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AUTUMN
sure is splendid, especially given the number
of festivals hitting the Catskills this weekend and next. The
29th annual Bellayre Fall Festival’s moved to Arkville,
just up Route 28, but Pine Hill’s having a lot of music
and check out the Ashokan Fall Fest Columbus Day weekend. As well
as Onteora’s Homecoming on October 18... a perfect time
for football.
Budgets
Rising Fast
Shandaken’s Preliminary Spending Plan, Like All In State,
Readies For Some Cuts
10/9/2008
Phoenicia Times Staff
The Town of Shandaken’s preliminary budget has appeared
on schedule this year, unlike last year when the same document
didn’t jump out of town hall until close to Halloween.
But this years $5 million spending plan may still give taxpayers
a fright. Filled with raises for all public officials and non-union
employees plus a whopping 18% increase for the town’s ambulance
squad, this wish-list form of the budget doesn’t seem to
have been prepared with an eye toward cost cutting the way most
levels of government are trying to do.
Continue>>>
One Road Opens, Another Closes
Down
It’s never easy getting between
Woodstock and Phoenicia, it seems. It’s never easy
getting between Woodstock and Phoenicia, it seems. According
to Dave Sheeley, Ulster County Commissioner of Public
Works, the replacement job on a Woodstock bridge that’s
kept Wittenberg Road closed between Wilson State Park
and Mt. Tremper for months now was expected to be done,
with the route once again open, by this Thursday, October
9, at latest.
Things got held up, he said, because of complications
replacing the original span’s footings, and the
only reason he was unsure of an exact time for reopening
was some leeway in when his department could put in new
guard rails.
Asked what other closings folks could expect in the area,
Sheeley said none that he could think of… and then
remembered that Old Route 28 between Mt. Tremper and Phoenicia,
otherwise known as Old Plank Road, was in the process
of being scheduled for major repairs that could keep the
three and a half mile distance shut down for “quite
some time.”
“The stringers on the bridge there in Mt. Tremper
are rotted,” Sheeley said of the span and roadway
the county’s had to repair several times in recent
years due to flooding. “We’ve put in an order
for the steel to do the job but can’t say when it’s
coming in yet.”
He added that, to be safe, he’d be closing the road
“for the foreseeable future” sometime in the
coming month of October.
“It’s a fairly extensive project so I couldn’t
tell you how long it’s going to take,” the
Public Works Commissioner added. “It’ll take
time.”
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Belleayre’s
Still OK
State Cuts, But Vows To Up Stewardship,
Catskills Keep Drawing Increased Focus
10/9/2008
by Paul Smart
According to DEC officials these days,
the state Department of Environmental
Conservation’s key mission now and
for the foreseeable future is to beef
up its stewardship credentials, to do
the best it can with what it already has.
That means going along with across the
board state budget cuts and using new
challenges as a means of bettering its
core functions… including operations
at Shandaken-based Belleayre Mountain
Ski Center, which the state Department
of Environmental Conservation says will
operate as usual this year, albeit with
a number of cut backs.
John
Parete’s Legacy
 Ulster
Democrats’ Political Architect Steps
Down From County Politics
10/9/2008
by Brian Powers
There were Democrats in Ulster County before
John Parete became party chairman in 1999,
but you had to know where to look for them.
There certainly weren’t many in elected
office, just 6 of 33 county legislators
at the time, and things weren’t much
different at the town government level.
And while people’s party registration
is of course public record, many Democrats
used to be reluctant to offer that information
casually, for fear that sharing their formerly
non-mainstream leanings sometimes entailed
a degree of risk.
Continue>>>
A
Blessing On Wall Street
Our Intrepid Columnist Makes His Way Into
The World Of High Finance
10/9/2008
BySparrow
I’d
heard that Mama Donna, the Urban Shaman,
was planning an “emergency Equinox
Blessing” in front of the Stock Exchange
at 11:44 Monday morning, September 22. I
arrived on Wall Street at 11:37 to find
a 63-year-old woman laden with necklaces
and African bracelets conferring with security
guards by the barricades. (The Stock Exchange
has been closed to visitors since September
11.) This must be the Urban Shaman herself!
“I cleared everything with them,”
she reported back to her five supporters.
“This won’t be another one of
Mama Donna’s equinox arrest excursions.”
She was making an in-joke about being arrested
with 43 celebrants at South Beach in Staten
Island in 1998.
Continue>>>
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