Newsbriefs

---

(from February 16, 2006)

Poncic Revision?
The Shandaken Planning board has until March 17th to decide whether the draft environmental impact statement for a proposed water harvesting business is complete, but the way things went Wednesday night, it appears the important document still lacks vital information.
Several years ago Andrew Poncic submitted plans to tap into a natural spring on his property near the end of Woodland Valley Road in Phoenicia. He hopes to gain approval to run a pipeline from the spring, hundreds of feet away, across the woodland valley stream to a small shed near the edge of woodland valley road.
Twice a day, five days a week, a truck would pull up to the pipe, a valve would be opened, and 5800 gallons of water would be taken and shipped to another location for bottling.
But recently the details about the truck, a major concern of valley residents, were not available.
It was noted that in the draft it states the truck would be a ten wheeler. But in drawings of a proposed turnaround for the vehicles it shows an 18-wheeled tractor-trailer. Residents fear that a truck that size, planners estimate it to be 58 feet long and weigh approximately 34 ton, would damage the roads and bridges and make the road unsafe.
Planner Gerry Setchko told Poncic February 8 that the board needed to know what size the truck would be.
Poncic however, was evasive.
“We don’t have a truck..this is all assuming,” he said. “We won’t buy a truck without a permit. I can’t answer what we don’t know yet.”
The planners finally agreed to review the application assuming the truck would be an 18 wheeler.
The Planners have also asked newly elected highway Superintendent Keith Johnson to review some of the bridges on Woodland Valley Road and render an opinion on how such trucks would affect them. He may also be asked to do the same for parts of the road that are slipping into the stream. After he does the fieldwork, planners hope to hear from him personally.
“He should come to the planning board and talk to us,” said planner Beth Waterman.
As for residents concerns about how the trucks would affect other uses on the road such as walking and biking, planner Joan Munster said she felt there would be little impact.
“I don’t think that’s an issue…I think (those uses) are seasonal,” said Munster.
The discussion ended with an unexpected topic. Poncic said that last years floods have moved the stream 75 feet closer to Woodland Valley Road from where it was when he prepared the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. Marci Meiller, who lives across the street from the project site, said that could mean Poncic no longer had the space to build his shed, which planners seemed to think needs to be at least 100 feet from the waters edge.

No Sign
Skiers at Belleayre this past week were treated to a hard to miss, welcome-to-Ulster-County-politics sign of the times. At the mountain's route 28 gateway, affixed to a trailer parked in the Highmount post office parking lot owned by developer Crossroads Ventures, was an 8 by 32 foot red-on-white sign citing job and tax benefits and urging readers to "Support The Belleayre Resort."
"Technically it's not considered a sign because it's a truck," said company spokesman Paul Rakov, explaining why no permits were sought for the missive - five times larger than the biggest sign allowable under town law.
"We wanted to educate the public as to the benefits of the project," he added. "But after listening to feedback from the community, Mr. Gitter has decided to remove the sign. No laws were broken, no zoning violations occurred. And no public official came to us with any legal reason for removing the sign. It is simply that some people didn't like it, and so, it will be removed."
In a statement released just before our deadline, Gitter reiterated that the sign would be down in a few days, saying ""it was intended as the beginning of a new effort on our part to educate both public officials and the public as to the major benefits the Belleayre Resort offers..."

