Follow Up on the News
Out of the $47,003,340 recommended budget, $35,057,945 or 74.59 percent was singled out as being tied to staff salaries and benefits, which Ford noted is a cost the district cannot control. Most school board members requested further reductions in the budget and said they would look for more cuts in line items.
Ford and Assistant Superintendent for Business Victoria McLaren said they are currently seeing staff cuts as necessary.
“As administrators, as musicians, as people who love children we would never want to support cutting anything anytime, but as mature administrators we are also bound by the fiscal realities of our world…” said Ford. “We have an obligation to the public to look at the budget in a very responsible way.”
Current cuts totaling to $920,824 include two full time music teachers, seven full time special education teacher assistants, elimination of elementary summer school, elimination of the 5:15pm late bus run, one full time behavior intervention specialist and reductions in general office supplies.
Ford said the music reduction was made because of declining enrollment in the elementary schools. The seven special education assistant cuts are based on IEP (individual education plan) need and could be reinstated if recommendations in special education are made. Ford said the elimination of the elementary summer school is temporary and will be restored next year, but there will be no alternative for students in need of help this summer.
Elementary enrollment as of February 2007 in grades Kindergarten through six totaled to 774 students. This does not include special education students. According to Ford, based on the district’s elementary population and class size policy there should be 30.23 full time elementary teachers. Onteora currently has 42 full time elementary teachers.
Eight staff retirements, with six new hires are expected this year, which in short term will save the district around $240,000 the first year. But health insurance between the retired and new employees will rise and over the years the district will carry a larger burden of costs.
Additions incorporated into the proposed budget include a technology teaching assistant, a full time speech therapist and the creation of a capital project line. Ford warned that if voters rejected the budget, an additional $710,440 would get eliminated. Programs suggested for elimination would include the Indie program, field trips, non-athletic stipends including clubs, and sports.
The March 29 district wide vote is to approve $1,862,711 for two major repair projects. Although projects that concern the health and safety of students do not require voter approval, a promise refund in State aid does. As a one time perk, the district will be getting $662,711 in EXCEL aid (Expanding our children’s Education and Learning) and the state will cover 30 percent of the other $1,200,00. The money is needed for a new boiler at Woodstock Elementary School and renovations to the high school auditorium. There are two votes that need to be approved in order to qualify for the state aid. One will levy the money and the other will release the money already available from the capital reserve fund. Polls are open from 2pm to 9pm at local elementary schools, which will close early that day..
The two-session forum titled “Discussing Dreams, Options and Realities,” held at Onteora Middle/High school on March 3, raised many questions, offered new information and allowed the public to share ideas on three proposals addressing the reconfiguration of the evolving (and demographically shrinking) district. New Superintendent Dr. Leslie Ford was on hand meeting people and keeping time so everyone could be heard.
Informational booths with representatives from the field were set up, allowing the public to learn about the different plans, costs, environmental factors, financing, education and transportation. The attendant crowd of forty or more people at each session broke into small groups and were drilled with questions by school board members who gathered data, searching for common themes.
Tables were set up representing the five topics of the day: student needs, instruction, facilities, transportation and community needs.
At the end of each session Armand Quadrini of KSQ Architects summed up each topic based on the groups point of view and concerns.
Discussions throughout the day voiced the need to use more energy efficient ways of heating, light and fuel alternatives such as bio-diesel for buses. Investment in energy efficient technology that would lead to long term cost savings was voiced as a need throughout the district. As part of curriculum based initiative, people favored educating students in green technology and conservation.
Uncertainty about local population growth or loss was a concern regarding proposals for additional elementary school closings. Quadrini said, “Right now we are faced with enrollment decline. What happens if enrollment starts to tip in the other direction?”
The latest adjusted enrollment projections and actual number of enrolled students between 2002 and 2007 were available and will soon be listed on the district website. But it appears, actual student enrollment is lower than projections that do not take into account the population of home school and private school students, which came to 210 last year.
Most agreed that the central campus plan would not allow room for expansion. Operating costs versus the reduction of schools and how it impacts future costs to the district was a requested facility study. In addition, questions were raised on what to do with additional closed buildings — could be rented? — and what to do with West Hurley elementary school, closed in 2004. In the end, demographics and community needs tended to clash on issues of declining enrollment and the desire to have community-based elementary schools.
Quadrini said, “The group seemed to gravitate to plan A in terms of its dialogue -in that it maintains a community school in each neighborhood.”
Plan A is the only proposal that would not close any additional elementary schools. Concerns were voiced over loss of community, lack of flexibility and population shifts.
