Follow Up on the News
The move disappointed committee members that have so far been displeased with the way the committee has handled disseminating information to the Phoenicia public, a public that continues to appear and question costs associated with the proposed project.
Although the community was blindsided by the move, insiders say the plan was set in motion about two weeks ago to kill the committee.
Now, according to an angry, acting Chairman Mike Ricciardella, all Phoenicia wastewater issues will be handled by the Shandaken Town board. This may prove difficult for Phoenicians seeking information, as the town board has established policy that limits public input at its monthly meetings.
Thus far, those that stand to be affected by the proposal have done a pretty good job of showing up at the Parish Hall, demanding firm answers about project details and costs.
What was made clear Tuesday was that the project was going out to bid soon, it was hoped, and Phoenicia would know by July what the cost of construction will be.
After that the community will get to vote on whether they want the project or not.
Prior to the sneaky disbanding, audience members asked questions more honed than those at previous sessions, indicating a greater understanding of the plan by those most affected.
In general terms, project engineer Fred Grober said that the project would come in at a cost close to the $11 million now allocated by the City of New York, but other officials guessed the amount to be closer to $13 million. It is hoped the City will pay all of the construction costs.
Engineers are expected to supply figures from similar communities that already have systems, like Stamford and Hobart, in hopes of showing that the annual costs of the running Phoenicia’s system won’t be that high.
Restaurateurs like Ricciardella and Al’s Seafood eatery owner Paul Pettinato, who was also a committee member, voted against the disbanding of the committee, as did Ric Ricciardella, Mike’s brother and also the Commissioner of the Phoenicia Water District, which has seen its own escalating costs.
All three were critical of the proposal, and felt that Tuesday’s move was a way to squelch their voices.
“They got rid of us,” Mike Ricciardella told the Phoenicia Times after the meeting Tuesday night. “They gave us the shaft, and now they’re gonna give Phoenicia the shaft.”
The Onteora Budget’s In
(In an austerity situation, in which voters reject a budget and the district chooses not to hold a second election, an increase of 3.84 percent is allowed by law, but would eliminate all equipment purchases or upgrades.) A substantial portion of the budget proposal’s increase is due to health care, retirement and salary increases for teachers that would amount to $985,533.
The budget proposal was put forward after trustees and administrators heard protests from parents, teachers and supporters of Special Education, asking them not to allow $335,258 in cuts for the department, including the elimination of five Special Education teachers, one Speech/Language therapist, one Deaf/Hard of Hearing teacher, four teaching assistants and one part time social worker. Also proposed is the elimination of two elementary teachers.
Onteora teachers and parents came in to protest the proposed cuts on March 28 en masse. Onteora students stressed that if it were not for the Onteora Special Education services, they would not have been as academically successful.
District Superintendent Justine Winters, who will be resigning in June, explained that she and other administrators were following directives from the board’s 4-3 majority. She noted that even though the district cut $600,000 from Special Ed last year, the new plans call for greater handling of Special Eds needs by BOCES.
Simultaneously, March 28, the board passed a resolution to establish a Capital Reserve fund and will ask voters to approve it in the May elections. This reserve fund would not be authorized to collect more than $3 million over the course of five years and the funds would be contributed to it only when extra money is available, in order to accumulate a savings with interest. The purpose of the Capital Fund would be for renovations, repairs or other facility problems in the district.
At the board’s April 4 meeting, assistant superintendent Deborah Fox and business administrator Victoria McLaren presented their reasoning behind the special education cuts. “Discussions have continued… regarding the historic perception that Onteora has offered a high quality Cadillac model for special education services and we are now moving toward a high quality Chevrolet model,” Fox read from what seemed to be a board directive.
Again, many parents, teachers and students were present and disagreed, with the shifting to a “Chevrolet” model. Audience members questioned money increases to other departments such as transportation, administration, newsletters and calendars that matched the decreases in special education. Parent Kathy Cioffi said, “Write the budget you need and give the kids the best you have…let’s serve kids and not the money.” Throughout the long meeting lasting to midnight, board members had questions for the administration, while the public accused administrators of working with numbers.
