Newsbriefs

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8/30/2007

Principal Shifts
At its Tuesday night meeting on August 28, the Onteora School Board accepted the resignation of longstanding Onteora High School principal Barbara Ruben and hired former interim superintendent Jack Jordan, an educator from Sullivan County who is currently running for Town Board on the GOP line in Shandaken, to serve as interim principal until a permanent replacement can be found.
Ruben will be moving on to a principal position at Ulster County BOCES in Port Ewen, where OCS’s former Director of Elementary Education and Bennett School principal Laurie Cassel was recently hired as Deputy Superintendent.
Ruben’s resignation is effective September 4. Jordan’s hiring was as from September 4 through December 21 at a rate of $550 per day, with two additional days thrown in for work done August 20 and 21.
Simultaneous to Ruben’s hiring at BOCES it was announced that another principal of the school in charge of its Career and Technical Center will be undergoing a sex change operation in the coming week. According to BOCES District Superintendent Martin Ruglis, Gary Suraci, 52 of Wappingers Falls, who has been the principal for career and technical students since 1996, will undergo gender reassignment surgery, and the school was set to inform parents at an “educational and informative” meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday evening, August 28… the same day as the hiring changes at Onteora.
Ruglis has said that BOCES officials plan to tell students about the change in their principal’s gender during meetings when they return to school Sept. 5 and 6. He added that the school has taken the necessary steps to provide students with an educated team of counselors that can answer questions and concerns.
In other business August 28 at the Onteora meeting, held in the Junior/Senior High School cafeteria, recently hired superintendent Leslie Ford was offered, and accepted, an amended contract through June, 2010, bringing in matters discussed in Executive Session at a meeting on August 14.
A contract set to be signed for the continuation of the school’s groundbreaking INDIE program, also being run in the Greene County school district for the town of Catskill, at $145,000 for the coming school year, was meanwhile not even discussed
More on these issues in our next issue…

New Candidates
Shandaken resident Frank Nazzaro has put his name on the ballot to run for town Supervisor, making it a three way race for the town’s top job.
On Tuesday Nazzaro, a founding member of the Heart of the Catskills Chamber of Commerce who once liked to be known as Farmer Frank, said he entered the race late because he didn’t want to upset the Republican and Democratic applecarts when the two parties held caucus’s recently to endorse candidates. Instead of trying to get an endorsement from either party, Nazzaro will run on an Independent line called the Shandaken Genuine Party.
“I have too many friends that are Republican or Democrat to run against them,” he said, explaining why he did not challenge Republican Jane Todd or Democrat Peter DiSclafani when both sought endorsements from their respective parties.
Nazzaro did say, however, that he felt he was the only candidate that could represent the entire town, saying that the other candidates both represent special interests. The town board needed now, Nazzaro said, is a diversified one that would tackle issues with best interests of the town in mind.
As campaign season begins, Nazzaro said he wouldn’t be running a campaign filled the negative, mud slinging propaganda that has become a fixture during recent Shandaken elections.
“I like everyone….I’m not running against anyone. I’m running for the town,” he said.
Todd, who was unchallenged at the Republican caucus, is a current member of the town council whose term expires this year. Todd was a member of the towns planning board, and has served on the town council for the past eight years. She retired last year as the Executive Director of the Shandaken Area Revitalization Program, a non-profit agency that develops affordable housing in the area and also secures grants for housing rehabilitation, Main Street revitalization and other community projects.
DiSclafani is also on the town board, having served half of the four year term he was elected for in 2005. Disclafani owns and operates the Catskill Rose, a restaurant/lodge in Mount Tremper.
In other election news, the town’s Conservative Party held it’s caucus Monday night and set its list of candidates.
It was no surprise that the close knit group chose Todd to for Supervisor and no surprise that they picked their own party member Vincent Bernstein to run for town board. Another expected move was to pick Jack Jordan for town board. All three are the Republican picks for town board this year, as is town clerk Laurilyn Frasier, who is seeking another term and was given the conservative nod.
The Conservatives shook things up a bit in the race for tax assessor, where they chose Democratic pick Rose Rotella and Republican favorite Heidi Clark to run for the two positions and also backed Conservative Ken Berryann to run for Superintendent of highways. Berryann ran unsuccessfully against current Highway Supe Keith Johnson two years ago, and will face him again this year. Democrat Eric Hofmeister makes it a three way race, as he was endorsed by that party, instead of his own GOP, to run for highway super earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Republican assessor candidate Theresa Grant, who agreed to a candidacy and was voted a ballot slot when the GOP realized it needed two candidates for open slots in November at their July caucus, notified party chair Ken Umhey recently that she’d prefer not to run and signed off the required paperwork removing her name.
“I heard that John Horn was chosen to replace me,” said Grant. “I have a hard time believing they’d actually appoint him to run for any position with the town. Why they’d do that I have no idea.”
In 2005, Horn ran unsuccessfully for the same position, after published comments attributed to Supervisor Cross indicated that Horn was informally conducting a revaluation of the town that was, at that time, two-thirds complete. Horn has since indicated that is not the case.

