CORNWALL — The response of the Board of Finance (BOF) to proposed town and school budgets for 2014-15 was more of a philosophical and legal one than about numbers.The board’s regular meeting March 19 was also a chance to look at other aspects of spending. A large chunk of the meeting was devoted to discussing with school board members and Cornwall Consolidated School (CCS) Principal Michael Croft more than $47,000 in surplus funds. One part of the surplus is $10,000 — the difference between what was approved in the local budget for regional education spending and the actual assessment after a reduced Region One budget was accepted after seven referendum votes. Another $37,531 is a credit to the last payment (in April) on Cornwall’s regional assessment now that actual spending for the fiscal year can be determined. At its meeting earlier in the day, the school board heard Croft’s proposal to use $25,000 to close a budget gap that came when a new English teacher was hired over the summer at a greater salary and benefits cost. He said spending for non-essentials had been carefully monitored up to that point. Another $12,000 could be used to “pre-buy” instructional supplies for next year and reduce that budget line. The school cannot retain funds from one fiscal year to the next. Only the town can have savings accounts, capital project funds and other undesignated fund balances.Finance members were divided on who gets to decide what to do with those funds. Funds for town or school?In some other towns it was decided that on a legal basis, the “returned” funds belong to the town, as the tax-levying authority that pays the bills. The discussion in Cornwall last week included setting policy for procedure going forward. Longtime finance member Earl Brecher said it has been a practice to let the school board make the decision about spending it.Chairman John LaPorta compared it to an additional revenue source, since it is above what was budgeted. He also noted that the school budget becomes one line item in the town budget, and the finance board can ask only for a change to the bottom line.Celia Senzer noted Croft said they could have gotten by without the $37,000. She advocated reducing the amount the school wants to use.The local school board is proposing a $148,541, or 5.84 percent increase that is due mostly to contractual salary increases and a regionwide increase in health insurance costs. Some finance members said they were amazed at how small the overall increase is, given the large increases in those two categories. Croft and school board Chairman Becky Hurlburt said big savings can come only with staffing cuts, which are not possible given there is only one teacher per grade.But not every finance member agreed. Combined classroomsAlternate finance member Maureen Donahue noted Cornwall has had combined classrooms in the past, and that schools with similar declining enrollment, such as Lee H. Kellogg in Falls Village, are doing so successfully now. She added that CCS combined two grades recently, but kept the extra teacher on staff.She acknowledged that not laying off teachers has been a priority for the school board, but staff reduction in response to enrollment is “a trend that needs to start now.”Senzer said she wholeheartedly agrees. Croft presented a plan to make a change that involves staffing, and possibly a savings.Board clerk Susan Gingert will retire at the end of April. The plan is to transfer the payroll and accounts payable portion of that job to the town finance director, who will have to be paid accordingly. Croft said it is not ideal from his perspective of having a 35-hour clerk who can occasionally squeeze in tasks not in the job description. But it will make the position ineligible for health insurance. The new position would be 28 hours with vacation time. The school board would maintain the option to return to the current full-time clerk for any fiscal year.Finance members also debated a bottom-line cut for the school budget proposal. While some said it was a little late in the process, others said this is precisely what the budget season is about.In the end, it took four motions to hash out two decisions. Bill Hurlburt moved that the school budget be approved as presented with the condition that next year, surplus funds be returned to the town. Town Finance Director Barbara Herbst said she believed combining the two would violate state statute. A motion by Senzer to request a 10 percent reduction to the school budget was not seconded.Janet Sanders moved the school budget be accepted as proposed. It was approved with one dissenting vote, from Senzer.Brecher moved that the Region One budget overages be spent as proposed, but that they be “returned to the town” after this. Senzer was, again, the only nay vote.The selectmen’s budget is proposed to rise by 5.25 percent, or more than $89,000. A large part of that is the same regionwide increase in health insurance costs. Greater social service needThere was a little friction over control. While LaPorta said the finance board could make changes to any line item, First Selectman Gordon Ridgway disagreed.“Your job is not to micromanage each line item,” he said. “It’s to determine how much the town can afford and not to make decisions about line items.”Specifically addressed was the social services budget. The selectmen approved half of a $6,000 (or 41 percent) rise to meet increased demand. Finance members said they were not aware of what the social worker was doing in that department and if the increase is merited. Ridgway said his board asked for monthly reports to track services and case-load changes.Finance members passed a motion to approve the entire request for an increase from the Northwest Corner Chore Service. They had been getting a $1,500 donation. They asked for $5,000. The selectmen put $4,000 in their budget, and advised that it covers only part of the gap between costs and what residents pay for the services that help keep seniors and disabled people in their own homes. That approval came after a withdrawn motion and discussion over a suggestion by Senzer to take the additional $1,000 from a $2,000 donation budgeted for the Cornwall Conservation Trust. Finance members said they support the work of the trust and reasoned that whether or not the funding could be found elsewhere, it was too insignificant an amount and would send a false negative message.A look at revenues and other budget impacts was tabled due to time, until the next meeting.
