on the squad, disagreed with the move and resigned from all his duties. When he left, so did longstanding Billings Manager and paramedic Lisa Benjamin, who had first raised the squad to self-sufficiency and, eventually, cash generator for the town’s General Fund over the last eight years.
Pearlman made arrangements to stay with the squad until a replacement could be found for him so it would be able to maintain “advanced life support” service, a level of medical care greater than what is called “basic life support,” being that he was the only squad member with the appropriate credentials, which allowed him to perform such duties as administering narcotics.
But after he resigned, a snafu occurred when several local officials questioned the legality of his resignation and confusion arose, leading to Pearlman divorcing himself from the squad earlier than expected on legal advice. The town then hired certified paramedics, through Mobile Life Support Services of Kingston, to work around the clock for Shandaken until a member or members of the squad could get the appropriate credentials.
Later, Vitarius presented a letter to a special meeting held January 10 at town hall in which she said that Pearlman and Benjamin had left the squad because of false news reporting, which each later said was not true.
The amount being paid Mobile Life came out when a local resident complained at that same meeting that the service was costing more than $1,000 a day. That figure was not disputed, but Vitarius, who was the squad’s administrator when the deal was made, later said that she did not know the exact cost because town Supervisor Robert Cross Jr. made the deal, not her.
Cross said the cost is $1,200 per day but that the town will retain the revenues from any calls to which the paramedic responds.
In her prepared statement Vitarius blamed Pearlman for creating the need to hire Mobile Life because of his sudden resignation.
Pearlman wife, Adele, a member of the ambulance squad, told the Town Board that her husband resigned because the town broke a promise that he would not be under the supervision of Vitarius.
Blame for the present brouhaha, and Pearlman’s being forced out, leads back to the former squad leader’s questioning of the town’s costs keeping an ambulance on call at state-owned Belleayre Mountain Ski Center on winter weekends, including a diminished service for the remainder of the town. Pearlman said in a recent interview that repeated promises by Belleayre Superintendent Tony Lanza to request additional monies to help pay for the added coverage had at first yielded promises that a request to the state would be made, and later threats by Lanza to find other service from private ambulance companies, none of which came to be.
When Pearlman went to Cross and the town board to plead his case, a similar series of promises of action resulted, although the supervisor later told he and Benjamin that he was getting pressured by Lanza to lay off… the town, the DEC offifical said, was getting enough benefits from the ski center without ambulance payments.
Discussions had reportedly started about setting up the ambulance service as a self-regulating ambulance district, such as with fire protection or water services, when Pearlman was stripped of his command at the January 2 reorg meeting… to his and the squad’s surprise.
Pearlman meanwhile noted how he had been working over the years to build up the squad’s budget to be able to afford a higher quality service for the town. He noted, though, that increased revenues brought in through emergency services were swallowed by the town and used for other purposes.
He agreed, when asked, that the current problems may be an indication that town-specific ambulance squads, like volunteer services, may becoming a thing of the past.
Benjamin, a Shandaken native, has said that her only regret about leaving has been a sense of sorrow that town politics was allowed to enter into local issues involving citizen’s safety.
Vitarius, meanwhile, has said that she has a new list of people who have agreed to work for the ambulance squad if needed, many of whom have also agreed to take needed training to match what it had been under Pearlman.
“At no time were any of the people of the Town of Shandaken in jeopardy,” she wrote in her prepared statement. “All dispatches were answered immediately and efficiently… I hope that we can now look to a brighter future with one of the best, if not THE BEST ambulance squads in the region.”
Stay tuned… and stay safe.
A lengthy discussion proceeded on the various bond proposals for district-wide configuration changes designed to better utilize Onteora’s aging facilties, with the school board deciding that three steps would be taken in order to gather further information.
First, on Saturday March 3, the board will host a district-wide community meeting at the high school to get input on what each community school should look like. There will be a presentation, question, answer and comment period with a formal introduction of the district’s new Superintendent.
