New Emerson
On Wednesday, May 11, Emerson Place founder and Managing Partner Dean Gitter was set to give a press conference at the former Legends and Deanies restaurant/nightclub at the junction of Routes 212 and 375 in Woodstock announcing a new, temporary restaurant venture that would keep at least half of the 52 employees of the Emerson Inn working, including newly hired chef Michel Nischan, a James Beard award winning author and television personality who has appeared on the Food network and “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
The Emerson Inn was destroyed by an early morning fire on April 25 that is currently under investigation by the Ulster County Arson Task Force and other entities. Gitter and other Emerson Place principals have already begun talking about creating plans for rebuilding the award-winning Inn, a project that could take years. The recreation of the Emerson Inn in Woodstock, for dining purposes unless Gitter and company can wind their way through the town’s stringent zoning requirements, has been labeled by the company as an “aggressive plan with which most positions lost to the fire will be retained.”
On Monday, May 2, Emerson Place’s CEO and President, Ted Wright, quietly resigned his positions, along with his assistant, with no formal announcement. Nischan has since been named The Emerson Inn’s new General Manager.
“Clearly, after losing our signature property to a devastating fire, Emerson Place no longer has a need for a world-class hospitality veteran like Ted and, he understands that,” Gitter wrote in an e-mail this week, when asked about Wright’s departure. “However, we are pleased that Ted will continue to play a role as we move forward with plans for the Belleayre Resort and its two hotels.”
Under another of his companies, Crossroads Ventures, Gitter is currently enmeshed in the long-term process of trying to win approvals for his controversial multi-million dollar Belleayre Resort plans, which would see the building of two hotels and golf courses in the Big Indian/Highmount area. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is currently awaiting word from an administrative law judge as to what environmental issues may need trial-like adjudication before the state permitting process can continue. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection, meanwhile, has already gone on record saying that it will not grant permits to the proposal as presently drafted.
In a separate development (see story) one of Crossroads’ original partners, Fleischmanns’ native Kenneth Pasternak, has recently been notified that he will be facing charges for financial hijinks on Wall Street.
Legends, located at the entrance to Woodstock, has had a checkered history of businesses in recent years, following years of stability as Deanies, one of the town’s leading establishments for decades. It was most recently run as a rave-oriented night club. The building is owned by Cyrus Adler, a New York attorney who also owns the Tinker Street Cinema.
Recent plans for the Legends location include Adlers’ plan to build a new Cineplex behind the restaurant/club, for which he’s already won zoning changes. Before moving to the Catskills, Gitter was involved with Cambridge, MA’s famed Orson Welles Cinema, one of the nation’s first repertory movie houses.
Before this new move to Woodstock, Gitter long touted his intentions to keep his entrepreneurial activities within the town of Shandaken. Several people commented on the new move by bringing up the many establishments that are closed or for sale in the Phoenicia area at present, from the Woodland Valley Inn and former Val D’Isere to the former Auberge des Quatres Saisons, Pierre & Yvettes, and Phoenicia Hotel.
All Emerson Place employees were called together for an announcement about the new Woodstock venture at the old Riseley conference center building on the Emerson Place compound in Mount Pleasant on Tuesday afternoon, May 11.
In separate business, Shandaken Police announced recently that they had arrested one Robert J Perry Jr.m age 29 of Kingston, after receiving a 911 call for a dumpster fire behind the Catskill Kaleidoscope on Route 28 Phoenicia at about 11:O5 pm Thursday evening, May 5. Police stated that the arson was called in to 911 after Perry allegedly found the dumpster on fire. Following a police investigation, the fire was determined to have been started by Perry, a security employee hired to keep an eye on the nearby Emerson. Perry was charged with Arson 5th degree, a class A Misdemeanor and issued an appearance ticket to appear in the Town of Shandaken Court. Further charges are pending at this time.
Emerson Place Public Relations Office Paul Rakov said this week that a new security firm, Allstate Security out of Orange County, has been hired to watch the charred remains of the Inn, still under investigation.
Asked whether Wright and his assistant’s leaving had anything to do with reports that the two had been named in a new lawsuit filed against the Emerson in state Supreme Court last week, Rakov replied with a simple, “It doesn’t.”

