Follow Up on the News
But new developments and changes at the DEP, which was just appointed a new commissioner by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday, February 1, along with the resignation of the woman who had originally suggested the City/Coalition tete-a-tete, former state Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Erin Crotty, has kept specifics about the meeting still vague.
“I’m as in the dark as everybody else about it, as to the date,” said Robert Cross Jr., a Coalition Executive Board member as well as Supervisor of Shandaken. “I think there is only going to be three or four people there.”
The meeting was first suggested by the Coalition of Watershed Towns, the ad hoc organization of Upstate municipalities that achieved notoriety in the mid 1990’s by suing New York City and creating the Watershed deal that brought millions of NYC dollars to the region for conservation and development purposes. After eight years of partnership, the Coalition started suggesting last year that NYC hasn’t been playing fair, what with a growing number of instances where it felt the DEP had overstepped bounds.
But close watchers of the Coalition feel that what really prompted the Coalition’s ire was when New York sided against the proposed Belleayre resort golf development pegged for Shandaken and Middletown, a stance they have said could throttle future development of the region.
Last December, things came to a head when Crotty and then Acting DEP Commissioner David Tweedie both attended the annual meeting of The Watershed Protection and Partnership Council, along with significant representation from the Coalition of Watershed Towns, at a conference center in Hunter. Coalition Attorney Jeffrey Baker, who worked with Crotty, along with Belleayre Resort counsel Dan Ruzow, during the 1997 watershed agreement process, asked the DEC commissioner if she would intervene and call a meeting between Upstates and New York. Baker accused City officials of dragging their feet on allowing full recreational use of the thousands of acres, such as snowmobiling and small game hunting, and decried its paying top dollar for land purchases beyond what the Coalition it agreed it could make. Baker also complained that the City is in the process of drafting revisions to other regulations that would govern land use throughout the region, and that as written they give the City “unfettered discretion” in matters that will kill many small development projects “before they even begin.”
City Officials fought back, with acting Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner David Tweedie stating that his agency had acted within its legal rights, but noted that they would take another look at the recreational use issue, as well as other complaints.
When Baker said, “We are not interested in bi-lateral discussions with the city,” Crotty agreed that she would set up a meeting.
It was announced at the Coalition’s recent meeting that they had received an agenda for such a meeting from Crotty. But that was days before she announced her resignation… and a new DEP commissioner was announced by Bloomberg.
Now, everyone’s wondering whether any of the major players who had agreed to meet would be able to do so with any knowledge about the issues set to be discussed, as well as whether the situation at hand was in truth as dire as the Coalition had called it, or merely a smokescreen for other issues.
“We don’t know anything about any meeting. What’s it for?” asked Crotty’s receptionist on her last day of work. After a few minutes of discussion outlining the reason for the meeting, the receptionist gave up. “Let me put you through to Deputy Commissioner Lynette Stark,” she said.
Stark had already been named as Crotty’s interim replacement and was set to take over until Wednesday, February 2. She was unavailable for comment and her receptionist also said she’d never heard of any of the agencies involved, let along any meeting.
Finally, after a few moments, she called back to say there was to be “a meeting of the New York City Watershed,” but it would be Bill Harding who was handling it. “On February 11th.. in Newburgh. Somewhere near an airport…”
Harding is the Director of the The Watershed Protection and Partnership Council. As of press time, his office had not yet confirmed the meeting.
Ian Michaels, spokesperson for the Department of Environmental Protection, said he was not sure if Lloyd would represent the agency at the purported February 11 session in Newburgh. “It is not known when she’ll start yet,” he said.
Lloyd, who was Commissioner of New York’s Sanitation Department from 1992 to 1994, and was the Executive Vice President for Government and Community Affairs and the Executive Vice President for Administration at Columbia University, was introduced at a brief press conference at City Hall Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, where Bloomberg thanked both Ward and Tweedie and noted how he expects Lloyd to more than fill the bill.
“Emily, do a good job,” he said.
Lloyd took the podium and immediately vowed to protect the city’s precious drinking water, which she called “the most fundamental resource of this city.” But then, moving beyond the fact that the agency she is taking the reins of handles myriad issues and responsibilities, Lloyd added that she would be “moving ahead with the partnerships upstate” as one of her top priorities for the job.
An interesting remark, given the strained relationship the partners have had lately.
Could someone have told her about the vague meeting set for next Friday in Newburgh?
Getting Better HealthareIn addition, the practice has hired a new osteopathic doctor, Teresa Foster, re-hired Nurse Practitioner Alexandra Perrignon, freshly returned from Australia, and brought into the practice Nurse Practitioner Brian Callahan, an eleven year veteran of the Phoenicia office during its years under the ownership of Benedictine Hospital.
