Follow Up on the News
Bringing the matter up at this past month’s August 7 town board meeting, councilman Rob Stanley said it’s time to look into the sticky issue, which the state strongly recommends all municipalities do on a regular, if not annual basis, because of the recent lawsuits brought against the town and its assessors for changing only certain classes of property values, as well as a recent New York City Department of Environmental Protection challenge over valuation on its Pine Hill sewer plant.
“I think we’re in for more suits,” Stanley said as his fellow councilpersons, Jane Todd and Pete DiSclefani, joined him in endorsing a meeting with state Office of Real Property services officials.
Town Supervisor Bob Cross, who brought up the issue while campaigning two years ago and then dropped it, said the reval should be “done by pros,” but added that the town could do some preliminary work… like make sure that the info used by the pros was correct. He said the town “could make sure a house was really as old as the records say it is, that’s it’s really as big as they say,” etc.
His statements bothered some in the audience August 7, though, because of what they have called a “good ole boy network” where Cross and town planning board member (and unsuccessful assessor’s position candidate) John Horn set values for a number of properties in town in recent years without any public notification.
Shandaken Landowners Association member Peter Vinci, a leading force behind the various taxpayers’ lawsuits now pending against the town who ended up in fisticuffs with Cross at the town’s July meeting, said he hoped Shandaken would hand off all reval work to outside professionals to eliminate any possibility of cronyism, or even the impression of it.
Others, though, grumbled that nothing but bad would come from opening such a Pandora’s box. All were long time residents.
“Stay underneath the radar,” said restaurateur Mike Ricciardella. “That’s the only thing we’ve got going for us.”
Al Friseneda warned that, with a possible price tag of close to $400,000, a reval could cripple the taxpayers with very little real benefit. “You’ll spend all the money and end up right back in the place where you started he said.
Later, at an Onteora School District public hearing on the Large Parcel issue where the subject of Olive’s recent reval came up at several points, Cross publicly announced that, “There’s a possibility we’ll do a reval now. Some of my board members want to meet with ORPS about it… We’re the last town to be doing this.”
Later, in private, though, Cross said the whole thing “was Stanley’s idea. Ask Stanley.”
He added that he wouldn’t say what his feelings about revaluation were until the time came for a vote.
“Can we do it? Do we have the means to do it,” he asked. “How is it going to effect the population?”
Reminded that ORPS and other state agencies tend to fund revals, the better to have them accomplished, and that under usual equations, one third property values go up, one third down, and one third stays the same, Cross pursed his lips.
“I have an open mind, let’s put it that way,” he said. “I reserve judgment until I get all the facts.
We’ll let you know in our next issue when the reval meeting with ORPS is scheduled…
Large Parcel Hearing
Made up primarily of members of the citizen’s group, Olive Matters, that formed two years ago in answer to the school district’s 2004 implementation of the controversial law, the audience spoke in emotional terms about how divisive they felt the law was. How it kept the board from its educational goals and tossed it into areas involving taxation and politics to the detriment of Onteora’s student body.
Some questioned the very right of outside entities such as the state Office of Real Property Service (ORPS) to try and equalize towns that were in essence not equal, but individualist in nature. Others, including Olive town supervisor Bert Leifeld and councilman Bruce LaMonda, said the basic problem was that the state, via ORPS, didn’t buy the town’s assessment of New York City’s massive Ashokan Reservoir, creating the problem in the first place.