Cops To Stay...
The state’s top court has ruled that New York City watershed police have the authority to issue traffic tickets in the city’s nine-county watershed area.
According to Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the City’s Department of Environmental Protection, the decision came down from the State Court of Appeals this week on the DEP Police jurisdiction case.
“I think it was a 4-3 vote… the DEP Police get to keep their jobs,” he said.
In 2003, a local judge in Delaware County threw out speeding tickets issued by officers of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection. The case was upheld by Delaware County Court, but the county district attorney’s office has appealed the issue to the state Court of Appeals.
The case began in January 2003, when city DEP officers, in separate incidents, issued speeding tickets in the Delaware County town of Hamden. Hamden Town Justice Duane Merrill dismissed the tickets, and when the district attorney’s office appealed, Delaware County Judge Carl Becker ruled that DEP police have no jurisdiction in Delaware County. Merrill cited the "colonial nature of the relationship" between the city-controlled police force and watershed communities that he said threatens the sovereignty of those communities.
Merrill also said the only legal authority that DEP police have comes from a 1906 law giving them authority to protect the inhabitants of the area during the construction of watershed reservoirs.

OCS Fights
An Onteora high school student allegedly beat another student unconscious earlier this month. After punching his victim in the face several times and knocking him down, the attacker reportedly kicked him in the face, splitting the boy’s lip and breaking his teeth. An ambulance brought the victimized teenager, an eighth grader, to the hospital where he was treated for having a concussion. The fight was over fallout from an alleged drug deal.
This extreme incident, said to have occurred right in the hallway at the victims locker, has people talking, but according to Onteora’s Superintendent of Schools, Justine Winters, fights are more the exception than the rule when it comes daily life at the junior senior high school.
Describing the facility as “very safe,” Winters said privacy laws prevent her from discussing specific cases. She did admit that there have been cases, although no more so than any other school district she has been involved with.
On Tuesday the victim’s mother, speaking on the condition of anonymity, was trying to get word on the results of a disciplinary hearing that she believed took place Monday. She hopes the school district decides to suspend the attacker because now her son is afraid to go to school. But she fears the punishment may not be a long one, as the district would still be required to provide the boy with an education, which could be costly.
Winters said Tuesday she could not confirm whether a fight or a hearing had taken place, but did say the School district had the ability to suspend students “for immense amounts of time.”
A few weeks ago, according to sources, a high school girl allegedly slashed another girl with a broken Snapple bottle.

Our Jail Saga…
The County Legislature oversight committee has endorsed spending $4.78 million for claims and management and architect’s fees for the much-delayed Ulster County Law Enforcement Center… by a one vote margin. The monies, which now need to be approved by the full Legislature on May 12, would bring the cost of the controversial jail project to $84.58 million, almost $13 million higher than its original budget. Minority Democrats objected less to paying more money to construction management firm Bovis Lend Lease, architect Crandell Associates and project labor agreement consultants Hill International for construction costs, which they have characterized as unending… and a boondoggle.
The Law Enforcement Center is a year-and-a-half behind schedule with a current completion date targeted for Sept. 21, 2005.
“The good news, if there’s any good news in this disaster, is that it looks like it may actually be completed,” said Minority Leader David Donaldson, D-Kingston.
Because the county will have to borrow the money it is trying to authorize, a favorable vote by a two-thirds majority of the Legislature, or 22 of the 33 members, will be required for the measure to pass on Thursday.

Bad Boy
A principal financial backer of a proposed golf resort in town is facing charges leveled against him last month by the world's leading private-sector provider of financial regulatory services, the NASD, which charged Kenneth Pasternak, former CEO of Knight Securities, L.P., and John Leighton, former head of the firm's Institutional Sales Desk, with supervisory violations in connection with fraudulent sales to institutional customers in 1999 and 2000.
Pasternak, a much touted financial backer of the controversial Belleayre Resort at Catskill Park who spent his boyhood in nearby Fleischmanns, is charged with failing to supervise Leighton's brother and failing to establish and enforce a system designed to ensure compliance with federal securities laws and NASD rules. NASD's investigation of Leighton's brother is continuing.
From January 1999 to September 2000, Leighton's brother was responsible for generating nearly $135 million in trading profits for Knight - or approximately 30 percent of the trading profits of Knight's entire Institutional Sales Desk. NASD's complaint calls the magnitude of the profits generated by Leighton's brother - both in absolute terms and in profit per share - "extraordinary."
Pasternak was the Chief Executive Officer of Knight and John Leighton's supervisor. Pasternak was also the designated supervisor of the firm's Institutional Sales Desk in John Leighton's absence. NASD's complaint alleges that Pasternak was responsible for the deficient supervisory structure by assigning John Leighton to supervise his brother's trading while at the same time approving their unique profit-sharing arrangement. Pasternak also failed to have the firm adopt any supervisory procedures or systems that would address the conflict inherent in this unusually suspect arrangement and the deficient supervisory structure he approved.
NASD's complaint alleges that although Pasternak knew that John Leighton assigned most of Knight's largest institutional customer accounts to his brother, and knew that Leighton's brother generated an inordinate amount of profits for Knight in absolute terms and a grossly disproportionate amount of the profits of the firm's Institutional Sales Desk, Pasternak did not take reasonable steps to determine whether John Leighton was monitoring or reviewing his brother's trading, did not review or monitor the trading himself, and did not assign anyone else to do so. Neither John Leighton nor Pasternak questioned the extraordinary profits or took any steps to see how Leighton's brother was making them.
"In this case, it is inconceivable that fraudulent trading of this magnitude could go on for so long and generate such an exorbitant amount of excess profits and escape detection by the firm's supervisory systems and the supervisors themselves," said NASD Vice Chairman Mary L. Schapiro. "Supervisors are obligated to take appropriate steps to ensure that persons acting under their supervision comply with securities law and regulations, and we will not hesitate to take action against supervisors who fail to fulfill that responsibility," she said.
In December 2004, Knight paid $79 million to settle NASD and Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it had defrauded institutional customers through the fraudulent and deceptive conduct of its leading institutional sales trader, who was John Leighton's brother. That sanction included $25 million in fines and a payment of $54 million in ill-gotten profits and interest into a Fair Fund established by the SEC for compensating harmed investors.

