Water Rate Hike!
Phoenicia Water District ratepayers should expect a $30 to $40 hike in their annual water bills for the next five years. On Thursday the Shandaken Town Board met in special session to float a $55,000 bond at 3.8 percent interest. Officials say the bond will be paid off over a five-year period.
The money was needed to pay for work done on the $808,000 water filtration system installed last year.
“We knew there would be a shortfall,” said project engineer Dennis Larios, who was on hand at the meeting to explain how the project went over budget.
The session was called because contractors waiting for payment threatened legal action unless paid by August 15th. The bond, which about doubles water bills for the average residential user, is only the beginning. Another $150,000 is needed to make improvements to the system, and officials fear that may need to be bonded too.
At the August 1st town board meeting, Supervisor Robert Cross Jr. said $60,000 is needed to prepare plans for an additional filtration gallery. Water Commissioner Ric Ricciardella reminded Cross that another $35,000 is needed for a new generator as well. Also, Cross guessed it would take another $100,000 to actually build that new filtration gallery.
Cross said he was still hoping to obtain grant funds for the construction project but he admits it remains difficult. He said the town is still hoping for documentation from the Ulster County health Department about an e-coli hit of the water supply last year because that would provide substantial leverage in the effort to harness grant funds.
Last September the residents of Phoenicia got warning to not drink the water. The reason was that e-coli, a dangerous bacteria, was detected in the system. After several days of disinfection all was well, although the cause of the contamination was never determined. Now, according to Cross, the Ulster County Health Department is claiming there was never any e-coli contamination at all.
Officials have another issue that may help toward getting grant funds. A water source on High Street was damaged when heavy rains caused flooding in the hamlet last April. Larios was going to inspect the damage soon.

School Tax Hike!!
According to the latest figures presented by Onteora District Treasurer William Thornton at this past Tuesday’s School Board meeting, tax levies will go up 10.15 percent in Shandaken, 10.54 percent in Hurley, and 6.98 percent in Woodstock for the coming school year if, as expected, the current board elects not to re-implement the Large Parcel law tax equation for the coming year, while rates go down by 15.97 percent in Olive.
Should Large Parcel again be implemented, contrary to campaign pledges and public statements by four of the board’s seven members, Olive’s taxes would rise 9.66 percent for the coming school year, Hurley’s would go up 9.82 percent, Shandaken’s up 1.21 percent, and Woodstock’s would drop 1.70 percent.
The figures are based on a last-minute budget figure that includes last-minute revenue options that have yet to be okayed, and include either a 36.01% or 30.36% drop in the tax levy for those Marbletown taxpayers in the Onteora district, depending on whether Large Parcel is implemented or not, respectively; and either a 0.84 % or 9.74% hike in that portion of Lexington in the district, by the same equation.
The board has set aside next Monday, August 22 for a final public hearing and meeting on the subject, at which point they will vote to either implement, not implement, or make no decision on the Large Parcel law. The meeting will start at 7 p.m. at the High School cafeteria in Boiceville.
Public comments on the issue included statements from three Olive and three Woodstock board members, plus the Ulster County Legislature’s Majority Leader, Mike Stock, who said there is a strong likelihood the issue will be brought back to life on a county level before November, given that at least one legislature who voted against LP’s legislation last week is likely to request a re-vote.
Before the actual public hearing portion of the evening, which was kept to a shorter timetable than two weeks ago by Board President Dave Patterson, new trustee Maryjane Bernholz of Olive noted that the way in which Thornton had presented the budget figures and tax levy percentages seemed to place all responsibility for rises and drops on the Large Parcel issue, skewing the public’s perception away from the other variables involved in such matters.
Commentary included:
Olive councilman Bruce LaMonda noting that the Large Parcel bill was “totally discriminatory to small communities.
Olive supervisor Berndt Leifeld pointing out all that his town had done to avert tax inequities since he last he came before the school board two years before and asking that the board “please put this issue to rest for this year to let Olive do what it has to do.”
Woodstock Taxpayers’ Association organizer and former school board member Sam Mercer asking for equity, and the law’s reinstatement.
Woodstock supervisor Jeremy Wilber reminding the board of the dangers of flip-flopping on previous board decisions (“Will we be teaching Intelligent Design one year and not the next?), while asking for more board meetings in Woodstock (“After all, we do pay 35 percent of your school taxes.”
Before dropping his bombshell about re-introducing the Large Parcel issue in the county legislature, Stock suggested that if people really took issue with thelaw, “We should all take it to Albany.”
John Tisch asked what Woodstock would do if 8,042 of its acreage was submerged in a reservoir, then warned about the upcoming issue of a proposed Boiceville community septic system which “We would be paying for while all the rest of the district would be benefiting.”
Woodstock Councilman Gordon Wemp countered a Tisch assertion that the May board election served as a mandate, noting that it was the crowded field of candidates that was key to the new majority’s win.
Former board member John Hurld suggested the district should become its own taxing entity, with one tax equation for all in the district.
Woodstock Councilwoman Liz Simonson asked the board to look at a full history of tax payments and then figure out its long-term goal for such matters.
Olive Councilwoman Linda Burkhardt said that how Olive pays its tax bills is Olive’s business, and countered previous claims that the entire Large Parcel issue had been triggered by the town’s over-assessment of New York City’s Ashokan Reservoir property.
In other school business Tuesday night, the district’s new Transportation Supervisor, Maureen Stancage (formerly a dispatcher in the New Paltz school district) asked that she be given ample time to meet the demands of a new transportation safety audit requested by new trustee Cindy O’Connor and approved unanimously. She’d only been on the board six days, she noted, and needed time to get her systems up and running before tackling such an endeavor.
Similarly, an O’Connor request for a monthly Internal Claims Audit by new district auditor Monica Kim was countered by Superintendent Justine Winters, who pointed out that Kim had worked only two half days on the job so far and also needed time to adjust. O’Connor changed her request so that the board would get its first audit report in October.

