Follow Up on the News
“The detour for traffic headed northbound for Shokan will be Route 28A East or West to Route 28. Southbound vehicles headed towards Olive Bridge will use Route 28 East or West to Route 28A. Detour signs will be posted,” said Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.
The three day diversion will require significant travel for motorists. Rt 28A connects with Route 28 in Hurley near the old Doll’s House building and runs along the reservoir to Boiceville where it again intersects with Route 28.
The road resurfacing has been coordinated with Ulster County and with the New York State Department of Transportation. Local authorities have also been notified, Michaels said.
He also said the work would not hinder the actions of local emergency service.
“Emergency response vehicles such as police, fire trucks and ambulances will be allowed to pass,” Michaels said.
Also on Friday, September 1, the City has announced that it will be resurfacing the Five Arch Bridge in Boiceville.
“Motorists can expect delays during this resurfacing,” Michaels said on this one. “Only one lane will be closed, and flag crews will be on site to guide traffic through work zones. This work is being accomplished to eliminate uneven approach ramps, and pot holes throughout the bridge.”
This weeks exercises should be good practice. The whole dividing weir bridge is scheduled to be replaced beginning in the Summer of 2010. The length of the project is expected to run almost two and half years. Michaels said DEP is attempting to plan it so that one lane of the bridge remains open for the duration of the project, but no decision has been reached yet.
So what’s the good news?
Recently announced plans to close Route 28 for culvert repairs in the Boiceville area are being postponed until October or November, with an anticipated detour through Woodstock now replaced by “on-site detouring” according to state Department of Transportation officials.
But that doesn’t mean traffic patterns won’t be disrupted for the coming Labor Day weekend, or that confusion won’t reign as the result of new signs just west of the Thruway traffic circle.
New plans were simultaneously announced this week for another Route 28 repair job in the town of Ulster that will close down 300 feet or so of the heavily-traveled highway to one or two lanes just east of where Route 28A enters the main road near the old Doll’s House and current Sunoco Station… for anywhere between two and three weeks of “pipe replacement.”
“We’re in the process of putting together a public information meeting and press release on the Boiceville area closures,” said DOT Civil Engineer Lee Zimmer of his agency’s Operations Management office on Wednesday. “We’re working out some details now.”
Zimmer, who agreed that the signs further east on Route 28 have proved confusing to many who had heard about the repair plans for further west on the highway, and nothing about the pipe replacement and repaving job about to start, added that “we’re waiting for them to finish up fixing 23A before we start work.”
Several hundred feet of Route 23A slipped down the mountainside slopes of scenic Kaaterskill Clove following heavy rains in late June. DOT crews have been working 24-hours-a-day throughout the last month to build new retaining walls along the highway. As of last week, 45 of the 59 pilings needed to support the road were in place.
Current estimates call for the road to be open again by November 1, and possibly earlier. The 23A repair job is considered of major importance because the road serves as the chief route between Greene County’s valley towns and its Mountaintop Region, whose economy is based on winter skiing. At present, the only routes open to the area are via Route 23 and the town of Windham, farther north; via the narrow Platte Clove “back road” from Manorkill and West Saugerties to the Elka Park area, and up Route 214 from Phoenicia.
The latter is the route Adirondack and Pine Hill Trailways busses have been taking instead of 23A since late June. Platte Clove Road is closed by the town of Hunter each November 15 for five months.
Long-needed repairs were completed on 23A several days before the June rains that closed its collapse, making it almost a full four months that the town of Hunter, and its villages of Hunter and Tannersville, have been isolated to date.
While putting the highway back in place along the mountainside, DOT officials have said, a number of other needed repairs to culverts and topping will be made along the Kaaterskill Clove roadway.
Zimmer said that DOT plans for work on 28 near Boiceville, which is seeking to replace a 50 foot deep culvert harmed in flooding in June and earlier, will be postponed so as not to further hamper traffic to the Hunter area.