Others, including the three OCS school board members elected to office by Olive residents outraged at how their taxes soared under implementation of the Large Parcel Law, plus former board president David Patterson, questioned the very figures that district business manager Victoria McLaren had come up with for tax assessment figures with and without implementation of Large Parcel, via the aide of county Office of Real Property Services director Dorothy Martin. According to figures made available at the hearing, and discussed by McLaren and Martin before the floor was opened to the public, the 2006-2007 tax rates per $1,000 of assessed property value, as based on a $33.89 million levy set to be adopted at the board’s August 22 meeting, where it will also decide what to do about Large Parcel for the fourth year in a row are as follows: For Hurley, $10.47, an increase of $1.86 over 2005-06. The town also has reservoir property, but state officials consider it to be assessed fairly, with New York City to pay $891,995 in taxes for 5,689.59 acres valued at $85.19 million. For Olive, $7.77, a decrease of $1,554.80, or 99.5 percent, if no vote is taken or the law is defeated. The steep drop is the result of the town’s recent revaluation of all properties within it, balanced out by a new $650 million (up from the state’s $331 millionassessment and the city’s $180 million request) for the Ashokan.. The rate would be $9.42 per $1,000, a decrease of $1,553.15, or 99.4 percent, if the Large Parcel law is adopted. In Woodstock, $11.60, a decrease of 33 cents, without the law; $10.83, a decrease of $1.10, if the law is adopted. In Marbletown, $10.62, a decrease of 47 cents, without the law; $9.92, a decrease of $1.17, if the law is adopted. For Shandaken, $42.05, an increase of $2.43, without the law; $39.26, a decrease of 36 cents, if the law is adopted. Finally, for Lexington, $13.55, an increase of $1.22 increase, without the law; $12.65, a 32-cent increase, if the law is adopted. In terms of actual figures, McLaren and Martin pointed out how taxes on a $100,000 house would be effected, as well. (They also showed figures for a $200,000 home, but those were basically just about double those for a $100,000 house). For the current year, without implementation of Large Parcel, the figures showed, Hurley’s school tax for a $100,000 home was $1,026.60. Marbletown’s was $1,109.97. Shandaken, Woodstock and Lexington were all at $1,109.98, give or take a penny. And Olive was at $781.76. For the coming school year, with state equalization rates thrown in to compensate for towns’ lack of updated assessments, as in Shandaken’s case (which has a 24 percent equalization rate), or discrepancies in assessed amounts, as with Olive’s valuation of the Ashokan (resulting in a 129.86 percent equalization rate), the estimated taxes per $100,000 home, without large parcel law implementation, will be $942,64, a drop of 8.18 percent, in Hurley; $1,009.26, or a drop of 9.07 percent, in the towns of Marbletown, Shandaken, Woodstock and Lexington; and $777.19, or a drop of 0,58 percent, in Olive. Under Large Parcel, McLaren and Martin’s figures show, everyone’s school taxes on a $100,000 home would be $942.29, representing an 8.21 percent drop in Hurley, a 15.11 percent drop in Marbletown, Shandaken, Woodstock and Lexington, and a rise of 20.53 percent in Olive. Martin pointed out that the overall drops in taxes were the result of Olive’s high valuation for the Ashokan, a figure the City has challenged, but which Leifeld has said will have to wait for a final decision until the DEP’s cases on three previous years –2002, 2003 and 2004, get decided on, likely this autumn, in court. When grilled how figures turned out the way they did, and why the state used the equations it used, Martin replied, somewhat curtly, that “that’s just the way it is.” When later asked to create figures for the various towns using other equations requested by the board, she and McLaren said they couldn’t do so without “putting false information out to the public, which we don’t like to do.” Several members of the Olive crowd in attendance greeted the projected figures with whispered admonitions – “lies” – as they were explained. Others, not from Olive, later said that the entire assessment was skewed by Olive’s manipulation of the city reservoir’s assessment, a game of chicken that could create problems for all in the school district should the city or state prevail in court against the town’s valuation. Martin countered a recent daily newspaper article that termed the Town of Olive as underassessed, but reiterated that eventually, everything would end up coming down to “how the reservoir gets assessed.” Former Onteora School Board member John Hurld of Hurley suggested that the entire Large Parcel problem could eventually be skipped should the district become its own taxing entity. Board president Marino D’Orazio said he would ask the board’s attorney to look into such matters. Shandaken supervisor Bob Cross backed Hurld’s idea, but otherwise stayed mum as one after another Olive resident got up to say no to Large Parcel. “We’re a district, not individual communities,” he tried saying as people heckled him, albeit sotto voce, from the back of the room. “I know what it’s like to be bashed and beat around.” D’Orazio then cut public commentary after O’Connor and Vanacore also questioned the state’s figures, saying the board still had an executive session to tend to. It all comes back up on August 22 for a vote: either yes, to Large Parcel, no, or no action. The meeting is at 7 pm at the Junior/Senior High School cafeteria.
According to Eagle Day committee chair June La Marca, “This will be a wonderful opportunity for the people in the community to come together, meet and enjoy themselves – and for visitors too!”
A parade of over 85 participants will leave from Terrace Farm on Plank Road at 10:30 am and will file west along Main Street. The lineup includes 4 bands — the Kingston High School Marching Band, the Old Saratoga Fife & Drum Corps, the Walker Valley Marching Band and the Hunter Fire Dept. Fife and Drum — with 31 floats, plus a variety of balloons, marchers, vintage cars, and other wheeled conveyances filling out the ranks. Says parade organizer Gene Gormley, “There has been an extreme outpouring of cooperation from the whole community for this event.”
Television news anchor Rolland Smith will emcee the rededication of the Eagle on the 20th anniversary of its touching down at the junction of Routes 28 and 214. Ceremonies include the reading of a poem written for the occasion by Dakin Morehouse – a metal sculptor, he has just cleaned and burnished the cast metal statue — and a performance by the Shandaken Theatrical Society of the song “Happiness Is Shandaken.”