Later in the meeting, Patterson suggested adding another school board meeting to review and possibly make more “line item” cuts. Middle school teacher and Onteora Teachers Association president Corey Cavallaro urged the board not to make any more cuts. “Take it out of your hands and let the voters decide.”
Finally, trustee Cindy O’Connor requested that the school board begin a newspaper column and submit it to the local papers, which she accused of spreading misinformation. She said she had arranged a meeting with Brian Hollander of the Woodstock Times and Paul Smart of the Phoenicia Times/Olive Press to discuss such articles. This publication had first raised the subject with O’Connor last year but then decided that a regular column, which O’Connor suggested would be all “facts,” would face controversy trying to establish a singular voice for a usually-divided board. Instead letters to the editor and a sharing of boardmember information with the local media was suggested, with the option for occasional stories to be edited and submitted by the administration, with final editorial say on the part of the participating publications.
Time To Negotiate Now?He’s also started using a local attorney once more who had been distanced from Gitter’s activities because of Conflict of Interest fears involving the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s ongoing review of the Belleayre Resort proposal.
Could there be cracks in the seemingly infallible funding behind Gitter’s multi-million project? Could he be finally finding reason in U.S. Congressman Maurice Hinchey’s suggestion last year that the proposal be halved, with much of its acreage to be sold to the state? Or does the developer have new cards up his sleeve?
“Crossroads Ventures, LLC, the company behind the proposed Belleayre Resort at Catskill Park, today announced their support of a recent Town of Shandaken resolution that calls for a ‘reasonable consensus’ between concerned parties regarding the scale and scope of the Resort,” noted the press release put out by Paul Rakov, the company’s Vice President of Public Affairs and Director of Public Relations at Emerson Place.
Rakov was referring to a unanimously-passed resolution passed by the Shandaken Town Board at its monthly meeting on Monday, April 3 which resolved that urged just such negotiations.
When told that Councilman Rob Stanley had noted Gitter’s involvement in the writing of the legislation, Rakov would only admit that the resolution was written with the help of Gitter friend and business aide Gary Gailes, who is also spearheading the move to build a $21 million Catskill Water Discovery Center in Delaware County. Its opening statements suggested the Gitter project’s “potential for making a significant contribution to the economic revival of the towns provided that environmental concerns can be reasonably mitigated,” and noted that six years of “delay in the review process has contributed to prolonging the endless controversies surrounding the Project and has created unnecessary and protracted division within our community and may have stalled expansion plans for the Belleayre Ski Center.”
“Our partners have consistently communicated that the Belleayre Resort’s overall goal is to provide the region with a world-class resort destination that is both economically viable while protecting the natural assets of the area,” Rakov quoted himself saying in his press release. “We are willing to discuss plans that reduce the Resort’s size while still achieving that goal. After six years, we believe it is time the acrimonious atmosphere that has besieged this project, and the town, be put behind us.”
The town’s resolution was copied to all the mentioned parties, key officials with Ulster and Delaware County government and, significantly, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, expected on many fronts to be the shoo-in as New York’s next governor.
Tom Alworth, Executive Director for the Coalition of Watershed Towns and spokesperson for the 11-member Catskill Preservation Coalition reacted to Gitter’s announcement by reiterating support for the Hiinchey proposal. Marc Gerstman, CPC attorney, noted that were Gitter really serious about the downsizing he was proposing, his lawyers would have contacted he and the various other attorneys who had been sorting through the proposal for the past two years. Because any downsizing, he added, would need new review processes on all counts.
“If he wants to negotiate he has to have his lawyer give me a call,” Gerstman said. “It’s pretty basic.”
The same resolution passed by Shandaken was expected to be brought forth in Middletown later this month.
The other major Gitter action of occurred Wednesday morning, March 29, when he appeared before the Ulster County IDA, which runs under the aegis of the semi-independent Ulster County Development Corporation, to ask for a ten year abatement on County and Town taxes. Gitter and attorney Anthony Bucca, who had recently worked for a number of years in the same DEC office that runs the ALJ program that was reviewing the Belleayre Resort project, told the IDA board that circumstances had changed since November when they had turned down the opportunity for the property tax break, which necessitates Emerson Place coming under the nominal ownership of the county for the length of the abatement program, which now needs the town and other taxing entities to negotiate required Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) arrangements.