“Yes, you could call it good news,” he said of his announcement of a pending press release and public hearing, scheduled for final approvals and dissemination in the coming weeks… with the meeting scheduled for a space to be arranged in the area for the middle of September.
Earlier plans, announced in the local press several weeks ago, had called for the possible detouring of all Route 28 traffic through Woodstock and up Route 212 while culverts were replaced. Local responses ranged from bemusement to outrage.
According to Olive town superintendent Bert Leifeld in a recent interview, he and other local municipal leaders had been working with state legislators Kevin Cahill and John Bonacic to put pressure on the DOT to change such plans.
“We’re looking to close things down to one lane while doing our repairs and get things done ASAP up there,” Zimmer added. “We’re hoping the 23A job gets accelerated so we can accelerate our own repairs. We’ll be keeping everyone informed from here on in…”
Gitter’s Next Round
Originally, Gitter’s new plan was to be announced at an 11 a.m. press conference set to coincide with the end of a site tour of the proposed resort property for federal Environmental Protection Agency Region 2 Administrator Alan Steinberg. But after it turned out that press invitations had been to only certain publications, and not others, and then all in attendance were stood up for over an hour and a half, the original plans were scuttled.
In addition, it seemed that Steinberg and U.S. Congressman John Sweeney, along for the trip, had not been informed that their “informal visit,” as Steinberg’s spokesperson would later put it, would include a press announcement of Gitter’s new proposal, which he had forced the EPA to keep under wraps throughout recent weeks.
“This investigation of new possibilities was in response to an invitation issued to the company by EPA Regional Administrator Alan Steinberg,” Crossroads’ spokesperson Paul Rakov said in the press release handed out concurrent with the officials’ visit, noting several of the long-held concerns voiced over time by the EPA and New York City Department of Environmental Protection. “In place of the central amenity of the golf course, Crossroads would consider an expanded spa and wellness facility, building on the same success of the nearby Emerson Resort & Spa.”
In a June 22 letter, Steinberg had expressed support for a no-build alternative for the Belleayre Resort’s eastern half suggested by U.S. Congressman Maurice Hinchey last year, which noted that all the major problems involving potential harm to the watershed could be avoided if permits were granted for only Gitter’s western half proposal.
Gitter had scoffed at the Hinchey proposal, saying it would make his resort economically unfeasible. Later, state Comptroller Alan Hevesi released a report this past summer questioning the financial figures put forth by Crossroads in its thousand-plus pages of documentation.
The proposal now being put forth by Crossroads in press release form, without any formal documentation, calls for the dropping of an 88-unit time share community in the eastern “Belleayre Highlands” section of its proposed resort, and the elimination of an emergency access road into the hamlet of Pine Hill and related bridges, and possible hook-up to New York City’s Pine Hill sewer treatment plan in addition to the dropping of a golf course. The developers claim such changes reduce the area of disturbed land by 50 percent, cuts water demand by 54 percent, drops the amount of phosphorous loading into local streams by 69 percent, and adds to the amount of land to be left as open space… even though close reading shows such claims being related to only the eastern half of the 2,000 acre resort proposal. And furthermore, New York has expressly said it does not want such a resort hooking into its wastewater treatment facility.
Along the way, it is noted that “the possibilities were presented” to City DEP Commissioner Emily Lloyd in a meeting at New York City Hall on July 31, and that “technical discussions with personnel of the EPA and the DEP are ongoing.”
Both the DEP, a regulatory agency whose permits are necessary for the Belleayre Resort project to be built, and the EPA, whose only role in the proposal’s review is to ensure that the city’s watershed does not become polluted, thus forcing it to shift to an $8 billion plus filtration system, have gone on record several times over the years saying they would not allow Gitter’s project to be built, as planned. And according to sources at DEP working on the technical aspects of the proposal, the Crossroads camp has never attempted to give them workable figures in recent years as the company’s principals have concentrated on pushing their case through legal and political means.
