The Phoenicia Times - Follow Up on the News

Follow Up on the News

Planning Vacancy

             In a telephone conversation on January 27, Waterman said she had been having conversations with Cross about her concerns regarding the number of turnovers occurring on the planning board during a particularly busy season about to become even busier with imminent review of the Belleayre Resort project now pending. She noted her respect for Cross, who stood up for her retaining the chairmanship despite complaints from several of his leading Republican detractors.
            "He's a straightforward guy," Waterman said at the time. "He seems to be listening and avoiding outside pressures."
            At the time, the chief planning board issues on Waterman's mind were two new vacancies, announced at the February 2nd meeting.
            One, by former planning board chairman Bob Kalb, whose term was set for renewal this year, was noted as becoming effective at month's end.
            Kalb said he was quitting because he'd "just had it," noting his problems with the former Democratic administration and the fact that Waterman, named acting chairman a year and a half ago, was "still chairman" and hadn't been holding as many meetings as he felt were needed to review the Belleayre Resort project.
            Kalb further noted that he was looking forward to taking on a new position with the Catskill Watershed Museum, which was originally set to be built in Shandaken near the proposed resort until its organizers moved the project to nearby Arkville, losing over $1 million in New York City exhibit funding in the process.
            Gary Gailes, president of the museum project, is also project manager for Crossroads Ventures, developer of the Belleayre Resort project.
            Also noted at the February 2 meeting was the recent discovery by Cross that planning board member Howie McGowan never took his official oath of office after being named to the board to fill out a vacancy a year and a half ago. Asked about the situation after Waterman brought it up, Cross said that according to town board law (McKinney), planners who have not taken their oaths must be removed from their board.
            McGowan ran, unsuccessfully, for the town board as a Democratic candidate last November.
            Van Blarcum said that he called the state Association of Towns legal department to ask about such legalities and was told that in most cases, barring hostile town boards, reinstatement occurred immediately upon discovery that a planner had not taken his or her oath. Someone yelled out the name "Fichtner" at that point, referring to a Republican planner removed from office for the same reason when the last, Democrat administration took office two years ago.
            Van Blarcum read from a second set of town board laws (Gould) that noted that the responsibility for giving oaths of office to volunteer board members fell to the town clerk.
            "I'm not a babysitter for anyone," blurted out Town Clerk Laurilyn Frasier. "And I didn't tell on anyone!"
            "It was an honest mistake," noted Edna Hoyt, who was recently forced off the board of the not-for-profit SHARP Committee, which raises funds for the town, for having written a politicized letter to local newspapers during the recent election.
            "I didn't know I had to be a lawyer here," quipped freshman board member Joe Munster, a former county tourism director.
            Waterman recommended that McGowan be reinstated because of the board's need for experienced planners at this point.
            Cross was asked whether the town board would go with whatever recommendation the planning board made regarding McGowan's case and seemed to agree. But when an audience member asked whether that meant Cross would abide by the planners' decision, local Republican Club presidnet Gerry Setchko corrected the supervisor and said no, he had not said what he seemed to have said.
            Later, Cross was asked directly about the planning board recommendation. Would he heed a majority?
            "If it's a clear decision, say 5-1, I'm sure there'll be an effect," he said. "But I'm just one of five members."
            Asked about Waterman's comments regarding the need for experience - compounded by the fact that with one new member appointed a month ago, and now two new openings and possibly a third in the coming months, the board could have a majority of inexperienced members - Cross said he'd see who applied.
            "We're going to see if we can get some people with past board experience in there," he said. "There are people in town with board experience. And people with knowledge of the issues."
            Finally, in regards to the vote on Waterman's continuing chairmanship, Cross would only say that "allegations had been made" and no more.
            Why did he wait until a town board meeting to bring up such things, not even bothering to talk to Waterman about what might have arisen?
            "Look, I like Beth," he said. "We talk. But I don't want to say anything that might hurt her. Make me the bad guy- I've got the big shoulders for it."
            In other business at the February 2 meeting, Cross stressed his new format for public input. Those wishing to speak filled out cards before the meeting started at 7 PM and asked their questions after the Pledge of Allegience and before any official business, or the resolutions being addressed, got underway. Press inquiries were told to use the same format, although Cross allowed that he would be open for private questions following the close of the official meeting.
            The results were invariably awkward, with citizens bringing up subjects with questions and comments that were later answered by Cross, and then later acted on by the board according to its agenda, set four days earlier except for several last minute changes.
            A letter was read into the record from Adam Nagy of the Catskill Heritage Alliance asking that agenda information be put up on a town website and otherwise publicized earlier, to better allow the public some input into the meetings. Also, at meeting's end Cross was asked to add a second public input period to allow commentary on earlier actions.
            "I've got to stop the fighting, the cross talk," the supervisor said of the awkward lack of public input. "Then I'll make adjustments."
            A meeting was set for 2:30 PM on Friday, February 13 to discuss items regarding the ongoing Belleayre Project review- as well as further planning board business, including its chairmanship, McGowan's reinstatement, and the upcoming Kalb vacancy.