Cellular Secret?
If a balloon flies in the air but no one is there to see it, did it make a visual impact?
The above may be a poor papaphrase of an over used philospophy question, but in Shandaken it is a very real question.
Last Saturday the company that hopes to build a cell tower on town property quickly and quietly launced a test balloon to see whether a tower would create a unsightly blemish on the local scenery.Despite planners requiring ample notice of the date and time for a test to gauge the visual impact of a proposed 190 foot cellular structure, applicant Masterpage Incorporated moved ahead with the test giving officials less than 24 hours notice.
At a Planning Board session Wednesday, many of the seven members complained of not being kept in the loop about such an important test.
Masterpage owner Kevin Kellerhouse has attended a few planning board meetings since last fall and has supplied some information on his plan to build the tower on town of Shandaken land near Glenbrook Park off route 42 in the hamlet of Shandaken. He has yet to submit a site plan for the project, and Planners have sent him away after his visits with requests for further information.
On Wednesday Chairwoman Joan Munster openly complained that she heard informally that the balloon test was scheduled for some time during the week of February 12th. She added that such a test, designed to give an indication of what type of visual impact the structure would have on the community, should be well publicized to the board and certainly be one conducted when planners could view the results.
The rest of the board agreed.
“Even if they have a tentative date set they should let the board know so at least the board could schedule it tentatively,” said planner Keith Holmquist.
“If they’re planning tests we should know more than the day before,” added planner Beth Waterman.
But on Saturday, even before it was light out, that’s just what happened.
Town Code enforcement officer Glenn Miller said he got a call from Masterpage on Friday saying they were doing the test the next day at five AM.
“I got the call and I notified all the planning board members,” Miller said.
Miller said he wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to give the planning board less than 24 hours notice of the test. He added that he had not spoken to anyone yet that had seen the test.
Masterpage proposes to build a 140 foot tall tower with another 50 feet of antenna on top.
Last fall the Town board authorized Supervisor Robert Cross Jr. to enter into a lease agreement with Masterpage Communications to use the site. The towns officials website states that a copy of the lease is available for inspection at the Town Hall, during the hours and is subject to the right to a permissive referendum.
On Tuesday Cross was not pleased with the little progress Masterpage has made.
“They should have been much further along by now than where they are,” he said.
Clough Harbor Associates, the engineering firm conducting the test for Masterpage, was expected to continue the test on Thursday, February 16th between 7am and 8:30 am.
Clough Harbor’s Kevin Hajos said Tuesday that his company needs to take photographs of the balloon from points within a five mile radius and couldn’t complete that task Saturday due to wind. That’s why, he said, the test was again scheduled.
Masterpage owner Kevin Kellerhouse could not be reached for comment. He is expected to appear before the planning board next month.

Shut Up, People!
Shandakenites watched helplessly as their town took what one resident said was a step backward this month, when the Supervisor conducted his first meeting under a new set of rules for procedure.
The new rules, written by Supervisor Robert Cross Jr., severely limit input by audience members at meetings as compared to previous sessions both under this Supervisor and several of his predecessors, and they give the Cross the power to limit such input at will.
But as the old saying goes, rules are made to be broken, and Cross himself deviated from his when he wanted to, allowing some to speak at length while cutting others off.
The way it works now, audience members have time at the beginning of the meeting to air concerns about any action the town board plans to take that evening. The trouble is nobody saw the resolutions until right before the meeting took place.
There were 21 in all. One was to borrow $1.2 million to repair Pine Hill’s water system. Another attacked an alternative plan by the regions Congressman for the proposed golf resort. Another began steps to eliminate the free of charge Building inspector service supplied by the County and have town taxpayers pay for the same service. Another started the process to give the Highway Superintendent, on the job since January 1st, a raise.
In between these were actions assembling new committees, hiring new police, changing town employee health insurance rates and so on.
Until this month all resolutions were posted on the towns website the Friday prior to the monthly Monday session, but that will no longer be the case thanks to Cross.
Asked why he said, “Because I chose not to.”
Audience members complained that there is no longer ample time to review the resolutions. Town Clerk Laurilyn Frasier countered such remarks, saying all resolutions, except one, were available to the public at four o’clock Monday. The one left out was still unwritten Tuesday. It pertains to the Town asking Ulster County to allow a new right of way across its railroad tracks for ingress and egress to the privately owned bat factory on Fox Hollow Road.
Audience members were not the only ones to complain. In the new rules it is stated that all resolutions must be given to all town board members “at least 48 hours prior to the opening of the meeting.” Newly elected board member Peter DiSclafani, the board’s lone Democrat, said that he had not received most of them and was only seeing many for the first time that evening.
In response, Cross shrugged and said he did his best.
Kathy Nolan, a frequent, outspoken audience member, said she refuses “to feel like a visitor in the town hall.”

