Newsbriefs

---

(from April 27, 2006)

Poncic Advances
The town of Shandaken Planning Board made a surprise declaration at its April 11 meeting that the final environmental impact statement for Andrew Poncic’s proposed water harvesting project is complete and they will begin its review. The decision was made following an unexpected appearance before the Planning Board by Poncic, who supplied the information planners asked for months ago. Board secretary Marie Stutman said afterwards that the board reviewed the information supplied by Poncic and decided that he had met his responsibilities to the board. The board then declared the environmental impact statement complete. The board will now review the completed document, which shows how Poncic plans on avoiding or mitigating potential problems the project may cause. After the review, Stutman said, the board will issue a findings statement, which will state whether or not the board feels the project should be allowed to proceed.
A draft findings statement will be prepared by board Chairwoman Joan Munster, along with Stutman, and be presented to the entire board at its workshop session on Tuesday, May 2, at 7 p.m. Should the board agree that the project can proceed, Poncic’s project must then undergo a site plan review. During the site plan review phase there will be a public hearing held.
Poncic, who lives in Woodland Valley and New York City, caused an uproar in the community several years ago when plans called for tractor-trailers to use Woodland Valley to take the water to another location for processing into bottled water. Neighbors cried foul, warning of safety issues concerning children and the general quality of life along the residential road. The plan calls for two truckloads of water per day to be taken out of the valley, on weekdays only.
On April 11 Poncic supplied a key document to the board: a map detailing the truck turnaround area he plans to construct.
Environmentalists, as well as members of Trout Unlimited, have complained that plan would rob the Woodland Valley stream of precious groundwater. The groundwater is consistently a low temperature that cools the stream off in the summer months and makes it habitable for trout.

OCS Super Search
The Onteora Central School District Board of Education has employed Richard Lerer Educational Consulting Services to assist them in the recruitment and selection of a new Superintendent of Schools. Dr. Lerer spent 40 years in public education in New York and served as District Superintendent of Schools for the Southern Westchester BOCES for 16 years and Superintendent of the Public Schools of the Tarrytowns for seven. In 1994, he established his own firm to provide Executive Recruitment and Management Training Services for School Districts and has achieved a proven record of success in conducting over 60 superintendents’ searches and is known for his ability to identify leadership needs and priorities of the district and then find the right person to meet those needs.
Dr. Lerer is scheduled to meet with the community at large on Tuesday, May 2 8:00 p.m. at the Bennett Elementary School Cafeteria. On Tuesday, May 2nd, and Wednesday, May 3rd, Dr. Lerer will meet with District Administrators, Teachers and Non-Instructional Staff, Community Groups, PTA Leaders, High School Students and Union Leaders. Dr. Lerer has already held a preliminary meeting with the Board of Education. These meetings are all being held to identify the issues and challenges to be faced by the next Superintendent of Schools and the desired experiences and personal characteristics necessary for success.
During April, advertisements will be placed on the AASA Web Site, in Education Week, and in the New York Times. Letters requesting nomination of candidates will be sent to over 1,200 agencies and individuals throughout the United States including over 120 Graduate Schools of Education, over 700 Superintendents of Schools in New York State as well as Superintendents of Schools in Bergen, Essex, Morris and Union Counties in New Jersey, Fairfield County in Connecticut, and the 50 Executive Directors of the State Associations of Superintendents of Schools.
The deadline for applications will be May 18th and Dr. Lerer plans to present a slate of finalist candidates to the Board early in June. The Board will then begin to conduct its own interview and reference checking process and will be in a position to make a decision by the beginning of July with the new Superintendent starting on August 15, 2006.