“Crossroads Ventures continues to listen and respond to concerns expressed by all the parties,” Rakov said of the new proposal, and his company’s new discussions, in Monday’s release. “This compromise, with its dramatic downsizing, speaks directly to their issues. We hope that the various governmental agencies and the involved environmental organizations will see this as a victory for their efforts and embrace the new prospect.”
Gitter’s original resort plan called for an 18-hole golf course, a 150-room hotel with a spa and other amenities, 77 buildings housing a total of 183 detached timeshare lodging units, a golf course maintenance building complex, a satellite golf course maintenance building, and a wastewater treatment plant on the eastern portion of the resort. Proposed for the western portion is another 18-hole golf course; a 250-room hotel with a conference center, spa, and other amenities; 21 buildings containing 168 detached lodging units, a children’s center, clubhouse, golf course maintenance building complex, a satellite golf course maintenance building, a wastewater treatment plant, and a 21-unit residential subdivision.
“Such a restructuring of the project, if accepted by Crossroads and formally submitted to the various regulatory agencies, would dramatically reduce almost all of the potential environmental impacts raised as concerns by the EPA, New York City’s DEP, and a coalition of national and local environmental groups,” Rakov said. “Central to these explorations is the hoped-for determination by the EPA that this new set of possibilities would eliminate any concern that the Belleayre Resort, thus newly configured, would pose a threat either to the drinking water of several million New Yorkers or to the withdrawal of the EPA’s Filtration Avoidance Waiver on which the City of New York is depending.”
When Steinberg announced that he would be looking more seriously at Gitter’s new “proposal” and visiting the site of the Belleayre Resort on public radio a few weeks back, he said he was doing so “because I don’t needlessly want to hamper development.” His spokesperson Mary Mears then added that the EPA would not go “back on any of our stated concerns” but give the developer a chance to make his case.
She added that the whole case came back up via Sweeney, who was also reportedly responsible for Steinberg’s recent reversal regarding a long-held EPA plan to force General Electric to pay for dredging of the Hudson River.
Hinchey, reacting to Gitter’s new proposal, as well as the Steinberg and Sweeney visit, said this week that no matter what’s on the table, the $8 billion cost to build and $750 million a year to operate a city filtration plant is not worth any economic development gamble.
“If we have to build a filtration plant for the New York City watershed water over on the east side of the Hudson, before it gets into New York City, what about the water that’s going into New Paltz? What about the water that’s going into High Falls? That water is going to need to be filtrated too,” he said, noting that although his personal preference is still for no development at all, he still backs a western-build alternative only. “I understand what Dean Gitter is doing. He’s got a project and he’s trying to make some money off of it.”
“There are some who are saying nothing should happen here,” Sweeney said on Monday, clarifying that he was referring to Hinchey’s alternative while asking that he not be photographed. “My concern is that with our tax base shrinking and jobs of paramount importance., the western side is dependent on the eastern. We’ve been encouraging the Crossroads folks to develop alternatives.”
Steinberg, also speaking on the condition that he not be photographed, “I have not yet made a final judgment as to whether this new proposal should or should not go forward.”
That, he added, was a matter to be taken up under the project’s ongoing SEQRA review.
“I have one issue… Whether or not this proposal will have a negative impact on turbidity in the watershed,” he continued. “ “I need to sit down with my staff and review those issues.”
Steinberg also added that he had already met with representatives from some of the environmental groups involved in the project’s review.
Asked about those meetings, environmental attorney Eric Goldstein of the National Resources Defense Council, as well as the local Catskill Preservation Coalition, an ad hoc organization of national and regional conservation groups, said there had been several in the past, but none yet regarding Gitter’s new proposal changes. He said he expected Steinberg to be meeting with he and others from the CPC in the coming month.
“This is far from over. No matter how far people go with this change, it still will need to go through the whole environmental review process,” Goldstein said. “The process can’t be short-circuited, even if it can sometimes be expedited if everyone – and we mean all parties – are in agreement about things.”
