Back to School, Back to Business
Though the air’s thick with summer yet, a new season’s almost upon us. Fall is a time of transitions and new beginnings, particularly for the younger amongst us. For those transiting from elementary to middle school, from middle to high school or high school to college, it’s a shift from a smaller to a larger world, where what one loses in intimacy gets replaced by what one gains in appreciation of one’s widening horizons. Such transits are often anxious times, and though we all make our adjustments it’s best to make allowances for that anxiety. On the other side, closer than it often seems, is the beginning of another level of wisdom that hopefully, will carry everyone through to new ways of dealing with what proves, over time, to be a constant process of change.
At Onteora, there’s a lot of administrative change and new beginnings underway. Gabe Buono has moved from Asst. Principal at the High School to the Principal’s job at Bennett Elementary. Replacing him at the high school is Lance Edelman, new to the area from Beacon. Edelman will be reporting to Jack Jordan of Pine Hill, our former Interim Superintendent, who’s now stepping in as Interim Principal of the high school, following Barbara Rubin’s resignation for a new job at BOCES, where she fololows Bennett’s former principal, Laurie Cassel. And the middle school has a new principal as well, Paul Schwartz, who’s taking over from Gayle Kavanagh.
Structurally it’s lots of change in a short time, including a board of trustees for the district whose longest-serving member has been on for under two terms; but the mood at the school seems up, ready, and willing to do what it takes to tackle key educational challenges.
How other possible changes facing the district, from new bus routes to upcoming decisions regarding the configuration of district facilities, end up rolling out has yet to be seen. But at least they’ll be occuring in an atmosphere that, for the moment at least, is ready to deal with changes in an involved fashion.
We celebrate such transits. In some neighborhoods, they’re still marked by block parties and the like, where neighbors get together to see their kids off to school and celebrate the last of summer, as well as the start of autumnal responsibilities. Our wider communities, too, tend to mark this time in a celebratory manner. Shandaken Day, held in Pine Hill this year, was a great event. Olive Day, coming up September 8, is once again shaping up to be as strong an example of home town neighborliness and good cheer as can be imagined these days.
To paraphrase Whitman, we celebrate ourselves and sing ourselves, for every atom belonging to you as good belongs to me.
Seeing that in the flesh, knowing that in the heart, that’s what community is.
Locally, election season is slowly kicking off, in a year when we once again select our town governments. This year, for the first time in many, we’re incredibly encouraged by what we see. In Shandaken, there’s at least four candidates for two town board seats, any one of which could be a terrific addition to the municipal government. For the first time ever there’s a real dialogue taking shape in the Assessor’s race, where clear and distinct perspectives seem ready to frame a serious dialogue that’s never happened before over long-standing problems. It’s great, and it’s time.
Olive’s strength continues to be its continuity and the town board’s remarkable ability to mobilize for the collective interest of its town majority at the polls. It’s a positive object lesson for everybody and a justifiable source of pride, even if we sometimes worry how the current leadership will be followed and when recent demographic shifts in the community will get reflected in town government.
The big news, this week and next, is being made in Kingston. We’re writing this before any testimony takes place on the history of the new jail, so you probably know far more about it now than we do as we comment here. We don’t expect any bombshells; those testifying will have had years to prepare for the questions they’ll be asked, and to think through what they’ll say. What’s important about this process isn’t whether any criminal charges are ultimately filed, or anyone gets ultimately convicted of wrongdoing. What matters is the reckoning, the truthful accounting of what happened and why. It’s not often public officials are called on to do that, and nobody relishes the idea they’re in in that position. But we do need to understand what happened with that project, both so we don’t repeat the mistakes and for our own sense of closure.
By the time it’s paid off, the new Law Enforcement Center will probably cost each and every household in Ulster County more than $2,000 in county taxes paid. That’s a staggering figure for a single, relatively small part of any county’s municipal infrastructure. Paying this off is more than a test of whether this county or any county can long endure poor management. It’s a personal financial burden on every household that we didn’t need to commit to at the level we did.
We appreciate the irony that the man who ultimately inherited responsibility for making this thing work was from day one, it’s clearest and most persistent critic. That is Sherriff Paul Van Blarcum, who tried harder than anyone to make sure Ulster County’s residents weren’t saddled with the burden we all now carry. Had those who are now being held publicly accountable heard him better, these hearings would not be happening. We wish him luck in sorting out the flotsam and righting the boat.
BP