Gitter Again...
Despite his public calls for a meeting to discuss possible compromises, Belleayre Resort developer Dean Gitter’s still without any sit-down offers from other parties… and maintaining his belligerence towards the environmental community, New York City, and the state DEC Administrative Law Judge overseeing his proposal to put in a massive resort with double golf courses, hotels and a multitude of condos, town houses and private homes along the Belleayre ridgeline.
Representatives for the agencies Gitter says he wants to talk with, and offer a vague, un-detailed “40 to 45 percent” downsizing to, have noted that were the developer serious about what he’s talking, he’d have made actual proposals in writing via his attorneys instead of attempting to circumvent the current proceedings regarding his proposal.
“”Mr. Gitter sure is making a lot of noise about wanting to talk. Maybe next Dean will fly an airplane over the Catskills pulling a banner saying ‘Let’s Talk,’” said Catskill Center director Tom Alworth, head of a coalition of a dozen national, state and local environmental organizations, of the refusal to meet with Gitter before local newspapers’ editorial boards with no lawyers at hand. “We hear him and we too are willing to talk.But, obviously we don’t agree on the terms of those discussions. Mr. Gitter walked away from Congressman Hinchey’s proposal, which we supported then and we still support. We’ve been saying all along that if he is serious about talking, his lawyer simply needs to pick up the phone... remember, we’re still in a legal proceeding where the facts matter... this isn’t a game of monopoly; we insist on sticking to the facts of this case and the more we do that the more uncomfortable Mr. Gitter is.”
Gitter has to date gone before the Kingston Freeman and Albany Times Union editorial boards to say that he was prepared to “reduce the environmental impacts of major elements of the project by between 40 and 45 percent,” but Alworth called that a concession without meaning or substance.
“The state judge who heard all of the facts ruled that this project, in particular the eastern side of this project, raises serious environmental issues, and regardless of what the developer says or does, they will not be ignored,” Alworth said, referencing state Adjudicatory Law Judge Richard Wissler’s 2004 ruling that Gitter face a trial-like process determining the correctness of a dozen of his environmental mitigation claims. Gitter has appealed the judge’s rulings. “In front of the editorial board is not a place to discuss projects. The ‘Let’s just go to a back room here’ is not going to happen, and it’s inappropriate.”
U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley, has proposed a “lower build” alternative in which Gitter would build nothing on the east side of the property, with the state buying 1,242 of the 1,960 acres the developer has accumulated at market price, but Gitter has rejected that suggestion as economically infeasible.
Meanwhile, Giter also went back to the Middletown Town Council in person recently to ensure that they passed a resolution in support of his compromise talks, even though they’d bowed down for doing so a first time around.

IDA Changes?
The Ulster County Industrial Development Agency has started coming under fire with its recent turning down of a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes plan for the proposed Hampton Inn in Ulster on Route 9W. The request followed an hour-long public hearing that drew opposition to the tax break, including a petition signed by 118 residents. Town officials, meanwhile, spoke on behalf of the motel noting that other PILOT agreements adopted by the IDA in the town of Ulster have included Kingston Block and Masonry in 2003, Dutchess Beer in 2002, and SunWize Technology in 2001, and that the new Marriott Courtyard hotel on the opposite side of Ulster Avenue will receive a tax break.
On Monday, April 24, the IDA held a public hearing about changing its structure to start questioning the sorts of development it would support in the changing county.
Stay tuned…

Cell Submission
The West Hurley based company that plans to build a 180 foot cell tower in Shandaken has delivered an application to the Shandaken Planning Board. The project, which should have been underway this month, is delayed slightly because Masterpage has yet to go through a review process by the planning board. The Board will meet in an unofficial workshop session on Tuesday, May 2nd at 7 pm to review the application and determine whether is complete, or whether Masterpage needs to submit more information.
The application, an inch and a half thick, includes several maps detailing the tower site and projections for how far cellular coverage would transmit from the tower. Also included are the locations for two other towers in town, yet to be built, that are supposed to form a network to expand the coverage area.
But right now, according to Dominick Scaramuzzino, a radio frequency engineer for Nextel, the signal will only cover a small portion of the town.
The tower, planned for a hillside near Glenbrook Park off of Route 42, will send a signal north on that road to the town line in Bushnellville. The signal will also transmit west on route 28 for a about a mile and a half, just west of Golf Course Road, and travel east on 28 down to just east of Broadstreet Hollow Road.
“This map clearly demonstrates that the proposed facility will remedy a portion of the significant gap in reliable service in the town in the vicinity of the proposed facility,” Scaramuzzino said in a statement accompanying the application.
Nextel, so far, is the only communications company with plans to lease space on the tower. Masterpage, a paging business, plans to occupy the tower for its purposes and also to allow for emergency service communications.
Nextel’s nearest facility is in the Greene County town of Hunter. To increase coverage the company is investigating several nearby sites, including sites in Pine Hill and Phoenicia as well as locations in the nearby Greene County Town of Lexington, as well as Olive. The map shows other potential sites as well, located atop nearby mountains.
The application identifies the two other Masterpage sites as the Sam Umhey parcel and the Peter Goertzel parcel.
The Umhey parcel is in Phoenicia near the Phoenicia Diner. In the 1990’s the Crown Atlantic Corporation had plans to build a cell tower on the location but those plans never materialized. The Goertzel site, located in Pine Hill, is a site that already has an old tower on it, according to planning board secretary Marie Stutman, which is currently not in use. The application, Stutman said, is available for review by the public at town hall and includes a visual impact assessment.