Jail Hearings…
The special committee looking into why the Ulster County Law Enforcement Center took years longer than expected to build and millions over budget began its formal hearings this past week, taking sworn testimony from the first of 17 subpoenaed people on Monday and Wednesday, with a third day of questioning set for the week following Labor Day. According to those in attendance, the hearings were moving glacially, although it was also noted that the overall effect was akin “to watching a boa constrictor squeeze its prey to death.”
The hearings began with questioning about pre-construction, to be followed with construction timeline questions and finally, with post-construction issues. Committee special assistant John Mavretich, who was working with Ulster Publishing before taking on his current assignment, is asking the questions.
First to testify were former County Legislature Chairman Ward Todd and Richard Gerentine; Harry Sleight, former Ulster County commissioner of buildings and grounds; and Francis Murray, a former county attorney. Mavretich questioned the policy-making for the decision to build a new county jail facility versus remodel the old one.
He asked why the Albert Street land, upon which the new LEC is situation, was purchased by the county prior to a decision being made to build the new complex. Todd said the county needed the land for stormwater drainage. Further questioning also asked about Requests for Proposals allegedly being shown to competitors, and contracts being given to Republican contributors.
Todd, who is currently the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce Director, and whose wife Jane is running for Shandaken town supervisor, answered a majority of his questions with a quiet but calm, “I can’t recall.”
More as this all unfolds over the coming week…

Lost Hikers?
A New York City woman and her two teenaged nephews from Blue Bell, PA, who were the objects of an overnight search, turned up safe and sound Friday morning, August 24, in Phoenicia. Laurie Pachetti, 45, and her nephews, ages 15 and 13, planned on hiking the Slide Mountain Trail off Oliverea Road in the Town of Shandaken. They entered the trail at about 2 p.m. Thursday with plans to hike the loop and were due to return no later than 7 p.m.
Kingston State Police found their car parked, unoccupied at the trail head. Two state forest rangers responded to the trail head and completed a seven hour hike across Slide Mountain in search for the missing hikers. Troopers were stationed at either end of the six mile trail in case the hikers returned.
At about 7 a.m. Friday, the forest rangers completed their trail hike without finding the hikers. At 8:15 a.m. as more searchers began to amass for a large scale search, Warren Reynolds, a retired state police sergeant who lives in the area, was riding his mountain bike on Woodland Valley Road, passing a second Slide Mountain trailhead, when he spotted the three walking out of the woods. They appeared to be disoriented and told him they had been hiking the trail, took a wrong turn late in the afternoon on Thursday and when darkness set in, decided to wait out the night.
At sunrise, they continued their hike until they ran into Reynolds. He told them to stay put and he rode his bike back to his home in Phoenicia and called state police to alert them as to where to find the lost hikers.

