Follow Up on the News

Board Candidates...

A February 17 meeting scheduled to deal with the vacancy, which will then go up for district-wide vote along with two other board seats when the school budget gets voted on May 19, was canceled last week due to an illness in board president Maxanne Resnick’s family.
The four applicants who have come forward, culled by reporters who FOILed the dirict for the information, are West Shokan resident William Melvin, Oliverea Resident Tom Hickey, Mount Tremper resident Dan Spencer and Shokan resident Rita Vanacore.
Melvin, a high school senior and student representative to the Board of Education, said in his statement that his appointment would allow for continuity and could serve to bring harmony to a sometimes divided board.
“I feel my appointment would be in the best interest of the…district,” he wrote. “Student perspective, someone who experiences firsthand the effects of board decisions, on the board…would be very beneficial to our schools.”
When Melvin first suggested he be appointed to the position earlier this month, board member Donna Flayhan said to him that she thought such a move would end up detracting from his studies.
Hickey, who ran unsuccessfully for the school board four years ago and who has a background in finance and management, said in his statement that he is willing to serve until the next election in May.
“I feel with my background, I can be fair and balanced and bring experience that may help the ongoing budget process,” he wrote.
Spencer, who submitted his statement of interest one day after the February 16 deadline, is a Project Manager at AMETEK Rotron. Spencer wrote that his position gives him skills that would benefit the board. He also considers himself “neutral on the issues currently driving what I see as a split in both the board and the community they serve.”
Vanacore, a former trustee who lost her re-election bid last year, and adamantly said she would not be running when asked earlier in the month, wrote that she always put the needs of the students first during her tenure.
“My previous tenure gives me the updated experience to transition onto the board with the least amount of confusion and lack of knowledge,” she wrote.
To fill the vacancy, the remaining six trustees will decide with a majority vote.
Legnini, a West Shokan-based musician and producer elected to a three-year term on the board last May along with three other district residents running as a slate, resigned on February 3. His resignation letter said he was frustrated with a board that, in his view, lacked the harmony necessary to do the best job for the district.
A special meeting had also been set this for Tuesday, February 24 to discuss the hiring of a new District Clerk to replace Laurel Herdman, whose recent resignation was the district’s third since July 2008, when longstanding District Clerk Jeanne Shultis retired.
At that meeting, Fern Amster was named the new Onteora District Clerk.
Resnick was elected board president at a special meeting on February 6, where she won a 4-2 vote with Michelle Friedel and Richard Wolff in opposition.
At that same meeting, Triton Construction was awarded the bid for the High School Auditorium renovation project. In total there were three bidders. Contractor Greg Chiapperino presented a timeline and oversight table assuring that the job has appropriate oversight. Board Vice-president Laurie Osmond asked Chiapperino to protect the auditorium seats that are still in good condition.
Chiapperino said he was aware and already received a call from someone possibly interested but board policy dictates that the district must try to sell the seats before donating them. Resnick explained that they have already emailed out to non-profit arts organizations, offering to sell them in lots of 25. When McLaren said there have been no interested bidders Resnick replied that, “Levon Helm wants 50.”
The auditorium is still on schedule for completion by the new school year in September 2009. But Chiapperino said it is important that the school board approve construction by the next school board meeting, which at the time was February 17.
That matter will now be voted on at a special meeting the board has called for this Friday morning, February 27, at the District Administrative offices in Boiceville.
In ongoing budget discussions geared towards addressing fluctuating revenue possibilities for the coming year, department heads have presented budget reductions as a way of keeping costs down while addressing declining enrollment. And according to Onteora superintendent Dr. Leslie Ford, six teachers have been given word that if the board approves a reduction, their positions will be eliminated.
In a separate interview, Union President, Corey Cavallaro said, “Contractually they have to tell the staff that they are being excessed by sometime in March.” He added that he believes the administration will follow through, recommending the cuts even if money is freed up to keep teachers.
“We have the lowest enrollment that I think the district has ever had,” said Cavallaro, “and we have too much staff our district cannot afford to pay…it’s just not fiscally responsible.”
On the other hand, Cavallaro admitted that he disagreed with the cuts proposal, but explained that it is a very difficult fine line to walk between what is good for students and right for taxpayers.
“It’s a difficult situation the district is in, we want to do the best for the kids, and laying off staff, I don’t think that is in the best interest of the students right now.”
An alternative plan under discussion includes shared teachers and courses in order to keep staff at full time, as well as a possible changing of secondary school scheduling from an eight-day block with 55-minute classes to a nine period, 43-minute class per-day.

