SusanCampriello: My Works

Tour of the Catskills a ‘climber’s race’
The Daily Mail
Sept. 21, 2009

One thousand bike racers and their friends and families visited the Mountaintop this weekend for the second Tour of the Catskills - a more than 100-mile, three-day race around Greene County’s peaks and valleys.

Event staff said 285 bikers participated, traveling from 15 states and four Canadian provinces to bike in the Tour’s two loops and time trial. Last year, 175 racers participated.

The Tour was sponsored by the Catskill Mountain Foundation along with the Hunter Chamber of Commerce and the Windham Chamber of Commerce.

Saturday’s Catskill Epic loop took racers from Windham to Prattsville, Durham and Acra and back to Windham. Sunday’s Mountaintop Classic loop wound through Hunter, Jewett, Windham, Acra, Round Top, Palenville, Tannersville and ended at the Catskill Mountain Foundation offices in Hunter. Professional racers followed slightly different and longer routes that included laps of parts of the main loops.

Tour winners would have spent about 5 hours on the road race staff estimated Sunday, before official results were calculated. The day’s leader in the professional category, Justin Lindine, completed the 75-mile Mountaintop Classic in just more than three hours. He was followed across the finish line by Andrew Guptill, Roger Aspholm, Peter Horn and Cameron Cogburn.

Racers were divided into nine separate age, gender and skill classifications, each with their own winners.

The men’s category three winner was Pavel Gonda of the Czech Republic, who rode for the Pacifico team. Gonda raced in Europe from 2002 until 2005 and picked up the sport again this year, he said.

Gonda arrived in the United States in August to begin studying law at New York University, in New York City.

Gonda said he beat the men’s category three second-place winner Jim Komarmi by 10 centimeters.

“I came here to be first,” the racer, who was places second after Friday’s time trial and third after Saturday’s Catskill Epic, said.

Gonda said both legs presented their own challenges — Saturday’s route scaled and declined several hills and Sunday’s featured a push up Route 32A and a sprint to the finish line.

“It is a very, very beautiful race,” he said.

Komarmi, who coaches Alpine skiing at the Green Mountain Valley School in Vermont, agreed that mountains defined the race.

“It’s definitely a climber’s race,” he said.

Komarmi, who rode for the American Flatbread team, explained that racing was as much about pacing and passing strategy as about speed.

“It’s very much a chess match on the road,” he said.

Komarmi and men’s category three third-place winner Michael Boardman agreed that although the terrain was challenging, the race did not draw a hugely competitive group of riders.

Boardman, of Rockstar Video Games’ team, said he expected that competition would grow as more bikers entered the race.

Catskill Mountain Foundation Executive Director Peter Barker said he expected that participation would increase due to the success of the first two races.

He said no major incidents or injuries were reported over the weekend and that all the racers seemed happy. Happy racers, he said, would return.

Barker said the weekend’s success was due to cooperation of local law enforcement, community members and volunteers who provided food and support to the racers.

“What makes this race so successful is the volunteer effort,” he said.

Nature Center called ‘political football’
Panel argues that town board’s reluctance to authorize certain work has shut them down
The Daily Mail
Sept. 8, 2009

CAIRO — The Cairo Nature Center Committee and the Cairo Town Board agreed to meet with each other to discuss future plans for the center after each aired groups expressed its unhappiness with the way communication has been handled.

Members of the committee told the Town Board that they thought the Town Board had effectively shut their committee down by its reluctance to authorize certain maintenance work at the Nature Center.

The Center on Route 23, which opened two years ago, features hiking and biking trails, picnic areas and fishing spots in a reservoir. Earlier this summer, a bridge railing in the Nature Center was broken. It has since been fixed.

Committee Chairman Neil Schoenfeld said that after the park was dedicated two years ago, it closed for a year pending permit process review, some volunteers left the committee and residents seemed to lose interest, calling the progression “disheartening.”

He also said he had never run into the negativity and trouble the park has caused.

