The Phoenicia Times - Follow Up on the News

The first public meeting on the proposed changes being mulled for the state Route 28 corridor will be held by the Central Catskills Collaborative, put together for the spending of $500,000 in state Smart Growth funds this past Spring, at 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 25, at the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development in Arkville.
There, state Deputy Secretary of State Robert Elliott will discuss “Intermunicipal Cooperation and Smart Growth,” officials said.
Elliott founded the Historic River Towns of Westchester County, a 13-community consortium focused on waterfront development, tourism and Main Street economics. As deputy secretary of state, he serves on New York’s Smart Growth Cabinet, an interagency initiative created by executive order of then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer in December.
The Central Catskills Collaborative is a group of six towns and villages along the corridor in Delaware and Ulster counties. Andes, Fleischmanns, Middletown and Margaretville are among them.
“This stems from the push to help the upstate economy,” said Middletown board member Donald Kearney of the new push. “We have been discussing the development of a scenic byway and coming up with some kind of uniform advertising and developing ideas like a scenic bicycle route.”
Peter Manning, the Catskill Center’s regional planner, said the group has been engaged “in a regional dialogue focused on protecting and promoting the scenic, cultural, historic, and economic well being of the Route 28 corridor and the central Catskills.”
The state-sponsored Central Catskill Mountains/Park Smart Growth Program was announced in April, and made $500,000 available for local improvement projects along the Route 28 corridor and in the hamlets. They have since developed recommendations to improve economic activities while sustaining the Catskills’ sense of place, including improved interpretation of and access to the Catskill Forest Preserve; greater CCC participation in rail corridor revitalization; Exploring the creation of a scenic byway; Pursuing intermunicipal funding opportunities; engaging educational institutions to assist the CCC in its objectives; Regular communication with DEC and DOT; and Implementing recommendations from previous planning documents.
In a recent interview, DEC Regional Director Willi Janeway said that although it was premature to speak of the new discussions in terms of proper Scenic Byway planning, the current talks came after his agency and others, “Had invited these towns from Hurley into Delaware County whether they were interested in sitting together to discuss scenic byway possibilities. We wanted to know if they were conceptually interested… and they were.”
He added that, should the towns collectively want to move forward with further collaboration involving the corridor, “WE are prepared to help move this along,” including helping for formal designations withg the DOT and other agencies, and the marshalling of future monetrary resources for projects.
“There’s no great rush,” Janeway concluded. “But so far a majority of the towns have said yes.”
Under Scenic Byway designations, the state program everyone’s talking about refers to a system of collaboration, between municipalities and governments and the public, designed to accentuate a roadway’s tourism potential. Corridor Management Plana require sign regulations akin to those already existing in the Catskill Park, sign inventories, resolutions of support from local government partners; and a shared sense of protection for the beauty and safety of the designated roadway.
The term dates back to a 1991 federal program designed to protect historically scenic US routes and promote them for new tourism. 99 such designations currently exist.
More information on whatever programs apply will be brought forward as the joint partners progress with their planning, or not, in the coming months.
The current efforts are being undertaken with input from the DEC, CCCD and Catskill Watershed Corporation.
Stay tuned…

Decision Overturned
Woodland Community Association president Carol Seitz said Tuesday that the decision, reached last year following an eight year local battle for project promoter Andrew Poncic, is rendered moot by this appeal verdict.
“I am pleased to announce that I have heard from our lawyers at Hogan & Hartson and we have proven successful in our appeal,” said Seitz in a prepared statement. “The Appellate Division of the State of New York Supreme Court agreed with us that the Town of Shandaken Planning Board overstepped their jurisdiction by attempting to interpret zoning law, something that only the Zoning Board of Appeals is authorized to do.”
Without a ruling from the zoning board, Seitz wrote, the planning board had no authority to grant Poncic’s Good Water Corporation a special use permit a year and a half ago.
In a June 12th decision Justice Robert S. Rose wrote that the appeal decision hinged on the fact that Poncic’s plan called for non potable water being drawn from his site, not water for bottling. The towns zoning code needed to be interpreted by the zoning board to determine whether a special permit could be issued for such a project. Rose wrote that last year the Supreme Court made the interpretation instead.
“(The) Supreme Court did not address this issue of whether the Planning Board was authorized to interpret the Code. Rather, the court justified the grant of a special permit by its own interpretation of the Code’s provision regarding water bottling to include the use proposed by Good Water. However, because the Code makes clear that such an interpretation is for the ZBA to make in the first instance and the ZBA has not done so here, the court’s reading of the Code’s provision was premature,” Rose wrote.
