Newsbriefs

5/22/2008

Smart Growth!?!
Call it progress, Catskills-style. In other words, regionalism in the smallest increments… where the simple agreement of a handful and villages to meet and discuss joint projects, and planning, along the Route 28 corridor is big news.
Also call it turbidity in action, a muddying of otherwise clear concepts, both from confusing sources and murky futures.
We’re talking of much-touted Smart Growth initiatives that include two components at present: one, a push to get the towns of Olive, Shandaken, Middletown and Andes, and villages of Fleischmanns and Margaretville, talking together about planning for joint futures along the Route 28 corridor that defines the central Catskills. The other a half million dollar pool of grant money to be shared by those towns as a means of getting their sharing exercises moving ahead in a lubricated fashion.
Recent weeks have seen resolutions passed supporting the joint commission, and representatives name, in each of the involved municipalities. A first meeting has been set for this Thursday, May 22, to discuss current and future projects and ideas, as well as what can be done on a joint basis to bring in more funding over the coming years.
But creating confusion, said project coordinator Peter Manning of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development this week, has been the fact that the $500,000 in Smart Growth monies arriving simultaneously for the municipalities needs to be applied for fast… by June 20, to be exact. As well as the accompanying facts that first, everyone involved has now recognized that those funds need not be spent in any coordinated fashion; and secondly, that those monies, and the whole Smart Growth concept for the region, first surfaced as part of former Governor Eliot Spitzer’s Agreement in Principal compromise plan for the building of Dean Gitter’s controversial Belleayre Resort project.
“After the state Department of Environmental Conservation started holding workshops on the funding and what would be needed for applications, it became apparent we’d be ending up with individual proposals instead of, say, a proposal to do six information kiosks along Route 28,” the CCCD’s regional planner said this week.
Manning noted that projects discussed for the $500,000 Smart Growth funds to date included the creation of a possible picnic area along Route 28 in Olive, sidewalks for Pine Hill in Shandaken, the planting of trees along Bridge Street in Margaretville, and either the extension of street lights in Andes or the creation of a scenic pull off at the top of Palmer Hill in Andes, which overlooks both the east and west branches of the Delaware River.
Talk of projects in Fleischmanns and Middletown, he added, was still preliminary, although ideas were bandying about for “mortar and bricks” projects that could be implemented within the funding’s fast timeline.
Manning said the quick deadlines were likely tied to a number of factors, including the tenuous state of the State budget, questions surrounding the entire Spitzer Agreement in Principal, and “of course, that whole switching of governor’s thing.”
Representatives for the involved towns, to meet Thursday, include artist Robert Selkowitz for Olive, councilman Tim Malloy for Shandaken, councilman Don Kearney for Middletown, trustee Harriett Grossman for Flieschmanns and planner Alex Adelson for Andes.
Among ideas Manning wants to get people talking about at the upcoming meeting are ways to move beyond the initial funding to start thinking about releasing future Smart Growth funds from the state and other agencies. To accomplish this, he said, a sense of communal planning has to be established; an advisory board needs to be set up, including representatives from involved groups such as the state DEC, City DEP, local chambers of commerce, the Catskill Watershed Corporation, and the Coalition of Watershed Towns; and regional priorities, from better ties-in to the state DEC’s new Catskill Park Master Plan and various localized environmental incentives, have to be outlined.
“We need to show responsibility, and that we can be forward-thinking,” Manning said, noting that various state officials have started talking about the Catskills, and Smart Growth, as key concepts they want to explore for the coming years. “Just getting these resolutions passed supporting the idea of a joint commission, and getting the municipalities to meet about their funding proposals, is a major accomplishment.”