According to Rissman and Krakower, the various moves are designed to better serve the local community through expanded services. In addition, Krakower, who served as the visiting doctor for Benedictine’s Phoenicia office for the last few years, said the new staff additions would provide he and Rissman enough breathing room, “so we don’t burn out,” as he put it with a laugh.
The Benedictine Hospital system of rural clinics was started in the early 1990s soon after the Town of Shandaken purchased the old home and office of retiring Phoenicia family doctor Dominick Scagnelli, with the promise that it would henceforth ensure the local community’s continuing access to localized medical care. Eventually, they opened clinics in the rural Greene County communities of Jewett and Hensonville, but were forced to close both when the Hospital found it difficult to hire doctors to travel to the remote locations, and the costs of justifying such small patient bases proved cumbersome.
Callahan, who started with Benedictine in its Emergency Room while on the verge of graduating from his Practitioner’s program, first came to Phoenicia during its early days. Eventually, he says, he ended up spending most of his time at the Benedictine satellite offices in Jewett and Hensonville. When the first closed about six years ago, many of Callahan’s patients came with him to Hensonville. After Hensonville closed down last year, many of its patients again followed Callahan to Phoenicia.
The remainder of the Greene County Mountaintop patients are now going to Dr. Ravi Ramiswami’s Catskill Wellness Center. Ramiswami previously served as the Medical Director for Benedictine’s rural out-clinic system.
Rissman spoke at length recently about how the move into Phoenicia, along with the new hiring, is part and parcel with the excitement he’s felt since the early 1980s, when he first moved to Woodstock with the dream of becoming a small town doctor.
“We want to be able to give our patients the time they need, to provide our community with the care we feel it’s an honor to be able to give them,” said Rissman. “This frees us up to see new patients.”
Krakower added how the practice had taken in new people in recent years, but only in spite of an outward appearance of not doing so.
“Our front desk staff was protecting us, saying no first,” said Rissman. “They know us. We never stopped taking new patients.”
When asked if the recent popularity of Dr. Wayne Longmore’s short-lived Woodstock Walk-In Doctor’s Office had prompted any changes in their practice, Krakower and Rissman said no… they’d always been working for the good of their community “behind the scenes.” The two spoke of regular home visits, long hours, and other accommodations.
“We just like to ask that people call before stopping by,” Rissman said, noting how a panic-free office environment can work to the betterment of all.
Both doctors are excited about their new hires. Foster, it turns out, studied Osteopathic Medicine under the auspices of the U.S. Army, for whom she worked up until answering Maverick’s ad online at the American Academy of Physician’s website last summer. With three young children and an actor husband able to stay home with the kids, she’s loving her new role in the community. She will be in Phoenicia at least one day a week..
Perrignon, Rissman and Krakower added, worked with Maverick Family Health for two years before her husband, currently an Emergency Room doctor at Kingston Hospital, took a job in the couple’s native Australia a few years back.
As for the new Maverick West office, both doctors, and Callahan. said that there would be no real changes to the overall business, or operations in Phoenicia, because of the way the two practices had worked so closely together in recent years.
As it stands, the next big move Rissman and Krakower want to make is an expansion of the “new” offices on Ava Maria Street across from the Phoenicia Post Office, to expand the number of examining rooms open year-round from a current two to six or eight.
Instead of simply offering Maverick’s Willow and other West-of-Woodstock town patients a closer office, the doctors noted that Phoenicia will be coming with its own patient base, and potential for growth.
Altogether, Rissman and Krakower estimated they keep records, presently, for about 8,000 patients.
For further information on Maverick West, call 688-7513.
But that’s beyond the suspense involved in awaiting final word of who will replace Shandaken board trustee Tom Rosato, who recently resigned. Interviewing, and choosing between seven candidates for the temporary position, up for election in May, was postponed from January 25 to February 3 due to prior commitments from two of the remaining six board trustees.
In budget matters, the general tip-toeing around Onteora’s need for new vehicles, building maintenance supplies and other put-off stuff was discussed in terms of a possible shift to leasing and a greater reliance on outside-contracted bus routes. Several new purchases, such as for computers necessary to keeping the district competitive with today’s educational standards, were raised in near-embarassed tones at both meetings.
At one point, student representative Dean McGee went so far as to note how the Onteora High School’s student council was fundraising to purchase a vending machine to provide for students who find themselves hungry during after school activities, and don’t want to cross Route 28 to shop at the Boiceville Plaza.