Cell Questions
The Attorney for the town of Shandaken has reviewed a proposed lease to allow Masterpage Communications Inc. to build a 140 cell on the town’s property at Glenbrook Park.
Kingston based Attorney Paul Kellar examined the details of the 4 page lease after the town board agreed on August 1st to begin negotiating with Masterpage.
Councilman Paul VanBlarcum, who opposed making a deal with Masterpage until other companies talked to the board about a potential deal, released a copy of the lease and Kellar’s remarks and indicated that it appears the Lawyer sees many flaws.
“His comments were almost as long as the lease,” VanBlarcum said.
Kellar, who notes the lease cannot be signed until the period for a permissive referendum has passed and no petition has been filed, identifies elements in the lease such as the town agreeing to a 50 year term. “In my view this is far too long,” he wrote.”…I suggest a five year term with several five year renewal options.”
In contrast, Masterpage could have the option to terminate the agreement each year. Kellar recommends the town have the right to terminate, as Shandaken may one day have other uses fro the property.
He also questions language that would give Masterpage the right put up more than one facility, as well as other incidental appurtances.
“Lets be specific and find out exactly what they need and not leave the door open,” Kellar wrote.
The lease also allows Masterpage to leave their equipment on the site with little repercussion if they terminate the agreement. “What penalties, if any, should be imposed if they fail to remove the equipment within 180 days? As presently drafted, they would simply have to pay rent,” Kellar said. He added that the lease should include a requirement for Masterpage to remove the tower if they don’t pay rent and a requirement to make Masterpage maintain the tower in good condition by keeping it painted and inspected annually. The draft Kellar reviewed contains none of these.
The lease also allows Masterpage to take the site over rent free until they build the tower and acquire clients for co-location on it.
“I have never seen a lease agreement which allows the tenant to control the date when rental payments begin,” said Kellar.
Kellar thinks the entire basis for rental payments needs to be reexamined. Right now the lease calls for Masterpage to pay twenty five percent of revenue generated by the facility. Kellar said its not clear if this particular tower will generate any revenue by itself, and he also wonders if Masterpage would give co-locators sweetheart deals on the tower in exchange for paying higher revenues on a different tower. There is still not even an indication as to what kind of revenues the town should expect or any mention of guaranteed increases.
“Does New York Telephone generate income from a single telephone pole?” Kellar added.
Supervisor Robert Cross Jr., who is handling the lease negotiations for the town, could not be reached for comment