All on hand are invited to pose for a community photo. (The official tee shirt and hat are encouraged for this.)
Finally, in what could turn out to be a stroke of rural genius, commemorative kazoos will be handed out for a tune-filled march back down Main Street to St. Francis de Sales Parish Field, where the rest of the day’s activities will begin.
"We want to have the world's largest kazoo band," said LaMarca, announcing the last plans at a recent town board meeting, explaining how the committee came up with the idea while mulling over the logistics of the day.
Because everyone was already walking, organizers saw an opportunity.
Once a batch of 1,000 kazoos have been handed out, the "musicians" will be taught a tune to blow on their kazoo as they walk through the hamlet.
LaMarca said the Guinness World Records”people” have been contacted, and the town was told there is not yet a category for world's largest kazoo band. She hopes to convince Guinness officials to create the category with Shandaken's event.
“Guinness World Records," known until 2000 as "The Guinness Book of Records," is a reference book, published annually, that contains an internationally recognized collection of world records, both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world. Even the book itself holds a world record, as the best-selling copyrighted series.
The book contains such records as "longest non-stop clothes ironing" (55 hours and five minutes) and "world's oldest barefoot water skier" (87 years, 18 days).
To date, the only controversy surrounding the event has been the organizers’ refusal to allow booths for political parties or environmental organizations... for fear such things are not “community.”
Also, two questions remain: who gets the task of reminding Phoenicia’s mascot bears about the parade — and will they and the eagle get along?
Gitter’s manipulations of the approval processes – normally involving state Department of Environmental Conservation, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and local Planning and Zoning board approvals – surfaced surreptitiously this past week in the form of an apparent EPA reversal.
It started like this…
Last week, on August 3, U.S. Congressman Maurice Hinchey, whose district encompasses most of Gitter’s proposed development, sent out a press release announcing that the EPA’s Regional Administrator, Alan J. Steinberg had “endorsed the congressman’s plan for a lower-build alternative to the proposed Belleayre Resort.”
The reference was, on the one hand, to a Hinchey alternative plan presented to Gitter last winter that seeks to safeguard the 1,240 acre eastern portion of the resort project site from development, while allowing some development on the less sensitive western parcel. On the other, it referenced a June 22 letter to Congressman Jerry Nadler from Steinberg, asking for comments on Hinchey’s plan.
“ The momentum has clearly shifted in favor of protecting the New York City Watershed and responsible development. I look forward to using the EPA’s backing as additional leverage to advance this alternative proposal,” Hinchey was quoted in the release, which outlined how Steinberg’s letter “referenced the agency’s previously expressed concerns about the size and scope of the proposed development and referenced the project’s risk to water quality” and “noted the threat from runoff of turbid storm water to the sensitive Catskill water supply, which provides drinking water to over 9 million New Yorkers.
“We therefore support revisions to the Belleayre Resort project that would eliminate development in the eastern section of the site which lies within the Catskill watershed,” Hinchey’s release quoted Steinberg stating.
But then on Monday, August 7, Steinberg was quoted on a WAMC-FM report by new Hudson Valley reporter Julia Taylor entitled “Dueling Compromises Over Belleayre” basically contradicting his own letter to Congress.
“I have to first and foremost protect the water systems,” Steinberg said online. “At the same time, I don’t want to needlessly hamper development. If development has to be restricted due to environmental concerns, so be it. If, on the other hand, a development proposal will avoid harmful effects to the watershed, so be that also.”
Hinchey, in the same broadcast, asked how the EPA could go back on its own findings. Steinberg added that he was basing his statements on a new proposal Gitter’s development company, Crossroads Ventures, had presented to him. He concluded by noting that he would base any final recommendation he made on a late August visit to the area.
Asked about Hinchey’s letter Monday, Crossroads’ spokesperson Paul Rakov referred all questions to the broadcast, once it became available online.
“Congressman Hinchey based his announcement on a letter that was not addressed to him and that is now more than a month and a half old,” he added, even though the Steinberg letter had been directed to a number of Congressmen, and the dates of departmental proclamations setting precedent normally never come into play. “For several years, Crossroads Ventures has maintained a constant dialogue with all the regulatory agencies: the EPA, the DEP and the DEC - listening to their concerns and re-examining our plans for the Belleayre Resort accordingly. Congressman Hinchey seems to be unaware of these interactions and the new concepts which we are exploring. His understanding of these developments is out of touch and out of date. While the so-called ‘Hinchey compromise’ was an interesting, though unacceptable, starting point, it should be clear that he is not the only legitimate source of compromises.”