Quadrini said questions were raised regarding the consolidation of schools, time spent on the bus and what the pollution impact would be to transport kids further distances. New data collected by interim transportation supervisor Peter Montalvo showed an expansion of costs if elementary schools were to close.
Comments were made that the school board should specify what additional school would close in Plan C. Many wanted to reopen the West Hurley school, noting it as superior because of land size (over 30 acres).
Off campus programs such as Indy and Universal Pre-K were suggested as a way to save school buildings and overhead costs.
At the end of the sessions, Ford gathered the data and asked participants as they were leaving to write down which plan they would prefer. Although she said it would not be the deciding factor, it will help the district come up with solutions that would ultimately lead to a plan that the community can agree on.
A report on their findings will be given at a future school board meeting.
Trouble With DEP Police...
From the perspective of the city DEP’s administrative levels, the stated dissatisfaction does not reflect what they characterize as a tripling of investment in DEP policing activities and infrastructure, reflective of their concerns over the reservoir system’s safety.
In between, a number of long-time DEP watchers — including county Sheriff Paul Van Blarcum and Bert Leifeld, supervisor of the town of Olive, where much of the DEP force is based – have wondered whether all the noise may simply be the byproduct of ongoing contract negotiations between the city and its DEP police force.
It all started, at least in its present public form, when LEEBA President Kenneth Wynder Jr. sent out a press release on March 14 in which he reported that, “Recently New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Police Officers, members of the Law Enforcement Employees Benevolent Association (LEEBA), canvassed the membership for a vote on the performance of Chief Edward Welch and Assistant Chief Mark Benedetto. 95% of the officers voted and of 91% voted against Chief Welch while 85% voted against Asst. Chief Benedetto. These officers expressed their opinion that mismanagement within DEP Police must end.”
Continuing, Wynder’s release complained about how the DEP “has no apparent definable future goals or long term plans” for its Police Division, resulting in low morale.
“The present administration utilizes intimidation, retaliation, and unauthorized disciplinary actions instead of leadership to control the members of the command,” LEEBA charged. “The turnover rate in the ranks of DEP Police remains the highest of any City Department and it directly affects the safety of New York City’s Water Supply and the citizens of the surrounding watershed. Relations with the public and other neighboring police agencies are strained.”
Wynder noted cases where promotions were refused longstanding officers, inadequate infrastructure and equipment, poor personnel policies, and bad communications of both a literal and metaphorical basis.
“DEP Police Officers are extremely dissatisfied with the current management,” Wynder concluded. “Through retaliation, discrimination and unauthorized disciplinary actions, the Chiefs have degraded morale to its lowest ebb.”
Asked to reply to the union release, New York City DEP spokesperson Ian Michaels confirmed that contract negotiations were underway, then countered a number of the charges made against the department and its management without going t=into any personnel details regarding Welch and Benedetto, or any matters currently part of the contract talks.
“The security of the water supply is of the highest priority to the DEP. That is why we have made a huge investment in the DEP Police,” Michaels wrote in his own release of March 20. “In the last five years, DEP has tripled the size of the force and added new units such as Emergency Services. DEP has invested over $120 million in facilities and equipment to improve the effectiveness of the DEP Police, including the construction of five new precincts and two new training centers. The DEP will continue to work to make the DEP Police an even more effective force for the people who rely on and live near the water system.”
Van Blarcum said that his department has a good working relationship with the DEP Police. Leifeld, whose town is host to much of the Ashokan Reservoir, as well as the DEP Police headquarters, added that his town’s police department also works well with DEP police and that Olive residents have no issues with the department.
Wynder could not be reached for further comment beyond his statement despite several calls to all his listed numbers, as well as e-mails, in the week since his initial press release.
The draft, several inches thick, was commissioned by New York City to fulfill its Federal filtration avoidance requirements with respect to the Ashokan Reservoir, a source of city drinking water, which is fed by the Esopus Creek. Administered by Cornell Cooperative Extension, the preparation of the plan was based on a comprehensive survey of the creek and its tributaries by U.S. Army Engineer Research Development Center and New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), questionnaires and feedback from streamside landowners and other community members, assembly of past data on the stream system, and a study of stream habitat by Walter Keller, retired Fisheries Manager of New York State Region IV Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
New York City has earmarked $2 million for implementation of the plan. Cornell’s Education and Outreach Coordinator Michael Courtney said this funding could be leveraged into four to five times that amount through further grants as projects get underway.