Casino News…
House of Representatives Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif, warned recently that a new series of proposed deals New York wants to make with Indian tribes might not pass muster – another sign Congress might move to curb off-reservation casinos in the Catskills. Gov. George Pataki has been negotiating with a number of tribes to settle land-claim conflicts, in part by offering lucrative casino development on non-Indian land in the Catskills. Pombo has been circulating draft legislation that bars tribes from establishing off-reservation gaming except in specified development zones where several tribes could build casinos in one area. Such a law could kill the deals Pataki is seeking, already stressed by adverse Supreme Court rulings and dissension from his own Senate majority leader in Albany.
Meanwhile, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs has said that it will mediate a leadership dispute within the Cayuga Nation stemming from their conflict over whether or not to build a $500 million casino at Monticello Raceway. The BIA had recognized Clint Halftown, who pulled the tribe out of a recent casino deal with the state, as the leader of the Cayugas.
A recent poll of residents in neighboring Sullivan County has found that 49.1 percent now say they favor Indian-run casinos in the Catskills, versus 36.4 percent opposed. Fourteen percent of those surveyed said they did not know or had no comment. Three years ago, a similar poll found 62.8 percent of residents favoring a casino and nearly 23 percent opposing the idea. In 1996, 61 percent favored having a casino.

Get Hitched
Shandaken now has an official Marriage Officer. Last week the town board agreed to bestow that title upon Supervisor Robert Cross Jr., who claims he “has a special request to perform a marriage ceremony.”
The appointment, which is only temporary and shouldn’t last much beyond Election Day, gives Cross the authority to marry anyone anywhere within town borders.
Cross wouldn’t say who asked for his help in tying the knot, but it’s someone he’s known since he was nine years old.

Trashy Departure
Charlie Shaw, the 16-year executive director of the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency who had cut his pay dramatically in recent years to help stem rising debts at the agency, recently announced that he is leaving his post to run an antiques business in Dutchess County, leaving his board to name Michael Bemis, the RRA’s director of operations and safety, as its acting executive director until the end of 2007.
RRA Board president Kevin Roberts said that because Ulster County is under a hiring freeze, Bemis will be kept on at his current salary of $70,846 per year for now, even though Shaw had been paid about $100,000 a year before taking a pay cut to $27,500 in January.
Shaw will receive $54,727 in severance pay over three years and receive 100 percent of his health insurance for the foreseeable future. The RRA budget was recently slashed from an Ulster County contribution of $2.93 million to $2.26 million for the coming year, still subject to county review and a mandated public hearing.

Thunderstorms!
Strong, fast-moving thunderstorms swept through the Mid-Hudson region Sunday evening felling trees, blowing leaves and other debris across roadways and knocking out power to just under 3,000 customers in Ulster, Dutchess and Greene counties.
The region suffered a number of power outages Sunday evening, April 14, with nearly 2,000 homes between Woodstock and Ellenville, many in the towns of Olive and Shandaken, losing service for a number of hours. In Dutchess County, 600 lost service, while in Greene County, 300 customers in Catskill experienced brief interruptions.
A particularly strong cold front produced more lightning than a typical storm and the weather service on Sunday night had received second-hand reports of structures being hit by lightning, as well as a power line snapped into a feeder stream for the Esopus Creek in Phoenicia.