The other two steps include a survey to be mailed to district residents and the compilation of more cost figures on each of the bond proposals.
Costs for the three bonds range from $30-$62 million, not including transportation, athletic fields and environmental considerations. Two of the three plans would include closing an additional elementary school or creating a centralized campus at the Boiceville site.
Some school board members recently took a tour of the Taconic Hills Central school district, a consolidated centralized campus that took eleven referendums to pass. It was noted that not until the Taconic school community was made a part of the decision making process and major changes made that a bond passed.
Victoria McLaren the assistant superintendent for business gave an overview of the upcoming budget process and highlighted budget concerns. She outlined the current tax certiorari, or amount of legal challenges, over the value of property assessments. The total amount of challenges facing the district at present is $15,670,826.84, with most coming from a New York City dispute that has alleged that the town of Olive over-assessed the city’s reservoir. If New York City were to win their litigation against Olive, Onteora taxpayers could owe $14,293.667.60, a cost that the city believes it is owed based on their own assessments.
McClaren said Onteora does not have enough in reserves to cover such an amount.
“We only have $3.8 million in reserve, so we could potentially end up having to pay $11.8 million more, McLaren explained. “I don’t know what the chances of that are, but we are likely having to end up paying more than we have in the reserve right now.”
According to New York State law, the school district can only keep the money in reserve for four years. McLaren added that the costs of special education will be another financial concern for the coming budget process.
“Last year, after we adopted our budget, we then restored a number of positions,” McLaren said, noting how some transportation costs have gone up dramatically in this area.
Trustee Maxanne Resnick asked if there was a better process for special education referrals in regards to the budget, noting that she did not want to see a repeat of last year. Assistant superintendent Deb Fox said the pupil personnel staff have already set possible projections for next year.
McLaren also asked the board to consider costs that may reflect the budget process, such as retirement, contracts that will be ending June 2008, rising cost of health care, and a new State mandate that requires a certified director of Physical Education.
School board president Marino D’Orazio asked the administration to try and keep the budget at a four percent increase or lower.
“I don’t want to talk percentages because that makes me crazy. I really want to see keeping track of the quarterly reports we have gotten and the unencumbered amounts of money and the fact that the last three years we have come in at an overage that keeps increasing every year,” replied Trustee Rita Vanacore. “I am not interested in percentages. That is telling my district that we really didn’t do anything better this year than last year.”
Wisneski, a Glenford native and resident of Lomontville who’s planning to move to her husband’s Olivebridge home in the coming months, was speaking from her Albany office in preparation for a CMCE fundraiser set to take place at Woodstock/Saugerties’ New World Home Cooking this Sunday, January 21. Entertainment for the 1 to 4 pm informational gathering and celebration, put together by local artist Bruce Ackerman, will include Mik Horowitz and Gilles Malkine, Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, the Princes of Serendip, Sarah Kramer-Harrison and Robin The Hammer… all local favorites. In addition, Congressman Maurice Hinchey and other political figures of note from the region are expected to be on hand, along with a host of donated goods and services to be silently auctioned off.
The CMCE movement in New York State seeks to set up public campaign funding for all statewide elections similar to other public systems set up in recent years in Arizona and Maine, by public initiative efforts, and in neighboring Connecticut, by legislative action. In those states, prospective candidates would qualify themselves for public funding by raising a certain amount of private monies in small donations – Maine puts the limit at $5 a pop. Once qualified, CMCE candidates would be given a certain amount to spend, determined by analysis regarding how much most legislative or statewide races take to win, with additional amounts available should a privately funded candidate seek a money advantage, or a third party try “swiftboating” a publicly-supported candidate (a reference to the private group that went after John Kerry’s Vietnam record during the 2004 Presidential race).
