SusanCampriello: My Works

Organizers hope Eco-Faire points to the future
Chamber of Commerce president says going green will, in the long run, save consumers money
Sept. 11, 2009

CAIRO — Area residents will get a chance to learn about outdoor wood boilers, electric vehicles and solar energy Sunday as the Cairo Area Chamber of Commerce hosts its first Eco-Faire at Angelo Canna Park.

Chamber President and Eco-Faire Co-Chairwoman Claudia Zucker said the event will feature residents who use and create green energy, green vendors and lecturers to speak on how green energy can be used around the house.

“Most people think that going green costs money but we are out to prove in the long run that it saves you money,” she said.

Other featured exhibits will include Greene County residents and companies who generate all their own energy, own hybrid vehicles and produce and sell organic foods. A beekeeper and herbalist will be there, too, she said.

Eco-Faire-goers can participate in animal diet and treatments, recyclable jewelry, and workplace greening workshops.

Speakers will include State Assemblyman Pete Lopez, R-Schoharie; Andy Turner, executive director of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Greene County; and real estate broker Hal Zucker.

Claudia Zucker said the idea for the Eco-Faire came out of a green renovation class on which Hal Zucker, her husband, was working. Other members of the Chamber shared ideas, too, she said, and the faire came together.

“Everybody got excited about it,” she said.

Zucker said the Chamber is hoping for a good turnout Sunday and are already thinking of venders and exhibitions that could be included in next year’s Eco-Faire.

Eco-Faire Co-Chairman Neil Schoenfeld said similar fairs that bring new energy technologies to communities have been held across the country.

He said the problems of pollution have to be dealt with if the earth is going to remain viable.

“This is the future,” he said.

For Cairo voters, it’s no contest
Democrats will not nominate candidates
The Daily Mail
Sept. 10, 2009

CAIRO — The Cairo Democratic Committee will not field any candidates for town office, according to committee Chairman Michael Coyne.

“The committee has chosen after thoughtful deliberation that it is in our best interest this year not to have a caucus,” Coyne said Tuesday night.

The decision leaves the Republicans — incumbent town supervisor John Coyne, incumbent councilman Raymond Suttmeier, councilman candidate Douglas Ostrander Sr., justice candidate Leland Miller and incumbent tax collector Emily Feeney — with no Democratic opposition.

Coyne said the committee’s unanimous decision was not made to stymie the democratic process. He stressed that no Democrats came forward to run for town office during the spring or summer.

The Cairo Democratic Committee is supporting the summer nominating petitions for incumbent county legislator Harry Lennon and will continue to run that campaign, Coyne said.

Lennon and incumbent legislator William Lawrence, who is a Republican, are vying for Cairo’s two seats on the county legislature, again without opposition.

Incumbent Councilwoman Alice Tunison, a Democrat who has said that she would not seek re-election, changed her mind and decided to run for re-election after last week’s Town Board workshop meeting, she said Wednesday.

Tunison said her decision came out of a desire to see through some of her efforts to improve Cairo and she did not want to walk away from the Town Board.

“This has probably been the hardest job I have ever had but I am convinced that a lot of the things I have done for the Town of Cairo have been very important,” she said. “I want to be sure that I still do my push-push there.”

Tunison unsuccessfully lobbied Coyne and the committee Tuesday night for a Council nod.

Coyne applauded Tunison’s efforts Wednesday but said the committee had decided upon their strategy to not caucus before Tunison made her appeal.

Coyne was elected chairman of the committee only six weeks ago, too little time, he said, to run a real race for credible candidates.

The deadline to file a petition as a third party candidate passed in August. Tunison said her next step is to launch a write-in campaign.

“You better believe it,” she said.

Since she took office in 2006, Tunison has worked to install an air conditioner in the Acra Community Center, to improve a speaker system and provide tents for veteran’s events and to organize parades. Tunison established the Cairo Historic Association and serves as its president.

She is currently involved with projects to refurbish the World War I memorial fountain as well as other beautification efforts and to make crosswalks more visible.

She has organized an annual memorial observance for the Sept. 11 attacks since before her election in 2005.

Tunison said she had corresponded with nearly every Cairo resident while administering Cairo’s program to provide 911 street number signs to every property owner. She said se had done her best to attend every event to which she was invited.

“I really enjoyed the responsibility I felt and good feeling I felt about representing my Town,” she said.

Cairo Republican Committee Chairman Joseph Birk said Wednesday he was surprised by the Democratic Committee’s decision not to run any candidates.

“I have been a chairman for 22 years and this is the first time I’ve heard that,” he said.

Birk said his party will still campaign for its slate of candidates by knocking on doors, posting signs and holding candidate events.

Election Day is Nov. 3.