Emerson News
The new Emerson at Woodstock, Shandaken developer Dean Gitter’s $100,000 plus renovation of Manhattan attorney and Tinker Street Cinema owner Cyrus Adler’s Legends property at the junction of state routes 212 and 375 in our neighboring town, is currently set to open its doors on Friday, August 26. The new restaurant, on the site of the former Deanies (among other configurations over the past quarter century), will then host a special benefit for the Woodstock Playhouse featuring actor/philanthropist Paul Newman on August 29.
According to Paul Rakov, public relations manager for Emerson Place, the Mt. Tremper-based conglomerate of stores, kaleidoscope attractions, lodge, restaurant and spa formerly known as Catskill Corners, the new Emerson at Woodstock will feature two separate restaurants: the causal “community feel” Ricks’ Bistro and more upscale Riseley Room.
The Emerson at Woodstock was first announced by Gitter in an employee-packed press conference in early May, less than a fortnight after the Emerson Inn was lost to an early morning fire on April 25.
According to Ken Blundell, chairman of the Ulster County Task Force, his outfit concluded its investigation of the blaze in late May, terming it “an undetermined fire… we couldn’t really establish how it started, only where.”
Blundell added that the fire is still under investigation by the Town of Shandaken police force, who have been administering lie detector tests to a list of suspects reported to have been given them by Gitter.
“We investigate on behalf of the county,” Blundell said. “The Department of State’s Office of Fire Protection oversee criminal investigations and insurance companies provide their own investigators.”
He noted that, “Unless an insurance company can find someone with a match in their hands, they pretty much have to pay the claim.”
At his May 11 press conference announcing his Emerson at Woodstock, which will operate under a two year lease, Gitter intimated that he considered the many environmental organizations who have sided against his concurrent proposal to build a double-golf course mega resort on Belleayre Mountain were among those who should be considered suspects. Among his announcement statements, Gitter noted that “incendiary rhetoric regarding the Bellayre Resort may have contributed to the disaster that befell us two weeks ago.”
He has since offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of someone involved in what he has repeatedly termed as arson.
Repeated calls to the Shandaken Police Department and its Officer-in-Charge, James McGrath, were not returned. McGrath was the 2001 Republican candidate for supervisor and is a close friend of Gitter.
Rakov refused to comment about the ongoing arson investigation when interviewed on several occasions this past week, and said the status of any insurance claims brought by Gitter and Emerson Place regarding the April fire were "still in process."
On the same morning of the fire, former Emerson Place CEO and President Ted Wright claimed fire damage at approximately $20 million, at first, but later noted that $7 million would represent the entity’s insurance claim. It was later announced, one week later on May 2, that Wright had volunteered to leave his position at the Emerson.
During the May press conference, Gitter and Rakov stressed that one of the main reasons for the quick decision to move the Emerson to Woodstock was as a means of keeping the restaurant’s 52-member staff in place. After a pair of heavily-advertised job fairs in June and July, Rakov said that much of that original staff is still in place, “with a lot of well-known faces from right here in Woodstock now.” He added that the Emerson’s previous reputation for having a largely European staff “was never true” and that a majority of the current employees are local residents.
As for the August 26 opening of the Emerson at Woodstock, plans are currently spotty. “There’ll be a ribbon cutting ceremony with some local dignitaries,” Rakov said. “We’ve been absolutely thrilled by the warm welcome Woodstock has given us to date.”
Gitter has said that he is as yet unsure where he will rebuild the Emerson Inn, and suggested it would likely be outside of Shandaken, despite longstanding promises that his entire Emerson Place concept was designed for the town’s economic benefit.
For further information on the new Emerson at Woodstock, keep checking the old Emerson Inn’s website at www.emersonplace.org or by calling 679-4861.

Farm Saved!
A Kerhonken family’s almost 300-acre farm on Route 209 will not be opened up to strip malls or housing subdivision development, now that a development rights option has been signed between the family that has owned it for generations and the New York-based Open Space Institute, allowing Arrowhead Farm to maintain its dairy operations.
The agreement gives the Open Space Institute a year and a half to come up with $1.6 million to purchase an agricultural easement from the state Department of Agriculture and Markets, a similar deal to ones it brokered for the Phillies Bridge Farm in Gardiner a couple of years ago, the Pauls Farm in Hurley, and Davenport Farm in Stone Ridge. OSI has also been instrumental in protection of Overlook Mountain in Woodstock and is a co-owner of property once pegged for a Catskills visitors’ center on Route 28 in Shandaken.
Arrowhead Farm has been raising dairy cows, growing hay and corn, and producing maple syrup since 1911.
OSI is currently in negotiations with several other Rondout Valley farmers and is open to other conservation easement propositions throughout the area to help stem encroaching development in the region..