The Park's Centennial

The Catskill Park boundary was first defined in 1904 in order to help guide state land acquisitions in the region and originally included only the state-owned Forest Preserve land within the area created by the "blue line." In 1912, however, the Catskill Park came to include both public and private lands, a feature that distinguished it and the similarly bounded Adirondack Park from most others. Catskill historian Alf Evers wrote that with the creation of the Catskill Park "the word 'park' took on an extended meaning to the people of the region" and "the new kind of park-was owned by the people and might be used by them except in ways that might damage the conservation goals of the park."
            According to Chase, the primary goal of the centennial committee is to increase public awareness and appreciation of our Catskill heritage and history. Committee members consist of volunteers from a variety of state agencies, local businesses and tourism organizations such as the Department of Environmental Conservation, the Black Dome Press, The Catskill Center, Hunter Foundation, SUNY New Paltz, the Sierra Club, and the Department of Environmental Protection, to name a few. A diverse group of local musicians and artists, media and interested citizens are lending a hand as well.
            Yearlong activities will include lectures, talks, art and history exhibits, musical events, craft demonstrations, thematic hikes and other outdoor activities around the Park, hosted by a variety of organizations.
            "We are trying to partner with already existing events that take place within the park and ask them to advertise with our logo as an event of the centennial," says Chase. The upcoming Esopus Whitewater Slalom, sponsored by the Kayak and Canoe Club of New York, she says, is one such event.
            The committee also hopes to offer a week-long Catskill Park Ramble, modeled after the popular Hudson River Valley Ramble, during "leaf-peeping time in the Fall", says Chase. Also being planned is Catskill Park Chautauqua, a recreation of a uniquely American performance and cultural event which, held in a large tent, was a common form of entertainment in the 1800s and early 1900s. The show will travel to various communities within the blue line to celebrate and promote the Catskill Park. The program will include lectures dealing with topics of conservation, development and sustainability, poetry readings, portrayals of historic personalities and music and dancing.
            Committee members, Chase says, are also working on an Inn-to-Inn Hiking/Biking/Snowshoeing/Cross-country Skiing trail system in the Oliverea/Big Indian/Pine Hill area whose route will most likely be finalized in time for hiking season in the Spring. Other projects in the works include an audiotape tour around the Catskill Park Blue Line that people can follow along with while driving the route in their cars and a bicycle tour and race along a similar route.
            New entrance signs for the six major highway entrances into the Catskill Park are expected to be posted by the state Department of Environmental Conservation in February, Chase says. "The signs are in the shop right now. They are nice because they are in color and contain an adjunct sign underneath that [denotes] the centennial."
            A calendar of all events, Chase says, will be posted to the committee's website, www.catskillpark100.org. Make sure to watch for the Catskill Park 100-Year Anniversary logo throughout the coming year, and if you know of an event planned for this year that could join the centennial celebration, feel free to contact Chase at 657-2107.
            "I would like to hear from people about activities that they feel could carry the logo and be part of our agenda. I am hoping that my message machine will become full."