In his own press release reacting to the Crossroads’ press release, the CPC (via Goldstein) noted that “Mr. Gitter’s bait and switch project proposal must be examined with the same scrutiny that prompted the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Administrative Law Judge to require 12 significant environmental issues to be adjudicated.”
That decision is being appealed by Crossroads at present, with a final decision by the DEC still pending after nearly a year of review.
According to Rakov, noting why his press conference was called off an hour and a half after its scheduled start-time on Monday, the EPA Administrator’s and Sweeney’s time “simply ran out.”
Mears simply reiterated that Steinberg’s visit had been “informal,” and he would speak to the press when he had a decision to announce.
“It sounds like the developer way have overreached and tried to box the EPA and congressman into supporting a half-baked proposal,” Goldstein added. “The last thing you want to do is embarrass the EPA.”
The vote will carry the same results as voting no on the controversial law.
At the meeting, board president D’Orazio asked Vanacore to read the resolution, noting she was its author. The crowd at the Middle/High School consisted of nearly all Olive residents, who applauded the board members who supported the resolution. Vanacore’s resolution read, “Be it hereby resolved that the board of education of the Onteora central school district will not entertain a vote on the large parcel legislation, thus sending a clear message to the New York State Legislature, the Ulster County Legislature and the Onteora Central school district that, we, the Trustees feel that this type of legislation fractures the cohesiveness of a school district and that no school district should be involved in political issues.”
Later Vanacore called the large parcel law “discriminatory by nature against small towns and if it were in fact brought to court, it would be considered illegal and unconstitutional.”
D’Orazio, an attorney, asked people to look at the law in more realistic terms. “There is no way that this legislation is going to be declared unconstitutional, people are trying, people will try, but there is no support in the legislature for doing away with this law,” he said.
Patterson supported Vanacore’s resolution and said, “The last two years reflected my vote against implementing large parcel and each time it has been that it is not our job as a school board and this is why I think this motion fits in.”
Patterson added that the board had had a “lengthy discussion” regarding the break down of assessed home values given to them and their accuracy.
“I know some trustees asked questions and there is still some unresolved issues,” he said. “There seems to be a lot of people who are supposed to be experts but have no idea how to do the correct math on this.”
Patterson and other board members did not go any further into what the alleged blunders were or who was responsible.
But Bernholz questioned the process on the tax charts because of the number of times they were changed, noting “blatant mistakes that need to be drawn to people’s attention.” She also read from letters of objections to the school, county and state-approved figures from the tax assessors of Hurley and Olive, with the Olive assessor calling the tax rate table “partisan propaganda.”
Rosenfeld said Large Parcel and “the whole way of calculating taxes is rotten.” Commenting on Bernholz’s stated lack of trust in the process, he added that tax collectors have “generated a language that no one seems to understand.”
But the recently-reelected Rosenfeld also said the intent of the law is to provide an equal playing field.
“If somebody owns a $100,000 house anyplace in Onteora they should be paying the same tax for the service,” he noted, adding that his responsibility was to the whole district. “We are not four towns or six towns here, we are one town when you are talking about Onteora.”
The newly-elected Resnick said the legislation created division among the communities but she recognized, as an elected school board official, that difficult decisions must be made. The legislation, she explained, forces the board to choose between two definitions of fairness.
“One would be whether each household in the district would pay approximately the same amount based on the value of their home to support our school system,” she said. “The second would be to determine whether each town as a whole is paying its fair share based on its proportionate share of the school tax levy - the proportion of which is determined by the town’s share of the total assessed of all of our towns.”
Resnick said she agrees in spirit with Vanacore’s proposal, but believes the board was handed a “lousy law” and it is their responsibility to make the decision. She added that she would prefer to see a vote of yes or no on the legislation, noting that she would vote in favor of adopting the law.
She further commended Olive on doing a town wide revaluation of their properties and noted that she would like to see her own town of Shandaken do the same.