Hippie Pause
The 36th annual Woodstock reunion, a private party with a price tag of $35 now that the “official site” of the 1969 megafestival is being privately developed into an arts park and multimillion dollar tourist destination, has become the center of a growing legal battle over heritage, history and generational change.
Roy Howard and Jeryl Abramson , owners of land once belonging to farmer Max Yasgur, who rented out his field to festival developer Michael Lang of Woodstock, is currently in court fighting charges from the surrounding Town of Bethel and Sullivan County, which had sent warnings to the couple to not celebrate the festival’s anniversary last weekend, following complaints (including two stabbings) throughout recent years.
The town and county claim the couple refused to meet the requirements of the permitting process, while the couple claims that the government has been making up rules as they go along.
Harold Russell, a neighbor and Town of Bethel councilman who is running for supervisor, meanwhile claims that the music killed a few of his cows and forced many of them to stop producing milk last year.
The festival site has long been a point of controversy, especially since an impromptu 1989 20th anniversary gathering drew 200,000 people and Lang threw reunion concerts drawings hundreds of thousands of younger concert goers to Saugerties in 1994 and Rome, NY in 1999. In 1991, chicken manure was dumped on the concert site to keep people away and in other years a separate “Freedom Fest” was organized near the site for the benefit of possible festival goers.
A group calling itself the Woodstock Preservation Alliance has fought developers to limit the size of the new Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, and pushed through a negotiated compromise to keep the actual field made famous in the 1970 film of the festival, Woodstock, free of future development.
Bethel Woods named a new director last year, David E. Carlucci, who managed Ohio’s popular Blossom Music Center and other venues before coming to New York to get the proposed 4800-seat pavilion – with lawn seating for 12,000 – up and running by next summer. Bethe Woods is being pegged as one of several homes for the New York Philharmonic, featuring an interpretative center/museum that recognizes the historic nature of the location, permanent outdoor event structures, parking and infrastructure.
Following years of trouble with architects (including some of the nation’s top talents), construction on the new state-of-the-art festival theater is expected to start in the coming weeks.
Cable television pioneer Alan Gerry of Libert, NY purchased the 37.4-acre location of the original festival in 1996. Funding for the $46 million project comes from the Gerry Foundation, with over $15 million in government support announced by Governor George Pataki, State Senator John J. Bonacic, Congressman Maurice D. Hinchey and the late Assemblyman Jake Gunther III.

Coalition Costs
The Coalition of watershed Towns spent about $12,000 on legal advice over a two-month period recently.
The Coalition, which has about $120,000 left after making the payments Monday, met in Margaretville to mull over various issues which, according to Executive Committee member Robert Cross Jr., included his concern that the City of New York’s Department of Environmental Protection was sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong: namely Shandaken town business. Cross, who is also the Supervisor of Shandaken, said he recently got a call from DEP’s legal staff asking to be an involved agency in the review of the towns comprehensive plan. Cross demanded proof that DEP had a right to participate, he said, and that proof never arrived. The plan was ultimately adopted with no input from DEP.
In other news, the Coalition worries that DEP may be looking for loopholes in the watershed agreement to buy land in the region previously believed to be off limits to the Big Apple.
The Coalition, which met Monday night In Margaretville, is a regional advocacy group that is largely responsible for that agreement being put together. The group was formed in the early 1990’s after NYC announced plans to introduce economy crippling land use regulations in the Catskills in an effort to protect the drinking water which flows from the region downstream to over 9 million people. The Coalition forced the City to the bargaining table, where a deal was hammered out to keep the water clean and the upstate economy healthy.
Part of the deal allows the City to acquire land in the Catskills to prevent development, but there rare restrictions on how they buy and what they buy, most notable is a clause preventing the City from purchasing non-vacant land.
Coalition Chair Pat Meehan said DEP just tried to buy a gas station in Prattsville until the town heard of the deal and complained. He said the problem is the city may feel they can buy it because it’s not a house. Apparently non-vacant may actually mean that the land must not contain a habitable dwelling.
With a concerned shrug he said, “Can you live in a gas station?”