Dan Davis, DEP geologist and project manager, addressed issues of flooding and erosion, the top concern of local creekside property owners, according to the survey mailed out by Cornell. Computer modeling indicates that releases from the Shandaken Tunnel would have minimal effect under flood conditions, elevating the creek by only one to three inches. (DEP policy calls for the tunnel to be closed whenever flooding is imminent.) When the Esopus is flowing at lower levels, however, releases do contribute to erosion of susceptible sites with little protective plant growth.
Davis observed that flooding is a natural process that only creates difficulties when it comes into conflict with human construction. He mentioned problem sites such as the stretch near the Copper Hood Inn, the confluence with Birch Creek, and sections of the Stony Clove Creek. The plan recommends prioritizing the candidates for remediation and obtaining funding for solutions like the 2004 rerouting of the Esopus at Woodland Valley bridge that may have prevented a row of houses from falling into the water in the April 2005 flood.
When Elizabeth Winograd, owner of the Copper Hood, asked how she could protect her property, sited between the creek and Route 28, Davis said riprap, placement of large rocks on the bank, would be helpful only if she planted vegetation whose roots would anchor the rocks. She was skeptical, noting that even nearby trees had been ripped out by flooding. He said willows and sedges, rapidly propagating, grasslike plants with high root density, would be more helpful than trees but acknowledged that in her sticky situation, probably only a rerouting of the water would provide a long-term solution.
“Why is it that for the first ten years I lived here, I could stand in the creek up to my neck and see my feet through the water, but for the past few years, I can’t even see my hands?” asked Kathy Nolan of Mt. Tremper, echoing a concern posed by other members of the public at the meeting. In response, Davis painted a picture of cyclical turbidity produced by flooding, which breaks down banks of glacial deposits and distributes sediment throughout the stream system. The resultant cloudiness takes years to clear out of the system. Although data do not indicate an increase in flooding over the past 75 years, the persistence of turbidity may come from the increase in human habitation along the banks, where mowed lawns reduce the extent of root systems that prevent erosion, roads limit the ability of streams to recover from floods, and riprap and retaining walls harden and preserve some portions of the bank, often at the expense of increased erosion downstream.
The plan encourages towns to develop land use laws that prevent inappropriate development in areas that are at high risk for flooding and erosion. Davis showed a computer-generated map that shows flood projections based on data collected during the project. He expressed the hope that town governments and planning and zoning boards would use such maps in devising land use laws.
Keller, the fisheries expert, cited studies that show little effect of turbidity on the trout population of the Esopus, a finding that runs counter to intuition, since trout are visual feeders and are impaired by cloudy water. Keller pointed out, however, that the higher trout population in the lower, more turbid sections of the creek might be due to other influences such as colder water, which fish require in summer. He urged more studies on the effects of turbidity on fish, with collaboration between scientists and community members.
He also noted the importance of the cold water released into the Esopus by its tributaries, including the Shandaken Tunnel, where the turbidity of water from the Schoharie Reservoir is offset by the same water’s colder temperature. As a result of a lawsuit brought by Trout Unlimited, the city is currently working on a plan to address turbidity at the Schoharie Reservoir. Among the Esopus plan’s recommendations are identification and protection of cold-water tributaries and wetlands, as well as management of tunnel releases for maximum habitat benefit.
The tunnel came up again under the category of recreation. Tubing, fishing, canoeing and kayaking are local attractions that provide a mainstay of the area’s economy. These activities often come into conflict, observed Jeremy Magliaro, Cornell’s project manager. While fisherfolk abhor the turbidity involved in tunnel releases, tubers and kayakers depend on the increased volume of water. They also compete for space on the creek at peak tourist season. The plan suggests developing a code of conduct for dealing with such conflicts.
The plan calls for periodic public meetings like Tuesday’s gathering, held perhaps quarterly, perhaps annually, depending on interest, to update information and solicit feedback. Community members were encouraged to get involved by participating in monitoring of macroinvertebrates, which indicate stream health; photo-monitoring, in which repeated photos are taken of a section of bank, following a strict protocol; streamside planting projects; stream clean-ups; and other initiatives. See www.esopuscreek.org for information on community projects and for downloads of sections of the Stream Management Plan (found under “Documents”). The Cornell office is located at Phoenicia Plaza on Route 28 and may be reached at 688-5496 or 340-3990.
“The Fourth of July — that’s an interesting time to stop drinking,” I replied.
“Independence!” Mr. Cross said, smiling.
Ward Todd, President of the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce, arrived with a huge pair of scissors. (I felt like I was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.) Two mysterious men in brown suit jackets conferred near the front door. I heard one say: “I don’t believe the scissors actually work. They are purely ceremonial.”
