SHARP SHAKEOUT

Three of SHARP’s six board members from Shandaken, including two of its founders, Lonnie and Ruth Gale, have resigned following accusations by the group’s president that comments in a letter-to-the-editor written by fellow SHARP board member Edna Hoyt had undermined the group’s reputation.
According to SHARP President Ernest Gardner, Hoyt’s comments were an attempt to “politically discredit” its executive director, Shandaken town board member Jane Todd.
Gardener, in a December 1 letter notifying Hoyt of her immanent dismissal, said that “The SHARP Committee has never and will never be engaged in ‘using government money’ to further anyone’s career.”
His denial was unusual in that Hoyt’s letter-to-the-editor which appeared in The Phoenicia Times and the Catskill Mountain News in late October and which Gardner claimed as the basis for the Board’s action, neither mentioned nor implied any such charge.

Continue>>>

---

Talking ‘Bout Mister Right
A New Year Holiday Kind-Of Love Story

By Martha Frankel
January 14th
It's love at first sight, although I hear Her voice first. It is nothing like the mean, stupid woman's; Hers is light and funny. The girls at the shelter are showing Her all the yapping puppies, using words like sweet, adorable, cuddly. "What about him?" She asks, nodding towards me. I don't move, don't wag my stump of a tail, don't look interested or pathetic, both of which I do pretty well. I know what's coming. "Well," the girls tell Her, trying to steer Her back towards those adorable puppies, "he's a year old Doberman-mix, partially trained, but he's got a bit of an attitude." She walks right over to my cage. "Me, too," She says, eyeball-to-eyeball with me, and within the hour I'm riding in the back of Her car. She sings the whole way home and scratches my ears. I nuzzle Her hair with my nose.

Continue>>>

FLASH! Tonight's Public Hearing on the proposed Belleayre Resort is postponed until Jan 20 at 7PM at the Onteora School. Come early to sign up and reserve your chance to speak.

DEC will be accepting written comments until February 24, 2004. Written comments should be addressed to Alexander Ciesluk, Jr. NYS DEC, 21 South Putt Corners Road, New Paltz, NY 12561-1620

Email: afcieslu@gw.dec.state.NY.us

---

Ready For Changes   
Bob Cross Steps Up To The Supervisor's Position Promising To Enforce Civility

By Paul Smart

For Bob Cross Jr., Shandaken's incoming Republican supervisor, the final weeks of the year are always his busiest. A surveyor by trade, Cross says this December has been even more stressful than usual, what with his new job set to start with the town's official reorganization meeting January 5.
"We're going to wind it down some for a few months, cut the magnitude way back due to me taking this position," he said of the business he runs with his father, Bob Cross, Sr. "My father's 73. You worry about your dad at his age"
Asked what parts of the town's governance that have been drawing his attention, and preparations, most at this point, Cross listed three major engineering projects: the finalization of the long-awaited Phoenicia filtration plant, started over the last year but still unfinished; the initiation of much-needed repairs to the town's newly-acquired Pine Hill Water System; and the creation of a plan for implementation of a New York City-financed Phoenicia Sewer System, now inching forward under the direction of a town-sanctioned citizen's committee that is weighing several options.

Continue>>> 

---

Ali's Friend

Teen Reporter Meets Local
Oscar Winner...

By Hailey Martine Pearson
            Walking up the windy driveway to the door of Leon Gast‚s screen porch has to be one of the most nerve-racking things that‚s occurred in my life to date. But being greeted by the legendary filmmaker himself, and his two dogs, has also proved to be one of the best things that‚s happened to me.
Leon Gast is a documentary filmmaker/producer. He is most widely known for the extraordinary film, When We Were Kings, which was about Muhammad Ali at the time of the Foreman/Ali fight in Zaire.
            Born in Jersey City in 1936, Gast's first job in the film business was with a show called High Adventure with Lowell Thomas that ran in the 1950s. Leon speaks of Thomas in terms of adventure. He says that Thomas was the first to see the Dalai Lama: "Lowell brought an expedition up Everest. He was just one of those kind of guys, back fifty years ago."

Continue>>