Calls to Hinchey’s office the day after the Steinberg turnaround found aids stating that the Congressman stood by the letter Steinberg had originally sent.
According to that letter, “EPA provided comments about the Belleayre project in a March 2004 letter in which we raised concerns about the size and scope of the proposed development. In general, EPA explained that the project represented a risk to water quality and could promote additional growth and development in forested areas outside of town centers. The letter specifically recommended that a reduced scale project be considered.”
That letter, it turns out, had been written by longstanding regional EPA employee Walter Mugdan. Steinberg was appointed to his position on September 7, 2005, by executive order during the follow-up to the Katrina disaster.
Prior to his EPA appointment, Mr. Steinberg worked for the federal government’s Small Business Administration, served as Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, and spent years with the New Jersey Department of Commerce and Economic Development, as well as in higher-up Republican Party political offices.
In his June 22 letter, Steinberg referred to a May 21 letter he had sent to Gitter. ON air, he spoke about a new development proposal made available to him.
“Unfortunately, we can’t share that proposal,” noted Steinberg’s spokesperson, Mary Meers, this past Tuesday, adding that “it would be up to the developer to release it. It’s not ours to share.”
Meers added that as far as she could tell, there were no contradictions between the Administrator’s June 22 letter and his current statements. When we read elements of the letter and transcript to her, though, she said she’d talk to Steinberg.
Getting back a few hours later after speaking to Steinberg – who said he was unavailable for interviews the remainder of the week – Meers said that, “The developer came to us with a revised project. Alan feels the EPA has to look at all options here… not that we’re going back on any of our concerns. It’s simply a new, scaled-back proposal.”
Tom Alworth, the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development director who is also serving as head and spokesperson for an alliance of national and regional environmental organizations who have shepherded resources to oppose Gitter’s plans, which call for two gold courses and over 1,000 hotel rooms and condominium units over a long ridge line running on either side of state-owned Belleayre Mountain Ski Center, said he was taken aback by Gitter’s recent move. Usually, he says, WAMC has phoned him for commentary on any news involving the resort project, but the recent story seemed to have been arranged by Gitter’s people.
“When a letter from the EPA regional administrator says one thing, and days later he backs off his own statements, some interesting questions arise as to why,” Alworth said. “It’s like he was two days for it and then two days against it.”
Meers, asked to supply details about when Steinberg might have received a new proposal for the Belleayre Resort noted that there had been a meeting with Gitter in his offices on June 28, 6 days after Steinberg’s letter was received in Congress. She added that someone from Representative John Sweeney’s office had set the meeting up and was on speakerphone throughout its proceedings.
Sweeney, who represents the sprawling district to our north that includes the Delaware County portion of Gitter’s proposed development, is a former state Republican Party chair nicknamed “Congressman Kickass” by President Bush after he started the so-called “Republican Riot” that shut down the November 2000 Miami-Dade elections commissioners vote recount, ostensibly leading to Bush’s victory. Sweeney recently helped convince Steinberg to delay a long-promised EPA dredging project to remove PCBs from the Hudson River, to have been paid for by General Electric, long amongst Sweeney’s biggest backers.
“Quite frankly, I am not surprised, from the beginning I have had concerns regarding the magnitude of this project,” the Congressman said on July 27, the same hour Steinberg made his announcement.. “It is sad that it took others far longer to realize what the rest of us have already known…”
“We are now facing several obstacles beyond our control that make it unrealistic to begin dredging during the 2007 dredging season,” was how Steinberg tersely put his decision to push all work, promised four years ago, off to 2008.
Rakov, when asked if others on a state or city level had been invited to Gitter’s June 28 meeting with Steinberg, or given a chance to see his new proposal, was equally terse.
“Who says we didn’t,” came his e-mailed reply.
After being told that Meers had said no one else was invited to the meeting and that all queries to New York City about the proposal had the DEP scrambling to get a copy and make a statement, because Steinberg’s August 7 radio interview had been the fiorst they’d heard of anything, Rakov replied again. He had also been asked, at this point, about Sweeney’s part in Gitter’s process.
“You have our comments,” he replied. “That is all we are saying at this time.”
The EPA, it should be noted, has been holding public hearings this year in regards to the City and state’s need for it to issue a second seven year Filtration Avoidance Determination that would not only preclude New York from the $8 million plus expenditure necessary should it need to filter its water, but the loss of much of its Watershed funding program should such occur.
The only real opposition to the granting of a new FAD has come from the once dormant Coalition of Watershed Towns, whose former attorney now works as Gitter’s counsel and whose first big issue in years arose two years ago when it decided to sit in on the Belleayre Resort issues conferences, speaking on behalf of Gitter’s proposal in most cases.