ATV & Hunting
The comment period on a draft statewide all-terrain vehicle policy ended more than two months ago, but state Department of Environmental Conservation staffers continue to sort through letters and e-mails received on the issue. According to agency officials, the draft policy is not a new law for ATVs, but is clarifying what the current laws are governing ATV use and what criteria need to be considered for the natural impacts. Officials have said the policy would require agency employees to use due diligence in evaluating every opportunity for ATV use on a case-by-case basis. It has been further noted that no majority consensus is showing itself as to future policy decisions.
The state agency has already determined access by the recreational vehicles must conform with state vehicle and traffic law, the environmental conservation law, agency rules and regulations and Adirondack and Catskill state land master plans. Further, it must not encourage trespassing on private lands or degrade the environment. The policy prohibits ATV use within the boundaries of wildlife management areas, tidal wetlands and environmental education centers, though there are exceptions for people with handicaps.
Meanwhile, the state DEC has put on sale its hunting, fishing and trapping licenses for the upcoming sporting season. Licenses and deer permits can be purchased by mail, phone or at one of the DEC’s 1,600 sales outlets. Applications are available on the agency’s Web site, www.dec.state.ny.us, or by calling 866-472-4332.
The DEC plans to issue approximately 320,000 deer management permits for the 2005-06 season, roughly half last year’s allotment. The lower number is the result of a smaller deer herd, because of the lingering effects of a harsh 2002-03 winter and a record harvest in 2002.

Pressured…
Development pressures on the region calling for thousands of new condominiums and townhouses along the Hudson in Kingston, as well as a new megamall in Newburgh that could prove to be one of the world’s largest shopping destinations, is yielding major oppositional organization on the part of environmental and state-of-the-community advocates throughout the area.
In Kingston, a newly formed coalition of environmental groups has requested an extension of the public comment time on a draft environmental impact study compiled by the developer of a large-scale waterfront housing project that proposes to construct 2,200 units of housing and 300,000 square feet of commercial space on the Tilcon Inc. property located in the city and the town of Ulster. In a press release, the new group, Friends of the Kingston Waterfront – made up of such regional entities as Scenic Hudson, Friends of the Rondout, Hudson River Heritage, and Riverkeeper, said the unprecedented size and complexity of the draft environmental impact statement was the main reason for requesting the extension.
Meanwhile, the proposed Marketplace at Newburgh, an 800,000 square feet complex of shopping with 4,700 parking spaces, is starting to encounter equal trepidation as its developers, Wilder Balter Partners, approach completion of their planning process. What they’ve got in mind is a mix of big boxes and small stores, a regional shopping hub they hope will draw heavily from across eastern Orange and southern Ulster counties, with a few stores the mid-Hudson has never seen before… all located near the junction of Interstates 84 and 87, which will be getting a new interchange to accommodate the mall.
The Marketplace still needs town approvals and faces vocal opposition from neighborhood groups, but Wilder Balter is committed to making the deal work. They’ve bought the 110 acre site outright and have pledged spending $125 million while already starting to sell their concept to retailers, including the addition of four or five big box stores.
Prepare for a big regional fight…

Vote Tampering
Despite a zero-tolerance policy on tampering with voters, the Republican Party has quietly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide private defense lawyers for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to keep Democrats from voting in New Hampshire. James Tobin, the president’s 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.
A telephone firm was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day 2002, prosecutors allege. Republican John Sununu won a close race that day to be New Hampshire’s newest senator. At the time, Tobin was the RNC’s New England regional director, before moving to President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.
A top New Hampshire Party official and a GOP consultant already have pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors. Tobin’s indictment accuses him of specifically calling the GOP consultant to get a telephone firm to help in the scheme.
Since charges were first filed in December, the RNC has spent more than $722,000 to provide Tobin, who has pleaded innocent, a team of lawyers from the high-powered Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly. Republican Party officials said they don’t ordinarily discuss specifics of their legal work, but confirmed to The Associated Press they had agreed to underwrite Tobin’s defense because he was a longtime supporter and that he assured them he had committed no crimes.
Federal prosecutors have secured testimony from the two convicted conspirators in the scheme directly implicating Tobin.