Rose noted that during the projects review process opponents of the project called the Planning Board’s attention to these provisions and the boards obligation to request an interpretation of the Code from the Zoning Board, the Planning Board made no such request and instead determined on its own that Good Water’s application was for a permitted use.
The WCA filed a lawsuit against the town after the permit was issued, and lost. State Supreme Court Justice John C. Egan Jr. issued his decision in the matter last July, stating that the Shandaken Planning Board acted appropriately when it issued the approval in the fall of 2006.
“The planning board undertook the requisite hard look analysis of the environmental impact of the project and arrived at a well reasoned conclusion in approving the same,” he wrote.
The plan by part time Valley resident Andrew Poncic to draw two truckloads of a day water from a spring near the head of the dead end Woodland Valley road in Phoenicia was given the go ahead by the Shandaken Planning board in October 2006 after a six year review. Hisses and boo’s from the audience were heard at the session when the planners gave Poncic the green light. Following the 5-1 vote, one woman shouted “shame on you” to the majority of the board that supported the project. The lawsuit was filed immediately and opponents felt confident that they had a case.
Justice Egan disagreed, dismissing the case on the merits.
“The court finds that the collection and hauling of non-potable water falls within the category of permitted uses under “water bottling and related uses” and it was within the planning boards jurisdiction to grant good water a special permit,” the judge wrote in his 16 page decision.
“The project cannot be rejected simply on the basis of community pressure and there must be substantial evidence demonstrating the nature and magnitude of any undesirable impacts.” He wrote.
Now, Seitz said, the permit is voided and the case will be sent back to the State Supreme Court who, in turn, will send it back to the Planning Board. The Planning Board must then refer the matter to the Zoning board for consideration on whether harvesting water for entirely non-potable uses is sufficiently similar to water bottling and related uses to merit a special use permit.
“If and when that determination is made, the Board will have an opportunity to consider Poncic’s application anew,” she said.
The WCA feels the project would have made the roadway unsafe due to the trucks going back and forth.
Attempts to get in touch with Shandaken Planning Board chairpersons past and present received no comments as of presstime.

The new laws, they say, are the result of shifts in the types of items people are burning, especially in rural areas, causing possible health dangers to the general population. As well as the increasing potential for wildfires being pushed by growing dry conditions tied to Climate Change.
And already they’re producing steam from local folk, especially in the rural Route 28 corridor towns of Olive and Shandaken, where former Woodstock Police Chief Rich Ostrander has started sounding the alert on what’s happening, and what could happen as a result.
“We will be looking at public comments over the coming months,” DEC Region 4 Director Willi Janeway said of the statewide regulatory changes set for public hearings to start June 24. “It is typical for us to revise proposals based on public reaction.”
“I have spoken to many contractors in the area and no one knows about the changes. There will be substantial cost increases for homeowners and contractors alike,” wrote former Woodstock Police Chief Rich Ostrander of Boiceville in a recent e-mail (see hisletter, and a missive from the Olive Town Board, in the letters section inside). “I personally think this is a very important issue for a rural area and it is going to hit like a ton of bricks.”
In what they say is an effort to reduce the impacts of pollutants such as dioxins, particulate matter and carbon monoxide and to limit the risks of wildfires, the DEC proposed in early May to extend a ban on open burning statewide beyond the current ban for any municipality with a population of 20,000 or more, a law in effect since 1972, to include the entire state.
Once considered harmless, DEC has reported that open burning has been found to release more dangerous chemicals into the air than thought generations ago. They cite a recent study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, undertaken in conjunction with DEC and the State Department of Health, that found that emissions of dioxins and furans from backyard burning alone were greater than all other sources combined for the years 2002-04. The study also found that burning trash emits arsenic, carbon monoxide, benzene, styrene, formaldehyde, lead, hydrogen cyanide and other harmful chemicals. Trash containing plastics, polystyrene, pressure-treated and painted wood and bleached or colored papers can produce harmful chemicals when burned.
In addition to releasing pollutants, it was found that open burning is the largest single cause of wildfires in New York State such as that which destroyed a large chunk of the Minnewaska area earlier this Spring. Data from DEC’s Forest Protection Division show that debris burning accounted for about 40 percent of wildfires between 1986 and 2006 - more than twice the next most-cited source. The proposed rule does allow for a number of exceptions, including 3 foot radius camp fires, celebratory bonfires (where allowed), fire training exercises, specialized burning to protect crops from frostbite and burning of agricultural wastes (though not agricultural plastics). But according to Ostrander, officials he spoke to about the new regs in Albany told him, “You’re not going to be able to light a newspaper on fire in this state after this,” in regards to the proposals.