Stream Activism
Supervisors and mayors from Ulster County communities affected by flooding along the Esopus Creek have organized themselves as the Esopus Creek Coalition of Supervisors (ECCOS) in an attempt to open discussions with New York City and the federal government to implement flood control projects to prevent the deluges that now seem to reach crisis proportions every time there is an inch or two of rain. The cause appears to be overflow from the city’s Ashokan Reservoir, which discharges into the lower Esopus Creek. Class action lawsuits have already been launched against New York City in Delaware and Sullivan counties as a result of flooding conditions there.
The group was organized by Hurley’s Michael Shultis and held its first meeting at his office at the Hurley town hall on Monday, January 30. The fact that all of the officials involved – supervisors Vincent Martello of Marbletown, Berndt Leifield of Olive, Robert Cross of Shandaken, Nick Woerner of Ulster, Greg Helsmoortel of Saugerties, and mayor Bob Yerick of the village of Saugerties - were present on such short notice gives some indication of how they view the situation’s gravity. Mayor James Sottile of the City of Kingston was unable to attend but told Shultis he wants to be included and plans to participate in future meetings, according to the Hurley supervisor.
“I don’t think a lawsuit is the way to go,” said Shultis. “I think we should sit down at the table with them and create a dialogue.”
New York City is currently releasing 540 million gallons of water daily to its Ashokan Reservoir system from the Schoharie Reservoir via the Shandaken portal in order to draw down the water level there and make repairs to the Gilboa Dam that has been deemed unstable.
Heavy rains and snow melt have made it difficult for the city to lower the Schoharie’s level, however, despite the maximum possible discharges through the Shandaken tunnel that takes the water into the Esopus near Phoenicia. It then runs downstream and collects in the Ashokan, which has been atypically full in recent months. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) would normally be drawing down the Ashokan’s western basin at this time of year in anticipation of snow run-off during the next month or two, but that is currently impossible because of the immediate need to stabilize the Gilboa Dam, according to DEP spokesperson Ian Michaels.
The ECCOS supervisors want the city to retrofit the Ashokan to permit drawdowns that will prevent flooding. The group also wants the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers brought in to clean debris from the Esopus that has collected from years of inundations that now regularly cause the stream to back up and spill over its banks.
The DEP is in discussions with SUNY New Paltz to flood a waste channel that runs through the university’s Ashokan Field Campus as a temporary flood control measure. Use of the channel that was built as part of the reservoir system in the early 1900s would involve flooding part of the field campus, but the Esopus must be below flood stage, and heavy rains this year and the Schoharie releases linked to the Gilboa project have kept the Esopus at the top of its banks.
Meanwhile, the state Assembly recently held a public hearing at Schenectady Community College to examine public concerns over dam safety in New York state.
Testimony was provided by representatives of state and local government, environmental organizations, public safety agencies and other interest groups. Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston, specifically asked Ulster County Legislator Michael Berardi, D-Ulster, to testify on behalf of Ulster County residents.
Assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli, chairman of the Environmental Conservation Committee, and Assemblywoman RoAnn Destito, who chairs the Governmental Operations Committee, scheduled the forum to focus on 383 dams (of 5,564 statewide) that are considered “high hazard” dams, whose potential failure could inflict significant loss of life and widespread property damage.
There are five New York City owned reservoirs and dams in New York City’s Catskill/Delaware watershed region. At least one dam, the Gilboa on the Schoharie Reservoir, is now undergoing emergency repairs, and two others, the Neversink and the Merriman, are under scrutiny after it was revealed that inspection reports had been routinely photocopied from week to week.