John Paunovic, the general manager of the Phoenix Restaurant, within the Emerson (so named because it rose from the ashes) told me: “I was born in Brooklyn, my mom was originally Romanian, my father’s from the former Yugoslavia, I grew up in Austria and Switzerland, and I started working in the Emerson in 2000. We helped them do the grand opening! I was the bar manager for four and a half years, and we’ve been away — myself and my wife — in Aspen for about two years. And now were here for the opening again!”
“What kind of food does the Phoenix have?” I asked.
“It’s American-based cuisine, with Asian fusion and Thai fusion,” Mr. Paunovic replied.
“Pretty ambitious!”
“Well, we’re trying to fit the motif. All the hotel is a modern Asian style, with an influence of the Middle Eastern.”
“What languages do you speak?”
“English, German, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian. And Italian, as well. When I used to live in Davos, Switzerland, there were people from Italy. Italian and Romanian are very similar.”
But I had to run to the front of the room, because the speeches were beginning.
An excerpt from Ward Todd’s oration: “It’s such a special day, I think — the culmination of so much planning. To look back, it was less than two years ago that the original Emerson burned. How rapidly this has all come together, and how spectacular this facility really is. We step back and say: ‘Could this really be in Shandaken? Is this really ours?’”
When his speech ended, the woman next to me observed: “No one can clap! They all have champagne glasses!”
From Bob Cross’ speech: “I was privileged to sit down at a table and enjoy a presentation a little over two years ago when the Conde Nast Johansens Award was presented to the Emerson for the best lodge and spa in all of North America, South America and the Caribbean. That was a fantastic honor, it was a great thing to be part of. But this is even better.” He presented Dean Gitter, founder of the Emerson, with a vase he bought at the Shandaken Bicentennial, to display here.
From Dean Gitter’s talk: “It so happened that I was the first kid on my block to own a 13 foot high, 7 foot wide set of Hindu doors. You may have seen on television an advertisement in which a young couple comes into the office of an architect, puts a Lohman faucet on the desk, and says: ‘Build a house around this.’ Well, this is what I did to our interior architect, Antony diGiuseppe.’”
There was a snafu with the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Mr. Gitter was supposed to pause, holding his three-feet long scissors, so the photographers could capture this moment of Shandaken history. Then, after the flashbulbs flashed, Lyn, his wife, would cut the large red ribbon with a real scissors. But Lyn jumped the gun, and no one got a good photo.
Meanwhile, we visitors began swarming through the luxurious edifice.
Actually, I’d never been in a five-star hotel. (Of course, we aren’t sure how many stars it will have. We must wait for the rating committees, especially the Mobil Travel Guide!) I was surprised to discover that a five-star hotel mostly consists of large, awkward carpeted lounge-type rooms — like a small airport. Also, I was shocked the health club only has two televisions (though they were 42" HDTVs). Most posh spas have a separate TV for each treadmill. And the resplendent bouquets of sumptuous tropical flowers were, I discovered, genuine plastic.
Perhaps I expect too much from five-starhood.
Unfortunately, I fast every week from Thursday evening to Friday evening to protest the CIA, so I could not sample the food: raw oysters on the half-shell in soy tamarind sauce and beef satay (on wooden skewers). I did take some of the buffet home, to eat after my fast ended: 17 purple grapes, which were tidy and sweet; and a chunk of craggy cheddar cheese.
As I circled the provisions, I ran into Dean Gitter, and we spoke.
My exclusive interview
with Dean Gitter:
Sparrow: Those doors, how long have you had them?
Gitter: Before we started this project, about five years.
Sparrow: And what are they? They’re Rajasthani?
Gitter: Exactly, they are Rajasthani. Mughal Period.
Sparrow: So they were in a temple, a Hindu temple?
Gitter: Actually a Mughal temple.
Sparrow: Like a mosque?
Gitter: Yeah. They got blurred, in there, during the 16th century.
Sparrow: And Rajasthan is on the border of Pakistan...
Gitter: Yes it is.
Sparrow: So, it’s an area where the religions blur.
Gitter: Right, right. And the paintings are all copies from the Ajunta Caves, which are maybe 200 miles northeast of Bombay. They date from around 300 A.D., which is the period when Buddhism and Hinduism coexisted. And I’ve been to the caves. They go on for miles. And they’re just a perfect amalgam of Hindu and Buddhist art.
Sparrow: The caves are sculptures, or paintings?
Gitter: Actually, many, many, many paintings — thousands of paintings. But there are also some astonishing sculptures. I mean, the space itself has been sculpted.
Sparrow: Wow! These are frescoes?
Gitter: Exactly! [Turning to the painting behind them.] You see those strange light things up there, in the upper right?