Money Back!
This past month, the Onteora School Board approved a district tax levy for $35,138,267 and added that they were happy to report that taxpayers will be getting a lower than expected levy this year.
“Between the 2005-06 tax years, Shandaken worked hard to get the vacant state land in that town revalued, they raised the value of all the State land, they actually increased the value in Shandaken by almost $6 million, that was really great,” noted Assistant Superintendent for Business, Victoria McLaren adding that the changing of values on 207 parcels brought an additional $70,000 to the district.
She did not mention that the move has been legally challenged by local taxpayers, as well as the state and city.
The board then approved the creation of a capital reserve fund for $1million for building repairs.
Trustee Cindy O’Connor requested, at the August 14 OCS meeting, information on the tax certiorari status between the town of Olive and New York City over the assessment of the Ashokan Reservoir.
McLaren replied that, “Our attorney is going to send us a written update of what the status is, but what I can tell you is that there is a court date set for January.”
The board agreed that they would update the public on their legal findings no later than October.
New York City is suing the town of Olive over the value of the Ashokan Reservoir. If the courts were to rule in New York City’s favor, Onteora taxpayers could owe up to $14,293.667.60. This is money that New York City claims is the result of Olive over-assessing the reservoir between the years 2003 and 2005. The district has set aside nearly $4 million in tax reserves in the event New York City wins it’s litigation, the most it can do legally.

Hospital Blues
Kingston Hospital has abandoned plans to create an ambulatory surgery center in a building connected by a covered walkway to its main campus. The proposal was intended to shift abortion and some other reproductive health services off-site from the hospital, physically and corporately, in preparation for a state-mandated consolidation with Catholic Benedictine Hospital.
In a series of public forums this spring, the transfer of abortion services and sterilizations - procedures banned under Catholic healthcare directives - to the Kingston Medical Arts Building was presented as the best option available to address the thorny issue of how to handle reproductive health in the re-alignment between the Catholic hospital and its secular counterpart. The 2006 Berger Commission report called for the hospitals to consolidate services and operate under a single governing body. The commission also directed Kingston Hospital to maintain all reproductive services either within the hospital or at a “proximate” location.
The initial solution to the issue called for the creation of an ambulatory surgery center at the building, a 1990s-era condominium of physicians’ offices that is linked to Kingston Hospital by a covered walkway over Foxhall Avenue. The center would handle minor surgical procedures of all kinds, including abortions and sterilizations. Benedictine Hospital’s board of directors signaled that the solution would provide enough distance between the single overseeing body that will manage both hospitals when the realignment is complete, and procedures banned by church rules for its healthcare institutions.
The plan faced immediate opposition from shareholders in the Medical Arts condo, who complained their practices would be hurt by the presence of the surgical center, and watchdog groups who said removing abortion services from the hospital campus would stigmatize women, compromise security and put reproductive healthcare at risk.
Dr. Ken Johnson, who helped organize opposition to the plan from condo shareholders and members of Health Care STAT, a local group founded to serve as a “watchdog” on the realignment, both said the Medical Arts building plan had been abandoned. A source familiar with the issue said current plans now call for the creation of a new freestanding structure to house reproductive health services. A spokesman for the two hospitals declined to give specifics, but said that Kingston Hospital officials had come up with a solution that would satisfy the Berger Commission mandate on reproductive health services within or proximate to the hospital campus.

Water Wars?
Changing weather patterns will leave millions of people without dependable supplies of water for drinking, irrigation and power, a growing stack of studies conclude. In California, where cloud seeding has become a fruitful business in recent years, people are saying the old systems no longer work because adding 10 percent to rainfall means noting “when you’re getting 10 percent of zero.”
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), new patterns of increased droughts followed by heavy floods will result in the eventual drying out of areas such as southern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, South Australia, Patagonia and the U.S. Southwest. And these will not be small droughts, according to the studies, but cataclysms on a par with those that hit much of the world in the 1930s.
The resulting potential for conflict, the IPCC is saying, is more than theoretical. Turkey, Syria and Iraq bristle over the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt trade threats over the Nile. The United Nations has said water scarcity is behind the bloody wars in Sudan’s Darfur region. In Somalia, drought has spawned warlords and armies.