Alternate H2O
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has completed a drilling project in the Hudson River near Newburgh in an effort to determine whether an aquifer there can complement the city’s upstate reservoir system, but the agency has decided not to release the results of the million-dollar study.
The Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees New York City’s vast upstate reservoir system, has been searching for an alternative to a pumping station used during severe droughts, and the agency had test wells installed in the river to determine whether an aquifer there can yield good-quality water in consistent amounts.
The drilling was done to test the feasibility of a technique called “induced infiltration,” in which water is pumped from the aquifer to create a vacuum. This forces river water to flow down through natural layers of silt, sand, fossilized oyster beds and other material, which agency officials say act as natural filters and yield water that requires less treatment than water pumped directly from the river. If the test results were positive, induced infiltration could replace the nearby pumping station.
The study, costing $1.58 million, shut down from June 2004 to January 2005 to avoid interfering with fish spawning.

Skier Deaths
A skier who reportedly lost control and went off a trail at Belleayre Mountain last Wednesday, Feb 8, died shortly thereafter. Wayne Rochester, 46, formally of Suffern, N.Y., was transported from Belleayre by State Police Helicopter to Albany medical center, where he died. The details of his injuries were not available at press time.
Rochester was reportedly participating the Pine Hills Arms race held at Belleayre that day. Valarie Konefal, the owner of the arms, had no comment on the incident other than too say that Rochester, who had participated in the race earlier that day, had the accident while skiing afterwards..
Shandaken Police forwarded all queries to the press office of the Department of Environmental Conservation, which operates Belleayre. Calls to that office went unreturned Tuesday.
A Greene County man, Slawomir Wozny, 50, of Tannersville, died after a skiing accident at Hunter Mountain Ski Bowl on February 9. State police at Catskill said Wozny was on the lower “42nd Street” trail about 11:30 a.m. when, according to witnesses, he lost control while trying to make a turn at high speed, went off the trail and struck a tree and a boulder. Wozny, reportedly an experienced skier, suffered head injuries and was treated at the scene by the Hunter Mountain Ski Patrol, but he was pronounced dead a short time later at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, police said.

Bouncer Charged
A bouncer at the Hunter Village Inn, Thomas S. Sebald, 27, of New Paltz, was arrested Sunday and charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death of a patron, 45-year-old Peter G. Shine, of Oakdale whom police said he had tossed from the bar early Sunday morning.
According to a police report, Shine had a disagreement with another patron at the Hunter Village Inn, which escalated to the point that Sebald had to remove Shine from the establishment. Sebald, according to police, escorted Shine to a rear exit door and shoved him outside onto a small porch. Shine was found at the base of the steps with a head injury about a half hour later, said police, who responded to the scene at 12:26 a.m. Sunday.
Greene County District Attorney Terry Wilhelm said Shine was dead when police arrived… killed by pressure applied to his neck, according to Greene County District Attorney Terry J. Wilhelm. Wilhelm said the pressure to his neck cut off air and blood to Shine’s brain.
According to the Associated Press, Sebald teaches government and economics at Monroe-Woodbury High School in Orange County and coaches football and lacrosse there.
One of Sebald’s ninth-grade students, Brittany Crespo, said, “We really like Mr. Sebald. We want to support him any way we can.”
Shine was described by witnesses as “very intoxicated,” and he also sustained a head injury, which was determined by an autopsy performed at Albany Medical Center Sunday not to have contributed to his death.
Sebald was arraigned in Catskill Town Court and was freed on $10,000 bail.