GOP Again?
After a year and a half in the Shandaken Conservative Party, former Republican Club head Gerry Setchko has gone back to the GOP.
After months of dissention within Republican ranks Gerry Setchko, a GOP also-ran for Shandaken town board in 2005 and current Planning Board chair, quit the Republican party in 2006 and launched a campaign to lure registered voters away from both the Republican and Democrat camps to create a stronger Conservative party. But after giving it the old college try, Setchko felt the close knit Conservative Party, which has about 40 members, was destined to remain the small party that it has been for as long as anyone can recall.
“I couldn’t see it getting any bigger,” Setchko said Tuesday. At the same time he was working on developing the Conservative Party, he said, he was watching his former party begin unravelling and found he was not alone.
”A lot of people didn’t like the way the party was run for the past couple of years,” he said.
With the 2007 election over, which brought in a slate of Democrats, Setchko noticed there was support for him returning to the GOP in his role as President of the town’s Republican Club. He has now been voted in by the Club’s rank and file to once again take the helm, and last month he held a meeting for club members to get together and have a chance to speak openly about the party’s strength’s and weaknesses.
At this point Setchko says it’s his job to put the Republican Party back on track, which he said is no easy task.
“I’ve got a road long ahead,” he said.

Murder Revealed
The folks at Tetta’s Store in Samsonville, the only business along the Olive/Rochester town border for miles excepting a tire service and rural bar/restaurant, say they kept a Missing Persons photo and description of Joey Martin up for nearly a decade after the 15 year old vanished March 25, 1996. Although not willing to talk on the record about events of recent weeks, when a 27 year old friend of Martin’s, now living in Brooklyn, admitted to killing the teen 12 years ago with another friend since convicted to state prison for the murder of another local resident 11 years ago, they said the news was all anyone in this rural corner of Ulster County had been talking about since it hit the news May 9 and was revealed in full detail on Mother’s Day.
The facts, brought forth in a pair of hearings in the Town of Rochester court on May 8 and 13, are gruesome, and deeply troubling.
On May 7, State Police investigators from Ellenville went to Brooklyn where they interviewed Alexander Barsky, 27, a childhood friend of Martin who had been periodically interviewed in the past about the disappearance. After failing a polygraph test, Barsky admitted to having killed Martin with a third friend, Daniel Malak, who was later convicted for second degree murder when he admitted killing a second-homer in Samsonville for his car. Based on what Barsky told them, they found clothing shreds identified to Martin in a location where the two teens hid the 15 year old’s body after bludgeoning him to death with a metal pole.
Barsky, who went to Rondout Valley High School with Martin and Malak and moved to Brooklyn within a year of his graduation, was charged with second-degree murder late Thursday, May 8. Malak, who was charged with murder in the shooting death of 62-year-old George Allison of New York City in Allison’s weekend home in Samsonville a year after the Martin murder, is currently serving 20 years to life in East Meadow State Prison near Glens Falls. He has not been charged with any crime in relation to the Martin murder as yet, according to Ulster County District Attorney Holley Carnright, who said on May 14 that it would be at least month before a grand jury for full investigation of the 1996 incidents could be called.
Barsky is currently being held in the Ulster County jail without bail, and will eventually be tried as an adult, according to Carnright.
In Rochester Town Court in Kerhonksen on Tuesday night, May 13, County Assistant District Attorney Katherine Van Loan described how Martin had left his family’s Krumville Road home in Samsonville, near the Rochester-Olive town line, at about 10:30 p.m. on March 25, 1996, saying that he planned to walk about a mile-and-a-half to Schwabie Turnpike in Rochester to meet Barsky and Malak and watch the night sky for the comet Hyakutake.
State Police Investigator Peter Cirigliano testified that Barsky said he and Malak had plotted for two days to attack Martin because Martin had robbed Barsky. On the evening of the murder, the two boys took beer and marijuana to a makeshift fort they had made in the woods off Schwabie Turnpike, where they had arranged to meet Martin. There, they forced Martin to his knees and Malak struck the baby-faced boy repeatedly with a two-foot metal pipe, which he then handed to Barsky, who repeated the blows. The two then placed Martin’s lifeless body in a wheelbarrow and pushed it through the forest to a large rock that had a cave-like indentation into which they jammed the body. They then went back to their fort, finished the beer, and went to their individual homes and went to sleep.