New Sports Head
The Onteora school district’s new Athletic Director William Hannon loves football and is committed to see Onteora have a team.
“The football program was addressed at the time of my hiring,” said Hannon, “I’d really like to get that program back up.”
The varsity football program was cut in 2006 due to lack of interest and previous director Michael Kocher asked the school board to support a modified and junior varsity program with the hope it will build up again. Hannon says he understands that in order to have a good Varsity program, youth football is important and he plans to work with the community on the development of a Pop Warner youth Football program. He believes Onteora is at a disadvantage since area school communities have youth football programs that prepares players once they get to Varsity.
Hired at a salary of $11,848 a year, he works every day from 1pm to 6pm and on Saturday during games.
Hannon carries a strong sports background, with a degree from St. John’s University in sports management and a degree from Columbia University in Physical Education. While at St. John’s he played linebacker for their football team.
For the past two years he was director of Athletics and Physical education at St Thomas School, a private institution in New York City.
Hannon just relocated from New York City and is currently living in Monroe, his home town. He plans to move to this area as soon as he can find a place to live. Besides football he also enjoys baseball, basketball and soccer.

Eating Problems
Having trouble persuading your child to eat broccoli or spinach? You may have only yourself to blame. According to a study of twins, neophobia - or the fear of new foods - is mostly in the genes.
“Children could actually blame their mothers for this,” said Jane Wardle, director of the Health Behavior Unit at University College London, one of the authors of the study in this month’s American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Wardle and colleagues asked the parents of 5,390 pairs of identical and non-identical twins to complete a questionnaire on their children’s’ willingness to try new foods. Identical twins, who share all genes, were much more likely to respond the same way to new foods than non-identical twins, who like other siblings only share about half their genes. Researchers concluded that genetics played a greater role in determining eating preferences than environment, since the twins lived in the same household.
Wardle said food preferences appear to be “as inheritable a physical characteristic as height.”
Unlike nearly every other phobia, neophobia is a normal stage of human development. Scientists theorize that it was originally an evolutionary mechanism designed to protect children from accidentally eating dangerous things - like poisonous berries or mushrooms. It typically kicks in at age 2 or 3, when children are newly mobile and capable of disappearing from their parents’ sight within seconds. Being unwilling to eat new things they stumble upon may turn out to be a lifesaver.
While most children grow out of the food fussiness by age 5, not all do. For parents of particularly picky eaters, experts encourage them not to cave in when their children throw food tantrums.
While most people will eventually like any food - even one they initially disliked - after trying it about 10 times, more persistence may be needed when trying to convert a neophobic child.
Other taste-related traits - like the ability to taste bitterness - are also inherited. Scientists have already identified the gene responsible, and have found that approximately 30 percent of Caucasians lack the gene and cannot taste bitterness.
Some experts think that neophobia is essentially a reflection of personality. People known as “sensation seekers,” or those in search of new and intense experiences, tend to be willing to eat anything. Conversely, shy people tend to be reluctant to experiment with their palate. Still, experts say that the environment parents create is crucial to determining their children’s eating habits.
“It can’t all be genetics,” said Marcy Goldsmith, a nutrition and behavior specialist at Tufts University. “Parents need to offer their children new foods so they at least have a chance to try it.”

Trash Talk
The Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency’s proposed 2008 budget reduces the county’s subsidy to the department by more than half a million dollars, two years after a one million reduction, bringing the county subsidy from $2.39 million to $1.88 million.
The savings in the agency budget came from a number of sources, including more than $100,000 in savings from switching insurance carriers. Another $63,000 was reduced in pension costs.
As is the case in most years with the agency, the bulk of its spending comes from shipping waste outside of the county. The agency has proposed to spend $2.68 million on private hauling contracts and another $4.18 million on solid waste disposal. Both of those figures are down from 2007.
The Resource Recovery Agency still maintains a sizable debt. Last year, that debt figure was $32.49 million, and the agency was scheduled to pay $3.14 million in debt service.