Introducing Elk?
Supporters of a plan to reintroduce elk to the Catskills, and eventually other parts of the state, say now is the time to do it and have stepped up lobbying efforts in Albany this year. Chronic wasting disease, which has decimated deer in the Midwest, appears not to be taking hold in New York, they note. And reintroducing these animals to New York, they add, would expand the state’s biological diversity and eventually provide a new venue for big game hunters. The state, they say, could bring these animals back — if it is willing to spend the time and money.
Opponents, including farmers and anti-hunting groups, though, say not so fast. The former fear elk would devour crops. Animal rights groups say elk pose a road hazard that makes colliding with deer look like hitting a pothole by comparison. And more people are worrying that the central Catskills is becoming too gentrified for such hunting purposes.
Furthermore, state officials aren’t convinced the danger from chronic wasting disease has passed.
Either way, there is at least one bill that would allow elk to be reintroduced, offered by Assemblywoman Francine DelMonte, D-Niagara Falls, and Sen. Dale Volker, R-Depew. Previously, Assemblyman Dan Hooker, R-Catskill, offered similar legislation.
Elk were wiped out in New York by the mid-19th century, when they were hunted for their meat, hide and teeth.
The bill might not become law this session, but proponents say they are working to shepherd such a bill through the process during the next few years.
“We’re gearing back up to talk about a restoration of elk in the state,” said Wally John, a retired counsel for the Assembly, based in West Shokan, who is leading the charge to bring back elk and is working with a national group, the Montana-based Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and, with researchers from Cornell University, which has studied the feasibility of bringing these animals back to selected areas. He said he envisions bringing in 100 of the animals and setting them loose in the high peaks of the Catskills, which biologists say has the best combination of isolated mountain terrain, grass and forest cover for the elusive animals.
Other potential habitat could be found in the Southern Tier near Pennsylvania, and in the western Adirondacks.
“Hitting a 150-pound deer does considerable damage. Can you imagine hitting an 800-pound object? It’s much worse,” said New Paltz-based Peter Muller, vice president of the Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting.
There are already several elk farms in the Catskills as well as private hunting preserves where people can pay up to $8,000 to hunt the animals.

Cartoon Hell
As leaders of the world’s 57 Muslim nations gathered for a summit meeting in Mecca in December, issues like religious extremism dominated the official agenda. But much of the talk in the hallways was of a wholly different issue: Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad. The summit’s closing communiqué took note of the issue when it expressed “concern at rising hatred against Islam and Muslims and condemned the recent incident of desecration of the image of the Holy Prophet Muhammad in the media of certain countries” as well as over “using the freedom of expression as a pretext to defame religions.”
The meeting in Mecca, a Saudi city from which non-Muslims are barred, drew minimal international press coverage even though such leaders as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran were in attendance. But on the road from quiet outrage in a small Muslim community in northern Europe to a set of international brush fires, the summit meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference — and the role its member governments played in the outrage — has turned out to be something of a turning point.
After that meeting, anger at the Danish caricatures, especially at an official government level, became more public. In some countries, like Syria and Iran, that meant heavy press coverage in official news media and virtual government approval of demonstrations that ended with Danish embassies in flames.
In recent days, some governments in Muslim countries have tried to calm the rage, worried by the increasing level of violence and deaths in some cases, even though the protests allowed governments to outflank a growing challenge from Islamic opposition movements by defending Islam.

Bad Cash Flow
On February 16, the Ulster County Legislature will hold a special meeting where they will seek to identify specific reasons why the county’s projected cash flow has significantly diminished. The meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. at the Ulster County Office Building on Fair Street.
Ulster County could see a $1.31 million deficit in its year-end cash balance without a reduction in spending or an increase in revenue this year, the county’s Deputy Treasurer Michael Hein has said, noting that the county’s $6.88 million cash balance at the beginning of January could shrink by $8.19 million, leaving a deficit, if no budget changes are made. He added that the deficit could increase daily if the new county Law Enforcement Center is not opened by April, the target date set by budget planners that was tossed in recent weeks, with six months mnore now being predicted befor the white elephant is completed.
Hein said measures taken last year to reduce the deficit, such as a hiring freeze and committee review of unplanned purchases of more than $500 or more, are already in place and will not affect current budget forecasts. He added that the deficit will far exceed state recommendations that the county have a fund balance of between $12 million and $20 million as part of its $293.11 million budget. The fund balance is now projected to decline for the third consecutive year.