Later, Alex Barsky helped look for his missing friend, participating in repeat searches for the boy, then vigils and remembrance walks. According to Martin’s aunt, Patricia Atkins, he even ate with the deceased’s family and cried with them at times.
At the May 13 Rochester court hearing, Barsky said he had lied when interviewed by police, and moved away from the area after Malak admitted to another murder. He came back to the site of Martin’s body twice in the next few years, eventually dismantling its bones to toss in garbage cans around Brooklyn.
“He said he couldn’t be more sorry about his involvement in such a horrible thing,” Cirigliano read in court from the statement Barsky gave him in Brooklyn last week. “He said, ‘I’m just happy to get it off my chest.’ He said he was not really a bad person, that he had lived a good life since then.”
Before those statements came forth, Rochester court was closed off for half an hour when another 27 year old man who had gone to Rondout High with Martin, Malak and Barsky attacked the accused while he was being brought into the room in his orange prison jumpsuit. The attacker, Christopher Ronda of Accord, was arraigned and remanded to the county jail on $2,500 bail on misdemeanor charges of assault in the third degree, obstructing governmental administration in the second degree and criminal contempt in the second degree.
“Everyone had suspicions about what could have happened to Joey. For a while I wanted to believe that he ran away, but there was always that sinking sickening feeling in the back of my mind,” read one comment from a classmate of the deceased, and the murderers, in the days following the 12 year old revelations. “Never in a million years did I think it’d be someone among us, someone who was there when the family pleaded and cried.”
The folks at Tetta’s said there were many such comments, many coming in from elsewhere to the many places the Rondout grads have since moved.
“It’s ripped open lots of old wounds,” said the woman who answered the phone. “Alex, he lived with his mom down in the old Rochester firehouse. This isn’t easy for anyone out here…”
CWC Update…
It’s been busy time at the Catskill Watershed Corporation. 27 education grants totaling nearly $135,000 were recently approved by the Catskill Watershed Corporation Board of Directors. The awards will go to schools and non-profit organizations serving school-age students in the Catskills and in New York City. The current crop of funded projects includes an agriculture-themed exhibition and field day for Sullivan County schools; a participatory community planning exploration in Margaretville; construction of a Watershed model at a New York City middle school, and development of a local history curriculum related to water-based industries on the Mountaintop of Greene County. Several schools will visit Frost Valley and Ashokan environmental education centers. Watershed include Jefferson, Hunter-Tannersville, Onteora, Delhi, Andes, Fallsburg and Gilboa-Conesville Central Schools; the Roxbury Arts Group; Sullivan County BOCES; Cornell Cooperative Extension of Sullivan County; Catskill Center for Conservation & Development; Mountaintop Historical Society; and Manhattan Country School Farm in Roxbury. Trout Unlimited, which runs the Trout in the Classroom program, will receive a grant to better serve more than 100 schools that are participating in this popular program both in the Watershed and in the City.
Also of late, the CWC recently sent letters offering maintenance assistance to 338 homeowners in the Catskills whose septic systems were installed or replaced in 2005. The CWC’s Septic Maintenance Program pays half the cost of pumping septic tanks and inspecting systems that were installed in the New York City watershed west of the Hudson River since 1997 and are at least three years old. Letters explaining the program were sent in early May to 180 homeowners whose systems were replaced by the CWC’s Septic Rehabilitation and Replacement Program in 2005, and to the owners of another148 new homes. (Septic systems for new construction are not covered by the CWC’s replacement program, but are eligible for the maintenance program.)
If you think you may be eligible for the maintenance program and have not received a letter and the required participation forms, please call the CWC at 845-586-1400, or, toll-free, 877-928-7433.
Low-interest loans approved by the CWC include a fifth loan to help finance the reconstruction of Brookside Hardware on Route 28 between Arkville and Margaretville, the creation of a wedding hall and event venue in rural Delaware County, the establishment of a bicycle rental shop in Arkville, amd funds for Richard and Mary Anne Erickson, owners of Blue Mountain Bistro (Bistro-to-Go) on Route 28 in the Town of Kingston, to purchase the building they currently lease for their catering business and retail gourmet food shop.
For more information, go to www.cwconline.org, or call toll-free 877-928-7433.