Thruway Tolls
On April 25, the NYS Thruway Authority board of directors voted to approve its first toll increase since 1988. The increases will enable a seven-year, $2.6 billion capital maintenance plan that includes higher speed E-Z Pass lanes. The increased tolls, which take the form of a 25 percent hike for passenger vehicles and 35 percent jump for commercial traffic, rounded off to the nearest nickel, will take effect at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday, May 15.
The Thruway Authority has said that motorists can drop their average increases by enrolling in the E-Z Pass program and other volume discount plans.
Under the new rates, the current $1.60 toll between Kingston and Albany will increase to $2, but only $1.80 for E-Z Pass users. For subscribers to a commuter plan, the toll will be 72 cents.
The Thruway Authority’s last proposal to increase tolls, in January of 2000, met with stiff public opposition, lacked support from either governor George Pataki or the state legislature and was withdrawn a month later. This time, the response was substantially more muted. Characterizing the Thruway as the “safest, most reliable highway in America,” a Pataki spokesman said. “The additional investments being made will allow the Thruway Authority to continue to maintain and improve safety and reliability along this critical travel corridor.”
The Thruway Authority plans to rehabilitate more than 500 “lane miles” of roadway and 220 bridges, and construct 43 new E-Z Pass lanes over the next seven years. Allocations in the Hudson Valley region include $102 million for the reconstruction of the Thruway’s intersection with Route 17, and $35.7 million to complete the new exchange with I-84, scheduled to open in 2006.

We’re A BioGem!
The National Resources Defense Council has placed the Catskill State Park and Forest Preserve on its watch list of BioGems needing protection. The watch list, which spreads awareness and can generate thousands of responses, calls for letters to NYS Governor George Pataki opposing Dean Gitter’s proposed Belleayre Resort, currently awaiting a DEC judge’s determination whether its issues need formal adjudication.
Every year, NRDC names 12 BioGems — unspoiled wildlands in the Americas threatened by development — and mobilizes citizens to take direct action to protect them.
NRDC BioGems Defenders now number more than 500,000 and in the four years following the campaign’s launch in January 2001 sent 5.1 million messages to corporations and government officials calling for wildland protections. At the start of 2005, two new BioGems were named in Mexico’s Upper Gulf of California, as well as on Chile’s Patagonia Coast. They, and the Catskills’ resort situation, join 10 BioGems designated previously, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, Canada’s Heart of the Boreal Forest, and Peru’s Tahuamanú Rainforest.