“Since this place has been open it has been nothing but a political football,” he said.

Schoenfeld said he did not mind doing maintenance in the park so long as he had support from the Town. He said such support was missing, citing past instances when he asked the Town for assistance in removing metal from the park and laying gravel in the park.

“This is a town designated park,” he said, adding that municipalities have taken over every other similar park of nature center he had built.

Town Supervisor John Coyne said he and other Town Board members did not like the tone of a letter sent by a second committee with overlapping membership to the Town Board regarding possible work on St. Edmund’s Chapel. The Town Board responded to that letter saying they did not want that committee to commence with work without speaking to the board first.

The Town Board expressed concerns that any volunteer contractors brought to the Chapel or the Nature Center might not be covered by the Town’s insurance policies.

Schoenfeld said work at the Chapel and in the Nature Center had essentially been stopped by the Town’s reluctance to allow the volunteer contractors commence work.

Cairo Nature Center Committee member Michael Esslie said problems between the committee and the Town Board should not have come to head over repairs over the bridge railing, as he believed they had, if communication between the two entities had been better.

Esslie said the committee had assumed the Town would maintain the park. The board seemed to have taken the opposite view that the committee would not ask the Town to make or finance repairs.

“We have to define roles,” he said. “If the Town has expectations, I think the Town needs to set forth what those expectations and where those limits are.”

He said once expectations are described, the committee will discuss whether they can meet the Town’s requests.

Committee members said they had tried to create interest in the park from civic organizations to use the park but few have held events there.

Esslie dispelled Coyne’s notion that the board had dissolved in the wake of the response letter saying that the committee would continue to encourage usage of the Nature Center and try to keep it and its facilities usable.

“We have not abandoned our project, we are participating here,” he said.

The committee and the Town Board agreed that as the Nature Center was used more, vandalism there would cease to be a problem.

They agreed also to hold joint meetings to discuss future plans for and work needed at the Nature Center.

Neil Schonefeld said after the Thursday meeting that a discussion with members of the Town Board on future work at either site would be impossible until the Town resolved the insurance issues for volunteers.

Snow removal measure panned
Cost, liability, responsibility among concerns
The Daily Mail
July 21, 2009

CAIRO — A proposed local law regarding sidewalk snow removal on Main Street was panned at a public hearing.

Liability, responsibility and cost were among the concerns voiced by Cairo residents and Town Board members about the law, which was introduced to the Board in June.

As written, the law would require homeowners, business owners and lot owners along County Route 23B, called Main Street, to clear snow and ice from their sidewalk within 24 hours after the end of a winter storm.

Other Greene County municipalities have enacted their own rules for sidewalk snow removal.

Laws in the villages of Catskill, Coxsackie and the Town of Windham state that home, business or lot owners must have their sidewalks cleared within 24 hours after a storm ends at penalty of fine.

In Coxsackie, offenders can be imprisoned. Windham residents are allowed to place salt, sand or sawdust on icy sidewalks they are unable to clear.

Cairo resident Patrick Brennan asked if the Town would accept liability for injuries sustained by those who fall on the sidewalks.

“If I shovel my walkway, I open myself to liability if anyone should anyone fall. I do not feel like being sued,” he said.

He said the law presented a Catch-22, face a fine for not shoveling or a lawsuit for shoveling.

Town Supervisor John Coyne answered a question posed by Bob Storey saying that the owner of buildings vacant during certain days of the week, such as the Methodist Church and the Masonic Temple, would have to clear snow just like any other Main Street occupant would.

James Freeman, who lives across the street from the Methodist Church, said he doubted that the Town could enforce the law when snow from Main Street is pushed back onto the sidewalks every time a plow is driven down the street.

He said those who work during the day cannot always return to their Main Street homes to shovel throughout the day.

Councilman Ray Suttmeier had the same worry at the June workshop meeting, when the definition of “Main Street” had been determined as running from the Cumberland Farms gas station at corner of Route 32 and County Route 23B to Cedar Terrace Resort, at 665 Main St.