Wisneski said that the total amount needed to cover New York’s statewide races would be unlikely to go above $20 million in one year… an amount she said would cost taxpayers an average $1 per person. Such spending, though, would be offset by savings in the amount of public monies given back to corporate contributors via tax breaks, as well as the changes that would occur in the pool of candidates willing to come forward for public service without the current fundraising demands modern elections involve.
Wisneski also noted that Spitzer’s recent campaign was run, and won, with over $40 million total.
Citizens Action, for whom Wisneski has been working since December 2005, when she came east from campaigning for similar measures in Hawaii, has been pushing for full Clean Money, Clean Elections reform in New York for the past nine years. She said that during one spell, following ex-Governor George Pataki’s 2002 defeat of Democratic candidate Carl McCall, funding losses forced a major downsizing in the push. During the interim, which lasted a couple of years, CMCE boardmember Irene Miller — a Palenville resident who had earlier been instrumental in a push to instill clean money principals into New York City’s Byzantine elections system – started New York Citizens for Clean Elections to “keep the ball afloat” with the help of a lot of local volunteers.
“With Spitzer having committed to full public funding in his State of the State speech, something he said he would do, and that led to our endorsement of him last year, we now need to focus on the state assembly and senate to ensure a bill goes through in the coming years,” Wisneski said. “That takes a lot of grass roots organizing, which means more staffing on our part… which all takes money.”
In addition to the coming weekend’s Woodstock/Saugerties fundraiser, she added, her campaign drew 45 people to a “highly successful” fundraiser at a private home in New Paltz over the recent Martin Luther King Day holiday weekend.
“Citizens Action always believed that the best bet for getting election reform moving in New York would be to elect a governor who was supportive of it to give the movement real legs,” Wisneski added. “When Eliot Spitzer first said he was supportive of clean elections while running for attorney general in 1998, we knew we had an opportunity… Now we’re working to keep the issue at the top of the state’s agenda.
In his January 3 State of the State speech, Spitzer said, early on, “To neutralize the army of special interests, we must disarm it. In the coming weeks, we will submit a reform package to replace the weakest campaign finance laws in the nation with the strongest. Our package will lower contribution limits dramatically, close the loopholes that allow special interests to circumvent these limits, and sharply reduce contributions from lobbyists and companies that do business with the state. But reform will not be complete if we simply address the supply of contributions. We must also address the demand. Full public financing must be the ultimate goal of our reform effort. By cutting off the demand for private money, we will cut off the special interest influence that comes with it.”
The Governor went on to also address gerrymandered legislative districts, judicial reform, the consolidation of local government, the elimination of “lump-sum members’ item” legislative grants, known as “pork barrel,” full pre-K coverage for all children in the state, and a new push to peg the state’s economic development on knowledge-based business over rust-belt industry and tourism.
“We have a tremendous amount of hope. That State of the State speech was amazing,” Wisneski said. “We know he means what he says.”
The big obstacle now, the campaign coordinator added, was to help push the wanted legislation through the state legislature. She said that although past bills passed regarding clean elections by the state assembly were only “partial,” she feels that Spitzer’s lead – as well as the fact of Connecticut’s recent move – should spur the writing, and passage, of a better law. As for the state Senate, which has blocked such moves in recent years, Wisneski noted that a comment by Majority leader Joe Bruno after the Stet of the State speech indicated possible support now, albeit with an odd restriction that legislative races not be included in the provisions. Furthermore, she noted that Bruno’s recent legal troubles, and his party’s shrinking majority, could work well for “real reform.”
“Incumbents don’t like this,” she said. “It works to level the political playing field, which is not to their advantage.”
She added that Citizens Action’s big push for now, to be explained at this Sunday’s event, is to push for a good elections reform bill’s passage in the State Assembly and then put “all energy” into convincing a similar move on the state Senate’s part.
Did she feel the Assembly would be cooperative?