Ostrander said this week that he has been telling many local contractors as he can about what’s happening, because he feels it will hit that industry particularly hard, forcing site clearings to resort to burying wood debris or hauling it away for disposal.
“The cost of a chipper’s averaging over $700 a day,” he said. “That’s a sizable expense.”
In addition, he worries about private citizens who regularly burn brush, as he does at his home. He’s unsure local landfills or the county Rural Resource Recovery Agency are prepared to handle the new loads it would have to deal with.
“The DEC believes that the private sector will solve the technical problems,” Janeway said when told of difficulties people are having with the DEC’s suggestion that local landfills incinerate local woods trash. “They will in time produce outdoor boilers that pass clean air standards. The old polluting units will age out over a predetermined time period. They will not be grandfathered forever.”
In the laws themselves, the state proposes that eventual benefits will outweigh immediate expenses.
“Due to the potential increase in the amount of household waste, brush, and land clearing debris, communities may need to upgrade their transfer facilities. Upgrades would primarily consist of large trash compactors for household refuse, and wood chippers or tub grinders for brush and land clearing debris,” the proposed law states. “Societal savings of health related costs in affected rural areas should more than make up for the increased costs of solid waste disposal. A single hospitalization for asthma outside of New York City costs over $8,900 and the total cost for asthma hospitalizations amounted to over $284 million in 2002.”
The law’s big aim, it states, is against so-called burn barrels, still a major component of rural life in many places..
Ostrander said he thinks that, in the end, some compromise can be reached, banning burn barrels, for example, while retaining a permit process for burning brush. He added that he was planning to take his campaign to other towns, the Catskill Watershed Corporation, the Coaliton of Watershed Towns and other entities that could help make the proposed regulatory changes less draconian.
Janeway, for his part, said the new laws were being less effected by Climate Change policies than a reaction to “major shifts in the waste stream.” Although he did say stemming burns in a dryer climate WAS important.
The state is currently conducting a series of public hearings on the proposal, including one at 5 PM on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at the Norrie Point Environmental Center in Staatsburg, Staatsburg, two from 9:30 AM to noon and 5 to 8 PM on Wednesday, June 25, at DE’s Central Office, 625 Broadway, Public Assembly Room 129, Albany, NY
It is important that folks be heard at these meetings, that they write letters to the state about their thoughts regarding the proposed regulations, and that they don’t just assume their local governments will affect needed changes.
For more info visit www.dec.ny/gov.

“I was looking for a small place to come to on weekends,” she recalls. “I looked for eight months, and I finally started knocking on doors and asking, ‘Can I buy your house?’ I found an old lady who said yes. Then she died and left the house and her eighty poodles in limbo—she was a poodle breeder. There was no way for me to get the house. I gave up looking. Two months later, when my real estate wounds had healed, I found a little house next to the building I own now. The realtor said the post office building was also for sale. When I walked in, I fell in love. It had been gutted, but it was lovely on the inside. The rest is history.”
Leigh had just gone through yoga teacher training, so she figured she’d teach a bit up here but spend most of her time in the city, where she had been an actor for eighteen years. “I put up flyers, expecting I’d get one or two people, but instead I had classes almost right away. So I went for it. I followed it instead of struggling with it, and it revealed itself.”
Her life as an actor, in contrast, had been “full of struggle and hard knocks—I was used to things happening slowly and being really difficult. I started taking yoga as part of acting training, and it changed the way I performed. Yoga made it easy and allowed me to open as nothing else did. Acting felt like fun for a change. I could lie backstage in my costume with my legs up a wall until I went on.”
The transition to teaching yoga came as a response to the eternal dilemma of the actor—how to find the right day job—heightened by her role in South African writer Athol Fugard’s play Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, which deals with the love affair of a black man and white woman during the period of apartheid. “Both characters are naked onstage and practically in the dark,” she explains. “I was temping for a civil rights law firm half a block from the theater, and the lawyers were coming to see the play. It was too hard to deal with. I didn’t want a day job where my identity was so different from my night job.”
Leigh is no longer acting professionally, although she hopes to go back to it eventually. “I love my students, and I feel so fortunate that I’ve been handed this gift. I’m just taking it and reveling in it.” Chichester Yoga offers classes six days a week, with Tuesdays off and Amy VanBlarcum teaching on Wednesdays, so Leigh can work with private students in the city, some of whom take her classes in Chichester on weekends.
Both Leigh and VanBlarcum have studied with Ana Forrest, a teacher now in her early fifties, who developed a style of yoga that comes out of work with physical therapists, chiropractors, bioenergetic therapists, and hands-on healers. Born crippled, Forrest’s early life included such challenges as physical abuse, drug addiction, alcoholism, epilepsy, and bulimia. In her teens, says Leigh, Forrest discovered yoga and would often go to classes drunk, but she used yoga to get sober and heal her physical problems. “She called Sun Salutations her twelve-step program. She would sometimes stay up all night doing Sun Salutations,” one of the basic yoga exercises.
