Newsbriefs

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Cliffhanger
According to county election officials just two votes now separate town board candidates Rob Stanley and Doris Bartlett. At the same time, the final admissability of two ballots cast has yet to be ruled on by Ulster County Supreme Court Judge Mary Work. Both ballots are being contested by the town and county Republican parties; one is an absentee ballot with questions concerning its travels through the postal system. The other is an affidavit or paper ballot, filed by someone who may have gone to the wrong polling place, or may have an incorrectly filled-out space on the envelope containing the ballot. County officials are hoping for decisions on the final two ballots from Judge Work by December 8 in order to finalize and certify the result within 30 days of the election. Procedures in the event of a tie vote remain open to interpretation; we'll keep you posted in detail if and as necessary...

Board Runaround
An effort to abolish an important citizens committee failed in Shandaken Monday when the town supervisor was unable to get the votes needed to do so, but another equally important group was wiped away.
Along the way, recently re-elected Supervisor Robert Cross Jr., who announced that he had the flu, found himself defending a decision to purchase a $2000 plus device to find underground water mains and phone lines when a firm has been hired to do the work for $10,000, and heard concerns about escalating ambulance service costs to taxpayers.
The Pine Hill Water Committee, which has for months been at odds with Cross over how to proceed with repairs and upgrades to the hamlet’s crumbling water system, found itself suddenly on the chopping block when Cross brought forth a resolution for its dismissal. But with Deputy Supervisor Jane Todd absent from the town board meeting, Cross’s usual 3-2 Republican majority vote was absent as well. The result was a 2-2 vote that leaves the issue unresolved. But Cross, who named the committee himself two years ago, hinted that he will do whatever is necessary to get rid of it, even if it means appointing new members.
This would appear contradictory to a state of the town address Cross made via a town wide mailing last week, noting the close election results and how he takes away “messages of both support and caution” from the experience. He vowed to re-dedicate himself to serving all citizens and said he needs to make sure that Democrats have their views taken into account and respected as well as Republicans.
At the meeting Monday VanBlarcum, a Democrat, questioned the rationale behind killing the committee, saying that its current makeup accurately reflects the Pine Hill community, and also has real knowledge of the water system and the issues surrounding it’s operation.
“Nobody knows it better,” Van Blarcum said.
But Cross, who noted that the decisions about the water system are made by the town board, countered that he will rely instead on Donald Clark, the Pine Hill water commissioner.
Last month Cross was embarrassed by former Pine Hill Mayor Marge Lloyd when she made it clear that the town board had been flat out ignoring the wishes of the committee and the Pine Hill Community by refusing to borrow enough money to make all the repairs to the century old system. Further embarrassment occured when possible councilman-elect Robert Stanley, also a Pine Hill resident, publicly intervened and convinced the board to borrow $1.2 million instead of the planned $900,000.
It remains unclear who will be on the new committee, but Peter DiModica, a Democrat who lost to Cross in the last months Supervisor race by the thinnest of margins, volunteered.
“So noted,” said Cross.
The current members of the committee are Elaina Brazen, Michelle Wooten, Neil Jocelyn, Matt Strank, Lowell Smith and Marge Lloyd. Richard Schaedle, whose family once owned the water company, was the chair of the committee but was forced to resign last year after Cross accused him of conducting business without keeping the Supervisor informed.
The meeting closed with a tense exchange between Cross and Stanley, who said he was concerned about the rising costs for the town ambulance service. The service, which used to pay for itself, has now grown to over $200,000 a year with its revenues no longer able to cover its expenses.
Stanley, who made it clear he supports the service, said that he was concerned about the new expense and wanted to get control over the spending.
Cross explained that the problem is that the current ambulance staff need help. He also said there was little choice, and that it boiled down to either having an ambulance squad or not.
“Throwing more money it is not the way to resolve it,” Stanley said.
Cross countered that he had a fever and wasn’t going to discuss it.
He adjourned the meeting.