Calls For Help…
Area Catholics have begun circling the wagons around St. Francis de Sales parish, targeted for church closures by the Archdiocese of New York. St. Francis de Sales Church was jam-packed for Easter services, and has formed a committee to save the parish, registering all who have visited the church or its satellites at any time as parishioners, as well as handing out sample letters to the archdiocese, which last month announced its plan to sell off two mission churches in the parish - Our Lady of Lourdes in Allaben and Our Lady of LaSalette in Boiceville - and convert the main church to a mission of St. John’s Roman Catholic Church in West Hurley.
Gene Gormley, chairman of the Save the Parish Committee in Phoenicia, has said he was hopeful that the archdiocese’s plan was drafted without a full understanding of the parish’s circumstances. To address that, the committee will provide information to the archdiocese that Gormley expects will lead to a reversal of the plan.
The Archdiocese of New York serves the pastoral, religious and educational needs of 2.5 million Catholics in 409 parishes in the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island and in Dutchess, Putnam, Orange, Rockland, Sullivan and Westchester counties. Currently ministering within the archdiocese are 686 archdiocesan priests, 812 priests of religious communities, and 271 priests from other dioceses, as well as 354 permanent deacons.

Stream Cleanups!
The Catskill Watershed Corporation will once again support groups and individuals who clean litter and other debris from streambanks in their neighborhoods by providing trash bags, gloves and tokens of appreciation for those who choose to serve their communities in this way. Call Kim Ackerley at 845-586-1400 to arrange to get these items. The NYC Department of Environmental Protection is coordinating the clean-ups at the Ashokan Reservoir May 6 and June 3; the Schoharie Reservoir May 20 and Sept. 9; the Pepacton Reservoir August 26, the Rondout Reservoir September 16 and the Neversink Reservoir September 30. Call Amy Flavin at 845-340-7530, or e-mail aflavin@dep.nyc.gov for more information on how to lend a hand with those projects.
Volunteers might also wish to coordinate their efforts with National River Clean-up Week sponsored by America Outdoors May 13-21. Go to americaoutdoors.org/nrcw/natao10.htm.

Planning Woes…
The state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation has stated objections to the height of a proposed condominium tower that the New Jersey-based Teicher Organization wants to build on the site of the arking lot at the end of Wall Street in Uptown Kingston. The agency has said the project, at a proposed 12 stories, would harm the historical nature of the Uptown area, in particular the adjacent National Register-listed Stockade Historic District and the Senate House State Historic site.
“The structure will overwhelm the primarily two- to three-story historic neighborhood,” the letter stated.
Kingston Mayor James Sottile, a strong supporter of the condo project, said opponents will use “any tactic they can to kill it.”
The condo building, as planned, would comprise more than 200 residential units, shops at street level and an underground parking garage with 600 spaces, 300 of which would be set aside for public use.
Harv Hilowitz, Teicher’s regional manager, said that there are no plans to reduce the proposed height of the building. He also said the developer is compiling a list of environmental issues that will be addressed as part of the planning process and that public hearings will be held.

