Follow Up on the News

 Things Pass Quickly

The board decided to delay affirming application of the large-parcel tax alternative until the summer but indicated that their intention remained firm, despite an appeal by Olive supervisor Berndt Leifeld, who questioned whether his constituents would vote for the budget with the expected spike in their taxes.
            County legislator Brian Shapiro of Woodstock asked the board to adopt the large-parcel legislation that will separate the Ashokan Reservoir from the Town of Olive tax rolls and spread school taxes more evenly over the district's towns. "It's equitable, it's fair, and it's the right thing to do," said Shapiro.
Leifeld said Olive officials have been meeting extensively with the Office of Real Property Services (ORPS) and making preparations to do a revaluation of all town properties. "We are committed fully to a reval," said Leifeld, stating that with the rise in taxes the reval would produce, the additional large-parcel hike of 51 percent or more would constitute an extreme hardship for Olive residents. He asked the board to table a vote on the issue until May 5 to give council members time to assemble data and make a presentation. D'Orazio, however, said the board had voted last summer to invoke the large-parcel option for next year and would not need to reaffirm its decision until this August, as the law requires the action to be renewed within the fiscal year of its application, according to district lawyer Dan Petigrew. The large-parcel alternative will not be an option if Olive succeeds in bringing its assessment of the reservoir to within five percent of that designated by ORPS and New York City, but the results of ongoing negotiations to that end will not be known until July.
Town officials had also spokne up at the April 1 school board meeting, with Woodstock supervisor Jeremy Wilber noting that legal opinions assert the board's need to make another resolution to carry out its previously stated intention of applying the large-parcel legislation, which is up to school districts and county legislatures to decide. Business administrator Chuck Snyder said the numbers come in from ORPS in mid- to late July, and then the school board has until August 21, ten days before tax bills go out, to make its resolution. In other words, we won't know if the reservoir has been exempted from the large-parcel decision until July. How, then, will taxpayers know the effect of what they're voting on at the May 20 school board election and budget vote?
Snyder said it's always difficult to come up with early projected figures. Board president Marino D'Orazio said, "This is an example of how legislators screw us up." Trustee Meg Carey agreed. 
            Woodstock council member Gordon Wemp also spoke at the April 1 meeting, saying, "I feel this large parcel legislation is a way of getting towns to do revals," which are not required by law, although ORPS encourages towns to do them every two years. Equalization rates, which change the percentage of each town's tax responsibility, are ORPS's way of attempting to compensate for the differentials among towns, whose properties may be assessed at various degrees lower than market value. However, a reval brings assessments closer to the true value of each property and usually raises taxes for about one-third of a municipality's residents.
            Finally, Shandaken supervisor Bob Cross, Jr. said his town was considering a reval, especially unpopular in Shandaken, which has the lowest per capita income in the district. He urged Olive to do a reval as well. "If there's some relief for Shandaken, it's easier to get everyone to accept a reval."
            Meanwhile, board members appealed to the community to unite and support the elementary school transition as well as the budget.
            Rowe has said repeatedly that no potential occupant can commit to leasing the West Hurley building before an official board resolution to close the school. BOCES has expressed interest in renting classrooms in the building, which is well situated for attendance by students from districts all over the county. There has also been discussion of using the school for expansion of the alternative high school classes offered by the Indie Program, a proposal that would save money by keeping within the district at-risk students who require specialized schooling.
            In addition to the complaints from Olive, threats to try to defeat the budget have come from West Hurley parents discontented with this year's recombination with the Woodstock school and with the forthcoming closing. Woodstock parents, meanwhile, have realized that, with most of the West Hurley students moving to Woodstock, many of the Woodstock children will be shifted to Phoenicia and some to Bennett.
            Board members apprehensively debated whether outlining to taxpayers a second possibility, the budget with a 4.3 percent increase that Rowe suggested offering if the first budget is defeated, would tend to discourage approval of the six percent budget. Rowe and his administrative team said their intention was to inform voters clearly what cuts would take place if the six percent budget goes down. Besides closing West Hurley, the 4.3 percent budget would entail loss of afterschool programs, summer school, many academic intervention programs that prevent dropouts and special education referrals, and other drastic cuts. At the insistence of trustees Meg Carey and Eisenberg, Rowe promised to leave in the new nutritional lunch program that has been a district priority in the last two years. A mailing to voters will detail the cuts required by a 4.3 percent budget as well as the deeper losses of a contingency budget, which would prevail should two budgets be defeated.
            Giving the contractually required sixty days' notice, the board provisionally laid off the 20-odd employees who will have to go if the district is forced to a contingency budget. These staff include special education teachers and assistants, teacher aides, food service staff, and others. They will be reinstated if the proposed budget passes. Also abolished were positions that will no longer be required as a result of the elementary school consolidation, including a principal, several teachers, and support staff.
            Employees of the district's transportation department explained the planned changes in bus routes to accommodate the shifts in student populations, emphasizing that the new attendance area boundaries are still tentative and will not be finalized until early August. The boundaries do not fall along strict geographic lines, said transportation head Mike Grehl, since the consolidation involves equalizing class sizes throughout the elementary schools. He added that none of the route changes will create rides of more than 45 minutes and that efforts are being made to keep neighborhoods together.He noted that students who moved from Bennett to West Hurley several years ago due to overcrowding at Bennett will now be returning to their home school.