Town Planning Board member Ed Forrester pointed out that the turnpike line along properties runs 33 feet on either side of the street’s center line.

He said historically some on Main Street did not shovel their sidewalks, arguing that once they do shovel, they take responsibility of the sidewalk from the County.

“Even though I am for cleaning the sidewalks, I do not see how you can tell a landowner he has to shovel land that technically he does not own,” he said.

According to Greene County Deputy Highway Superintendent Robert Van Valkenburg, the County and the Town have an agreement that the County will clear the road of snow but the Town is responsible for clearing sidewalks.

He said the Town can pass the responsibility to property owners by drafting and enacting a local law.

Brennan asked whether the Town had consider hiring a maintenance crew to run a snow blower along the sidewalks to shoot snow into a dump truck accompanying the snow blower.

Suttmeier asked the Board why a maintenance person could not clear the snow.

Councilwoman Janet Schwarzenegger said a maintenance person’s salary would either be paid for by taxes levied on the entire town or through taxes paid by those within a sidewalk district, which would have to be created.

Suttmeier said clear sidewalks on Main Street would benefit all Cairo residents since people from Acra, Purling, Round Top and South Cairo come Main Street.

John Morgese, who does not live on Main Street, said he did not want his taxes to pay for snow removal in what he called the hamlet of Cairo.

He said he has to re-clear his driveway after the Town plows the road by his house.

“It costs me $1,000 a year to move the snow off of my sidewalks, my steps and my driveway and the Town is not reimbursing me,” he said.

Councilman Richard Lorenz said upon re-reading the proposed law was that the Town had enacted an alternate side of the road parking rule so the County could plow the road. Snow from the road goes onto the sidewalk. Snow from the sidewalks, he said, could get shoveled back into the road.

He said neither scenario was fair.

“I think there should be something worked out between the County, the Town and the property owner,” he said.

Cairo cops new software helps fight crime
Squad cars installed with new equipment for faster processing
The Daily Mail
July 20, 2009

CAIRO—The Cairo Police Department has received two Traffic and Criminal Software units that will help officers quickly and efficiently issue tickets and report accidents and other incidents.

Cairo Police Chief Chris Sprague said his department was the first municipal department in the county to receive the TraCS units, although departments in Athens, Catskill, Coxsackie and Windham as well as the Greene County Sheriff’s Office hope to purchase their own equipment soon.

“It is a big accomplishment for a small department like ours,” he said.

The units, which are laptop computers connected to small printers and fit in housings next to the dashboard, will allow officers to enter data on incidents while in their vehicles. Information can be uploaded to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services database.

According to a New York State Police TraCS information page, license and vehicle data can be immediately searched through the database. The system allows officers to create diagrams of accidents with X-Y-Z coordinates. And, disposition data can be sent electronically from a court to the Department of Motor Vehicles and to officers and police agencies, according to the information page.

Sprague said the department was able to receive the new equipment through a $300,000 traffic safety grant. The process began a year and a half ago, he said.

The chief said all four department vehicles had been equipped with hardware to house the units, which can be moved from vehicle to vehicle as needed.

Sprague said his officers would receive software training in a few weeks so that all could use the new equipment.

“They will save time for the officers because they can do things in the field rather than have to bring people to the station,” he said.

Planners delay action on Wave Farm site
Panel to vote June 3 pending appeal of court decision
The Daily Mail
May 8, 2009

CAIRO — Tom Roe, free103point9 program manager, has been told by the Cairo Planning Board that no vote or action would be taken on his Wave Farm Site Plan.

Daniel Benoit, acting chairman of the planning board, announced that the panel would vote on the Site Plan June 3 if the Town Board decides not to appeal a recent court decision against the Planning Board’s previous rejection of the plan and if an outstanding balance of roughly $5,200 in an escrow account is settled.

“I am not surprised,” Roe said about the delay, adding that he could wait another month for the decision. Roe and organization Executive Director Galen Joseph-Hunter started the process to construct a residential and not-for-profit art study center in 2007.

