PINE PLAINS — The Town Board unanimously adopted the 2012 municipal budget at its monthly meeting on Thursday, Nov. 17, after a swift and concise discussion that entailed a couple of minor changes to the document.The total budget figure tallies at $1,613,5000, which has the town spending about $40,000 more than last year’s budget.“A lot of that is just trying to keep up with things,” said town Supervisor Gregg Pulver during an interview the following day. He then went through a litany of services the town must provide, and therefore finance.There are highway expenses, which rose about $10,000 to cover maintenance on much of the department’s aging equipment (the total projected highway budget line for 2012 amounts to $471,000); there are recreation costs, including an additional $10,000 for programs for the town’s senior citizens at the Heart of Pine Plains Community Center (the total projected recreation budget line for 2012 amounts to $94,000, plus the $10,000 for adult recreation); and then there are the obligatory items like health insurance and retirement that continue to rise year after year. (The projected 2012 budget line for employee benefits alone amounts to $125,000, up from this year’s $97,676.99.)The good news, according to Pulver, is that the town is in a strong position to handle many of the increasing costs.“We’re solvent,” said the outgoing supervisor. Democrat Brian Coons just beat Pulver at the polls, and will be replacing the longtime supervisor come January. “We were fortunate enough to see that 2 percent [state mandated] tax cap coming down the road and prepare for it. It’s going to put some towns in a handicap, those with 0 percent increases like Stanford will have to play catch-up. We, fortunately, are not in that dilemma. My advice to the new board is that they maintain that solvency.”The Town Board has a history of strong fiscal planning and it currently boasts an existing fund balance. That, Pulver said, could be of great assistance when it comes to the relatively new town library, which may need to be taken over by the town.“We do have money if there’s a need to bond the library,” he said. The library was built through a private foundation. “Nobody foresaw the economic downturn and they weren’t able to raise all of the money needed to pay off the library, so the bank is graciously holding the note on it. I’m guessing there will be a shortfall between $1.2 and $1.5 million. The good news is if the town has to take it over, there is money in the budget to bond it for 25 years, and it’s already in there so it will not spike the budget.”Two bonds have recently been retired by the town, making it possible for the board to assist the library: a $200,000 bond for a sidewalk project was retired, as was a $200,000 bond for a highway truck. Another benefit is that interest rates are at the lowest they’ve been, according to Pulver.“In some ways, it’s good news in the midst of all of this bad news,” he said.The changes the Town Board made on Nov. 17 to the budget were twofold. The first dealt with the library; it called for a $1,000 decrease in the town’s contractual line for the library.The second change was to correct a simple error; an amount was written on the wrong budget line. The change was made without any problem.The supervisor did have two recommendations at the board meeting — he called for both the town clerk’s and the highway superintendent’s salaries to be increased. The town clerk currently earns $19,300 a year; Pulver suggested her salary be raised to $21,300 annually. The highway superintendent earns $47,000 a year; it was suggested his salary be raised to $50,000 annually.“There’s plenty of money [in their budget lines to do so],” Pulver said, adding Highway Superintendent Barry Hay is likely the lowest paid highway superintendent in all of Dutchess County.Councilwoman Sandra David raised the board’s previous concern about increasing salaries in today’s financial climate.“We discussed in the past that with the recession that raising salaries might not be [wise],” she said. “[Town Clerk] Judy [Harpp’s] salary hasn’t moved in four years,” said Pulver, adding Hay is making thousands less than his predecessor. Councilman Bob Couse made a motion to accept Pulver’s recommendations. The supervisor then mentioned that his proposed budget meets the 2 percent tax cap status and “provides for a sound financial future” for the town.“That being said, it’s a fairly tight budget,” Pulver said to his colleagues. “Most lines didn’t go up.”The following day he expanded on his thoughts.“We actually have money in the budget to provide for different and new things, if the new board decides to do some of that,” Pulver said. “I think the town is in good shape; now it’s up to them to maintain that.”Back at the meeting, Couse’s motion was seconded and the rest of the board joined in, thus adopting the 2012 town budget.
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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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