More Gambling
The New York State Court of Appeals has ruled that Indian-owned casinos are legal, opening up new discussion of a $500 million casino proposed for the 1994 Woodstock Festival anniversary concert site in Saugerties at the same time that a concurrent US Supreme Court ruling has jeopardized plans for casinos in the Route 209 and 17 corridors of Sullivan County and lower Ulster County, and brought back into focus a county deal of two years ago.
Three weeks ago, Governor George Pataki withdrew pending legislation negotiated to allow five Indian-run casinos in the Catskills after weeks of contentious public hearings in Albany. Todd Alhart, a spokesperson for the governor, said recently that Pataki remains committed to the casino proposals but wants to revise them in light of the March 29 U.S. Supreme Court decision, and the coalition of anti-gambling interests whose lawsuit was overturned in state court takes his appeals to Washington.
Behind the high court’s interests in the New York cases is the transferability of tribal sovereignty to other lands for casino purposes, which is only occurring in our state.
The proposed Winston Farm casino across from the Saugerties Thruway exit would include a golf course and other non-casino development on the 840-acre property.
The Seneca-Cayuga chief tribe seeking to build the casino resort has no specific claim to the Saugerties’ land or to Ulster County and would need an act of U.S.Congress, in addition to state legislation, approving the creation of trust lands to enable an out-of-state Indian tribe to create a sovereign parcel.
Within the coming weeks, the governor expects to have proposed legislation back on the table to permit five additional Native American-owned casinos in New York, requiring the approval of both the state legislature and Congress. The legislation would settle land claims with the Seneca-Cayugas, the New York Cayugas, the Stockbridge Munsee Community from Wisconsin, the Oneidas of Wisconsin and the Akwesasne Mohawks.

Badly Evolved
A six-day courtroom-style debate in Kansas is trying to decide what children should be taught in schools about the origin of life — was it natural evolution or did God create the world? The hearings, complete with opposing attorneys and a long list of witnesses, were arranged amid efforts by some Christian groups in Kansas and nationally to reverse the domination of evolutionary theory in the nation’s schools.
“Part of our overall goal is to remove the bias against religion that is currently in schools,” said the leading group who have forced the hearings, which are trying to convince state education officials to change guidelines for how evolution theory is taught in science classes at a time when Kansas education authorities are producing new science teaching guidelines.
The hearings — organized by a committee of the Kansas Board of Education — were taking place 80 years after the so-called “Monkey Trial” of John Scopes, a Tennessee biology teacher who was found guilty of illegally teaching evolution. There is renewed debate over evolution in more than a dozen U.S. states and a resurgence across the nation in the influence of religious conservatives, who played an important part in the reelection of Republican President Bush last year.
Scientists have refused to participate in the hearings this past week on how the theory of evolution should be treated in public schools, but they haven’t exactly been silent. Scientists said they don’t see the need to cram their arguments into a few days of testimony, like out-of-state witnesses who were called by advocates of the ‘’intelligent design’’ theory. In 1999, the Kansas board deleted most references to evolution in its science standards.

NPR Attacked
Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Kenneth Tomlinson, former editor of Readers’ Digest, has started working towards changing public television and radio to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting public broadcasting leaders and others in the media to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence. At the same time, the contract for corporation’s chief executive Kathleen A Cox has not been renewed, and Tomlinson has said that he wants to replace her with Asst Secretary of State Patricia Harrison, former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee.
Without knowledge of his board, Tomlinson contracted last year with outside consultants to keep track of guests’ political leanings on the program Now With Bill Moyers; he also encouraged corporation and public broadcasting officials to broadcast The Journal Editorial Report, a Fox-like talk show, and repeatedly criticized public television programs as too liberal overall, while simultaneously denying trying to remove or tamper internally with existing shows,
PBS president and chief executive Pat Mitchell is now challenging Tomlinson publicly, disputing accusations of bias and criticizing some of his actions. She plans to step down when her contract expires next year.

Stocks To Drop?
For tens of millions of baby boomers and younger workers, the basic long-range financial plan is simple: accumulate stocks and bonds while working, then slowly sell them off to keep up a comfortable lifestyle in retirement. Not so fast, say a growing number of analysts these days, who have begun warning that a flood of boomer retirees with trillions of dollars of assets to sell over the next 20 to 40 years threatens to crush stock and bond prices. New belief is that it will take a massive investment in U.S. stocks by people in India, China and other developing countries to prevent a market meltdown.
The ratio of working-age people to retirees will decline over the next 30 years to an estimated 2.6 to 1 from 4.9 to 1 today. Simple supply-and-demand economics suggests that as retirees dump their holdings into a thin market, stock prices could plummet.

Mean Lil Girls
Meanness in girls can start when they still are toddlers, a new study which notes that girls as young as 3 or 4 will use manipulation and peer pressure to get what they want has found, pointing to behaviors ranging from regularly excluding others to threatening to withdraw friendship when they don’t get their way. The report found that the “mean girls” are highly liked by some and strongly disliked by others. They are socially skilled and popular but can be manipulative and subversive if necessary. They are feared as well as respected.
The study is the first to link relational aggression and social status in preschoolers. It appears in the current issue of the journal Early Education and Development. The research has found that about 17 percent to 20 percent of preschool and school-age girls display such “mean” behavior. It also shows up in boys, but much less frequently.
“The typical mantra is that boys are more aggressive than girls, but in the last decade we’ve learned that girls can be just as aggressive as boys, just in different ways,” the report says.There is also evidence that shows that physically and relationally aggressive children are more likely to have parents who discipline with psychological control and manipulation, withdrawing love, avoiding eye contact and laying guilt trips on the kids.