Casino News
In its recent refusal to hear a case filed by a broad-based anti-gambling coalition from New York, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed a 2001 state law permitting Las Vegas-style casinos on sovereign Indian lands in Ulster and Sullivan counties to remain standing. The high court’s refusal signaled the end of the road for a strategy by a large group of gambling opponents that included the Coalition Against Casino Gambling, New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedom, the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce, the Saratoga Springs thoroughbred racing industry, several state legislators, and members of the clergy. Last year, the governor submitted legislation increasing the total number of casinos in the Catskills to five, claiming they would bring jobs and economic development to the region. He withdrew this legislation calling for two additional casinos.
The Oklahoma-based Seneca-Cayuga tribe has joined forces with billionaire mall developer Thomas Wilmot to propose building a casino resort at the Winston Farm in Saugerties and the New York Oneidas are believed to have an option on the former IBM property in the town of Ulster in the hope of building a casino there.
In addition to removing the ban on slot machines, the legislation would enable the state to collect 25 percent of all slot machine revenues at casinos. The 2001 measure also allowed for the installation of video lottery terminals, a kind of electronic slot machines, at various raceways. Critics have claimed they are little more than slot machines masquerading as the lottery.

Charter Chatter
Ulster County’s Charter Commission has wrapped up its meetings of the last year and will start doing outreach to see it’s plan for a County Executive, who the rumor mill is suggesting might go the direction of Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, should he ask for the job. Commission Chairman Gerald Benjamin, the dean of liberal arts and sciences at SUNY New Paltz and a former Legislature chairman, said he plans to go to town and village board meetings, as well as to the Kingston Common Council, and bring whatever public input is received on the plan back to the commission. In the meantime, the commission will hire an attorney to draft the actual charter document that will be voted on by the Legislature, and, if approved, by the electorate in the coming year.
Commissioners unanimously decided upon a seven-member Redistricting Commission, with two members chosen by the Legislature’s majority leader and two chosen by the minority leader. The remaining three seats would be filled by the four political appointees within a month, or new majority and minority appointments would be made. None of the seven members can live in the same municipality, but all must be Ulster County residents. In addition, members must meet the same requirements as is needed to register to vote, cannot hold public office or be employed by the county, and cannot be an officer of a political party or a registered lobbyist, the commission determined.

Financial Shift
On the eve of changing hands, the Ulster County Legislature is offering suggested cuts and possible new revenue sources to reduce what was expected to be a 49 percent hike in the county property tax levy to balance the $299.7 million spending plan for 2006… but also considering postponing their planned Dec. 12 budget vote into the Holiday Week. With hard cuts, the levy rise is expected to be “in the mid to low 30s,” according to one legislator.
County Administrator Arthur Smith said money will have to be added to the budget to account for two factors unknown when departments were making their requests to the Administrator’s Office this summer: escalating fuel prices and the delay in the opening of the county Law Enforcement Center. He added that his department is working with the Buildings and Grounds Department to revise estimates.
To cut the levy by 1 percentage point, lawmakers must either cut roughly $695,000 in spending, or generate that amount in new revenue.
Ideas for cuts currently include the elimination of flexible spending accounts for county managers, eliminating private contracts for security services at Golden Hill Health Care Center and the Highways and Bridges yard, and using Sheriff’s Office security personnel instead, and eliminating some deputy department heads.
Proposed new revenue sources include implementing a quarter-percent mortgage tax, a motor vehicle use fee and adding new fees for electronic monitoring and drug and alcohol tests administered by the Probation Department.

New Jail $$s
Ulster County lawmakers have voted to shift more than $800,000 around in the project’s $84.4 million amended budget to cover construction costs and professional fees. The move does not increase spending t the project now 20 months behind schedule and $12.6 million over budget.
Five Democrats - Peter Kraft of Glenford, Jeanette Provenzano of Kingston, Brian Shapiro of Woodstock, Susan Zimet of New Paltz and Robert Parete of Boiceville - voted against the measure during the Legislature meeting, latrer noting that they fear further spending requests will be coming in the new year.
Democrats took control of the Legislature for the first time in 25 years this November, changing a 17-16 Republican edge to a 21-12 Democratic majority.
The project is currently slated for “substantial completion” at the end of December. It will likely take an additional several weeks before the facility can be fully used, to give contractors time to complete construction punch lists and go through the state’s certification process.