Economic Terror
Bad credit has supplanted terrorism as the gravest immediate risk threatening the economy, a key national research group is saying. Borrowers’ withering ability to pay their bills and the subsequent fallout in the credit markets this summer topped the list of short-term risks on peoples’ minds, according to a survey of members conducted by the National Association of Business Economics.
NABE, a Washington-based association, said 32 percent of its surveyed members cited loan defaults and excessive debt as their biggest near-term concern. Only 20 percent of members cited defense and terrorism as their biggest immediate worry, down from 35 percent when the survey was last conducted in March. Credit risk also topped gas prices, inflation and government spending.
“Financial market turmoil has shifted the focus away from terrorism and toward subprime and other credit problems as the most important near-term threats to the U.S. economy,” said Carl Tannenbaum, president of NABE and the chief economist at LaSalle Bank/ABN Amro.
The greatest long-term risk facing the economy is still health care costs and the medical needs of an aging population, NABE said.

Zoning Trouble
There’s been a couple of extreme cases of law enforcement lately in Shandaken. Not of the police variety, but of the type that occurs when people ignore the towns zoning laws.
In one case a landowner in Phoenicia has been informed that he must take apart and remove a massive wooden framed structure that town officials allege was built without proper permission. That matter is going to court after the landowner has filed a lawsuit against the town. In another circumstance, the towns planning board is considering revoking the special use permit given Hanford Farms in Mount Tremper, because the operator of the popular fruit and vegetable stand is not in compliance with the size restrictions specified within the permit.
These measures, which began in the office of town code enforcement officer Glenn Miller, may indicate that Shandaken is moving away from the days when one could get away with violating the zoning law as long as one got started before the town found out. Years ago town officials would not enforce the laws if it meant forcing a taxpayer to incur the expense to actually rip apart something just built. Violators could then go to the zoning board, claim ignorance of the law, beg for mercy and end up with an after the fact variance that enabled the construction or operation to become legal.
But as the political climate in town becomes tougher, the pressure to get tough increases. Two years ago Miller found this out when Crossroads Ventures parked a tractor trailer on Emerson property in Mount Tremper with a billboard sign attached to its side. Miller was immediately pressured into the awkward position of taking action against Dean Gitter, an owner of both crossroads and the Emerson, for the infraction. The trailer was removed, however, before any official violation was issued.
Miller is once again faced with an uncomfortable task. The farm stand, owned and operated by Alfie Higley, was given a special use permit three years ago. The operation has increased in physical size and is now larger than the permit allows.
Higley has had discussions with the town planning board and the zoning board, trying to finds ways to resolve the matter, but has so far been unsuccessful.
Now the planning board has discussed what to do. Revoking a permit is unprecedented in Shandaken, and it remains unclear what the proper procedure is to do so. While the board discussed the idea, nothing was done at the August meeting. There were questions about the planning boards role in the matter and whether they have anything to do with the enforcement.
Miller was called about it Tuesday and he hung up the phone after saying nothing should be written in the papers.
Some have suggested changing the zoning to reflect the changing times. The current law, which allows for a 100 square foot farm stand, might have worked decades ago when a farm stand was just a couple of picnic tables with some tomatoes for sale, but now farm stands, like Hanford and the nearby Alyce and Rogers fruit stand, offer everything from those same tomatoes to gourmet home cooked pies, an array of cheeses, as well as the everyday butter and milk that folks need. In other words, farm stands have become more like stores.
There have been no discussions yet on the town board level. The town board is the entity that can change the law, not the planning board.

Willow Weep?
U.S. Postal Service officials will meet with residents Sept. 19 to discuss options for a new post office site in Willow. The session is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Lake Hill Firehouse on state Route 212.
The USPO is currently operating out of a little mobile home that is on private property whose owner wishes it to be removed, located off of Silver Hollow Road.
The post office has been in the mobile home between 10 and 15 years. Postmaster Brenda Laskow said Willow has had a post office since 1890 and currently serves about 300 residents through boxes in the office and a rural route. She said arrangements for a new location are being handled through a real estate agent.