Medisaster?
Confusion over the new federal Medicare Part D program that took effect in January, and requires most people to sign up by May 15, have left people confused throughout the county, according to Ulster County Office for the Aging director Kathryn Puglisi, who has dubbed the new federal program “the dreaded Medicare Part D” plan.
Blanche Duffy, the office’s Health Insurance Information Counseling Assistance Program coordinator, said some people are saying the “D” stands for “disaster,” adding that many seniors haqve come in for help with its complexities in tears.
At local pharmacies, including Phoenicia and Nekos, meanwhile, business owners have worked hard to keep their customers covered while the federal plan’s details get worked out.
The biggest problem, everyone is saying, is the number of plans that consumers must choose from - 47 in Ulster County alone - and the fact that not all plans provide prescription coverage for all medications.

Spy Vs. Spy
The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development - is the federal government’s latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens’ privacy.
“We don’t realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we’re leaving traces everywhere,” says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are about connecting those dots - analyzing and aggregating them - in a way that we haven’t thought about. It’s one of the underlying fundamental issues we have yet to come to grips with.”
The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old “Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment” portfolio. The TVTA received nearly $50 million in federal funding this year.
DHS officials are circumspect when talking about ADVISE. “I’ve heard of it,” says Peter Sand, director of privacy technology. “I don’t know the actual status right now. But if it’s a system that’s been discussed, then it’s something we’re involved in at some level.”
Privacy concerns have torpedoed federal data-mining efforts in the past. In 2002, news reports revealed that the Defense Department was working on Total Information Awareness, a project aimed at collecting and sifting vast amounts of personal and government data for clues to terrorism. An uproar caused Congress to cancel the TIA program a year later.
Twice in the past four years, a top Justice Department lawyer warned the presiding judge of a secret surveillance court that information overheard in President Bush’s eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to obtain wiretap warrants in the court, according to two sources with knowledge of those events.
The revelations infuriated U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly — who, like her predecessor, Royce C. Lamberth, had expressed serious doubts about whether the warrantless monitoring of phone calls and e-mails ordered by Bush was legal. Both judges had insisted that no information obtained this way be used to gain warrants from their court, according to government sources, and both had been assured by administration officials it would never happen.
The two heads of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court were the only judges in the country briefed by the administration on Bush’s program. The president’s secret order, issued sometime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, allows the National Security Agency to monitor telephone calls and e-mails between people in the United States and contacts overseas.
James A. Baker, the counsel for intelligence policy in the Justice Department’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, discovered in 2004 that the government’s failure to share information about its spying program had rendered useless a federal screening system that the judges had insisted upon to shield the court from tainted information. He alerted Kollar-Kotelly, who complained to Justice, prompting a temporary suspension of the NSA spying program, the sources said.
Yet another problem in a 2005 warrant application prompted Kollar-Kotelly to issue a stern order to government lawyers to create a better firewall or face more difficulty obtaining warrants.
The two judges’ discomfort with the NSA spying program was previously known. But this new account reveals the depth of their doubts about its legality and their behind-the-scenes efforts to protect the court from what they considered potentially tainted evidence. The new accounts also show the degree to which Baker, a top intelligence expert at Justice, shared their reservations and aided the judges.
Both judges expressed concern to senior officials that the president’s program, if ever made public and challenged in court, ran a significant risk of being declared unconstitutional, according to sources familiar with their actions. Yet the judges believed they did not have the authority to rule on the president’s power to order the eavesdropping, government sources said, and focused instead on protecting the integrity of the FISA process.

Voting Info
As New York rushes to comply with the Help America Vote Act under a threatened US Justice Department lawsuit, many voters continue to raise concerns. On Sunday, Feb 26, four civic organizations will cosponsor an educational, non-partisan public meeting to hear from voters about proposed changes to NY’s election system and replacement of mechanical lever voting machines.
The free meeting will be held at 2 PM in the Common Council Chamber of historic Kingston City Hall, 420 Broadway, between W. O’Reilly and Foxhall Ave. An expert panel including Rachel Leon, Executive Director of Common Cause New York, and Aimee Allaud of New York State League of Women Voters, will be present to discuss issues and answer voter’s questions.
The nonpartisan educational meeting is cosponsored by Ulster County Democratic Women (UCDW), NY Citizens for Clean Elections (NYCCE), the American Association of University Women Kingston Branch (AAUW), and the Mid-Hudson Region of the NY League of Women Voters (LWV).