Medicare Runout
Medicare beneficiaries — those with low incomes and those with few health problems — are the slowest to sign up for the program’s new prescription-drug coverage. Most beneficiaries currently eligible for the plan will face higher costs if they sign up after the May 15 deadline. Premiums will rise by 1% a month after then. The Bush administration estimates that about 7 million eligible Medicare recipients have not signed up for drug coverage. Some outside groups, such as the Kaiser Family Foundation and Avalere Health, a health care research company, put the figure at 14 million.
Meanwhile, 48 of the 100 senators urged Republican leaders and the Bush administration in recent weeks to allow people more time to sign up for the Medicare drug benefit beyond the May 15 deadline. The administration has extended the enrollment period for some low-income people whose incomes are below 150 percent of the poverty level - $14,355 for an older person who lives alone, $19,245 for a couple. But administration officials said they lack the legal authority to extend it for everyone. Mark McClellan, the Bush administration’s chief Medicare official, said plenty of help is available across the country for people wanting to sign up before May 15.
With the deadline approaching, private insurers and the government are making a last-ditch push to sign people up and declare the venture a success. Already, though, the massive effort has produced clear winners and losers among businesses and seniors.
The early winners include some of the nation’s largest health plans, which are peddling the drug coverage. After a rocky start in January, the plans have snagged roughly 15 million new customers and healthy government subsidies. Also buoyed: drug makers, which are reporting increased demand for some products used by seniors, such as drugs. Dozens of smaller health insurers, meanwhile, are seeing only minimal enrollment gains, and independent pharmacists are criticizing the lower payments and suffering cash-flow problems.

Suing The Gov
New York state’s Senate and Assembly on Friday warned they would sue Republican Gov. George Pataki if they cannot settle a constitutional budget clash involving the Governor’s vetoing of policy changes the legislature made to his budget. Pataki also vetoed the lawmakers’ ‘clean-up’ bill which aimed to fix the problems.
New York’s top court has said lawmakers can only raise or cut how much programs spend. But the legislature modified some of Pataki’s programs in his budget, such as crafting a new property tax rebate out of his education tax credit.
Pataki aides say the latest vetoes, which followed last week’s $2.7 billion of vetoes, are largely focused on what they see as the unconstitutional action taken by the legislature, said one of the aides.
Pataki cut the legislature’s budget for the fiscal year starting April 1 to $112.8 billion from $115.5 billion. The governor’s new vetoes included the $1.7 billion property tax rebate, Medicaid programs and a few other items.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, estimating Pataki has now vetoed $5 billion of items, told reporters that no progress toward a compromise had been made. If such an accord is not reached, the Senate will override the governor’s vetoes, Bruno said. “And if the governor thinks that is unconstitutional, then we’ll litigate.”
Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, in a statement, said Pataki has set the stage for lawsuits whose outcome will not be known until long after his term ends. “The constitutional arguments he has laid out are wildly off base, extraordinarily arrogant and an unmitigated abuse of power.”

Hit And Run…
Joseph Gilsinger, 40 of Park Road, Chichester, was charged April 14 with a felony count of leaving the scene of an accident where he allegedly struck and killed a man on a bicycle, 43-year-old Richard “Ricky” Shultis of Hurley, before driving away and not reporting the accident. According to town of Ulster Police, a piece of plastic torn from Gilsinger’s truck, and eyewitness reports, helped authorities track down the perpetrator. Police say Gilsinger was driving a dark blue 1990 Dodge Dakota the evening of April 12 when the vehicle struck Shultis as he rode his bike near the Hess gas station on Route 28 in Ulster. The pickup left without stopping. Shultis was pronounced dead a short time later at Benedictine Hospital in Kingston.
An anonymous tip from a caller who read about the accident, complete with vehicle description, led police to Gilsinger. Police found the vehicle, a 1990 Dakota, outside Gilsinger’s home and located Gilsinger, a general contractor, at a job site in Olive, where he was taken into custody and later was arraigned.

Sheriff’s Race…
With Ulster County Sheriff J. Richard Bockelmann’s recent announcement that he will not seek another term, ending a 36-year career in law enforcement, the sole announced candidate in November’s election for his position is Shandaken-based Sheriff’s Deputy, Sgt. Paul Van Blarcum, the Democratic candidate for sheriff.
Van Blarcum has been blaming the sheriff for involvement in cost overruns and a two-year delay in opening the Ulster County Law Enforcement Center, but Bockelmann, 55, said that criticism played no role in his decision not to seek-election.
Van Blarcum ran for sheriff eight years ago, losing to Bockelmann.
News reports have opined that Republicans are thinking of running State Police Lt. Kevin Costello against Van Blarcum.