Anti-Casino
The new regional not-for-profit Catskill Mountainkeeper has kicked off a campaign that urges Catskill residents and visitors to speak out against the massive casinos proposed for the region. The campaign includes a billboard just east of Exit 116 on Route 17 near the Sullivan County border in Orange County that cites the likelihood of significant traffic congestion if casinos come to the region. It also includes a web-based letter-writing campaign to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who currently is considering an application for a casino at the Monticello Raceway.
“Many of our members have told us loud and clear that they oppose massive Las Vegas-style developments that will jeopardize our way of life here in the Catskills,” said Ramsay Adams, the group’s executive director. Instead, Adams said, local and state leaders should develop a vision for the Catskills region that emphasizes smarter development, not large-scale projects that do not fit in with the region’s character.
Kempthorne must decide on an application from the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, based along the St. Lawrence River in northern New York and Canada, for a Class III gambling facility that would include a 667,000 square-foot casino with 3,000 slot machines and 100 gaming tables, a 750-room hotel complex and at least six restaurants. By comparison, the MGM Grand—the largest Las Vegas casino—has 3,200 slot machines and 164 gaming tables. Empire Resorts would operate the facility.
Another casino has been proposed along the Neversink River, also in Sullivan County, and other proposals for Sullivan and Ulster counties have surfaced recently.
Catskill Mountainkeeper launched in May with a mission of building “an active group of citizens speaking out for the Catskills way of life.” In July, Gillingham led 12 Delaware County and New York City high school students on a three-week trek through the Catskills called “Mountaintop to Tap” as part of the group’s educational mission.

Crips & Bloods!
A six month investigation culminated in the arrest of 28 people in Kingston August 23, the county’s URGENT task force announced. The suspects, many of whom were affiliated with gangs including the Crips and the Bloods, were charged with a variety of crimes from drug sales and shootings to gang activity in the midtown Kingston area.
At about 6 a.m. task force members along with 40 additional officers executed four search warrants, a consent to search and several Ulster County indictment warrants in midtown Kingston. Raided were buildings at 29 Henry St., 59 Henry, 65 Henry and 156 Prospect Street.
The search warrants yielded three rifles, a shotgun, and a .380 caliber handgun as well as a over a half ounce of crack cocaine, pills and about $7,000 in cash.
Ulster County District Attorney Donald A. Williams called the sweep part of a “long-term strategy” by the Ulster Regional Gang Enforcement Narcotics Team (URGENT), a squad of law enforcement officers headed by Kingston Detective Lt. Timothy Matthews. “Everyone here recognizes that this is not the end… This sweep, these arrests, are not the end. And we all know that this sweep was not the beginning.”
The task force that led Thursday’s raid included members of the following agencies: Kingston Police Department, Ulster County Sheriff’s Office, Ulster County District Attorney’s Office; Town of Ulster Police Department, Ulster County Probation Department; Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency; U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; town police departments in Lloyd, New Paltz, Shandaken and Saugerties; state police and the state Division of Parole.

Registering…
The St. Francis de Sales Catholic Community in Phoenicia is registering K - young adults for its 2007/08 Faith Formation Program. Registration forms are available at the rectory (109 Main Street) or in the entrance foyer of the church. Registration materials need to be returned by September 2 either at the Masses or by mail to Fr. Phil Tran, St. Francis de Sales Catholic Community, 109 Main Street, Phoenicia, New York 12464. This year, Faith Formation classes will be held on Sundays (once a month) following the 9:00 a.m. Mass. Adults are invited to attend the Faith Formation lecture series after the Mass. The first class and lecture series starts September 16. For more information or questions, contact Faith Formation Coordinator, Lorenza Vesely, 688-2185.

Out Of Body?
Researchers have found a way to induce out-of-body experiences using virtual-reality goggles, helping to explain a phenomenon reported by about one in 10 people. The illusion of watching oneself from several feet (meters) away while awake is often reported by people undergoing strokes or epileptic seizures or using drugs.
In the studies published in the recent Science journal, two teams of researchers managed to induce the effect in healthy people by scrambling their senses of vision and touch with the aid of the goggles.
“We ... describe an illusion during which healthy participants experienced a virtual body as if it were their own, and localized their ‘selves’ outside their body borders at a different position in space,” wrote Olaf Blanke, a researcher at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland.
One team, led by Henrik Ehrsson at University College London, had volunteers sit in a chair in the middle of a room wearing virtual-reality goggles showing the view from a video camera placed behind them. A researcher moved a rod up to the camera at the same time as the person’s chest was touched, and then the rod disappeared from view. This created the illusion that the person was sitting a few steps back, where the camera stood.
In Blanke’s experiment, subjects wearing virtual-reality goggles watched an image of a mannequin representing their own body placed directly in front of them while a researcher scratched their back. Afterwards, the volunteers were blindfolded and guided backwards. When they were asked to return to their original positions, they went toward the place where they had seen their virtual body — the mannequin.
The researchers said mixing up the senses of sight and touch was key to the experiments. This type of experiment could help to shed light on philosophical questions surrounding the sense of self, and could also lead to more practical applications in video games or remote surgery, the researchers said.