Flood Funds
Funds are now available via the County to purchase new homes for those owners those homes were destroyed in the April 2005 flooding. The funding has been made available through the County’s application for assistance to the Governor’s Office of Small Cities.
Eligible applicants are those who owned a home that cannot be repaired, classified as destroyed, as a result of the April 2005 flood and meet the income eligibility guidelines of the program which are dependent on family size. Applications will be available through the Rural Ulster Preservation Company (RUPCO) and accepted until the close of business on March 10. Contact Robyn Awand at 331-9860 or visit the RUPCO’s Homeownership offices at 301 Fair Street, Kingston, N.Y.
Those considering applying are encouraged to attend one of the information sessions on the program to be held at RUPCO on Wednesday, February 22 at 6:00 PM and on Saturday, March 4 at 9:30 AM.

It Girls?!?
Local journalist and young adult author Dakota Lane’s work-in-progress, The Secret Life of It Girls, due out next spring from Simon and Schuster, deals not with starlets but with ordinary adolescents whose attractiveness, style, and social savvy have landed them in popular cliques. Lane has begun interviewing teens and finds them eager to talk about the details of their lives—”what nastiness and gossip goes on, the power element, what does it take to make a popular girl, how does she maintain her social status, and at what cost?” She describes her book as “Studs Terkel meets MTV”, a compilation of real-life interviews with only names and details changed to protect anonymity, along with photos of teens that capture both the vibrancy and poignancy of life as an It girl.
Lane is seeking girls—and some boys as well—between the ages of thirteen and eighteen to be interviewed and/or participate in a photo shoot at Onteora High School on February 17 and 18, with later sessions planned for March.
Teens—both girls and boys—between the ages of 13 and 18 are invited to submit applications to be interviewed and/or to participate in a photo shoot at Onteora High School on February 17 and 18, for the purpose of taking pictures of kids in typical school settings. Only 25 teens will be chosen for this shoot, but later sessions are planned for March. Onteora school district students may pick up applications and releases at the Onteora High School office. Others may apply by emailing Dakota Lane at itgirlcasting@hotmail.com. Applications must be filled out and releases signed by a parent and returned to the high school with a snapshot by email, with name and phone number.
For interviews, Lane said, “I’m looking for anyone who has a good story and wants to talk about the experience of being a teen.”

Yeah… The Jail!
The new Ulster County Law Enforcement Center will likely cost another $1 million or more and the facility isn’t likely to open for another five months, according to a new report that also states that the jail is “98.1 percent” complete. The “$1 million plus” was requested in a Jan. 26 letter from project manager Bovis Lend Lease. The letter added that “about $500,000 to $600,000” is “needed immediately” to satisfy construction contractor expenses.
The jail, which was scheduled to open in April 2004 at a cost of $71.84 million, had its budget amended last year to $84.39 million.
Other questions about expenses included concerns that the cost for about 250 feet of water line to the jail had still not been estimated and an agreement with Kingston city officials for service had not been reached because of installation problems.
Early estimates noted that a full renovation of the current jail would have cost $11,956,990.