“A 3.16 percent increase for transportation?” Board president Marino D’Orazio asked with rhetorical flourish at the end of one presentation by district Business Administrator Victoria Garone. “Anything more would be scary in terms of us trying to get a budget passed in this district.”
Onteora’s been operating under a strict austerity budget since losing its bid for a new budget twice at district polls last spring and summer. The losses were blamed by area taxpayers on district-wide changes that saw the closing of the West Hurley Elementary School, as well as the continuing rage expressed by Olive residents over the whopping tax increases handed them by the district’s adoption of the new “Large Parcel” tax apportionment rates.
Both issues continue to weigh on the current race between seven candidates, which will hopefully be decided in the next news cycle.
Half of those seeking to fill Rosato’s seat, which will come up for full election in May, say they’ve been pulled to their candidacy by the Large Parcel and other “taxpayer” issues. Half say they’re seeking to join and support a board they applaud for not succumbing to “single issue” focus, coming to the position open-minded and without any agendas.
Applications submitted to the district office before its January 10 deadline included Pia Davis of Shady, Mark Goldfarb of West Hurley, Anne-Marie Johansson, of West Shokan, Sara Morales of Woodstock, Michael Shultis of Hurley, Rita Vanacore of Shokan, and. former board member Greg Walters of Shandaken.
Vanacore, niece of former board member Joe Vanacore, said she’s long been planning a run, and sees the current vacancy as a leg up on the coming race for the open three year term in May. She says her interest in the school district, which she attended and sent her three children through, is as a taxpayer.
Goldfarb, a local businessman with a daughter in the Woodstock School, said he feels, “our legislators let us all down by dropping the Large Parcel issue on our school board the way they did<“ and adds that he has a lot of questions about the amounts being spent on Special Education in the district.
Shultis, a friend of Goldfarb, says his candidacy is all about “openness.” The son of a teacher, and an Onteora graduate, he characterizes himself as an unequivocal “tax advocate.”
Ann-Marie Johansson, a member of the Olive Planning Board and also an Onteora graduate who has sent her kids through the district, talked about her previous ties to the current board, having helped with the recent elections of current board members Kathy Hochman, Neil Eisenberg and Marino D’Orazio.
“I’ve been encouraged by the way our current trustees have handled things,” she said. “I’m just interested in helping this board be more than a one-issue board, and impressed in how they moved us away from the mascot issue. I’d like to work with these people.”
Morales, who has had three children graduate from Onteora and currently has a fourth at Bennett, also feels encouraged by the current board and administration, and wants to be able to bring her years of experience to some fruition.
“I believe this district has to be focused on more than one issue at a time,” she said. “I feel I have a good understanding of how it all works and feel I could come to the position with a clean slate.”
“I’m running because I care about educational matters in this school district and I don’t want to see more one-issue candidates get in, working against our kids’ best interests,” said Woodstocker Pia Davis, a writer and former member of that town’s Library Board.
Walters, the only incumbent seeking the open position, is a long-term IBM employee who lost his seat on the board two years ago in a three-way race with current boardmembers Lev Flournoy and Herb Rosenfeld. During his term, Walters stressed his role as an advocate for fiscal responsibility. He says he decided to offer his services this time around because, knowing the job, he feels his experience could help with the need for whoever steps in to immediately enter the district’s annual budgeting process.
Sitting at a table in the midst of his work-in-progress, Russ's Country Kitchen, Roefs talked about what he sees as Woodstock's loss of character since the days when he was one of the town’s leading innkeepers, as well as why the Route 28 corridor is now the region’s land of promise.
It's Monday morning, and Roefs is discussing tablecloths with Virginia Miller, who has stopped in to deliver a fluorescent light for the deli case. She says she'll pick up the tablecloths later in the week. "We still have to pass two inspections," he reminds her as she’s leaving. Other helpers wander in and out. A young man enters to announce, "I'm in the specialty beverage business," plunking down two bottles of iced tea with trendy labels.
"That's the kind of stuff we're looking for," nods Roefs. The beverage coolers and ice cream freezer are already full, the sandwich list is hung above the counter, and the three booths and ten tables are looking spiffy. The deli is scheduled to open in a week or so, but there's still a lot to do. The beverage guy leaves, and Roefs leans back.
"I had ten businesses in Woodstock over a 35-year period," he explains. "In the late sixties, Richie Mellert and I opened the Village Jug, a tavern on Rock City Road, where the framing shop is now." Around that time he married Linda Tiano, but the late hours of a bar owner were not conducive to marital accord, so he sold the Jug and bought the Corner Cupboard on Tinker Street in 1969. That was the year he began riding to (or descending upon) the village green as Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. He continued to play that role for 23 years.