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Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton\u2019s Main Street in 1985.
Provided
For Hermans, the award has prompted some reflection about why he has spent so much of his life involved in community projects.
“I was thinking about it this morning: Why do I do what I do?” he said. “And I think no matter what I’ve done, whether it’s been school board or rail trail, I’m trying to be useful to the communities I’m associated with.”
Hermans is perhaps best known as the longtime co-founder and steward of Oblong Books in Millerton, a business that began almost by accident. He and his first wife, Holly Nelson, were living in Millerton and looking for something to do during the winter. They had been painting houses, including the Grange Hall in Millerton, a job Hermans got through his aunt, who belonged to the Grange.
At the time, Hermans was also working in insurance for his father, doing collections.
“It was fine except I was doing collections, and it really kind of left me cold,” he said.
He and Nelson began thinking about what they might do together. Nelson was an avid reader, while Hermans had studied journalism and had worked in a record store. They noticed a chain of book and record stores operating elsewhere in the Hudson Valley and decided to follow that model.
And so Oblong was born.
Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton’s Main Street in 1985.Provided
“We really learned it by the seat of our pants,” Hermans said.
The business would eventually become a beloved and integral part of Millerton’s commercial life. But although Hermans may have learned the book business as he went, his affinity for retail — and for the connections that happen across a counter — had begun much earlier.
As a child, his second-grade teacher operated a little cardboard pencil shop in the classroom, and Hermans still remembers the satisfaction of selling a pencil for a nickel.
“I really liked selling somebody a pencil for a nickel,” he recalled. “I can remember that experience, and it was so pleasant.”
Later, while living in Arizona, he helped establish a food co-op and worked at the counter.
“I kind of knew that I liked doing that kind of thing,” he said. “It’s a nice way to be pleasant with people, but without making too much commitment to them.”
His relationship with Millerton also predates Oblong. His grandparents lived in the village, and he first came to Millerton as a baby. Over the years, he has watched the town change through several generations.
He remembers a Millerton with a much broader array of businesses, when stores such as Delson’s, the Main Street department store that stood for nearly 40 years in what is now Millerton’s Antiques Center, seemed to carry almost everything a resident might need.
“You could find everything from a set of dishes to a shotgun,” he recalled.
The rise of shopping malls changed that kind of downtown retail, he said, but Millerton has remained a lively commercial village.
“For us, it’s been a great place to have business,” Hermans said. “It’s a busy village.”
For Hermans, running a store was never simply about selling books and records. It was a way of being part of a place.
Music has remained another constant. Hermans continues to sell music at Oblong and hosts the radio program “New Harmony” on WKZE. The business of selling music has changed dramatically over the years, particularly with the rise of streaming, but Hermans has adapted.
He was initially reluctant to bring vinyl records back into the store because of their expense. But about four or five years ago, he began stocking LPs again, and they have become the main form of music the store sells.
He finds that many of the customers buying them are reconnecting with music they loved years ago.
“I do best with classic albums that people may have had when they were young,” he said. “And now that they’re retired, they want to hear it again.”
Hermans still reviews between 700 and 1,200 new music releases each week through the store’s distributor, Alliance Entertainment, carefully deciding what belongs on Oblong’s shelves.