UPAC Bardavon!
The Ulster Performing Arts Center's (UPAC) board of directors in conjunction with the Bardavon's board of directors,have announced their intention to enter a management agreement between the two historic theaters.The specifics of the agreement are being finalized and officials at both UPAC and the Bardavon are confident that the plan to collaborate is in the best interests of both theaters and that the final management agreement will be signed in time for an effective May 1 date. The Bardavon will assume all day to day operational activities at UPAC including programming of shows at the historic 1500 seat Broadway Theater.
The decision to enter discussions between the theaters began several months ago. An operational assessment study commissioned by UPAC and funded by the Dyson Foundation in 2005 concluded that given the pervading economic challenges facing many nonprofit arts groups, a collaboration or mergerbetween arts organizations was a logical and beneficial strategy. After several months of study and due diligence officials from both theaters have determined that a management agreement combining resources in order to develop audiences is in the best interest of the performing arts in Ulster and Dutchess counties.
During this transition, the UPAC staff will continue to work under the Bardavon's management team. UPAC members will continue to get their benefits for all shows brought to UPAC by the Bardavon. At present the Bardavon has booked at UPAC: Natalie Merchant, Pete Seeger, Jay Ungar & Molly Mason in a Benefit for Bill Vanaver on May 21, Pat Benatar on June 18, John Hiatt and the North Mississippi All-Stars on July 16 and they will open the Hudson Valley Philharmonic's 2006-07 symphony season with an All Mozart concert at UPAC on Oct 7. The Bardavon has also booked a series of daytime performances at UPAC which will be offered to students in all Ulster County school districts. The Bardavon is actively working to book other major headliners into UPAC for the 2006-07season.

Men & Sex
Around the world, middle-aged and elderly men tend to be more satisfied with their sex lives than women in the same age group, a new survey says. Substantial majorities of people who are married or who have a partner remain sexually active throughout the second half of their lives, according to a survey of 27,500 people aged 40 to 80 in 29 countries.
“There was very little effect of age on sexual well-being,” though other factors such as health problems or depression had a substantial impact, said lead researcher Edward Laumann of the University of Chicago in a telephone interview.
The survey published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior looked at how they viewed their sex lives, their health, and their happiness. It found that a greater proportion of people in Europe, North America, and Australia, where men and women have more or less equal relations, enjoyed sex physically and emotionally. A smaller percentage of people reported satisfying sex lives in male-dominated cultures in poorer countries, the research showed. But the gender gap persisted around the world.
“There’s a systematic disparity between men and women, where men are on the average substantially — or about 10 points — higher in their levels of satisfaction as women in that country,” he said.
“Pleasure is not part of the story” in sexually conservative cultures in the Far East — China, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, Laumann said. “Procreation is the rationale for sex. Many women ... characterize sex as dirty, as a duty, something they endure” — and often stop having it after age 50.
But roughly two-thirds of adults in Western nations reported their sex lives were very to extremely satisfying — though some countries appeared happier than others. Roughly four out of five middle-aged to older Austrians, for instance, rated their sex lives highly, while considerably fewer adults in France and Sweden shared that sentiment. In the United States, about three-quarters of men and two-thirds of women reported they were very satisfied with the physical and emotional aspects of their sex lives.

Hang It Up!
The use of mobile phones over a long period of time can raise the risk of brain tumors, according to a study by the Swedish National Institute for Working Life, which looked at mobile phone use of 2,200 cancer patients and an equal number of healthy control cases.
Of the cancer patients, aged between 20 and 80, 905 had a malignant brain tumor and about a tenth of them were also heavy users of mobile phones.
“Of these 905 cases, 85 were so-called high users of mobile phones, that is they began early to use mobile and/or wireless telephones and used them a lot,” said the authors of the study in a statement issued by the Institute.
Published in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, the study defines heavy use as 2,000 plus hours, which “corresponds to 10 years’ use in the work place for one hour per day.”
There was also shown to be a marked increase in the risk of tumor on the side of the head where the telephone was generally used, said the study, which took into account factors such as smoking habits, working history and exposure to other agents.
He said his study was the biggest yet to look at long-term users of the wireless phone, which has been around in Sweden in a portable form since 1984, longer than in many other countries.