Hotel In Limbo
With investigations lingering on, there has been no decision about the fate of the Phoenicia Hotel, which burned earlier this month on Main Street in Phoenicia. The town’s building department wants to see the remains of the blaze removed but the owner, Richard Stokes, feels the hotel can be salvaged. The argument will not be settled until Police and the Arson Task Force have completed their investigations into the cause of the fire.

Army Sapped…
Sapped by nearly six years of war, there is a growing consensus in the military, media and governmental worlds that the Army has nearly exhausted its fighting force and its options if the Bush administration decides to extend the Iraq buildup beyond next spring.
The Army’s 38 available combat units are deployed, just returning home or already tapped to go to Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere, leaving no fresh troops to replace five extra brigades that President Bush sent to Baghdad this year. That presents the Pentagon with several painful choices if the U.S. wants to maintain higher troop levels beyond the spring of 2008: Using National Guard units on an accelerated schedule; breaking the military’s pledge to keep soldiers in Iraq for no longer than 15 months; or breaching a commitment to give soldiers a full year at home before sending them back to war.
Most Army brigades have completed two or three tours in Iraq or Afghanistan; some assignments have lasted as long as 15 months. The 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, has done four tours.
For a war-fatigued nation and a Congress bent on bringing troops home, none of the alternatives being considered is desirable.
“The demand for our forces exceeds the sustainable supply,” the Army chief of staff, Gen. George Casey, said in recent weeks. “Right now we have in place deployment and mobilization policies that allow us to meet the current demands. If the demands don’t go down over time, it will become increasingly difficult for us to provide the trained and ready forces” for other missions.
Meanwhile, more than half of top U.S. foreign policy experts oppose President George W. Bush’s troop increase as a strategy for stabilizing Baghdad, saying the plan has harmed U.S. national security, according to a new survey. As Congress and the White House await the September release of a key progress report on Iraq, 53 percent of the experts polled by Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for American Progress said they now oppose Bush’s troop build-up. That represents a 22 percentage point jump since the strategy was announced earlier this year.
The survey of 108 experts, including Republicans and Democrats, showed opposition to the so-called “surge” across the political spectrum, with about two-thirds of conservatives saying it has been ineffective or made things worse in Iraq. Ninety-one percent of those polled said the world has grown more dangerous for Americans and the United States, up 10 percent from February. Finally, more than 80 percent of the experts said they expected another September 11-scale attack on the United States over the next decade, despite what they described as significant improvements among U.S. security, law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Only 3 percent believed the United States will achieve its goal of rebuilding Iraq into a beacon of democracy within the next 10 years.
On a similar but even darker front, Army soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, and more than a quarter did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new military report.
The increases for 2006 came as Army officials worked to set up a number of new and stronger programs for providing mental health care to a force strained by the longer-than-expected war in Iraq and the global counterterrorism war entering its sixth year. Failed personal relationships, legal and financial problems and the stress of their jobs were factors motivating the soldiers to commit suicide, according to the report.
“In addition, there was a significant relationship between suicide attempts and number of days deployed” in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries where troops are participating in the war effort, the report said. The same pattern seemed to hold true for those who not only attempted, but succeeded in killing themselves.
Firearms were the most common method of suicide. Those who attempted suicide but didn’t succeed tended more often to take overdoses and cut themselves.
In a service of more than a half million troop, the 99 suicides amounted to a rate of 17.3 per 100,000 - the highest in the past 26 years, the report said. The average rate over those years has been 12.3 per 100,000.