Bad Crash
There was a 4-vehicle accident on Wed, Aug.10th. in Pine Hill that resulted in a severe leg injury to a Big Indian Man.
According to Shandaken Police, at approximately 1:30 pm a Truck operated by Donald J. Travis of Niskayuna, NY was headed eastbound on Rte. 28 when it struck a second vehicle operated by Brandon Pesa of Fleischmann’s. Pesa was attempting to make a left turn into Belleayre Plaza.
The crash pushed Pesa’s vehicle into motorcyclist Wesley Pultz of Big Indian, who according to witnesses was pumping gas. Pultz suffered severe leg injury and was airlifted to Albany Medical Center. A fourth, parked vehicle was also struck but no one was inside.
The Plaza suffered property damage including an entire gas pump being knocked off its foundation.
Assisting Shandaken Police were "local fire companies", New York State Police, Ulster County Sheriffs department and Shandaken ambulance.

Devolution
After months of debate over science and religion, the Kansas Board of Education has tentatively approved new state science standards that weaken the role evolution plays in teaching about the origin of life. The 10-member board must still take a final vote, expected in either September or October, but a 6-4 vote approved a draft of the standards that essentially cemented a victory for conservative Christian board members who say evolution is largely unproven and can undermine religious teachings about the origins of life on earth.
Intelligent design proposes that some features of the natural world are best explained as products of a considered intent as opposed to a process of natural selection. If they win final approval, Kansas will join Minnesota, Ohio and New Mexico, all of which have adopted critical analysis of evolution in the last four years.
The new science standards would not eliminate the teaching of evolution entirely, nor would they require that religious views, also known as creationism, be taught, but it would encourage teachers to discuss various viewpoints and eliminate core evolution theory as required curriculum. Critics say the moves are part of a continuing national effort by conservative Christians to push their views into the public education process.
Meanwhile, Harvard University is joining the long-running debate over the theory of evolution by launching a research project to study how life began. The team of researchers will receive $1 million in funding annually from Harvard over the next few years. The project begins with an admission that some mysteries about life’s origins cannot be explained.

Whose Paternity?
One in 25 fathers could unknowingly be raising another man’s child, British scientists have noted after looking at over 50 years of studies from around the world.
The findings of the studies varied dramatically — some concluded that only one man in 100 is not the father of his child while others put the figure as high as 30 percent. The Liverpool researchers calculated the median figure at around 4 percent, suggesting that as many as one in 25 men worldwide is not the biological father of a child he believes to be his.
“The importance lies not so much in the figure itself but in the implications, given that as a society we are increasingly making our decisions on the basis of genetics,” said one of the researchers, Professor Mark Bellis.
Bellis said that while mix-ups of semen during artificial insemination accounted for some cases of paternal discrepancy, the majority were due to a woman having sexual relationships outside marriage.
He said in Britain, 20 percent of women in marriages or long-term relationships have had affairs, adding that the figures for other developed countries was similar. Around a third of pregnancies in Britain are unplanned, increasing the risk of paternal discrepancy.
Writing in the British Medical Association’s Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the scientists called for further research in the area. “We cannot simply ignore this difficult issue,” they said.