An April 17 ruling by State Supreme Court Judge Joseph C. Teresi stated that a previous denial of the arts organization’s site plan application had been “arbitrary and capricious.”

Roe was told the planning board would also not take action on the plan conditional to those criteria being met.

Roe noted that conditional approvals had been made on other sites in the past and said the Planning Board’s position to treat his plan differently than other plans was “arbitrary and capricious.”

“No, it is not,” Town Attorney Tal Rappleyea countered, “because we have been asking you and your attorney for several months to reimburse this escrow account and it has not been done. So you saying you will give it to us is something that has fallen on deaf ears on your side.”

Benoit explained that the planning board has withheld action on other site plans due to outstanding balances on escrow accounts.

Roe, engineer George Schmitt of Morris Associates and engineer Elliott Fishman of Santo Associates answered questions posed by the planning board regarding the width of a ingress and egress route as well as parking spaces.

Schmitt said that a section of driveway would be widened to 18 feet across in order to accommodate two-way traffic.

The board asked Roe whether the plan included an appropriate number of handicapped parking spots.

“If it was not correct, the judge would have noted that handicapped parking was still a question,” Roe said.

Benoit and the engineers counted and discussed the number of parking spots included in the plan and decided that at least 60 in the plan, with some room for more spaces would be sufficient.

Roe said that the issue of insufficient parking had not been mentioned in the past.

Benoit and the board agreed that another public hearing on the Site Plan was not necessary and Roe did not need to submit any additional information before a vote was held.

Planning Board member Frank Pambianchi recused himself from Wednesday’s discussion.

After the discussion, Roe hinted his feelings about what further litigation would cost the town.

“I would be doubtful that the Town of Cairo would want to raise taxes to shut down a library,” he said.

Judge favors arts group
Planning board to reconsider application for study center
The Daily Mail
May 6, 2009

State Supreme Court Judge Joseph C. Teresi has ruled that a Cairo Planning Board decision regarding arts organization free103point9 was “arbitrary and capricious.”

The Planning Board will reconsider the application for the organization’s Wave Farm residential and not-for-profit art study center today at 7 p.m.

“Upon remand the Board shall consider the petitioners’ application in its entirety, including the additional submissions as authorized herein, prior to voting on or issuing a resolution,” Teresi wrote in the decision he handed down April 17.

Free103point9 Executive Director Galen Joseph-Hunter said local residents have offered their support to the station during the ordeal.

“We will continue to pursue every avenue to right the wrong that has occurred over the past 18 months,” she said.

On Feb. 4, 2009, the Planning Board denied the arts organization’s application for the site, which will also include performance space.

The arts organization provided Teresi with an audio recording of the meeting at which the project was discussed.

Teresi stated in the ruling that denial was arbitrary and capricious based on the following facts proved in the record:

• the station had submitted documentation that the state Department of Health had approved waste disposal plans;
• the Town Highway Department did not have jurisdiction over a driveway into the property;
• the Planning Board does not have the authority to deny an application based upon its failures to comply with state Building Code requirements;
• the organization proposed to obtain a state liquor license for its events;
• the organization’s site plan showed locations of trash receptacles, the organization would work to prevent patrons from trespassing on neighboring properties and the organization would address the noise level leaving the property;
• the Planning Board used a consideration that was outside the scope of the Town of Cairo Site Plan Review Law in telling the organization it could have mitigated undesirable impacts with project modifications; and
• the site plan showed the site is surrounded by forest that will remain substantially undisturbed, which will provide adequate screening of the site.

Teresi ruled that although the record did not disprove that plans for off-street parking were sufficient for large events, “the standard the [Planning] Board used to make its determination was not supported by foundationary evidence of its accuracy, applicability or general acceptability.”

“While the [Planning] Board’s reasoning in this regard is not wholly arbitrary and capricious, the record is not clear that based upon this factor alone the [Planning] Board would have denied petitioners’ site plan application,” the ruling states.