Heller, owner of Fabulous Furniture on Route 28 in Boiceville, had caught a glimpse of legacy in that mirror which tracks directly forward to his winning, last week, of the New York Times Collectible Car of the Year Award and a subsequent invitation to display his mobile “sculpture,” the “Marquis de Soto,” at the celebrated New York International Auto Show in the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan from April 10th to 19th this year.
“I heard him pull away in the log truck and heard him come back,” recalls Martha Frankel, whose instincts as a mate were alerted by the maneuver. “He came in and said ‘I can’t get rid of this stuff. I have to keep it,’ and when I asked what he was going to do with it, he said he didn’t know.”
The “stuff” in question was a truckload of accumulated odds and ends which his father, a former antique dealer in Lake Hill, had left behind when he died and Steve had cleared out of the old homestead. Something in the reverse image of it said that this stuff wasn’t disposable and Heller, a creative designer of sleek and unique furniture, mulled on it a while before he started taking lessons in welding. Now, as Martha points out, a third of the furniture shop is filled with imaginative metal sculptures which trace their genesis to that almost discarded truckload.
Another “almost” in the story is the contest he almost missed because he heard about it with only two days left in the entry period. Since the “Marquis” was a custom-made vehicle rather than a restored car like most, if not all, of the other entries, Heller was a bit dubious about his chances. But those doubts fell out of his pockets as he jumped up and down when, on December 1st, Martha came into the workshop to announce she had checked the contest website and found the Marquis de Soto among the 30 finalists out of well over 600 entries.
From here it became a reader popularity contest as the finalists chosen by the Times automotive experts were put to a vote to be tabulated by the RealTime Media company in Pennsylvania. The announcement to finalists politely requested “please register to vote and come back to vote once a day,” sending Martha into action, saying she “remembered how Obama won” before sending directions to the car-voter website out to their e-mail list and posting the information on her Facebook page.
Hopes dimmed as time passed without notice from the paper before an e-mail from RealTime saying they were surprised Heller had not responded and there was only 24 hours left before the prize of a trophy, a first-place certificate and $5,000 in award money would be given to the second place winner. A phone call to the company revealed that an e-mail announcement a week before had somehow gone astray but it was then resent and another “almost” was averted.
It became a very busy week. The paperback edition of Martha’s memoir had just been just published by Tarcher/Penguin and a story on Steve’s car was in the New York Times. The book, titled Hats & Eyeglasses after a poker term signifying a hopeless hand, is a compelling account of Frankel’s shaded waltz with compulsive gambling and it had gathered a stack of positive reviews. Described as “fearless” by a brazen tabloid like the New York Post, it’s also a book in which a reviewer for USA Today found “a heady joy ride” in the turmoil of poker addiction; a clear tribute to the wit and writing ability of an author who had gained renown from her interview portraits of celebrities for numerous magazines.
Heller, raised in Queens, had met his wife-to-be, raised in the Bronx, at Woodstock’s Joyous Lake in 1974, a year after he had moved Fabulous Furniture from an upstairs space at Winchell’s Corners to its present location.
“Our shop burned down on October 30,1978, with all his tools,” recalled Frankel, who by that date had become deeply involved in the running of the business. “The whole town got together and helped and we built this amazing concrete block building before New Years. A hundred people would show up in freezing cold weather to lay block and put the roof up. It was a lovely, incredible thing. Steve was, I think, 38 at the time and I was 30 and that committed us to living in Olive the rest of our lives.”
Undaunted by the car trim which serves as kitchen cabinet handles or the Chevy Impala tail lights over the fireplace, Frankel is, on the contrary, delighted with Heller’s “customizing” touches around the house. Although he studied psychology rather than art, Steve’s eye is keen to the aesthetic sensibilities he brings to his woodwork and sculpture. She sees no separation between the focus of his work and the daily living of his life.
“I love that he’s doing something that he loves doing,” she declares, explaining that he turned to outdoor sculpture when house space was filled. “He’s so happy, who could be mad at him?”
The Marquis de Soto, of course, goes far beyond customizing. It approaches the kind of genetic engineering we find in the half-lion, half-eagle Griffins that Zeus created to guard the fabled “Gold of the North.” In fact, in an age when human genes are being inserted in rice and, for obvious reasons, the food industry and the FDA are downplaying the use of bacterium like Salmonella Typhimurium and various plant viruses as vectors in transgenic transfer to produce such patent-eligible foodstuff, it’s refreshing to see a mad scientist lay it all out there on his website. Click on the “Fabulous Stuff” link at Steve Heller’s Fabulous Furniture website and you will find this pedigree for his award-winning fabulous four-wheeled beast...
“She started out as an almost new Mercury Marquis. We stripped all the bumpers, lights and trim, modified and added rear quarters from a 1957 DeSoto complete with tailights, bumper and trunk lid. The front fender is from a 1958 Lincoln with headlights. The bumpers are from a 1955 Caddy and the grille is from two 1957 Corvettes with extra teeth. The top of the hood is a 1965 Buick Skylark trunk lid and the roll pan is a 1958 Caddy hood turned upside down. The directional signals are 1959 Cadillac tailights and the turning lights are from a 1948 Dodge. The side chrome is from a 1957 Buick. Also parts from 1953 Pontiac roof and front fenders.”
“I needed a car to drive longer distances than my truck and I always wanted to build a totally customized car,” Heller elaborates. “Since I was a kid, I’ve never driven a stock vehicle; always had some kind of modifications and custom paint jobs, which I do myself, too. The custom cars you saw on the covers of car magazines back then were just personalized whatevers. You could always tell what they were. But I wanted to do something different...something you couldn’t tell what it was...In the contest, the collectibles are all just restored cars. I think this was the first time they had a fully modified car in the finalists.”
With this triumph under his belt, Heller is looking forward to other intriguing projects on the horizon, such as a commission for his own cubist vision for a guitar sculpture eight or ten feet tall or the completion of his Stargate...
Stargate? Yes, he hopes to finish it this year, he said. It’s 14 feet in diameter and he’s “electrifying it so it works,” he said. “With a DHD (Dial Home Device), so you can get back from wherever you’re going... You don’t want to get stuck on planet BRB29.”
Er....okay, Steve. Visions of the Stargates of science fictional fame are dancing through my mind; visions wherein you step through dimensions and wormhole out on a planet light-years away in the space of a blink. Or studies of contemporary mythology like the ponderous The Stargate Conspiracy by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, wherein the concept takes a deeper step toward reality, and the subquantum kinetic twists of Paul LaViolette and others on the leaping trail of quantum “entanglements,” hyperbole geometry and further loopholes of physics and cosmology that provide scientific footing wherein serious Stargate theorizing is perfectly permissible.
Steve, the Marquis de Soto is combine sculpture that extends into the functional realm. You drive around in it. But a “Stargate” model would be...
“An absolutely functional model,” Heller said with a grin you could almost hear over the phone. “All my stuff is functional.”