D’Orazio agreed with everyone on the board that said the law was terrible for the school district. But he said that the members of the school board had taken an oath to “represent the interest of the school district and not any particular town.”
D’Orazio read a memo from John Wolham, the regional director of the NYS Office of Real Property Services (ORPS) stating that the tax options questioned by Patterson and Bernholz had been reviewed.
“For demonstration purposes the information presented appears to be a reasonable representation for each option,” the state official was quoted.
He commended Olive on fighting for what they believe is right, for accomplishing their town wide reval, and for electing people to the board who would sway the vote in their favor.
“There is nothing wrong with that, but I do not believe that I want to vote that way,” D’Orazio then added, drawing heckles from the audience.
O’Connor took offense with D’Orazio infering that she was elected because of the Olive Large Parcel vote.
“I have witnessed everybody take their stance and I take offense that when you bring other board members in on how they got elected. I do not say how you got elected!” O’Connor said, noting that she did not run on the large parcel issue and works “thirty hours a week” on school board projects.
D’Orazio apologized, saying that he was not trying to be offensive. But he then added that the vote that brought O’Connor and others to the board was “one of the ways that the town of Olive decided to exercise their constitutional prerogative to use political force to make things happen, which is a perfectly appropriate thing to do. I am not trying to be derogatory about it, it is how democracy works.”
O’Connor then weighed in on the large parcel issue, supporting Vanacore’s resolution.
“As a board member I am obligated to make sure the State education regulations and laws are being followed in our school district, just as I am obligated to make sure each towns are being apportioned correctly based on equalization rates handed down by ORPS,” she said. “This is why I want to vote yes to not entertain a vote on large parcel… this is not for us to decide.”
Once the vote was taken, a yes or no vote on the Large Parcel legislation became a moot point.
In other news, Interim Superintendent Jack Jordan announced that a private school has expressed an interest in buying the West Hurley School, adding that schools for sale tend to not get a good price and expressing uncertainty whether such a move would be a positive avenue to take… but certainly worth a look.
Jordan mentioned that the asbestos removal in the high school is complete and there are new tiles in the high school being replaced and will be complete by the beginning of the school year.
The school board passed a resolution allowing the continuation of Jordan as interim superintendent throughout the school year.
I read the letters welcoming parents, inviting us to various meetings and I began to review his classroom schedule. His classes were listed as eight days, instead of five. Could this be a mistake? I think of the Beatles song “eight days a week” and later, annoyingly find myself whistling the tune throughout the day.
I notice a worksheet for my son’s schedule in the packet of letters and maybe this could unlock the mystery or at least provide some instructions as to how the schedule works.
On the afternoon of the open house, we arrive at the Middle school entrance and are greeted by excited grade eight students who escort us to a classroom. This will be the room where we figure out how the eight-day school schedule works.
Teachers are milling about and assign a very nice patient high school student for my son. She gets to work on his schedule.
“You take period-one, and you write your class on every period-one slot,” she says, pointing to the days on the bright pink calendar. “Next you take period two, but make sure you are in the first semester.”
“Isn’t the first period the first hour of school?” I interject. “And what are the eight days for?”
The high school student replies that, “it is just a thing they do — it makes it easier to understand.”
She then tries to explain it to me. I get up and walk away pretending I just understood what she was talking about.
I look around and the room is full with kids greeting kids and parents greeting parents. I read one mother’s lips from across the room… “I am so confused.” We both laugh.
After the open house, in a phone conversation, I explain our confusion to Gayle Kavanagh, principal of the Middle school. Laughing, she says that the kids get the schedule right away, but parents have a difficult time. She adds that there will be another meeting on September 11 for parents with kids entering the middle school then explains that there are eight classes in total, a one-hour block of time but only 61/2 hours to a school day, so they split everything up into eight days.
“Every day you drop two (classes) and throw in lunch,” says Kavanagh. The schedule rotates for eight days and then begins all over again from day one.