“It seems like a natural fit. They’ve been saying they want to do reform for a long time now,” Wisneski said, noting that local Assemblyman Kevin Cahill of Kingston could prove an instrumental element of any push to convince Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to get a bill passed with some real muscle in it. Why? “Because he comes from a district where the grass roots for this entire movement have been strongest.”
As for the non-informational side of this weekend’s fundraiser, Wisneski said there would definitely be a major celebratory air to the proceedings because of Spitzer’s rcent inauguration. But also a thankful air for all the work Miller has done over the years, along with such other stalwarts as Ackerman and former Woodstock councilwoman Toby Heilbrunn.
“I’m looking forward to hearing recent Senate candidate Susan Zimet talk about the current system and how it can hurt a candidate facing a strong incumbent,” Wisneski said. “But I’m also thinking we should at least be giving Irene some flowers for having kept the momentum going all these years.”
“It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next two to three years.. Can we get this through,” Wisneski continued. “In Connecticut, it took sending a governor to jail. We’re hoping bringing in a new one will do the trick in New York.”
So where does the new sense of hope balance with reality?
“Spitzer’s not only talking the talk, but he’s also started walking the walk,” Wisneski said. “We’re not naïve. That’s why we have this grass roots movement, these fundraisers.”
The Clean Money, Clean Elections Campaign fundraiser takes place this Sunday, January 21, from 1 to 4 pm at New World Home Cooking on Route 212 near the Saugerties/Woodstock border. For more information call Jessica at 845-901-0264
A Dream Draws To A CloseCecilia Scanlan came to New York City from Ireland in 1950, to live with her aunt Catherine, who was one of the beleaguered immigrants to have miraculously survived the sinking of the Titanic. She met her future husband, Edward, at a dance for single immigrants. He was a construction worker, a soldier in the Korean War, and an import from a small fishing village in Newfoundland. They were married in 1955.
Edward Scanlan was by nature an industrious man, and as a foreman in a New York City construction company, he was accustomed to the idea of expansion. As his family grew, he began looking for ways out of the city, into the open pastures of rural America, where the opportunities grew wild along the roadsides. In 1965, he found his chance: an advertisement placed in the New York Times for a lumber company and hardware store for sale in the blue mountain-flanked hamlet of Boiceville, NY. The company was Singer-Denman.
Scanlan’s eldest daughter, named Cecelia after her mother, recounts that when Scanlan and his brother William – who was to be his business partner – first crossed the reservoir into West Shokan, they knew that there was “no going back” to the bustle of the city.
George Singer, who founded the hardware store and lumber company along with his son-in-law Lee Denman, was immediately impressed with Edward. Kevin Scanlan, Edward’s son, who was seven years old when his father bought the business, recalls that Mr. Singer sold it “on a handshake,” and personally held a note on the property until Scanlan had paid for it in full.
“My father was a very honest man,” said Kevin Scanlan. “If he told you he’d have $5,000 on Friday afternoon, he’d be there on Friday with $5,000.”
T heir first night in Boiceville, Edward, Cecilia, and their children stayed in the Trail Motel, the yellow sign for which is still a comforting sight along the side of Rt. 28. Their daughter, Siobahn, remembers it well: it was there she fell out of her bed and fractured her shoulder.
Despite this potentially bad omen, Edward took over the lumber business with the kind of passion and vigor that many would say defines the American spirit. William ran the hardware store, which was then housed in what is now the Boiceville Supermarket building. In 1967, however, William died suddenly of cancer, leaving Edward with both businesses to operate, along with the care of his brother’s widow and six children.
The tragedy of William’s abrupt death only spurred Edward to greater industry. In the next decade, he would construct a new building for the hardware store, and begin adding rental units to the lot, which would – by the 1980s – become Boiceville’s central shopping plaza.
Edward’s eldest daughter describes him as living according to a “Let’s go get it” philosophy. “Life was very simple for him,” she said, “There was no gray area in my father’s world.”
“He lived the American dream,” she noted.