It’s A Strategy!
Republican national chairman Ken Mehlman recently outlined a political strategy for 2006 to portray Democrats as too weak to protect the country and to bypass the mainstream media to spread the GOP message. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he roused the crowd at a Washington hotel to cheers as he told them President Bush had finally responded to decades of terrorist attacks. John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, keynoted the conference dinner, sketching out the Bush administration’s efforts to reform the U.N., implying future military actions against Iran, and lambasting the rest of the world for being anti-Israel.
Mehlman said the loss in popularity of the mainstream media - both the evening network news and daily newspapers - is an opportunity for conservatives. He pointed to the growing popularity of talk radio and blogging.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told the group he plans to push for a Senate vote in May on the inheritance tax, called the “death tax” by conservatives. And he said he would push for a vote June 5 on “the marriage protection amendment” that seeks to amend the Constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Bush Logic
From screening newborns for hearing problems to efforts to fight heart disease and find causes of premature birth, some innovative medical programs demanded by families are on the government chopping block. But so is the long-heralded Voice of America program at a time when it seems to be needed most.
President Bush’s proposed budget for 2007 contains what his health secretary called “hard choices” when it came to devising how much to spend on a host of competing ailments.
Included in the proposed cuts is a federal program that provides lifesaving defibrillators to communities, especially in rural parts of the country. Also on the block, the largest study of U.S. children ever performed. In January, mothers-to-be were to begin enrolling in the National Children’s Study to track 100,000 children from mothers’ wombs to age 21 to see how the environment - everything from mother’s diet to toddler TV to pollution - influences child health. Scientists hoped the first births in the study would point toward some preventable causes of such problems as premature birth, asthma and autism. Ordered by Congress and supported by both medical groups and the chemical industry, scientists already have spent $60 million in tax dollars preparing the study, with waiting lists of families hoping to participate. But NIH budget documents direct researchers instead to close the program down by year’s end.
Bush, meanwhile, has spent time since submitting his new budget to Congress defending the $36.13 billion profit Exxon Mobil Corp. posted in 2005 - the highest ever for a U.S. company. He said the profit reflected the market and that consumers socked with soaring energy costs should not expect price breaks.
“I think that basically the price is determined by the marketplace and that’s the way it should be,” said Bush, a former Texas oil man.
But he added: “There’s also a responsibility for energy companies to continue to invest and improve the ways that the American people can get energy. I would very much hope that Exxon would participate in the development of a pipeline out of Alaska, for example, in order to make sure there’s more natural gas available for families and small business owners so the economy will grow.”

Sleeping Sickness
Americans are taking sleeping pills like never before… About 42 million sleeping pill prescriptions were filled last year, according to the research company IMS Health, up nearly 60 percent since 2000. Some experts worry that the drugs are being oversubscribed without enough regard to known, if rare side effects or the implications of long-term use. And they fear doctors may be ignoring other conditions, like depression, that might be the cause of sleeplessness.
Although the newer drugs are not believed to carry the same risk of dependence as older ones like barbiturates, some researchers have reported what is called the “next day” effect, a continued sleepiness hours after awakening from a drug-induced slumber.
Furthermore, the growth of non-prescription sleep aids is furthering muddying the nation’s sleeping problem.
Ten percent of Americans report that they regularly struggle to fall asleep or to stay asleep throughout the night. Experts acknowledge that insomnia has become a cultural benchmark — a side effect of an overworked, overwrought society.
Reported problems include sleepwalking and short-term amnesia.
A Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman, Susan Cruzan, said she was not aware of any problems with the nation’s sleeplessness.

New Chamber...
The new Heart of The Catskills Chamber of Commerce, based in Shandaken and currently incorporating the ever-busy activities of local philanthropist Frank Nazarro, is currently doing metal pick-ups around town, including appliances and cars. While there is no charge for pick-up, pre-sorting is requested.
Regular meetings of the Chamber take place in the Colonial Inn in Pine Hill at 6 pm on Saturdays, where a buffet dinner is usually available, and after which many members like to attend the auction in Fleischmanns.
Ongoing procets of the Chamber include a Community Garden and CSA project running in cooperation with Nazzarro’s Opus 42 Farm in Shandaken, food drives and distribution, free home energy audits, bulk discounts for fuels and other supplies, and an Adopt-A Highway and Stream Cleanup project.
Call 688-7210 or 688-7444 for further information.