Teresi handed down a similar ruling in January, which stated that a Sept. 3 resolution passed by the Town Board to deny the application had violated the state’s Open Meetings Law.

Free103point9 has been working to create a community-oriented radio station featuring local cultural events, as well as school, hunting and historical programming. The organization will launch an online version of the station May 9 and will begin airing programming on 90.7-FM in 2010.

“We cannot believe the Town of Cairo wouldn’t want a community radio station or an internationally recognized art center and library, and we can’t wait to get the people of Greene and Columbia counties on the air producing their own local radio shows,” Program Director Tom Roe said.

Biomass heat equipment gains favor
The Daily Mail
April 22, 2009

State researchers and local businessmen are seeing green by seeing green.

Last fall, the state began an incentive program to support and improve biomass-fired heating equipment. The program was designed to foster the development of manufacturing jobs and the betterment of environmental performance of biomass technology.

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority Spokesman Sal Graven said that the initiative encouraged two pellet boiler manufacturers to relocated to New York, one to Dunkirk, on Lake Erie, and the other to Schenectady. They market a European outdoor wood-burning boiler, which, he said, operates about 80 percent more efficiently and produces less than five percent of the particulate emissions than a standard outdoor wood boiler.

“A house is now burning a renewable fuel instead of fossil fuels,” he said.

Graven said the project also encourages businesses to produce fuels grown in-state.

And the business potential is enough to excite Cairo businessman John Deschaine.

Deschaine, who runs a logging company, would like to add chipping capabilities to his logging business on Route 32.

Deschaine would join the roughly 30 logging companies in the state that produce chips as part of what DEC spokeswoman Lori Severino calls integrated harvesting operations.

Most of the companies are located in Northern New York.

Chips can be pressed into pellets, briquettes or used for fuel as they are.

Deschaine is optimistic about the possibilities of chipping wood closer to home.

“We have a large resource here in the Catskills,” he said, “I want to tap into that.”

Marilyn Wyman, program coordinator at the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Greene County Agroforestry Center, in Acra, oversaw an open forum on issues surrounding biofuels earlier this month.

She said the discussion focused on the potential of woody plants found locally, such as willow.

Willow, she said, grows in wet areas as a harvested crop.

The roughly 30 participants in the dialogue were curious about business opportunities and the factors involved with producing biofuels.

“I think there was a lot of interest in this,” she said.

Zywia Wojnar, of Pace University, also attended the Acra meeting.

Wojnar is the project manager of the renewable fuels roadmap, a project coordinated by Cornell Cooperative Extension and Pace University, NYSERDA, the state Department of Agriculture and Markets and the state Department of Environmental Conservation that was created earlier this year.

The roadmap was recommended by the Renewable Energy Task Force, created by Gov. David A. Paterson in 2008.

The roadmap, which is expected to be completed later this year, will provide guidance to those working on how to reduce dependence on foreign oil and harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

Wojnar said the initiative focuses more on biofuels that are made from non-food crops in order to avoid entering into the debate between growing a crop for food versus growing it for fuel.

“We try to steer away from that,” she said.

Wojnar explained that poplar can also be grown for fuel. Once the trees are mature, she said, they can be cut back — but not to the ground — and regrow. After three years, wood can be harvested again, she said.

She said that most of the woodfuel used by New York companies is produced in New York.

Currently, fuelwood pellets are manufactured for residential use in five location in the state, in Delaware, Herkimer, Jefferson, Stueben and Wyoming counties, Lori Severino, a DEC spokeswoman said in an e-mail last week.

She said two more plant will open, in Massena and Saratoga County, shortly.

Severino said that many sawmills use wood chips for space heaters and to run lumber dry-kilns and two coal-fired facilities in Niagara and Yates counties have begun to co-fire with wood.

Two electric/cogenerating plants, in Franklin and Lewis counties, use wood feedstocks exclusively, she said.

But chip and pellet production for large-scale operations still has room to evolve.