Wal Mart Health?
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., at the center of debate over corporate responsibility for health care, offered recently to use its cost-cutting expertise to help make the health care system more efficient. The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer, the largest private sector employer in the world, has added a lower-priced health care plan for employees that it is offering as a prototype for the U.S. Government.
Wal-Mart said health care is a national problem and required a joint effort from government, corporations and workers to find ways to make the system more efficient. The retailer said the key is to figure out what is driving up health care costs — just as Wal-Mart does with its vaunted supply chain network — and then wring inefficiencies out of the system.
Wal-Mart tracks expenses so closely that cardboard boxes at its distribution centers bear a message reminding employees that each box costs the company 75 cents.
The retailer offered up its information technology expertise to help develop a system for keeping electronic medical records as another means of reducing costs. Wal-Mart also said that lessons could be learned from health clinics it is opening in dozens of stores around the country, many of which serve uninsured patients who would otherwise go to the emergency room — a major drain on health care resources.

GOP Platform…
Protection of marriage amendment? Check. Anti-flag burning legislation? Check. New abortion limits? Check.
Between now and the November elections, Republicans are penciling in plans to take action on social issues important to religious conservatives, the foundation of the GOP base, as they defend their congressional majority.
In a year where an unpopular war in Iraq has helped drive President Bush’s approval ratings below 40 percent, core conservatives whose turnout in November is vital to the party want assurances that they are not being taken for granted.
“It seems like for only six months, every two years - right around election time - that we’re even noticed,” said Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council. “Some of these better pass.You notice when it’s just lip service being paid.”
In answer, the House has approved an amendment to the Constitution to outlaw flag burning and passed a bill to crack down on the practice of minors’ crossing state lines for abortions to evade legal limits in their own states. And Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a possible presidential candidate in 2008, announced early this year that the Senate would consider those and the anti-gay marriage amendment that has failed in both chambers despite Bush’s endorsement.
House Republican officials close to the scheduling process said the marriage amendment is headed for a House vote in July. An amendment banning flag desecration is also set to come up in June.

Gas Prices!!!
With the average U.S. retail price of gasoline surging about a dime a day over the past few days before we went to press, we checked on Sunday what the best prices locally would be. But much of the information we culled, it turned out, was already obsolete by Monday noon.
The oil industry has been saying that its pump prices reflect higher crude oil costs as well as regulatory ethanol-blending requirements. Yet there has been growing talk of hitting the major oil companies, which have boasted record profits in the last year, with a windfall surplus tax to force them to rein in what they are doing.
On a national basis as of last Friday, San Diego had the highest average price for self-serve regular gas at $3.12 a gallon,, while the lowest price was $2.54 a gallon in Boise, Idaho. But that was before another 10 cent hike over the weekend, with more expected in the coming weeks.
Regular unleaded is up over 75 cents or 35 percent from a year ago. Still, it is shy of the all-time high reached last September, in the aftermath of Gulf of Mexico storms that disrupted oil and gasoline production.
Locally, Country Store in Phoenicia had medium grade at $3.059, Sunoco in Boiceville had regular at $2.989, Shokan Mobil had super at $3.149, Hunter Gulf was at $3.129 for regular, Woodstock Gulf was at $3.049 for regular, Tannersville Citgo was at $3.059, as was West Hurley Getty. The lowest price in the area was a Citgo in Kingston at the corner of Sawkill Road and Washington, going for $2.859.
Deb Whitaker, the manager of the Phoenicia Country Store, says the high prices are hurting other sales.
”People are spending more on gas, and less on things in the store.” she said, adding that even though people spend more on gas, they are buying less gas. As a result gas deliveries have been cut back. ”We haven’t had a truck here since Thursday.”