Working with one of her own students, clinical psychologist and Hunter resident Dr. Cheryl Cornelius, Leigh has developed Asanapy, a healing modality that combines yoga and group therapy. They lead group sessions and private classes at the studio in Chichester and have students in New York as well.
“There’s a myth about yoga being religious or for people who are in shape or really flexible,” says Leigh. “There’s nothing innately spiritual about putting your hands on the floor and stepping your foot back. But yoga unlocks you so you can connect to whatever you want, whether it’s spiritual or something else. It makes you better at whatever you want to do. And it’s much more about integrity than flexibility. It’s yoga practice, not ‘yoga perfect’, not a show. It’s about where you are that day, not about whether you can get your foot behind your head. Don’t let inflexibility keep you from trying it out. There are some amazing teachers in this area, and it’s a worthwhile exploration. It’s been transformational for me.”
For information on classes, see www.chichesteryoga.com or call 688-9769.

Lisa Valvo (O’Connor’s sister) presented the outgoing board with flowers, including retiring district clerk Jeanne Shultis. Valvo thanked the board for their service and asked the remaining members who voted in favor of the five-through-eight middle school to convince the new board to continue with the plan.
“May 20 was truly a sad day for this district,” Valvo said. “The three of you did not deserve this modern day witch hunt of a campaign your opponents ran against you.”
She went on to accuse the four newly elected board members of using fear, emotion and confusion as a way to boost their platform to success.
Valvo then said that the transportation department is much safer than it was on June 18, 2002, when O’Connor’s son, Kevin, was tragically struck and killed by a school bus driver on Route 28. She thanked O’Connor for personally seeing that the children are safer.
Donna White-Davis of Woodstock voiced the thoughts of many in attendance offended by Valvo’s statements. She mentioned that it was the community as a whole who rallied new transportation director Dave Moraca for change to create a child safety zone, “When he wanted students to walk a mile on the same street that Kevin was killed on. We had to push to get people to make a decision to actually do something about the situation,” Davis said. “I respect and love Cindy, I know she worked hard, I loved Kevin, but to even paint the new members or this election with that is really unfair.”
Parent Abbe Aronson, also angered over Valvo’s statements on the election, said broader representation was a way to move forward.
“The more that certain members speak for certain communities, the easier it is for other people to say ‘wow, thank goodness we all got out and voted,’ because we need everyone’s representation in this community,” she said.
O’Connor replied, “I would like to talk about transportation because I don’t like what has developed in the past couple of months and if anyone has anything to say about transportation, I have the right to say it.”
She addressed comments made during the election that transportation was not safe and the department did not need a director, but a head bus driver. She called on Superintendent Leslie Ford, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum Victoria McLaren and Moraca to “educate the new board on where we are and how far we have come.” She said it was time for the new board members to learn the process and slow down their celebrations.
“For all of you that know me and my family, it has never been about celebration and picnics or campaign jingles, it’s been about relearning how to celebrate life when you are dealing with death,” O’Connor said tearfully. “Six years ago on June 18, I watched my son die before my very eyes, I watched him take his last breath due to complacency and non compliance, so nobody can tell me about transportation.”
Also causing a small stir was the extension of Ford’s and McLaren’s contracts through June 30, 2011. All voted in favor except for newly elected board member Laurie Osmond, who abstained. She explained that their contracts require the action, but wished the new board could make the decision in six months time when they had time to process.
“I understand that if the extension does not happen it is the equivalent of telling the superintendent that they should start looking for another job and it should not be renewed and that is not a message I am comfortable with,” she added.
School board trustee Maxanne Resnick, reading from a statement, gave more detail, noting that some parents are not happy with Ford’s job performance.
“Not knowing the specific complaints, I recognize that there is some dissatisfaction in the way both the superintendent and this board has conducted business and that this dissatisfaction coalesced to change the board composition,” she said, adding that by law, New York State Superintendents must have a three-to-five year contract.
Ford is in the middle of her contract with specifications that it be reviewed every December and June. She said the board has given Ford a positive review but outlined areas of improvement that may fall in line with parents’ concerns.
In other business, longtime Director of Pupil Personnel Services Barbara Boyce announced that she will retire affective October 1,2008. She received flowers and a standing ovation for her services.
“It has been an honor and privilege and I have valued all these years,” she said.
Also, the school board welcomed new Middle School principal Andrew Davenport, who will begin July 1. He replaces Paul Schwartz, who resigned after one year