John Deschaine explained that the pellets are more expensive to produce than chips because wood needs to be stripped of its bark before it can be pressed into a pellet or briquette.

Zywia Wojnar said that biomass needs to be commoditized, before the industry can grow.

A number of variable factors including moisture content, size and weight need to be standardized in order to a customer to know exactly how much product is needed, she said.

“I would not say it is a very established market,” she said.

Saving seniors from scams
The Daily Mail
Jan. 10, 2009

A representative of the Office of New York State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo met with senior citizens at the Acra Senior Center Friday to offer tips on how to avoid being caught up in money scams.

During the lively presentation, Mark Hoops, the Office’s senior consumer fraud representative, described schemes that target senior citizens, such as sweepstakes companies that offer prize money in return for an international money order, home improvement contractors who ask for cash upfront to buy supplies, and solicitors collecting for not-so-charitable causes.

Copies of the Office’s Smart Senior booklet, which outlines how to prevent and report fraud, were available as well.

Hoops warned the audience that even though as seniors, they have built up a history with banks, creditors and charities, banks might not catch abnormal activity or recognize it as fraud. Sending such orders, he cautioned, could quickly plunge a victim into debt, but is also illegal.

Hoops said that shut-ins and those who only have a telephone for company are especially at risk from these types of schemes. Hoops asked seniors at the lunch to speak with their friends who may fall into that category.

Hoops then turned the presentation to the scams home contractors pull on unsuspecting homeowners. He described the difficulty of tracking a suspect contractor, especially if the contractor was paid in cash.

Different counties across the state have different rules as to what type of contractors need licenses and training to conduct business, so the Office of the Attorney General recently launched a Web site to help inform homeowners and stop dishonorable contractors from pulling off their scams.

The site, NYKnowYourContractor.com, provides homeowners lists of which home improvement contractors and landscapers have complaints filed against them or are subject to lawsuits. It offers tips for finding the best contractor for a job, such as knowing which permits are needed for what type of work, obtaining proof of insurance for a potential contractor and interviewing multiple contractors for a cost estimate and to agree on a time frame.

The site also directs users to the state’s Consumer Protection Board as well as regional and county bureau and agency information sites.

Hoops advised the audience that charitable donations may not always end up where the donor intended.
“Anybody who wants to solicit money from New Yorkers is mandated by law to register with the Attorney General and report to them every year their collections, the name of the telemarketer they hired, and what they paid the telemarketer and what pledges they collected that actually went to the charity,” he said.

Last month, Cuomo issued a report that showed, on average, that 38 cents of every dollar brought in by a telemarketing company on behalf of a charity actually goes to that charity.

Hoops said that people considering donating to a charity with which they are unfamiliar should request its annual report before writing a check.

“When you introduce the Office’s name into the conversation,” he said, “the scammers usually hang up.”

He reminded the audience that solicitation calls from people claiming to be state troopers are from scammers, too.

Many audience members said that they had received calls from so-called troopers asking for money.

“State troopers don’t solicit funds. It’s simple, they don’t,” he said.

People can further protect themselves from scammers by taking advantage of the Security Freeze Law, which went into effect in 2006.

Under the law, people can send requests to the three major credit reporting agencies for a freeze, or lock, of their credit histories. Doing this will help prevent anyone from opening accounts or borrowing money using the information contained within.

Hoops described the benefits of a credit freeze as like becoming invisible.

“You stop getting bogus checks in the mail, offers for cruises disappear. Your mailbox lightens up,” he said.

Reports can be unlocked for legitimate reasons by the account owner and then relocked once the process is conducted.

Freezing the records will not disrupt credit card accounts or halt transactions, he explained.

Several seniors at the lunch said they were familiar with the schemes Hoops highlighted. Several said they knew of people who had been victimized by one scam or another and they would start using Hoops’ tips if they did not use them already.

Greene County Legislator William Lawrence, R-Cairo, who also attended the lunch presentation, said afterward that the freeze law was an excellent idea.

Using the service left little option for someone to open an account using someone else’s personal information, he said.