Edward’s daughters remember the Singer-Denman hardware store as being the de facto social center of Boiceville, where at some point, most of his children, his nieces, his nephews, and many of their friends, would come to congregate. The older children would work in the hardware store (and in Kevin’s case, the lumber yard as well), and the younger would find their amusements thereabout.
“We grew up in the lumber yard, in the sand piles,” Siobhan, Edward’s second-eldest daughter remembered. “We made houses out of stacks of cement and played hide-and-seek behind rolls of fiberglass.”
The Scanlans – Edward, Cecelia, and the troupe of 13 children – thrived in life and in business. Edward became renowned for his generosity, extending store credit to many of his regular customers. He established himself firmly within the social and political fabric of the community, building the town swimming pool and two town pavilions, and presiding as chairman of the town’s Republican party for 20 years. His daughters went to college in Europe, with one – Maura, the youngest – to become a doctor; and he sent a number of his late brother’s children to college as well. He bought property all over the area, and even purchased a house in Florida.
But all of his accomplishments could do nothing to prevent the same affliction that had claimed the life of his brother, from laying its claim upon Edward Scanlan as well. He managed to retain command of his business for some time, despite the onset of cancer, but – at the commencement of chemotherapy – was finally forced to yield even this. He left control of the hardware store and the plaza in hands of his son Kevin, and, in 1995 – at the age of 68 – surrendered his conquering spirit once and for all.
His daughter Cecelia lamented that his death came far too soon. “All he did was give,” she said, “He never took. He had so much more to offer.”
It was at the point of Edward’s death that his little empire, the hardware store, the lumber yard, and the plaza, seemed to begin crumbling. Large hardware and lumber warehouse stores opened in Kingston, creating competition of a kind with which Edward had never been acquainted. And when the Twin Towers fell in Manhattan, in September of 2001, the bridge between the Eastern and Western sides of the reservoir was closed for the purposes of security, effectively blocking residents of the Western side of Olive from conveniently reaching Boiceville.
“We lost $900,000 in that one year,” said Kevin Scanlan. “It was too much of a shock for a small family business to take.”
As the debts mounted for the business, Edward’s son and three daughters struggled to agree on the proper course of action. Kevin, the eldest among them and Edward’s only son, held the largest single percentage of Singer-Denman’s shares, and believed that they should remain the owners of the business. His sisters, two of whom now lived out of state, argued that the time had come to sell. While the controversy raged between them, the company’s financial condition became desperate, and before long, Singer-Denman was bankrupt.
Finally, Kevin had no choice but to concede. After selling numerous properties and mortgaging his house twice in an effort to save the business, he sold it – when it was all but worthless – to a man who had worked for him in the hardware store, Carlos Gonzales, who – according to Scanlan’s account – never paid him the full amount for it.
Edward’s widow and three daughters watched in dismay as the patriarch’s multi-million-dollar holdings fell, piece by piece, from their hands. In the end, the entire plaza was sold by a bank trustee to Mario Occhi, the owner of the Boiceville Supermarket next door, whose relationship with Kevin Scanlan had turned increasingly hostile over the preceding years. It was a bargain at $944,000.
Today, the hardware store and a section of the plaza stand vacant. Mario Occhi was not available to comment on his plans for the property. The Scanlan sisters have accepted the loss and moved on with their own lives and careers, while Kevin resides in the home of his mother, struggling to find work for which his college degree does not make him “overqualified.”
“My mother misses my father so much,” Kevin said. “Sometimes she cries, ‘I wish to God your father never died.’” He agreed, “None of this would have happened if he were still alive.”
“Every time I go home, I notice that another family business is gone,” said the younger Cecelia, who has now resided in Los Angeles for 20 years. “It seems like, when I was a kid, Boiceville was richer,” she said. “Now the dynamic has changed completely, and it’s just not lucrative anymore [to have a small business.]”
Nevertheless, Cecelia added, “I’m ready to come home.”