Real Estate Drop!
Sales of previously owned homes fell by almost three percent in October as the housing market continues to signal that the boom of the past five years is ringing more hollow these days. The National Association of Realtors reported the decline would have been an even larger 3.2 percent without a spurt in sales in areas where people displaced by the Gulf Coast hurricanes have moved.
Even with the decline in sales, the median price of an existing home sold last month rose by 16.6 percent to $218,000 compared to the median — or midpoint — price in October 2004.
“This signals that the housing sector has likely passed its peak. The boom is winding down to an expansion,” said David Lereah, chief economist for the Realtors.
The weakness in existing home sales followed an earlier report that construction of new homes and apartments fell by 5.6 percent in October, the biggest setback in seven months. Applications for new building permits, a good sign of future activity, fell by 6.7 percent the biggest decline in six years.
Lereah predicted that housing activity would cool further in coming months if, as expected, the Federal Reserve keeps pushing interest rates higher to combat rising inflation pressures that have been triggered by a surge in energy prices.
Some economists had expressed fears that rising mortgage rates could burst the housing bubble much as a speculative bubble in Internet stock prices burst in early 2000, sending shockwaves throughout the economy.
The 16.6 percent increase in the median sales price was the biggest year-over-year price increase since a 17.2 percent jump in July 1979.
By region of the country, the biggest sales decline in October occurred in the Northeast, a drop of 7.4 percent.

Flood Fears
The recent rising of the Esopus Creek after heavy rains on Nov. 29, exacerbated by New York City’s open-Portal release of waters from the overstressed Schoharie Reservoir, created a return of local flood fears up and down the Esopus last week, from Shandaken through to Ulster and Saugerties, including the Ulster County Emergency Management office.
“The people that were just hard hit, only eight months ago, are now seeing, over the last 48 hours, the return of the high water,” Art Snyder, Ulster County’s emergency management director, said on Thursday. “Of course they’re going to be shell-shocked.” In mid-November, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection began releasing water from the Schoharie Reservoir through the Shandaken tunnel at a rate of about 500 million gallons per day. That water enters the upper Esopus Creek, then fills the Ashokan Reservoir, with any overflow entering the lower Esopus. The upper Esopus runs through the Ulster County towns of Shandaken and Olive; the lower Esopus traverses the towns of Olive, Marbletown, Hurley, Ulster and Saugerties, as well as the city of Kingston.
Snyder said the combination of this week’s rain and the added water coming through Shandaken tunnel pushed the upper Esopus 3 feet above flood stage and the lower Esopus 2 feet above flood stage.
“Neither caused major problems,” he said. “But all you have to do is drive through the area to see how high the water is running.”
The release of water from the Schoharie Reservoir will continue to make the area more vulnerable to flooding through the spring of 2006, when the 78-year-old Gilboa Dam will undergo emergency repairs, once the water level in the Schoharie Reservoir has dropped enough to allow access to the dam’s underpinnings. An estimated 2,500 Schoharie County households and business are protected by the dam, which holds back almost 20 billion gallons of water at capacity.
City officials have said there was a remote possibility that the Gilboa Dam would
fail if there were a record storm and snowmelt, sending the 20 billiongallons of water in the Schoharie Reservoir roaring through the valleybelow, a historic area of covered bridges and small farms that is home to about 5,000 people.