Go Go Green!
Phoenicia Elementary’s 4th grade class, led by Sharon McInerney, showed its true colors – green – this week when it won the Green Nation award, a statewide competition sponsored by State Senator John J. Bonacic that focuses on environmental problems and solutions. With a clever news spoof concept and a rousing rendition of “Go Phoenicia,” sung to the tune of “Grease Lightning” (from Grease), McInerney’s class bested hundreds of other 4th and 5th grade entries from schools across New York State to take 1st prize in the video division of the competition. The video was conceived by the students on a Mac with the help of music teacher Mr. David Laks. It can be viewed on YouTube by searching “go go green Phoenicia.”.
The class wass subsequently invited to a celebration in Albany on Tuesday, May 20 to receive their award and attend a luncheon reception with the Senator. They will have the opportunity to meet fellow winning students from around the State, view other submissions, and tour the historic Capitol.
Last September, Phoenicia Elementary and their PTA instituted a school wide 5R’s (Rethink, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) waste reduction/recycling program. As part of their public service, McInerney’s class volunteered to be responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the program. To date, the efforts of the small rural school of 240 students and staff have saved over 70 mature trees, 28 cubic yards of landfill space and recycled six tons of paper, cardboard and co-mingled items according to Waste Management.
Ironically, on the same day that Ms. McInerney’s class was to pick up their award, Onteora School District voters went to the polls to select school board members in an election where a key issue is the closing of the same school that won the award.

Key Tax Battle…
A coalition of Adirondack and conservation organizations is seeking permission from the Appellate Division of NYS Supreme Court to join in the state’s legal defense of its tax payments to local governments in areas where the state owns large tracts of forest land. Those payments were threatened by a lower court decision last October. The coalition asking permission to join in the state’s defense of property tax payments to local governments is comprised of the Adirondack Council, Open Space Conservancy, Adirondack Landowners Association, Adirondack Mountain Club, Residents’ Committee to Protect the Adirondacks, Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, and Audubon New York. The case is expected to be heard in September.
At stake is more than $70 million in annual property tax payments to 92 towns, 12 counties and dozens of school districts in the Adirondack Park alone, on 2.7 million acres of constitutionally protected NYS Forest Preserve. Statewide, close to $200 million in annual revenue to local governments is at stake.
Last fall, a NYS Supreme Court justice ruled that all state property tax payments to local government must stop. In that case (Dillenburg vs. New York State, 2007) a Chautauqua County Town of Arkwright supervisor sued the state because it would not pay taxes on state-owned forest lands in the town, although it made payments to other towns for similar forest lands. The judge ruled that the town was right in claiming unfair treatment and issued an order halting all state tax payments to all local governments. The judge voluntarily held-off on the execution of his order, allowing the state time to appeal the decision before the payments to local governments are stopped.
Ironically, the judge also added that the state tax payments to local governments in the Adirondack and Catskill parks were both the oldest (established in 1886) and most legitimate, having been created with a clear public purpose in mind. However, he refused to exclude them from his ruling.
“The Legislature had good reasons for allowing the state to be taxed on state Forest Preserve by local towns, villages, counties and school districts in the Catskills and Adirondacks,” said Deborah Meyer DeWan, Interim Executive Director of The Catskill Center for Conservation and Development. “Those reasons still apply today. They are state parks, serving a statewide purpose. The Forest Preserve protects pure water and standing forests, while providing tourism revenue.”
“It was inappropriate for the lower court in this case to lump the Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserves in with other state forest lands,” said Neil Woodworth, Executive Director of the Adirondack Mountain Club. “Tax payments on non-Forest Preserve lands were set up at different times for different reasons. The payments on Forest Preserve lands have received broad-based public support and have been upheld by New York’s courts over the past 122 years.”
“All of the towns in the Adirondacks and Catskills have a more solid claim to state tax payments than the Town of Arkwright, which filed the original complaint, or any other town outside those two parks,” said Houseal of the Adirondack Council. “For example, there is nothing stopping local contractors from harvesting trees on state lands outside the two parks. However, timber harvesting is banned on Forest Preserve lands inside the parks, as is all private or commercial development. It is very unlikely that we will receive support from local governments for any new purchases of Forest Preserve in the Adirondacks or Catskills if the tax-payments aren’t secure. If the Forest Preserve becomes tax-exempt, it will be seen as a burden to local taxpayers, not an asset. Some Adirondack towns are more than 70 percent state-owned Forest Preserve.”
The organizations are being represented by Marc S. Gerstman of Albany, former chief counsel for the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, which oversees most state-owned forest lands.