Buy Some Press?
How much is good press worth? To the Bush administration, about $1.6 billion. That's how much seven federal departments spent from 2003 through the second quarter of 2005 on 343 contracts with public relations firms, advertising agencies, media organizations and individuals, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. The 154-page report provides the most comprehensive look to date at the scope of federal spending in an area that generated substantial controversy last year. Congressional Democrats asked the GAO to look into federal public relations contracts last spring at the height of the furor over government-sponsored prepackaged news and journalism-for-sale.
The new report reveals that federal public relations spending goes far beyond "video news releases." The contracts covered the waterfront, from a $6.3 million agreement to help the Department of Homeland Security educate Americans about how to respond to terrorist attacks; to a $647,350 contract to assist the Transportation Security Administration in producing video news releases and media tours on the subject of airport security procedures; to a $6,600 contract to train managers at the Bureau of Reclamation in dealing with the media.
"Careful oversight of this spending is essential given the track record of the Bush administration, which has used taxpayer dollars to fund covert propaganda within the United States," Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), ranking Democrat of the House Government Reform Committee, said in a statement after the report’s release.

Drive Clearly
Local law enforcement from across New York State, are “Taking Action against Driver Distraction” over the coming season. The goal is very simple: “through education and enforcement we are hoping to raise awareness on the huge responsibility that drivers share,” said Orange County Sheriff Carl DuBois.
The vehicle and traffic laws that will be focused on are releated to distractions provided by: Talking on a cell phone; steering without at least one hand on the wheel; TVs in view of driver; and having more than one earphone (IPod).
A 2006 study found that almost 80 percent of accidents and 65 percent of near-crashes happened within three seconds of some kind of driver distraction.
Drive carefully…

Pissed Off?
Court TV is in pre-production on a fascinating new series, Neighbors 911, which will profile real life feuding neighbors. A team of casting directors has set its sights on Phoenicia as one of the locations on a select list of New York tri-state towns where they’re searching for real life neighbors willing to air their beefs about each other on national television.
Based on size and location, Phoenicia matches the profile of the show’s target audience. According to Lauren Gellert, VP, Alternative Programming, Court TV, Phoenicia represents a classic East Coast town of modest size and strong convictions. What helps give the town its strength of character are some of the forceful and opinionated residents who live there. The producers of Neighbors 911 are convinced there’s nothing more exciting than real life stories told by the real people whose stories they are. And sometimes the most compelling stories going on in peoples’ own backyards are actually about their own backyards.
“We’re hopeful we can find some strong personalities in Phoenicia who are taking on the neighbors they feel have done them wrong,” says Ms. Gellert. According to Ms. Gellert, whether the disputes are about noise, trash, property lines or crazy personalities, feuds between neighbors are as much a part of Americana as white picket fences.
Neighbors 911 host and mediator, Myke Hawke, will be the final arbiter of who’s right and wrong in each case. A former Green Beret, Hawke is tough but fair and it’s unlikely anyone will challenge his final decision.
Neighbors 911 launches in 2008.
E-mail your story to: LizLewisCasting@Gmail.com or call 212-645-1500, ext. 110 (Leave Message).

Deer Wanted…
Glass Eye Pix (Wendigo, The Last Winter) is producing a series of shorts. The story follows two young Native Americans who leave the family camp on a hunting excursion for the first time. The production company, based in Olive, has a few key elements to address. Any information/leads on a few of these matters would be greatly appreciated, notes filmmaker Larry Fessendon in a witty recent release.
“First and foremost, they need to find trained deer, a deer wrangler, or very sweet local deer that can understand English and will do what we ask them to do. Does anyone know of any outlets for that kind of need? Along with that they need a prop of a dead deer carcass, which we most likely have their spfx makeup people do, but if there is any master craftsman upstate that may have done something similar, it would help. Also in general any contacts to Native American societies, specifically film cooperative places, etc. would be helpful. Places that may have authentic wardrobe, props, etc. and people willing to act.
If you have any suggestions, please contact Brent at brentkunkle@gmail.com