Legi-Changes!
The new Democratic Majority of the Ulster County Legislature recently decided its new regime of committee appointments for the coming year, utilizing a basic 5-2 Democratic majority for all but a few. Breaking from the past, the new Legislative Chairman, David Donaldson of Kingston, will allow county Republicans to pick their members once they choose their own leadership for the coming two-year session, although he has noted that he will retain veto power over their choices so that no legislator with relatives working for a specific department could work for a corresponding committee.
The appointments, to date, include:
Administrative Services (including Real Property and Board of Elections): Chaired by Legislator Robert Parete with Legislators Bishoff, Cahill, Kraft and Stoeckler as members.
Arts, Education and Community Relations (including Tourism): Chair by Legislator Zimet with members Legislators Bishoff, Cahill, Gregorious, and Sheeley.
Criminal Justice and Safety: Chair by Legislator Dart with Legislator Distel, Gregorious, Rich Parete, and Zimet as members.
Economic Development: Chaired by Legislator Rodriguez with Legislators Berardi, Gregorious, Loughran and Sheeley as members
Efficiency, Reform and Intergovernmental Affairs: Chaired by Legislator Bishoff with Legislators Bartels, Liepmann, Rodriguez, and Shapiro as members.
Environmental: Chaired by Legislator Shapiro with Legislators Bartels, Distel, Richard Parete and Rodriguez as members.
Public Works: Chaired by Legislator Berardi with members Cahill, Dart, Lomita and Stoeckler as members.
Health Committee: Chaired by Legislator Stoeckler with Legislators Liepmann, Robert Parete, Provenzano and Shelley as members.
Human Services: Chaired by Legislator Kraft with Legislator Distel, Lepmann, Loughran and Terpening as members.
Personnel: Chaired by Legislator Loughran with Legislators Dart, Kraft, Terpening and Shapiro as members.
Labor Relations and Negotiation: Chaired by Legislator Richard Parete with Legislators Berardi and Terpening as members (a five member board).
Ways and Means Committee: Chaired by Legislator Lomita with Legislators Bartels, Gregorious, Provenzano and Zimet as members.

Belleayre Perks
Belleayre Mountain Ski Center has joined with Ulster County Area Transit this winter to offer free rides for skiers and extended service along state Route 28. The primary goal of the partnership is to improve service for commuters traveling between Kingston and Shandaken. The ski center offered to pay to have the route extended to the state-run resort. Skiers can now pick up the bus anywhere between Kingston Plaza and the mountain and need only tell the driver they’re headed to Belleayre. The $2 fare will be waived for the passenger, with the mountain compensating Ulster County Area Transit for the trip. The return trip from the ski center will be free as well.
The bus currently leaves Kingston Plaza on Saturdays at 8:45 a.m. and reaches Belleayre at 9:45 a.m. A return bus, which leaves the plaza at 2:15, makes stops near the Hudson Valley Mall and in towns along state Route 28, will depart from Belleayre at 4 p.m. and arrive at Kingston Plaza at 5:15 p.m. The buses make their usual stops between the two points and skiers can board or get off at any stop. On or about Jan. 1, the route will extend to Belleayre six days a week, Monday through Saturday.

New CPR Rules
Putting the emphasis on chest compressions instead of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, the American Heart Association is pushing new, simpler guidelines that urge people to give 30 compressions - instead of 15 - for every two rescue breaths.
“Basically, the more times someone pushes on the chest, the better off the patient is,” said Dr. Michael Sayre, an Ohio State University emergency medicine professor who helped develop the guidelines announced Monday. “We have made things simpler. Push hard on the person’s chest and push fast.”
The streamlined guidelines should make it easier for people to learn CPR. Earlier rules were different for adults and for children and called on untrained rescuers to stop pushing the chest periodically to check for signs of circulation. Now, the advice is the same for all ages - 30 compressions - and you don’t have to stop to check for improvement. What’s important is to keep the blood flowing. Studies have shown that blood circulation increases with each chest compression and it must be built back up after an interruption.
Currently, about 9 million Americans a year are trained in CPR, the heart association says, but it has a goal of more than doubling that number in the next five years to 20 million. The new guidelines call for 911 operators to be trained to provide easy-to-follow CPR instructions by phone.
The heart association also offers new guidance to professionals, calling for cooling down cardiac arrest patients to about 90 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 to 24 hours.
The new guidelines also advise just one shock from a defibrillator before beginning CPR. Instead of applying the defibrillator pads up to three times before starting chest compressions, the guidelines advise rescuers to just give one shock and then do two minutes of CPR beginning before trying the defibrillator again.