The tax package was passed with a waiver for an accompanying public hearing, based on both Gitter’s argument that time was of the essence, given that he was already in the midst of rebuilding the 24 rooms and restaurant he lost to fire last April, as well as the fact that no one showed up when the request was first raised in early January. A public hearing will be held, however, when the second part of the IDA package Gitter is requesting, for $2 million in county bonding, comes up in May.
New IDA Chairman March Gallagher said that Gitter told her board that he had been asked by his investors to seek the IDA tax abatement package. Pine Hill resident Richard Schaedle, who was present at the meeting, said Gitter countered talk of a usually-necessary public hearing by explaining any delays might cause his investment deal to be broken.
“The IDA felt that in view of the tragic nature of our circumstances, making us wait another 60-days for a hearing process on the amendment would have been an unnecessary burden,” Rakov said, adding that several factors, including their getting $0.75 on the dollar in insurance reimbursement and the “economic effects of Hurricane Katrina and the ever-increasing cost of fuel” had made construction materials more expensive than originally planned.
Gallagher said that the way the application was handled highlights basic problems in the Ulster County IDA process, which essentially has no means of denying applications. She added that the Gitter proposal had been started into action before she was named to the board in January.
Asked about Bucca’s presence with Gitter at the IDA meeting, Rakov wrote in an e-mail, “Tony Bucca has retired from the DEC and is in private practice. Since his retirement, he has represented Emerson Place in all its dealings with the IDA and has had no involvement with Crossroads Ventures or the Belleayre Resort project.”
“We are willing to significantly downsize the project if others concerned are willing to accept a reasonable compromise,” was Rakov’s answer. “It is not a new position. We have been willing to compromise for some time; no one has accepted our invitation to privately discuss such compromises. The ball is in their court.”
Under the plan released March 28, St. Francis de Sales church in Phoenicia would remain open, offering Sunday Mass but no other services. Slated for closure are Our Lady of LaSalette Church in Boiceville, St. Augustine’s Chapel in West Shokan, and Our Lady of Lourdes in Allaben, where the last mass was served in January. The future disposition of these three church properties, along with the Rectory building and Parish Hall in Phoenicia, remains undecided at this time.
St. Francis de Sales Parish, the northern & westernmost outpost of the New York metropolitan area’s 10-county, 2.5 million member Catholic community, currently serves more than 260 local families with between 500 and 600 registered parishioners. Final decisions by the Archdiocese on the proposed changes are yet to be made, and do remain open to review and reconsideration by an advisory panel established for the purpose. Representatives of St Francis de Sales Parish are scheduled to meet with that body May 25. Parish members have established a committee to coordinate efforts to save St.Francis de Sales parish, and are expected to be reaching out both to parishioners and the community as a whole in the coming days for ideas and expressions of support. The committee can be reached at sfdchurch@hvi.net.
Of primary concern to the parish community is the loss of a resident parish priest for the region, geographically one of the Archdiocese’s largest, encompassing roughly 500 square miles. This loss would mean the end of daily masses and holy day obligation masses, along with only a single Sunday mass to serve parishioners from all three other churches. St. Francis de Sales Chapel in Phoenicia has a seating capacity of 140.
Concerns have also been voiced about the travel time and distance required of anyone preparing to receive the sacraments of baptism, communion, confirmation, or marriage. Under the new consolidation plan, all religious instruction would take place at St. John’s between Woodstock and Saugerties, a round trip of up to 60 miles from some of the parish’s communities. Also voiced by parishioners have been concerns regarding the lack of a future Catholic presence for the area’s youth, and others regarding the church’s continued ability to serve the region’s senior population under the proposed restructuring.
The preliminary decision by the Archdiocese appears to reflect a slow but continuing decline in local parish membership, weighed against the regional and national shortage of available priests, and the need to apportion their residencies to serve other areas of the diocese with larger and growing Roman Catholic populations. In an effort to measure those needs, in 2001 and 2002 the Archdiocese began statistical analysis by parish of four benchmarks; daily and weekly mass attendance and the number of baptisms and religious education students served. That data indicated almost one of every three parishes fell short on all four benchmarks. Also slated now for restructuring as a result of the realignment plan are 15 other parishes like St Francis de Sales which will be integrated into neighboring parishes, and 15 more which will close altogether.