For Love Of Nature

            Chase's family was in the Philadelphia area at the time, with a hardscrabble farm, bought by his grandfather in 1920, where the family compound now sits. He recalls, in detail, spending all his summers in the Catskills, wandering the forests and creeks and walking, when he could, to Woodstock where an aunt, Carmelita Hinton, lived in a home known as Camelot, later owned by Bob Dylan. (She went on to found the notable Putney School in Vermont). At the time, the area was a rich mixture of 19th century rural lifestyle and a smattering of the nation's best and brightest artists, musicians, writers, scientists and thinkers. You can feel the presence of such fertile soil in the current breadth and depth of Chase's interests, intellect, and continuing sense of passion.
            His father was an engineer, an uncle was one of the leading lights of what would become known as the Manhattan Project, which eventually produced the atom bomb. A bright boy from a very bright family, Chase spent a year at the University of Arizona, then still something of a frontier school. He went on to Yale and found himself drawn towards botany and genetics, a burgeoning field at the time.
            Kenny, originally a Compton, came from what was considered the nation's top academic family in the first half of the last century. One uncle was president of MIT, another of Washington University in St. Louis, the third head of Washington State. She went to Wooster College in Ohio, a place her family has had close contacts with over the years.
            Mutual friends brought the two back together. Sherret remembers how people would ask if he knew Kenny, and he'd always think how he just wished to know her more. Kenny kept hearing about Sherret and remembering the first time she'd met him, years earlier.
            Finally the two got together at a friend's wedding; Kenny invited Sherret out to her family's farm in Northern Virginia the next Sunday to which the young man came, only to find himself volunteered to escort an older man out to some fields to look at some brand-new hybrid corn. The man just happened to be Henry Wallace, the Vice President.
            Store this information for later∑
            "June 29, 1941," Chase quips, remembering the exact date.
            He goes on to talk about how he went on to graduate studies at Cornell University only to volunteer for the war, where he served in the 15th Air Force out of Italy. By then, he and Kenny were married.
            "After our third date we knew we were going to get married," he recalls, looking to his wife's smile.
            She tells of her first trip to the Catskills to meet his mother, and being picked up from the Kingston train station on a foggy night and driven up Chase Mountain from Kenosta Lake, thinking the whole world, "What in the world is happening?" The next morning, clear-skied, the couple walked over Winchell's Notch, at the place they still call "Two Views," and Sherret gave Kenny a ring, asking her to share his life. Later that evening, he says, the couple went to visit an old family friend in Woodstock who had long thought of the Chase as a potential husband for her own daughter. But then when she saw Kenny, he says, she whispered to him, "Don't let her go," and he said no, no, he never would.
            The wedding came quick after Sherret's call-up, and involved everyone going to his training camp in Savannah, where the newlyweds then lived sic weeks until he went overseas.
            After the war, they made home for a year in Houston, where he had to finish out his service. A first daughter was born. Then on to Cornell for a year and a half where a son came along. A first job was offered teaching in Iowa, where the family grew to 5 children over the next seven years. Then further jobs, in teaching and research, in Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Oswego, NY, and California before the couple finally retired to the one place that served as constant during their years of work and travel∑ in the Catskills.
            Chase, through his career, ended up becoming one of the leading authorities, and researchers, in the hybridization of corn, one of the "green revolutions" that has changed the world as we know it in the last half-century. At the same time, he also served as one of the founders of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, and has been instrumental in numerous other local and national efforts, from the continuing drive for a long-planned Catskill Park interpretive center in Mt. Tremper to new work, with former Vice President Wallace's daughter, to revive the American Chestnut.
            Kenny says, with a grin, "We've lived in twelve different places and it's the wife that makes the home when you move."
            Yet she has nothing but praise for the many moves her family's made, and all the places they've lived.
            "We always appreciated wherever we were as though we were going to love there the rest of our lives," she says, soberly. As a result, she adds, the couple have a network of close friends, dating back 60 years and more, all over the world.
            "Throughout it all, though, this was always our real home, right here in the Catskills," says Sherret, whose commentary about the proposed Belleayre Resort as an unwanted "shining city on the hill" has now reverberated beyond the local scene onto National Public Radio and the New York Times. "All of our children grew up with a similar feeling."
            So what about their recent appearance, Kenny's standing with her husband in support, and the couple's beliefs about the region?
            Another story, both agree. After all, it's Valentines.
            Do they celebrate?
            No, the couple says.
            "But you know," Sherret adds, "This has worked out pretty well."
            At which Kenny smiles again.