Bad Climate
The United States came under renewed criticism at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Montreal recently as thousands of environmentalists and international officials hammered out rules for a global treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. comments that it would resist any binding commitment to curb global warming by capping industrial emissions infuriated environmentalists, who accused Washington of trying to derail the long-awaited conference being attended by more than 8,000 environmentalists, scientists and government officials, including 120 environment ministers and other government leaders.
The conference is the first meeting of the 140 countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol since the agreement was adopted in 1997. It is aimed at setting agreements on emissions cuts planned after 2012, when the second phase of the protocol begins.
“When you walk around the conference hall here, delegates are saying there are lots of issues on the agenda, but there’s only one real problem, and that’s the United States,” said Bill Hare of Greenpeace International.
“There’s a difference between climate and extreme weather,” said Harlan Watson, the chief U.S. negotiator at the conference, who added that Washington would maintain its position of rejecting any calls for an international agreement that binds countries to emissions reductions after 2012.
This notion infuriates environmentalists, who point to myriad studies that they believe prove global warming is to blame for rising, warmer seas, melting Arctic glaciers and extreme weather conditions. The scientific panel that advises the United Nations looks likely to issue sterner warnings in its next report in 2007 that emissions of heat-trapping gases from power plants, factories and cars are disrupting the climate.
In September, polar ice contracted to its smallest size in at least a century, according to measurements by space agency NASA and the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Bribed Media…
It is not clear whether a Pentagon propaganda program that paid to plant favorable stories with Iraqi journalists and newspapers violated the law or Pentagon policy, the Department of Defense is saying as charges grow about the Bush Administration’s subversion of Freedom of the Press principals. Spokespeople for the government have been saying that the department was still gathering information about the program and the multimillion-dollar contracts that included paying Iraqi newspapers and journalists to plant favorable stories about the war and the rebuilding effort. Military officials in Iraq, meanwhile, say the program is a critical tool on the Iraq battleground. But Congress members and the White House have expressed concern.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., characterized the program as a scheme that “speaks volumes about the president’s credibility gap. If Americans were truly welcomed in Iraq as liberators, we wouldn’t have to doctor the news for the Iraqi people.”
At the same time, yet another propaganda boondoggle has started emerging – regarding FEMA’s “Recovery Channel” in New Orleans, a elevision program that features a military officer talking about all the good work that FEMA is doing rebuilding the schools, including hands-on aid from “our Commander In Chief.” When CNN investigated and found out the school in question was really two hours away from New Orleans and that virtually all the schools in the flooded city are in shambles.
The question now is what department of the Bush administration isn’t using tax dollars to promote the President and the Republican party’s political agenda?

Recruiting Angst
The U.S. Army, fresh off missing its latest annual recruiting goal, has launched an unprecedented effort to coax former troops to sign up again for active-duty military service. They are contacting 78,000 people who previously served in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to pitch them on the idea of leaving behind their civilian lives and returning for another stint in uniform. Unlike in the past, they now can return to the Army without giving up their previous rank or having to undergo the rigors of basic training.
The Army fell about 7,000 short of its goal of sending 80,000 recruits into basic training in fiscal 2005, which ended Sept. 30. Officials attributed the shortfall to the Iraq war and other factors. The fiscal 2006 recruiting goal again is set at 80,000.
The Pentagon says the new program, which targets people who left the military within the past five years and particularly those who were in branches other than the Army, is not a sign of recruiting desperation.
Bonuses ranging from $5,000 to $19,000 are being offered and the Army also dropped a rule that had blocked former soldiers from getting training in a different career field than they previously had worked. Former Coast Guard personnel also can take part in the program.
Meanwhile, Iraqi leaders recently called for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces and said Iraq’s opposition had a “legitimate right” of resistance. The communique — finalized by Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders just before Thanksgiving — condemned terrorism but was a clear acknowledgment of the Sunni position that insurgents should not be labeled as terrorists if their operations do not target innocent civilians or institutions designed to provide for the welfare of Iraqi citizens. The leaders agreed on “calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces ... control the borders and the security situation” and end terror attacks.

