WINSTED — More than 70 residents attended a public hearing on the proposed town budget for fiscal year 2013-14, which was held at Pearson Middle School on Monday, March 31.The budget presented by Town Manager Dale Martin is $33,639,815, which is down by approximately $508 from the budget originally presented by Martin in mid-March.“The state budget has not been set yet and right now it is in flux,” Martin said. “The state budget will not be set until after we have our town meeting on May 6. That is why there will be some changes.”Martin said that State Rep. Jay Case (R-63) informed the town that it will receive an extra $120,000 in Educational Cost Sharing (ECS) funds from the state.Martin said the budget, as he presented it at the March 31 meeting, would result in a mill rate of 33.57 if approved by residents.After Martin made his presentation, Police Chief Robert Scannell made his budget presentation to the audience.At the beginning of his presentation, Scannell showed a series of pictures of members of past departments.“In 1929 we had 19 officers, in 1941 we had 15 officers and in 1971 we had 19 officers,” Scannell said. “As of tonight we have 16 officers including me. I want the selectmen and residents to take this all into consideration when our budget goes before voters.”Scannell proceeded to play a call made into the department asking for help in order to break up a fight at a Christmas party.“On one particular call our resources can be used very quickly,” he said. “All of our officers can be on the road. On this call, one officer had to respond to a medical injury sustained in the fight, another had to chase a suspect into the woods and another had to detain a suspect. There has been an increase in domestic violence issues in town because money is short and people are unemployed. There has been an increase in domestic violence cases and suicides.”Martin’s proposed budget includes hiring an evidence and property clerk, along with a deputy chief position.The first resident to speak about the proposed budget was Stephen Kosinski who said he was not entirely satisfied with the proposed budget.“There is a lot of fat that still needs to be cut out of this budget,” Kosinski said. “We have to scrape the bones. We know we have an economic situation where the price of food and fuel is going up. But we need some sort of an increase, probably minimal mill rate. It’s a natural process of what goes on economically. The woes of this town are not due to the present Selectboard but due to past boards that did not do their job.”Kosinski said the town is “on its knees” financially.“We need to all come together or this town is going to die,” he said. “The last person out of town, please shut the lights off.”Resident Marsha Sterling criticized the budget and said, if passed, it would cause a ten percent property tax increase across town.“Property taxes will go from $20 million to $22 million,” Sterling said. “We are supposed to see $300,000 from the state to put into road [maintenance and repairs], but this budget doesn’t do anything with that amount. The $2 million increase is going to go to people and their pay, including their benefits. More stuff, but not fixing the one thing that needs to be fixed and that is roads.”Sterling said the closing of the Holabird Avenue bridge is the clearest indication that funds need to be spent on road maintenance and repairs.“It’s important to understand that there has been a big myth that the town has had zero budget increases over the years,” Sterling said. “The board of education’s budget has been capped over the past few years, so the increases have all been on the town’s side of the budget. Even without the supplemental tax, this year we have had a five percent increase in property taxes and a ten percent increase in spending. It’s not that we don’t have the money, we are not spending the money in the right way. If you support this budget, you are supporting the roads looking exactly the same way that they do now. Nothing will change.”Community Lawyer Charlene LaVoie criticized Sterling.“Well, I guess what the last speaker is saying is that we should get rid of the police department or cut it in half and do the same to the public works department, LaVoie said. “On the town side, that is all where the major staff is. Or let’s get rid of the assistant tax collector or the assistant town clerk. If that’s what you are suggesting, to further cut services or staffing to the bone, then say so. You say that we’re not spending money on the roads. No kidding. That’s because we have not consistently funded the budget. People have to make more every year. You don’t expect to work every year for 30 years and not get increases each year.”After public comment, all of the Republican members of the Board of Selectmen requested a long series of cuts in the proposed budget.The long series of cuts were not officially approved or voted on by the board.Mayor Lisa Smith requested that all salaries for town employees be frozen.Smith also asked for a cut to the finance director’s salary by $13,000 to $75,000.Town Manager Martin objected to the decrease.“My concern is you get what you pay for,” Martin said. “Cutting the finance director to $75,000 is going to greatly reduce the pool of qualified candidates.”“I did some research on the salary levels,” Smith said. “It was not just an arbitrary number. We offer them the amount if they want the job.”Selectman Dan Langer recommended that the town not hire an assistant town engineer, which would save the town $66,300.This drew ire from the current Department of Public Works Director Neil Amwake who was in the audience.“Right now I am the only staff member who does technical engineering for bridges, water and sewer issues,” Amwake said. “We are reaching the point that some of these infrastructure projects that we are talking about are going to be delayed because I am the only technical person as well as the one running the administrative and financial operational side of public works.”“We’ve contracted out before,” Smith said.In the police department’s budget, Smith proposed a $75,000 cut to the department’s overtime budget line.She also proposed to take out funding for a deputy chief and use it instead to fund a new patrolman’s position.Under proposed capital improvements, Smith proposed to take out funding for a new police car, reducing the budget by $50,000.Selectmen Candy Perez did not support Smith’s proposal.“When the department was at one of our meetings, when they were asking for funds to get an engine replaced, they talked about the cars in the parking lot that had a lot of problems,” Perez said.“I understand,” Smith told Perez.“Alright, I guess you decide,” Perez said.Smith also reduced a budget line item by $46,250 that would have been used to purchase a new plow truck.“So that will mean that it will take four years to get a new truck instead of two years,” Martin said.“Unless they have an auction for those types of things,” Smith said.“You all know that our plow trucks are over 10 years old,” Perez said.Also, Smith requested that the budget for Highland Lake maintenance to be reduced by $10,000, which Perez objected to.“The water quality tests are very important up there, as is the herbicide treatment up there,” Perez said. “It also provides for 26 percent of the tax base of this town. Making sure that the water quality stays where it’s supposed to be for generations to come is important. So please don’t make that cut.”Smith did not respond to Perez’s plea.Martin could not provide a total of the proposed cuts made by the selectmen.The next step for the budget is a hearing on the proposed Board of Education side on Monday, April 7, at 7 p.m. at The Gilbert School.
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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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