Roefs and Tiano also created Gourmet Catering, which operated through the Cupboard kitchen. Tiano, employed then by IBM, would come home from a full day's work and help out wherever she was needed. He sent her to school to learn how to make pastry. "She was a very positive driving force," he recalls. He also ran Gourmet Wholesale Ice out of their home next door to Sunfrost.
In 1970, Roefs and attorney Jim Myers bought the Woodstocker Restaurant, which was located in Bradley Meadows, where Sunflower is today. Myers later dropped out, and Roefs and Tiano ran the restaurant until 1973, when they sold it, along with the Corner Cupboard. They bought the Wittenberg Country Store, brought Roefs's parents up from Rockland County to run it, and, says Roefs, "I took a sabbatical," to focus on their newborn son, Bryan.
A year later, he was back in business with the Watering Troff, a bar in the Bearsville flats, where the Gypsy Wolf Cantina is now. He also bought the News Shop, which he eventually turned over to Sean Mulligan, "one of the kids I had taken under my wing over the years." Roefs ran the Troff for ten years, until the late nights broke up his marriage. In 1984, ready for another sabbatical, he closed the bar and leased the property. "When I came back, the Troff was fuschia!" he exclaims. Later he sold the place to two women, both named Susan, who reopened it as Whistler's. He went to work for Consolidated Septic on Route 212, bought the business, and eventually sold it to Bill Van Kleeck, the present owner. In 1991 and 1992 he served as a county legislator from Woodstock and Shandaken.
"Then I moved to California and went into the international trade business with my brother. We traded commodities: Russian steel, South American sugar. I met my second wife Janice there." In 1994, he opened a deli in a business complex with 3,400 employees as potential customers. "We also had a contract with the city of Cerritos to supply backstage meals for their big performing arts center."
In 2003, Roefs sold the deli and moved back to the area. "I had a yearning to spend time with my son, and I have a friendship base here, which I didn't have in California." While out West, he had remained in contact with Al Higley, a friend of 40 years who’s the former owner of the Boiceville Market, also a former legislator, and backer of the new farmstand on Route 28 just east of Mt. Tremper.
The two men talked about re-opening the Bearsville Market, as well as a deli business in Woodstock’s Bradley Meadows Shoping Plaza. Meanwhile, he had been helping out Higley's son at his outdoor vegetable stand in Mt. Tremper, where he kept marveling at the amount of traffic on Route 28. His business sense told him there was opportunity under his nose.
On September 3, 2004, he and Higley negotiated a 15-year lease of the store in the Phoenicia Plaza. Just over a year ago, Shandaken chief of police James McGrath bought the run-down plaza, unoccupied for several years, and spruced it up with repairs and spiffy new facades. Miss Kitty's hair salon and the Catskill Mountain Pizzeria (no relation to the similarly named establishment run by his son and Tiano in Woodstock) moved in last year, and Roefs hopes the vegetable stand, closed for the winter, will move there too when the weather warms up. He is considering opening a dollar store in the plaza in the spring. Since September, he and his friends have been renovating non-stop, while he lives in his motor home parked outside.
Roefs describes Russ's Country Kitchen as "a German-Jewish-Italian style deli. We'll have New York corned beef and pastrami, German salami, spaghetti and meatballs, Italian sausage-and-pepper sandwiches. We'll have quality cold cuts, Boar's Head and Thurman's, and we'll feature Cohen's Bread from Ellenville - Jewish ryes and pumpernickels. Everything will be homemade, lots of homemade comfort foods: stews, soups, meatloaf, pot roast. It'll be geared toward health, everything we can get natural and organic, and there'll be a line for the vegetarian people. There'll be a skier's special, a breakfast, as well as a box lunch for $5.50 or a picnic basket for $10.00. We'll be open from 6 a.m. to about 10 p.m., serving breakfast, lunch, and light dinner. We want to give the community and the people coming up 28 the finest food we can give them for a reasonable price."
Of his move back to the area, Roefs says, "I love being here. But I feel Woodstock seriously needs to take a look at itself. The town hasn't been able to hold its unique character but at the same time come across as clean and neat, with a continuity among the stores, like Rhinebeck has done, for instance. So many people come to visit, but there's nothing going on for them. We used to have local craftspeople, pottery shops, and artists on the street. We had a comfortable feeling about the eateries in the sixties and seventies. There's no place for locals to hang out, and the town is losing its quaintness. You don't have a landmark in Woodstock any more."
Which may explain why he’s now among us.