That same commitment to place has led Hermans into a wide range of community projects. His work with the Harlem Valley Rail Trail is among the efforts he mentions when reflecting on his years of civic involvement. He has also served on the school board and has been involved with the Millerton Business Alliance and the Irondale Schoolhouse. He is now involved with The New Pine Plains Herald, which he sees as complementary to the work of The Millerton News and The Lakeville Journal.
“I really think that the important thing about this award is that people understand what a newspaper does to connect them to their community,” he said. “And if that means anything to their lives, they gotta support it.”
Hermans knew Mary Lou and Robert Estabrook and remembers them as people who were deeply conscious of their responsibilities to the community.
“They were really nice folks,” he said. “They were very conscious of what their role in the community was.”
There is, in fact, still plenty on his plate. Hermans admits he needs to scale back because he has taken on more than his current abilities can comfortably accommodate.
“To be given this award is very special,” he added. “But I don’t feel like I’m done.”
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Adamah Farm crew members planning out the day’s tasks on a late September day.
Janna Siller
Over my 15 years of growing vegetables in Falls Village, I’ve exerted my will over all kinds of conditions, from drought to humidity to crows with a taste for cantaloupe. That’s what farming is all about. You zip around the field, hopping on and off tractors, moving hoses and chasing weeds, all in an effort to arrange conditions in favor of your crops. It is the crops’ job to gulp up sunlight and move water through their stems, to transform solar energy into your next pesto or ratatouille or butternut squash soup. It is the job of the farmer to irrigate just enough but not too much, to slice dandelion leaves without damaging delicate cabbage roots, to pander and pamper and stay in tune with what plants need to thrive.
The easy part of farming is trusting plants’ resilience. I have seen bright green shoots barrel ahead out of a plant torn to shreds by hail. I’ve watched wilty, heat-stressed seedlings turn rigid overnight and greet the next morning with vigor. The hard part is letting go of what you can’t control. As our crops lapped up Friday’s gentle sunshine and I considered the weekend forecast, I imagined roots holding tight to wet earth and branches supporting each other in sideways, pelting rain. I made sure all of our storage crops were already harvested and tucked away. I battened down the sides of our greenhouses and wished the remaining field crops good luck.
The nor’easter didn’t materialize too dramatically in our corner of New England. A few broken branches and debris blown about, nothing like the July Fourth storm that sent half a tree crashing onto the deer fence and left crates of fresh veggies in coolers without power.
Fall storage crop harvests amid soil building cover crops at Adamah Farm in Falls Village. Janna Siller
Farming is an exercise in acceptance. To do it well and return year after year, you have to balance hubris and humility. The prize can often be a certain equanimity, a training in the art of moving into the next day even when the last one scrambled all your plans.
Epic change is not always about the unexpected. It also comes like clockwork on the seasonal calendar. As I type, the last of summer’s watermelons wait naively on the vine for a few hot days to finish ripening. Broccoli are holding their leaves wide as they did in June and July, only to find that the hours of sunlight decrease with each earlier sunset. Plants can’t pick up and go south or call the manager to order a bonus round of sunshine. Their growth slows and they get a resigned look to the hue of their leaves, so different from the frenzied growth of summer.
The release of fall is not tragic or gloomy. It is not an ending because so many fall tasks are about setting up for the new beginnings in spring.
We turn the vines that yielded thousands of pounds of fruit into the soil, where healthy microbes feast on their rotting stems. Then we plant cover crops — a mix of cereal grains like rye and oats and legumes like peas, vetch and clover. Cover crops hold the soil and its nutrients in place over winter, feeding the soil food web and adding organic matter that next season’s crops will need to grow.
We sort sprinklers and repair hoses. We inventory tarps. We take notes about which plants did well where and how we might try a new approach for this or that. We stack crates of cured garlic and onions and winter squash in a cool, dark room.
We save seeds from tomatoes and beans and lettuce, carefully labeling each variety for next season’s long, sunny days.
Janna Siller is the farm director at Adamah, a community farm in Falls Village offering CSA shares, educational programs and a food access program.
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