Global Warming
Satellite and weather-balloon research released this month removes a last bastion of scientific doubt about global warming, researchers say. Surface temperatures have shown small but steady increases since the 1970s, but the tropics had shown little atmospheric heating - and even some cooling. Now, after sleuthing reported in three papers released by the journal Science, revisions have been made to that atmospheric data, which had been used by the Bush administration and other detractors of the global trend. After examining the satellite data, collected since 1979 by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellites, it was found that the satellites had drifted in orbit, throwing off the timing of temperature measures. Essentially, the satellites were increasingly reporting nighttime temperatures as daytime ones, leading to a false cooling trend. The team also found a math error in the calculations.
Global warming’s pace over the past 30 years has actually been quite slow, a total increase of about 1 degree Fahrenheit. It is predicted to accelerate in this century.
Mark Herlong of the George C. Marshall Institute declined to comment. The group, financed by the petroleum industry, has used the data disparities to dispute the views of global-warming activists. In recent years, however, the institute has softened its public statements, acknowledging that the planet is indeed getting warmer but still maintaining that the change is happening so slowly that the impact is minimal.
Meanwhile, a growing number of acamedic scientists have started talking about the world nearing its long-dreaded “tipping points,” delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth’s temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures. Among these is the fact that a vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming – an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined – which has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. Scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tons of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.
In its last major report in 2001, the intergovernmental panel on climate change predicted a rise in global temperatures of 4 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit between 1990 and 2100, but the estimate only takes account of global warming driven by known greenhouse gas emissions. The new discovery, in Siberia, could effectively double atmospheric levels of the gas, leading to a 10% to 25% increase in global warming, scientists say.
Last month, some of the world’s worst air polluters, including the US and Australia, announced a partnership to cut greenhouse gas emissions through the use of new technologies. The deal came after British Prime Minister Tony Blair struggled at the G8 summit to get the US president, George Bush, to commit to any concerted action on climate change to no real avail.

Allergy Epidemic
More than half of all Americans test positive in response to one or more allergens, double the percentage who did 30 years ago, a new study reports. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health found that 54% of people tested positive to at least one of 10 allergens. The highest response was to dust mites, 27.5%. The lowest was to peanuts, 8.6%. The findings appear in the August issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
The number of positive reactions is much higher than cases of actual allergic disease, notes lead researcher Samuel Arbes of the National Institutes of Health. Though a positive skin test for allergens such as ragweed or cats doesn’t necessarily mean a person has or will develop allergies, there is a strong association between the two.
About 20% of U.S. residents have allergies or hay fever; 8% to 10% have asthma.
The doubling of the prevalence of the six allergens tested in the earlier survey corresponds to a period during which there also was a 74% increase in asthma, Arbes says. Though there is evidence asthma rates have peaked, allergy rates appear to still be increasing, he says.
Those at highest risk of showing allergic response were people ages 20 to 29, males, minorities, people living in the West, people living in old homes and people who were not exposed to cigarette smoke. Researchers don’t know why positive skin tests, allergy and asthma are increasing. One theory is that people simply don’t go outside as often - Americans spend an estimated 90% of their time indoors - and have higher exposures to indoor allergens. Another theory is that children become more vulnerable when they are exposed to fewer bacteria and viruses. Some researchers believe that has an effect on the developing immune system.

Street Fight!
Members of the Shandaken Police report the arrest of numerous subjects following a fight on Main Street in Phoenicia. Police responded to a fight in progress which resulted in one subject being transported to the Hospital for a fractured Jaw. Through investigation it was learned that Joanne Winne, age 21 from Phoenicia had provided alcohol to minors and she was subsequently arrested and charged with unlawfully dealing with a child 1st, which is a class A misdemeanor. Winne was released on an appearance ticket returnable to Shandaken Court at a later date. Also arrested were Brandon Grant age 19 of Pine Hill and Thomas Brazilian age 20 of Boicville. Both Grant and Brazilian were charged with disorderly conduct, a violation, and released on appearance tickets returnable to Shandaken Court at a later date. Police report that more arrests are pending. The Shandaken Police were assisted at the scene by Shandaken Ambulance, the New York State Police and the DEP police.
Winne had been involved in another incident the previous week when she was arrested for burglary and harassment after assaulting a “friend” in Big Indian, along with two juveniles.

Phoenicia Cats?
Under the auspices of the Animal Emergency Fund, a new program will be initiated in the coming weeks aiming to “Trap, Neuter & Release” the entire stray and feral cat population of Phoenicia. Called the “Phoenicia Feline Project, the effort will utilize Hav-a-Heart cages and neutering/spaying via the AEF and Ulster County SPCA. All cats will be tested for FLIV and Feline Leukemia, get dewormed, and treated for all possible diseases before being re-released to the areas where they were originally trapped. No cats will be euthanized, according to a release for the program, and there will be no cost to the town. Residents are asked not to feed these cats. For further info or to make a donation, call Carol Shalaew at 688-2141 or Ann Tucker at 688-8119.