Hoops asked the audience to tell their friends about the protective measures, saying that as the public becomes aware of certain schemes, scammers are forced to give up their game.

Hoops is scheduled to make other related presentations around the county in the coming months.

 State judge says resolution violated Open Meetings Law
The Daily Mail
Jan. 8, 2009

State Supreme Court Judge Joseph Teresi ruled Wednesday that a resolution adopted in the Town of Cairo last fall did not comply with the state’s Open Meetings Law.

The decision requires the board to review the site plan and to take another vote.

“Because the defendants’ September 3 Resolution was not issued in compliance with the Open Meeting Law or Town Law 271(16) and 274-a, the Sept. 3 Resolution is annulled,” the ruling reads according to a press release issued by Tom Roe, free103point9 program manager.

The September vote denied an application from free103point9 for their Wave Farm “Study Center” in Acra, which will include a studio for a community radio station, living areas for summer resident artists and space for outdoor performances.

“Upon reconsideration, the board will utilize the Town of Cairo Local Law 1 of the year 2006, to review the plaintiff’s site plan application, and an affirmative vote is required to approve or deny the plaintiff’s application,” Tal Rappleyea, who represents the town and planning boards, read from the decision at a Planning Board meeting Wednesday.

According to the decision, the board has to vote on the project in a timely manner.

Rappleyea called the ruling “sort of a split decision,” saying that the decision did not rule against the Town of Cairo and the Planning Board for all items in the lawsuit.

Rappleyea said that the decision held that one part of the lawsuit, alleging that the board violated the civil rights of free103point9 by not making their decision under the new law, was not applicable, because the law had not gone into effect at the time of the vote.

Rappleyea told the planning board that the court said that it was too early to make a determination on whether the board had violated the civil rights of free103point9 for not approving the plan.

The decision will not become binding until the attorneys for free103point9 file it with the Greene County Clerk’s office.

Roe said he expected that the ruling would be filed very soon so that plan review can resume.

“This project has been delayed and delayed and delayed by the town already,” Roe said.

Rappleyea said that the file has been fully submitted to the board along with comments on the plan.

Planning Board Chairman Peter Maassmann told the board that no further public hearings concerning the project would be held and no new materials would be accepted.

Planning board member Daniel Benoit suggested that the board have a special meeting to discuss the plan. Maassmann said that such a meeting could be in order if board members felt one was needed after they reviewed the file individually.

“I trust the Planning Board to respect the court’s decision and review the project under the old site law,” Cairo Town Supervisor John Coyne said.

Free103point3 is a non-profit arts group that received a Federal Communications Commission license for a 3,300-watt non-commercial FM radio station on 90.7 in Columbia and Greene counties this fall. The station will air shows with a local focus that are produced by members of the community.

“I am looking forward to working with town officials in the future, and hope that, moving forward, this project is reviewed in a manner appropriate to its small-scale and community-oriented mission,” Executive Director Galen Joseph-Hunter said in the release.

Saving energy, money in Cairo
The Daily Mail
Jan. 1, 2009

Cairo town offices could close one day a week later this year in an effort to reduce the town’s heating bills.

Town officials discussed the four-day work week at their board meeting in December, but did not reach a decision.

Certain offices, such as the bookkeeper’s and the supervisor’s, could close Fridays, for example, but could extend their hours to accommodate residents who come for help when they get out of work.

Other offices, including the assessor and the building department would remain open, officials said.

The state mandates that the library stay open for 35 hours a week. Councilwoman Janet Schwarzenegger pointed out that the library needs to be open on Saturday to accommodate students. The Acra Community Center is also utilized on weekends.

Town Supervisor John Coyne said that officials were looking into various plans to save money.

“I would love to see this happen, but I don’t think it will happen this heat season,” he said.

Hours for the tax collector and assessor have already been publicized on department forms and could not be changed, he said.

Cairo officials did not respond to several attempts to learn how much the town spends on heating the building and how much money would be saved by switching to a four-day work week.