A Record-Breaking Trout

Moreover, it meant that old records could start tumbling down. According to Austin Francis' still honored Catskill Streams, THE guide to the area's fishing lore, the biggest fish caught on the Esopus was a brownie of 19 pounds caught up past Phoenicia in 1923. Next biggest was a 9 pound 4 ounce fish of 29 inches caught in 1955 out of The Mother's Pool just south of town.
            First thing was to check with Marietta, over at Morne's. Yes, she said. There was a big fish. Billy Vitarius, Jr. was the guy who caught it. Used a lure bought in the store, she added.
            Billy Vitarious Sr. noted that his son was quite the fisherman but because he had a cell phone, it might take some time for him to get back about the fish. it being Shandaken and there being no reception, after all.
            Finally, Billy Jr. called. Said the fish he caught actually measured 29 and 1/8 inches in length  and 10 pounds, one ounce on an official Berkeley scale used for such things. He'd taken pictures after pulling it out of the creek. then freezed the fish for later stuffing. Did I know of any good taxidermists south of Pulaski?
            Vitarius said he's caught the thing down in a big pool by the Parish Farm. not called Mother's Pool, as far as he knew. He was standing on one of the big rocks out there fishing with his favorite lure, a little rapeller called the Challenger, about two inches long. Thursday, April 8, around 7:30 at night.
            "I knew I had something as soon as I hooked into it," he said, explaining how the fish just kind of took off nice and steady headed upstream "like nothing was going to stop her."
            It took about 10 to 15 minutes, Vitarius said, to pull the fish in. Then he had to deal with the fact that he had no net, taking another five to ten minutes to climb into the water and push the giant brown trout up onto a rock where he hugged her until all the fight was gone and he could carry the fish, full-armed, back through the creek and up the bank where four boys had been watching the epic struggle and jumping around, cheering, as the fisherman emerged with his catch.
            "I was surprised as hell when I pulled her in. my jaw just dropped at the size of the fish," Vitarius added. "But nothing like the excitement those boys had when I pulled the fish out of the water."
            Once on land, Vitarius immediately went to find someone with a camera and got his picture taken in Phoenicia with his prized catch. Then he took it to his dad's house, noting how he'd been asked, specifically, to get some smaller trout for cooking purposes. Finally, he headed off to the Pine Hill Arms and had the fish flash-frozen.
            By the next week, Vitarius said he'd heard from a friend in Downsville who'd heard someone had caught a record-breaking fish. Calls to the Catskill Center, State Department of Environmental Conservation offices in Stamford and New Paltz, the Flyfishing Museum in Livingston, and various members of Trout Unlimited had everyone passing on the rumor, yet no one holding any facts.
            Yet everyone spoke about what such a catch might mean. Could the spawning traits of browns be changing or was this fish a winter holdover, a permanent resident? Vitarius said he could tell she'd been laying eggs by the distress on her underside. Would such a catch draw more fishermen to the Esopus as legends grew?
            Vitarius said he used to fish with flies but found he only likes them later in the season. Did he ever suspect he'd catch a trout like this? Naw, he says. And he doesn't suspect to see another like it for years now...