No Winners…
The U.S. military may not be able to win any new wars as quickly as planned because the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have strained its manpower and resources, the nation’s top military officer told Congress in a classified report recently. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the U.S. military as in a period of increased risk. “We will prevail,’’ Myers said when asked about the report. “The timelines (to winning a new war) may have to be extended and we may have to use additional resources, but that doesn’t matter because we’re going to be successful in the end.’’
Myers predicted the risk would go down in a year or two. Still, the report says the U.S. military is able to win any conflict it becomes involved in, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. “We are at war and that level of operations does have some impact on troops,’’ White House spokesman Trent Duffy said. “But the president continues to be confident, as well as his military commanders, that we can meet any threat decisively.’’
Among the most likely conflicts the Pentagon foresees in the near term, the report says, are with North Korea and Iran, the two remaining members of President Bush’s “axis of evil.’’ The Bush administration accuses both of having ambitions to become a nuclear power; North Korea has already claimed it has nuclear weapons. The U.S. military has timelines in place for defeating its potential adversaries, given enough soldiers, tanks, aircraft and warships to do the job. But with so much of those resources tied up fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, those timelines could slip, Myers said, according to the defense official.

Housing Fall…
Omens are gathering that the real estate boom is close to its end, with market pundits starting to draw parallels between the ongoing boom and the NASDAQ market rally of the late 1990s. New reports are finding that those who might be interested in selling their homes are increasingly hesitant to do so because they are not sure they can find an equivalent property to purchase at a price they can afford (even taking into account the unbelievable price appreciation in their own property). The problem is not simply that price appreciation has distorted the basic buying and selling motivations of the market; the market is so overbought that traditional courtesies that facilitate transactions (such as allowing a property sale to be contingent on the seller finding a new home) have disappeared altogether.
As a result, a growing number of analysts are starting to predict that the market will effectively freeze up for a year before prices start to tumble and the collapse in value ultimately accelerates. Given the current state of the real estate, housing, and mortgage markets in the United States, they suggest that any stabilization or decline in prices could prove catastrophic, virtually eliminating the net worth of the average American household. An overwhelming number of Americans have very few other assets beyond their home. And a majority of US banks currently base a large amount of their assets on continuing real estate appreciation. After all, real estate has been the only real source of loan growth for the financial industry. Commercial and industrial loans, the traditional mainstay credit products for corporate America, have stagnated for the past five years. The question, analysts conclude, is not whether the United States can avoid a recession when the housing bubble collapses, but whether the downturn will result in a recession or an actual depression.

Gore’s Right
Al Gore may have been lampooned for taking credit in the Internet’s development, but organizers of the Webby Awards for online achievements don’t find it funny at all. In part to ‘’set the record straight,’’ they will give Gore a lifetime achievement award for three decades of contributions to the Internet, said Tiffany Shlain, the awards’ founder and chairwoman. ‘’It’s just one of those instances someone did amazing work for three decades as congressman, senator and vice president and it got spun around into this political mess,’’ Shlain said. Vint Cerf, undisputedly one of the Internet’s key inventors, will give Gore the award at a June 6 ceremony in New York. ‘’He is indeed due some thanks and consideration for his early contributions,’’ Cerf said.
Gore, who boasted in a CNN interview he ‘’took the initiative in creating the Internet,’’ was only 21 when the Internet was born out of a Pentagon project. But after joining Congress eight years later, he promoted high-speed telecommunications for economic growth and supported funding increases for the then-fledging network, according to the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which presents the annual awards. He popularized the term ‘’information superhighway’’ as vice president.

Who Knew?
A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain’s just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy. The document, which summarizes a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair with his top security advisers, reports on a visit to Washington by the head of Britain’s MI-6 intelligence service that took place while the Bush administration was still declaring to the American public that no decision had been made to go to war.
“There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable,” the MI-6 chief said at the meeting, according to the memo. “Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD,” weapons of mass destruction. The memo added “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. The White House has repeatedly denied accusations made by several top foreign officials that it manipulated intelligence estimates to justify an invasion of Iraq.
The newly disclosed memo, which was first reported by the Sunday Times of London, hasn’t been disavowed by the British government. A former senior U.S. official called it “an absolutely accurate description of what transpired” during the senior British intelligence officer’s visit to Washington. He spoke on condition of anonymity. A White House official said the administration wouldn’t comment on leaked British documents.