Catskills Gas?
The Catskill Mountainkeeper, The Upper Delaware Council, Inc. (UDC) and National Park Service Upper Delaware Scenic & Recreational River (NPS) were to co-sponsor a free Public Information Forum on Natural Gas Issues on Wednesday, May 21, in Honesdale, PA. The objective was to present factual information on natural gas and its exploration methodologies, extraction techniques, the New York City’s DEP’s regulatory authority, potential environmental impacts, and the execution of mineral rights leases by property owners. Catskill Mountainkeeper was to focus on the environmental impacts that natural gas drilling will have on the region, including its potential impacts on ground water, drinking water and the reservoir systems that provide drinking water to both New York City and Philadelphia, as well as the impacts on air quality, wildlife and tourism.
Also expected to be talked about were previous explorations in the 1990s that were called off when it was discovered that uranium was being sought as well as natural gas deposits.
Stay tuned as these issues rise…

Orientation!
The Guidance Department at Onteora Central Schools will be hosting Middle and High School orientation meetings for parents in the coming week. The Middle School meeting will be held on May 28th, at 6:30 p.m. in the Auditorium. New Middle School parents are invited to attend. Topics covered will include transition planning, course requirements and available activities. The High School meeting is on May 29th at 7:00 p.m. in room #121A. New High School parents are invited. Topics will include course offerings, graduation requirements and tips for High School success.

Sharing’s Good!
Ulster County and ten of its municipalities are going to spend almost $261,000 from the state to conduct a feasibility study into possible shared services. The study will include the county and the towns of Denning, Hardenburgh, Hurley, Marbletown, Marlborough, Rosendale, Saugerties, Wawarsing, Ulster and the City of Kingston.
The county-wide share services feasibility study and implementation plan will research, identify and review the municipal services provided by the county and duplicated by each of the local governments. The focus of the study will be on shared highway services and where feasible, the potential for consolidation of court programs.
From the information gathered, an analysis will be completed that identifies areas where combining either space, service, departments, or employees would result in positive outcomes including a cost savings for one or more of the municipalities and/or an increase in the quality and amount of service delivery.
Isn’t it time for similar funding for sharing services throughout the Catskills, including the entirety of the Route 28 corridor?

Deadbeat Dads
The Ulster County District Attorney’s Office has filed criminal warrants against 11 parents who have refused to pay child support. DA Holley Carnright said collectively they own over $640,000 in past due support.
“For many years the impetus for collecting child support from ‘dead beat’ parents was on the aggrieved spouse who proceeded through Family Court,” he said. “Too often the spouse would be left with a judgment of child support but no actual payments were received.”
His approach is to use all of the resources available in a coordinated effort, said Carnright. “We are starting to treat spouses who are owed child support as we do other victims of crime.”

Benefit BBQ
Billed as an outdoor “gathering” sponsored by the Catskill Heritage Alliance, Barbecue & Bluegrass on Saturday, May 24, will be held at Casey Joe’s Coffeehouse in Arkville at the intersection of State Route 28 and County Route 38 starting at 1:00 pm. The musical group, Not Necessarily Bluegrass, will provide a range of foot-stomping, finger-snapping music, and the featured food will be barbecue chicken platters with all the fixin’s from the legendary Hickory BBQ Smokehouse on Route 28 in Kingston.
The gathering “is a great way for people who live here part time and all the time to get together with people passing through,” says Beverly Rainone, who is co-coordinating the event with Freddi Dunleavey, “so all can share what’s beautiful and unique about our region.” It’s also an opportunity to raise awareness and money “to support Save The Mountain’s efforts to sustain our mountain environment,” adds Dunleavey.
Save The Mountain is the coalition of organizations and individuals committed to preserving open space and the wilderness environment of the central Catskills.
In addition to the food and music, BBQ & Bluegrass offers a silent auction for a range of premiums—from artwork by local artists to meals at some of the region’s fine restaurants. T-shirts, hats, and information from Trout Unlimited and the Save the Mountain coalition will also be available. Parking will be plentiful.