She also says that this type of scheduling, in the event of snow days, allows classes to pick up the next school day. Other school districts also use this type of scheduling if there are blocks of classroom time instead of the traditional 35 to 40 minutes of classes.
I understand it all now.
Just as I also understand that even with towns divided, through the mascot, large parcel or other adult issues, the kids seem to not notice. As I look around the room, I see students from all areas of the district mixing, laughing, and sharing their nervousness to a new experience.
While waiting for them, though, parents voice apprehension about middle school reconfiguration proposals where the grades could expand to five and six in the high school. They wonder about having younger students taking the bus with high schools kids. Some worry about younger kids not being able to understand the complexities involved in getting around such a large school crowded with older students.
Finally when all socialization is finished we are assigned to another helpful eighth grade student as our tour guide for the rest of the day and visit classrooms, offices, music rooms, art rooms and talk to teachers. We learn about the many clubs to join, about after-school activities; about the help one can get with one’s homework.
And so now it’s their turn…
But then at the microphone on Shandaken Eagle Day as almost everywhere else, Gene Gormley found his voice, as he spoke with pride of the town he’s devoted his life to serving. Not an easy thing for a very private guy who hardly ever talks about his accomplishments, and never looked for the recognition that seems to have found him.
42 years with Rotary, including two stints as its President. A life member of the M.F.Whitney Hose Company with 35 years of active service. Eleven years on the board of Margaretville Memorial Hospital. A Trustee of St. Francis de Sales Parish and the chairman of its current appeals committee to the Archdiocese. And that’s almost a random selection of his commitments to almost every aspect of community in Shandaken, because they’re too numerous to list. The Eagle Day committee’s unanimous choice for the award, they couldn’t quite keep its existence a secret from him, since he co-chaired the committee and played a central role in planning the day’s events…just as he did at the first Eagle Day 20 years ago and again 10 years ago.
“The whole first eagle effort (in 1986) was to prove to ourselves that the community could work together,” he said. “We did prove it then.” And he points to last week’s events as proof we still can pull together. The parade he says, was a cross section of the town, with just about everyone represented. And next year he hopes the Onteora Marching Band will be there, wherever Shandaken Day events are held, in an effort to bring the celebration to other parts of the community beyond Phoenicia.
Asked to sum up the whole notion of service to the community, Gormley says “ It’s a can-do attitude. It’s infectious. People join right along with you. But you’ve got to get out there with this positive attitude that it’s going to happen. And you’ve got to ask. You’ve got to ask people you know have the talent to do whatever you need done. And you’ve got to plan and you’ve got to be organized. “
But what’s most central to Gormley is his home and family. He and his wife Maureen have been married 42 years, and raised their four grown kids here, all of whom maintain close ties with home and Phoenicia. According to their daughter Mary, dinnertime conversation at home generally centered on who they knew that needed help, and how they could manage it.
Walking the expansive fields around their home off Herdman Road - all of which he’s cleared himself - it’s hard not to feel the pride Gene takes in the place. Their 30 acres are in the floodplain, but have been crafted with an elaborate though nearly invisible drainage system that’s always kept them safe and dry. And the house itself is elevated, but artfully designed to appear as if it’s built on-grade. The net effect is that it seems as naturally sited as the fencing that keeps their horses in, or the tall stands of white pine that frame the distant views.
Gormley, who in 1965 took over the funeral business founded by his father in the 1930’s , also owned and operated the region’s ambulance service for many years, eventually donating to the Town of Shandaken its first ambulance. And more recently but for many years, Gormley along with his partner Beecher Smith have been building modular homes in the area. By Gormley’s count over 150 to date, including many for young people or those in need, through their company Valley View Homes, Ltd.
Gene’s sister Ann likes to tell the story that seems to tell it best.
“Many years ago,” she said, “Gene told me that every night before he goes to bed, he asks himself who have I helped today, or made happier?”
“If I have at least two people,” she added, “Then , and only then, would he say, ‘I’m happy.’”