The proposed changes represent the largest restructuring in the Archdiocese’s 156-year history.
Although long a part of that history, St. Francis de Sales has only been operated directly by the Archdiocese of New York for three years. First established in 1902 by the LaSalette Fathers, a modern missionary order now based in Hartford, CT, ownership of the parish was transferred to the Archdiocese of New York in 2003. That transfer took place against the backdrop of a private settlement of a federally filed lawsuit against the order and one of its previous resident priests for alleged improprieties. While recent years have seen the coalescence of a strong and stable church community, other factors including modest declines in mass attendance and the need for resident priests elsewhere appear to weigh against the parish in the deliberative process now underway.
Illustrating The Edges...
She will be at a special book—signing at the Woodstock-Byrdcliffe Guild’s Kleinart-James Gallery the afternoon of Sunday, April 23, and then at Phoenicia’s own Tenderland Home on Saturday, May 20. In addition, Scheele will be showing the original pastels and paintings for the book at her nearest gallery in Andes, Chase-Randall, opening May 13.
The book looks at first like a departure for Scheele, who has become one of the region’s top-selling artists since moving here 16 years ago. It is more representational than her usual minimalist landscapes. There are people and animals, a wealth of black and white figurative elements. And yet the artist says it’s actually more of a return to what she was doing before she started surrendering fully to the wonders of her oeuvre: a misty, memory-drenched sense of place where the edges blur, the emotions reign.
Scheele lived up Route 28 in Oneonta for much of her life, where her father taught in the university. But she counts Nebraska, where she lived until seven, and a host of special places traveled to, and cherished over the years as having been equally important to her development as a “non-regional” painter.
“This is a special place but all of the world is just so beautiful,” she said.
Scheele, who studied art, with degrees, at both Alfred University and the Royal Academy in Madrid, Spain, says she was adamant about being what she now is form the age of five.
“I told everyone I was an artist, not that I was going to be an artist,” she recalls with a laugh.
After college, headed to New York like so many of our talented young, Scheele ended up getting work in the then-thriving comic book industry, where she eventually became known, and in demand, as a top “colorist,” known for the moody emotional range she brought to whatever she was asked to work on.
Unlike many other art school grads, and comic world workers she knew, though, Scheele was always good at keeping up her studio time. At always pushing her painting to new heights of discovery and, eventually, adeptness and insight.
She found that all the work with color in her workaday world suffused her painting style so fully it allowed her more latitude playing with composition. And over time, she found she liked playing with her work’s edges, as well as the focus within.
Eventually, what she was doing gelled in the form of four landscapes, created in the studio based on four special places she’d been… Nebraska, the flatlands around Lake Champlain, Cape Cod, and the marshes of southern New Jersey. In each piece she was able to use her sense of shape and color to explore the memories she has always felt were implanted by the richness of her upbringing, its travel and academic settings.
Over the years, the singular style Scheele created has brought her success in galleries in Poughkeepsie and Beacon, Hudson, Woodstock and Andes, Martha’s Vineyard and the New Jersey. She’s built herself a fine studio. Taught art around our area. And all the while, raised her twins to teen-hood and kept up involvement in all things local.
So what was it like, working on this illustration job? What did it bring her, as an artist?
“It allowed me to fall in love with this area again,” she says of the process that started somewhat haphazardly when the designer/publisher of the Evers’ reissue called the house for either she or her illustrator husband. The project clicked right from the start.
She spent a lot of time on and around Woodstock’s Overlook Mountain so she could permeate her illustrations with the inspiration for Evers’ beloved “Watchdog.” And she enjoyed getting to know the noted historian’s work in depth, both in earlier, fifties-style renditions of the current tome, as well as in his noted histories of the Catskills, of Woodstock and, most recently, just before his death just she of 100, of Kingston.
“It made me go to my drawers and pull out another children’s book, which I had written as well, to start getting it around now,” Scheele said of what was gained, beyond a new body of work in black and white pastels, used to keep a consistency with her known painting style. “It also made me want to do more of this sort of work, if I can get it.”
While also keeping at the painting she’s been plying, as an artist since the age of five, of course.