Meers, when asked what role the Environemntal Protection Agency might play in the Gitter project, was at first circumspect.
“We have no regulatory role here,” she said. “Alan just likes to help parties reach a compromise if possible.”
But then asked again, Meers defined a role, vague though it might seem.
“We do have a role in protecting New York City’s watershed,” she said. “The EPA decides whether they filter or not.”
Hinchey’s office, asked if the Congressman had any last word about the press release he had sent out, said they stood by what was originally written.
Stay tuned...
Among the participants were two Onteora Middle School science teachers, Kate Van Baren and Lee Ann Kuhne, and West Shokan resident Sharon Sofranko, a teacher at Hunter Elementary School.
“There are some great ideas coming out of this group on how to bring these concepts into the classroom,” said Forestry Service conservation educator Susan Cox, who helped to facilitate the institute. Teachers were introduced to a number of programs they could use with students, including Green Connections, Forestry Bus Tours, Trout in the Classroom, and Project Learning Tree.
Do kids really take an interest in the science behind keeping our water clean? “The hand-on stuff can be very enjoyable,” said Sofranko, who has used the water resources curriculum put together by the CCCD and finds it absorbing for elementary level students. She also cited a project led by Aaron Bennett of CCCD during the six-day institute. He had placed packs of leaves on the upstream sides of brook rocks, and participants pulled the leaves apart and inventoried the macroinvertebrates they found, such as larvae of caddisflies, mayflies, and stoneflies, whose quantities indicate the relative health of a stream.
“It was really fascinating,” said Sofranko, adding that, while teenagers might be harder to engage than her third-graders, “Hopefully they’ll remember something from the teaching that will rise up later when they’re in a position to make decisions that could have an impact.”
The schedule for Thursday, August 10, included a field trip to the Model Forest Site administered by the Watershed Forestry Program and Watershed Agricultural Council at Frost Valley. Council forester Tom Pavlesich showed the teachers highlights of the model forest, one of four his agency maintains in the watershed. The project studies scientifically the most effective ways to manage forests for profit while enhancing, rather than harming, water quality and wildlife habitat, with a view to making sure landowners and loggers can afford to maintain their land and will not have to sell it for development.
“The land here is divided into research blocks, according to forest structure that reflects past land uses,” said Pavlesich. Researchers experimentally cut timber in different patterns and then monitor the effects on water quality and regrowth of valuable timber species, he explained.
The target audience of the model forest, besides educators, is landowners and loggers who want to learn to manage their property. As the group crossed a plank-and-girder bridge over a small creek, Pavlesich pointed out that the bridge could be folded in half and loaded onto a truck for temporary use in a nearby forest.
“Loggers don’t want to build bridges to get their logs across streams because they say it takes too long. But we can show them that a simple bridge like this, in fact, will save them time in getting across the stream, prevent wear and tear on their equipment, which won’t pick up mud and rocks in the treads, and it’s far better for water quality because it keeps sediment out of the water.”
Beyond the bridge, the uphill trail was cut intermittently by open-top pipe culverts that divert water from the trail, preventing erosion. A similar function was served by upright rubber strips angled across the path. “These are cheap and easy to install,” said Pavlesich, “and the trucks can run right over them, and they’ll pop back up.”
He stopped at a long swath of ferns and raspberry bushes under open sky, lined by forest on both sides. “This strip was clear-cut adjacent to hundreds of thousands of acres of mature forest. It provides an opportunity for new habitat and for growth of shade-intolerant species like wild cherry and ash, which are both very profitable timber.”
While clear-cutting over large areas, on steep slopes, or in poor soil can be devastating to water quality because of the erosion and high-nutrient runoff that result, small patches of clear-cut land create diversity, browse for wildlife, and money-making opportunities for loggers. Young trees in a clear-cut, however, may need deer fences for protection in order to move past the sapling stage. The model forest program is studying the best means of managing the cut in order to regenerate profitable growth.
In more mature woods, or when dealing with species that require shade early in life, such as maple and oak, culling of smaller trees and those with knots or twists results in maximizing sunlight and resources for the more profitable trees.
The teachers absorbed all this information with close attention, digesting it for use in the classroom. The trip also involved a visit to the Shandaken Tunnel Portal on Route 28, where the teachers were awed by the speed of water channeled from the Schoharie Reservoir meeting up with the Esopus Creek on its way to New York City. Learning about the watershed, said Obed Fulcar, a science teacher from Washington Heights in Manhattan, “made me appreciate the sacrifices made by people upstate for our drinking water. We just turn on the tap without realizing.”