Sparrow: Yeah.
Gitter: Well, that’s where the plaster has literally come off the walls of the cave.
Sparrow: Oh! This is a copy of a fresco!
Gitter: It is! It is, exactly.
Sparrow: How are these made? These are painted? With oil paints?
Gitter: Yeah. My wife painted them.
Sparrow: Oh, yeah?
Gitter: She did all of them!
Sparrow: Oh I didn’t know that! Wow, wow, wow. And I was thinking, this looks a little bit like a mosque, the carpet motif. [Looking down.]
Gitter: The ways of designers are mysterious. I don’t know what he had in mind, but it works.
Sparrow: Yeah, yeah. So you been collecting Indian art ever since...
Gitter: Ever since I was a student of Rudi ‘s, which goes back almost 40 years. I know it’s a great deal more difficult to export these things from India now than it was 40 years ago.
Sparrow: Which you may have found out, while decorating this place.
Gitter: No, all this stuff is new.
Sparrow: What about that sculpture around the corner? That stone goddess, in front of the mirror?
Gitter: Made the day before yesterday.
Dean and I are both art snobs, I discovered. We both find great inspiration in Eastern mysticism. There is one difference between us, however. Mr. Gitter enjoys entertaining billionaires, and I do not. (In fact, if any billionaires are reading this essay, I hope they find it repulsive.)
One wintry afternoon I brought my fifteen-year-old daughter, Sylvia Mae Gorelick, to Zuccala for a healing haircut. Beyond the house is a barn that has been renovated and divided into separate studios for Travaglia and Zuccala. We entered a light, airy room with colorful carpets and a massage table. A long-legged chair sits facing a mirror. Clay busts sculpted by Zuccala populate a row of shelves, while an antique saw blade adorns a wall. Light comes through a number of old-fashioned windows of four or six small panes each.
Zuccala offers us tea made of star anise, cardamom, and Japanese kukicha twigs, then drapes Sylvia with a thin maroon robe and seats her in the tall chair. “Tell me what you love about your hair,” she begins.
“I don’t think about it that much. It just hangs there,” Sylvia replies. “Lately I’m feeling weighed down by it.”
“So what wouldn’t you like to have?”
“Not bangs.”
“Do you want it all one length, or do you want movement in your hair?”
“Movement.”
“You’re an actress, aren’t you ? And probably you dance? So you need to be able to keep your hair away from your face. Do you like having long hair?”
“No, I’m not attached to it. I think of my hair as very boring.”
“So you want hair that can dance a little. Maybe some layering?”
Zuccala explains that she is going to touch Sylvia’s head, face, shoulders, back, and hips as she shifts and releases energy blocks. “Stresses in our lives create blockages internally, what we call ‘the issues in your tissues’. In a short session, we might not be able to release the issues, but we can get things to flow more freely. This gives you the opportunity to create a new intention and let go of old things. You might feel vibrations or sensations of cold or warmth—that’s just the energy moving.”
Sylvia closes her eyes and takes several deep breaths, and Zuccala works in silence for ten or fifteen minutes. At the end, Sylvia says she felt “a lot of clogged-up things” releasing.
As Zuccala proceeds to the haircut, she explains that she studied at the Queens Beauty Institute and worked at a salon on 57th Street in Manhattan, where she met her husband. “A client there was describing a man who loved classical music, eating organic food, exercising—I said he sounded just like me. She said, ‘And he’s my father.’ I said, ‘He must treat you well, and if she does, he must treat other women well.’ He’s very loving and caring,” she discovered.
Zuccala studied sculpture with a teacher from Tuscany at the New School and became so connected to the work and the class that she became his assistant. “I was always good at sculpting hair,” she notes.
A certified Reiki master, she bartered with her teacher for classes, doing hair and makeup for the wedding of the teacher’s daughter. She studied Integrated Energy Therapy both in Jersey City and upstate. When she first moved north, yoga classes in Stone Ridge brought her into the local community. “I come from a big family, and that’s what it started to feel like here. People were connected and caring—such powerful women.”
She gives Sylvia’s hair a few final snips and asks what she thinks.
“I feel so relieved,” says Sylvia, swinging her now chin-length hair to watch the top layers slide across the bottom ones.
Zuccala nods. “I believe hair should have movement to it, no matter what the length. Just like the energy work, it should have energy. One of my clients was a painter who was painting beautiful pieces with a lot of movement, but her hair was stiff. I worked to release the energy in it.”
For more information on healing haircuts or Integrated Energy Therapy, call Sandra Zuccala at 657-8673.