First layoff notices go out to state employeesHARTFORD — Marathon sessions last week in the state Senate and House of Representatives resulted in the swift passage of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s proposed two-year 2011-13 budget, but details regarding specific spending cuts remained unclear this week as the governor negotiated givebacks from state employees.As expected, Malloy began issuing layoff notices to state employees Tuesday morning, in preparation for the possibility of a stalemate.“After more than two months of talks, I’m afraid that my administration and the state employee unions have not reached agreement,” Malloy said in a statement Tuesday. “Our talks have been respectful and forthright so far, and I remain willing to continue the discussions if the unions are willing to do so. However, we must all be willing to work toward a settlement that Connecticut taxpayers can afford in the long run.”The impasse follows a political victory for Malloy last week, as the state House and Senate quickly passed his proposed budget. Rejecting a succession of amendments from Republicans, the state Senate voted 19-17 and the House voted 83-67 in favor of the two-year, $40.1 billion package, which cuts many services, increases taxes and calls for $2 billion in concessions from state employees — an estimated $22,000 per worker — in the next two years.The operating budget for fiscal year 2012, which begins July 1, is $19.8 billion, including $1.54 billion in cuts. Fiscal year 2013 comes in at $20.3 billion, reflecting $1.8 billion in cuts. Malloy said he still needs another $1 billion in cuts for the upcoming fiscal year, and $1 billion more in the second year, to balance the budget. “I have directed OPM to begin issuing layoff notices in an orderly fashion to the first 4,742 state employees,” Malloy said. “Those layoffs will result in savings of approximately $455 million. I’ve also directed OPM to begin the process necessary to cut an additional $545 million in spending; those cuts, many of them programmatic, will be spread across state government, and will, in all likelihood, result in additional layoffs.”Connecticut’s sales tax increases from 6 to 6.35 percent, with higher taxes for corporations and on hotels, entertainment venues, cigarettes and alcohol. Income taxes will go up on families making $200,000 to $400,000 per year and the state’s highest earners will pay 6.7 percent, retroactive to Jan. 1. The approved budget raises $2.6 billion in taxes for the next two years and increases spending by 2.8 percent in the first year and 2.3 percent the next. Malloy quickly signed the budget into law last week, calling it “another important step toward much-needed fiscal stability,” but underscored the importance of negotiations with state employees. On Friday, Malloy released a “Plan B” budget, which calls for the layoffs mentioned this week. Cuts to municipal aid and other programs will take effect if negotiations with state employee unions do not result in an agreement on concessions.“I’m disappointed because I think we jumped the gun,” said state Sen. Andrew Roraback (R-30) in an interview Monday. “I don’t think we should have taken up a budget before knowing what kind of agreement the governor was going to achieve with state employees. It’s putting the cart before the horse.”Roraback said last week that Connecticut residents will be taxed “from head to toe” under the approved budget and said he believes the hardest-hit residents will be middle-class citizens. “The irony wasn’t lost on me that big business supported this budget,” he said. “United Technologies said they liked the budget at the same time they were shifting jobs out of Connecticut. It’s hard to reconcile why big business signed off on the budget, but they did.”As far as concessions go, Roraback said he also feels for state employees who are being asked to make significant sacrifices. “I for one don’t think it’s fair to expect someone who is working for the Highway Department, maybe making $48,000 per year, to be expected to give up $20,000,” he said. “There are some top-level bureaucrats who are making $140,000 or $160,000 per year who should be asked to give back more.”State Rep. John Rigby (R-63) said he was disappointed with the budget and the way it was debated, with a lack of input from Republicans. “What we have is a massive tax increase and we still don’t know what’s to come,” he said. “Even the governor is not clear on what’s going to happen.”Rigby said Republicans put forth their own budget which would not have increased taxes. The zero-increase budget, along with all other Republican motions, was defeated by the Democratic majority.Criticism of the state budget did not just come from Republicans. Several Democrats broke ranks with the majority in both the House and Senate, noting the budget is $2 billion out of balance and requires what many see as unfair penalties to state workers.Supporters of the budget countered that families making $100,000 a year will only see their income taxes increase by about $20 this year, and that a balanced budget will make Connecticut a more attractive state for job creation. State Rep. Roberta Willis (D-64) said there were no easy decisions on the budget this year. Nobody wants increased taxes, she said, “but the decisions had to be made. We had to get our fiscal house in order.” Malloy talked a lot about shared sacrifice, Willis said, and tried to keep the budget as fair as possible. “Still,” she said, “the Legislature made some positive changes to the governor’s budget.” Those changes included reinstating a property tax credit in the amount of $300 a year, maintaining the earned income tax credit and keeping three additional cents off the gasoline tax. “When gas is between $4.19 to $4.33 a gallon, as I saw on the way to Hartford today,” Willis said, “and the public hears the state is putting three more cents on, that’s just a pebble in people’s shoes. We at least took away that constant reminder of increased taxes.”The governor said he would focus on negotiations with state employees ahead of a May 31 deadline to achieve concessions or submit his alternate budget.“Make no mistake,” the governor said. “Come July 1, Connecticut will have an honest, balanced budget in place.”
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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 former partner, 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.”
This article has been changed to reflect that Hermans and Nelson were partners. A prior version states that they were married.
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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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