WINSTED — Winchester Public Works Director James Rotondo did not paint a rosy picture of the town’s infrastructure and capital equipment needs for the Board of Selectmen during its meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 22.Rotondo was invited to make a presentation at the meeting about the department as part of the selectmen’s budget-making process for fiscal 2013-2014.According to Rotondo, the department, which has 23 employees, has a $4.4 million budget for fiscal 2011-2012.Of those employees, 10 of them work on the town’s highway department.“In 2001, we had 16 employees in the highway department, so right now we are doing the same amount of work with much less people,” Rotondo said. “What I would like to point out is that there is a certain minimum level of employees that you need to have in a department for it to be able to function and be effective.”Rotondo added the department could use an assistant to the Public Works director.He said he originally proposed the position in the fiscal 2011-2012 budget, but it was eventually taken out.“As I originally proposed it, the $50,000 salary for the position was going to be covered two-thirds town side, and one-third from the water and sewer side, so it would have really been a $33,000 from the town side,” Rotondo said. “I think the rewards would certainly have paid the salary and then some.”Rotondo said the town could have saved a substantial amount of money during the past year if it had hired an assistant.He said the assistant could have performed construction project inspections for the town which would have saved $75,000 on a Wetmore Avenue project and $125,000 on the Main Street Streetscape Project.Rotondo went on to speak about the current state of town roads which he said were in poor condition.He cited Fruit Street, Newfield Road, Perkins Street, Holabird Avenue and Mountain View Terrace as being the roads which are in most need of repair in town.“These roads have been neglected to the point where we have got to do major reconstruction to take these roads back,” Rotondo said. “There is an astronomical cost for failing to do preventative maintenance.”Rotondo said the reason why the roads are in the shape they are in is due to the town spending very little on road improvements and maintenance in its budgets.To make his point, Rotondo showed a bar graph which showed the lack of investments in road improvements and maintenance went back to fiscal 2000-2001.He said in fiscal 2012-2013, the town budgeted $50,000 for road improvements and $25,000 for road maintenance.“Over these past years, the town has made a miniscule investment in its roads,” Rotondo said. “We really have got to start thinking differently if we’re going to make improvements in infrastructure. This isn’t a minor tweaking, this is a major change. Preventative maintenance investment in these roads has been insignificant over these past years. Because of which, the town’s roads are now showing the results of years of neglect.”Rotondo said, without adequate routine and preventative maintenance, a road’s condition will decline dramatically after 12 years.“A road can just fall apart,” he said. “After it does, you are left with either rehabilitating it or reconstructing it.”Rotondo estimated routine maintenance project to a road would cost $1 per linear foot, a road rehabilitation project would cost $15 per linear foot and a road reconstruction project would cost $25 per linear foot.“It is much more expensive to not invest in a road at its early stages,” he said. “It’s much more cost effective to invest in preventative maintenance.”Rotondo went on to speak about the current state of the town’s bridges, starting with Holabird Avenue.He said the town appropriated $110,000 in its fiscal 2011-2012 budget to pay for engineering fees to finalize a design for a project to repair the bridge.“Unfortunately, the engineers estimated $127,000 to complete the design prior to the town putting the budget together,” Rotondo said. “I am currently waiting for the design engineer to give us a revised proposal and hopefully it will come in at a cost the town can afford so we can get the design done.”Rotondo said the engineering design for the project was originally initiated in 2004.“We are not doing a good job of getting things done,” he said.Rotondo said the state’s Department of Transportation (DOT) rated the bridge to be in serious condition.According to the department’s bridge inspection manual, a bridge in serious condition is defined as a bridge with a “loss of section, deterioration, spalling or scour have seriously affected primary structural components. Local failures are possible. Fatigue cracks in steel or shear cracks in concrete may be present.”The department lists serious condition as being two steps away from imminent failure.Rotondo said the other town bridges cited by DOT as being in serious condition includes bridges on West Street and Sucker Brook Road.As for drainage systems throughout town, Rotondo said the system on Oakdale Avenue is failing and in need of major repairs and replacement.He added the stone culverts throughout town, including the ones located on Pratt Street, Litchfield Street and Pratt Hill Road, are failing and in need of replacement.Also, Rotondo said many of the 1,440 catch basins throughout town are in need of major repairs or replacement.Rotondo’s next topic was the current state of the department’s equipment.He said the town has 13 snow-plow trucks which are, on average, 11.5 years old.“Because of their age, we are bleeding money because of maintenance and repair costs,” Rotondo said. “After the last snowstorm, two of our trucks had major breakdowns. One came into the DPW garage on the end of a tow truck. This is becoming more and more of a common occurrence. For the most part, I would say our snow-plow fleet is unreliable.”Rotondo said the town’s one-and-a-half ton bituminous roller is no longer working at all.“It is 28 years old, and it is obsolete because parts are no longer available for it,” he said. “This year, the town has spent $4,000 in rental costs to do minor bituminous projects.”Rotondo estimated it would cost the town $15,000 to buy a new machine.He concluded his presentation by talking about the current state of town sidewalks.Rotondo said several pedestrian bridges in town need major repairs or replacement, including a sidewalk on the Highland Lake Spillway, Pratt Street and High Street.“When you drive through the Spillway, you probably don’t notice it from your car, but all of the major beams underneath supporting the walkway are all rusted out,” he said. “It’s a costly problem, and it won’t be cheap. We have liability issues with these sidewalks and we need to fix them.”In conclusion, Rotondo encouraged the selectmen to consider increasing the department’s funding in order to improve the town’s infrastructure.“Don’t take this the wrong way because I’m not being critical of anyone or anything except for the fact that we as a team should get together and say that we have to change the way we do things here,” Rotondo told the selectmen. “Basically, I have rated all of the town’s infrastructure as poor. We have not made any headway on this. By not making any headway we are losing ground, because we have infrastructure that still can be salvaged but is slipping away from us. It will cost us a lot more money to reclaim it to bring it back to where it should be.”
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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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