Bedbugs!
Bedbugs, stealthy and fast-moving nocturnal creatures that were all but eradicated by DDT after World War II, have recently been found in hospital maternity wards, private schools and even a plastic surgeon’s waiting room in the New York City area, from whence they are now expected to move up into the Catskills.
Infestations have been reported sporadically across the United States over the past few years. But in New York, bedbugs have gained a foothold all across the city, where the city logged 377 bedbug violations last year, up from just 2 in 2002 and 16 in 2003. Since July, there have been 449.
In the bedbug resurgence, entomologists and exterminators blame increased immigration from the developing world, the advent of cheap international travel and the recent banning of powerful pesticides. Other culprits include the recycled mattress industry and those thrifty New Yorkers who revel in the discovery of a free sofa on the sidewalk.
Unlike mice and roaches, which are abetted by filthy surroundings, bedbugs do just fine in a well-scrubbed home, although bedroom clutter gives them more places to hide and breed.
When engorged with blood, they grow slightly plumper than the O on this page, although the nymphs, which appear almost translucent before their first meal, are not much bigger than the period at the end of this sentence.
The modern bedbug is immune to hardware-store-variety insecticides, and setting off a cockroach bomb in the bedroom will only scatter them farther afield. And because they are active only at night, many people don’t discover them until their population has grown into the hundreds, or even thousands.
Exterminators recommend bagging and washing every bit of clothing and fabric in the room and taking apart bureau drawers and bed frames in preparation for the application of four kinds of chemicals. The process often needs to be repeated.
Worst of all, bedbug sufferers say, is the stigma of living with an insect that feeds on blood - though it does not transmit disease - and leaves behind a trail of red bumps that many dermatologists mistakenly identify as hives or scabies.

India Rules?
Last month’s Cope India 2005 war games were billed as a standard two-week exercise between Indian and American top guns. But for the first time ever, the Indian Air Force beat the Americans in a surprising number of encounters.
“Since the cold war, there has been the general assumption that India is a third-world country with Soviet technology, and wherever the Soviet-supported equipment went, it didn’t perform well,” says Jasjit Singh, a retired air commodore and now director of the Center for Air Power Studies in New Delhi. “That myth has been blown out by the results” of these air exercises.
Military experts say the joint exercises occurred at a time when America’s fighter jet prowess is slipping. Since the US victories in the first Gulf War, a war dependent largely on air power, the Russians and French have improved the aviation electronics (avionics) and weapons capabilities of their Sukhoi and Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft.

Needing Help
Aid officials have warned that almost all of the hundreds of thousands of tents they distributed to survivors of Pakistan’s massive earthquake last month aren’t adequate for the harsh winter, while Pakistan announced soldiers have built 30 000 shelters for the 3,5-million people who lost their homes. They are warning that a lack of food and shelter, combined with increasingly harsh winter conditions, could cause a second wave of deaths for victims of the October 8 earthquake. Doctors say the situation could worsen in the coming weeks if arrangements are not made quickly to provide adequate shelters for the estimated 3,5-million people who lost their homes in the 7,6-magnitude quake.
Meanwhile, the whereabouts of 6,644 people reported missing after Hurricane Katrina have not been determined, raising the prospect that the death toll could be higher than the 1,306 recorded so far in Louisiana and Mississippi. Nearly 1,000 of the 6,644 unaccounted-for people are children.