Streamwork…
Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County’s Esopus Creek Management Plan will host a stream monitoring workshop at Simpson’s Mini Park in Phoenicia (at the intersection of Main St. and Route 214) on Saturday, May 31, from 9:00am to 3:30pm Rain date is Sunday, June 1. The cost is $10 per person. Open to adults, and children, at least 11 years of age. Children ages 11-14 years old must be accompanied by a parent or adult. No refunds. Participants will learn how to identify macro-invertebrates (insects) and monitor the health of the stream bed. For more information call Michael Courtney at 845-340-3990 or email mcc55@cornell.edu
There will also be a Streamside Restoration Project and Stewards Meeting in Big Indian, with participants helping plant trees to restore streamside habitat as part of the Department of Environmental Conservation Trees for Tribs Program. This project will take place on Saturday, June 1 from 9:30am to 12:30pm at the Kupec Property located at 33 Lasher Rd. in Big Indian. Following the planting there will be a volunteer meeting to discuss and plan future Stream Stewards projects.

Youth Artists!
Youth from around the world — and particularly those in the tri-state area — are invited to submit their original artwork to the “11th Annual Peace Pals International Arts Exhibition and Awards,” held this year in celebration of the International Day of Peace established by the United Nations on September 21. This year’s theme is “friendship.” The deadline for submissions is June 30, 2008.
A panel of international judges will select the first-, second-, and third-place winners in four age groups, ranging from age 5 to 19. Winning artwork will become part of a worldwide tour. The winners will be announced at an Awards Gala and Ceremony on September 21, 2008, in Beacon, NY. All artwork submitted will be displayed in Main Street storefronts in the city during a two-week Peace Pals celebration sponsored by the Beacon Arts Community Association. Although Peace Pals International is based in Dutchess County, NY (Wassaic), this year will mark the first time the Awards Gala and Ceremony is held in New York state.
Following the events in Beacon, the exhibition begins its world tour at the United Nations on October 2 for the International Day of Non-Violence. Other stops scheduled or planned for the tour include: Scotland, Germany, Japan, Brunei, India, Hong Kong, and California.
For full submission guidelines and additional information, visit www.wppspeacepals.org, or call 845-877-6093.

Grave Repairs
Friends of Middletown Cemeteries and the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown have invited The Haines Family Association to conduct a one-day workshop on cleaning and repairing old cemetery stones Saturday, May 31. Family association leaders, local historians, genealogists, town officials and caretakers who have cemetery maintenance as one of their duties will find this workshop invaluable.
The workshop will begin at 10 a.m. at Fairview Public Library’s Community Room, 43 Walnut Street, Margaretville, and will continue with an afternoon demonstration and work session at the Arkville Cemetery on County Route 38 (the Cut-Off Road).
The morning will be devoted to a discussion of cemetery history, appropriate cleaning and repair materials, and approved methods. During the afternoon session, some of the techniques learned in the morning will be demonstrated on a few gravestones which will be cleaned, re-set and repaired.
Representatives of the Haines Family Association will include Richard Haines and Bill Haines, who have spent many years restoring, repairing and maintaining small cemeteries in the Haines Falls (Greene County) area. They have attended training sessions in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Indiana to become thoroughly familiar with the proper methods and materials of cemetery repair.

Awareness…
The AWARENESS Alcohol Program, a teen group, will be offering with the Ulster County Sheriffs Department a Car Simulator program at the Ulster County Law Enforcement Center May 30th between 1 – 3 p.m, with an earlier visit planned for the Onteora High School in Boiceville. The car is a training tool that simulates driving and actually will show the consequences of an inattentive driver while that driver texts, talks on their cell phone and/or drives while impaired from alcohol or drugs. The visit is planned to remind teens and their parents of the dangers of bad driving just before the annual Prom night parties that took the life of a local teen last year at this time.
The AWARENESS Alcohol Program is an education program. The Ulster County Sheriff’s Department provides space for them at the County Law Enforcement Center. The group of teens who take part in the education component have all been trained by a licensed Substance Abuse professional and they continue their work under supervision during the educational classes held monthly. The next two hour program is May 23 between 7 p.m. – 9 p.m.
“The program currently has no county or outside funding and relies strictly on volunteers,” said Marie Shultis, program initiator. “One teen takes on the role of the Coordinator, including all paper work, setting up community service with Alternative Sentencing, following up and reporting to Judges at the completion of the community service, and creating and maintaining a data bank. If an offender is a repeat offender, the curriculum will be slightly different.”