Lesson 1 for schools:
How to stop swine flu
District officials encourage students, teachers to use common-sense hygiene practices to curb spread of H1N1
The Daily Mail
Sept. 8, 2009
The Windham Journal
Sept. 10, 2009

CATSKILL — As schools reopen, area educators and administrators are readying their buildings for learning, playing and perhaps spreading germs like those that could spread the H1N1 flu virus.

School administrations in Greene County are encouraging students and teachers to use common sense hygienic practices and are stepping up cleaning regimens to keep their buildings and grounds clean.

Hand sanitizing products will be available to students in every district, and staff will meet with health care professionals to learn the best way to keep classroom areas clean and students healthy.

School administrators said they will also follow guidelines set forth by the State Education Department and State Department of Health and keep in touch with the County Department of Health.

*
Overall, administrators said they would increase cleanings and reassess practices if students

“We are going to hope for the best and prepare for all the contingencies that we can,” Anne Rode, principal of the Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School.

Each district has its own procedures in place.

Cairo-Durham Central School District

Ron Agostinoni, assistant principal of Cairo-Durham High School, said nurses will remind students the proper way to wash their hands and prevent the spread of germs.

Hand sanitizer dispensers, like the ones in elementary classrooms, have been installed in classrooms in the Middle School and High School building. Sanitizers will be available to students before lunch period, he said.

He said students and staff will be encouraged to stay home if they exhibit flu-like symptoms.

As with procedure set last spring, bus drivers sanitize buses before, after and between runs, he said.

Catskill

District Superintendent Dr. Kathleen Farrell said the daily cleaning routine will be enhanced with extra cleanings of commonly touched surfaces such as water fountains, keyboards and doorknobs. Cafeteria areas will also receive extra attention, she said.

Hand sanitizer dispensers will be installed in every classroom, school office and common area, she said.

Farrell said staff will use hand-washing solution that shows dirty spots missed to demonstrate how to properly wash hands.

Farrell said as per request of Greene County Public Health, parents would not be notified of every student who presented severe flu-like symptoms. That could change, Farrell said, if the number of students with those symptoms increases.

Coxsackie-Athens

Coxsackie-Athens Central School District Superintendent Dr. Earle Gregory said at a recent Board of Education meeting that school nurses would be vigilant and aware of any illnesses.

Students will be encouraged to encouraged to thoroughly sanitize their hands.

He said staff will follow protocols set forth by Greene County Public Health and the State Department of Health,including increased cleaning schedules, encouraging students and staff with flu-like symptoms to remain at home for 24 hours after the symptoms disappear, and encourage students not to cough or sneeze into their hands.

District schools would not be closed, he said, unless a large absentee rate was seen.

Greenville

Greenville Central School District Director of Curriculum and Communications Colleen Hall said teachers in her district had already completed a training course on showing students how to keep themselves healthy. Classrooms have been stocked with hand sanitizers, she said. Buildings and grounds crews will continue to keep the buildings clean.

Hall said parents would receive a letter that included information on when a child should be kept at home and information would be posted to the district’s Web site.

She said student health would be monitored so that the schools would know when students were kept home for flu-like symptoms or for other reasons so she schools have a sense of why a student might be absent. Additional building and bus cleanings could be added if needed, she said.

Hunter-Tannersville

Hunter-Tannersville Central School District Superintendent Patrick Darfler-Sweeney said his building is constantly being cleaned due to several varied construction projects at the school.

High School students will meet with nurses during gym period to review universal precautions. Elementary class teachers will underscore the same precautions, he said.

Darfler-Sweeney said parents would be sent guidelines on when to keep students out of school.

The district’s Web site will be updated with information as the year continues, he said.

Darfler-Sweeney said students will be provided with alcohol-free hand sanitizing products and parents will be encouraged to give their children alcohol-free products if they feel the need to give their children anything.

Windham-Ashland-Jewett

Anne Rode said teachers and staff will meet with staff from Greene County Public Health to discuss how to prevent germs from spreading in the school building and on buses. Bus drivers would have an additional training to revisit safety checks and additional cleanliness protocols.

The school has ordered bottles of hand sanitizers for distribution as well as dispensers for all classrooms, common areas and offices in the school building.

She said the school reminds students to wash their hands and be mindful that they will be around many other children every year.

Information regarding the district’s procedures and the virus will be posted on the district’s Web site, she said, adding that information will also be included in a parent newsletter.

School administrators said physical contact — hallway greetings or during athletic events and gym class — will not be prevented or banned.

As Hunter-Tannersville’s Superintendent Patrick Darfler-Sweeney said, common sense hygiene practices will prevail, echoing what other administrators said.

“If we do a really good job with that, we will take care of 99.9 percent of the other stuff,” 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.

Schools to get stimulus funds
Money will be used to support improvements to teaching methods, learning environment
The Daily Mail
Sept. 3, 2009

CATSKILL — New programs and program features could be coming to the Catskill Central School District through more than $260,000 from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 as well as from other grant sources, according to District Superintendent Dr. Kathleen Farrell.

The district will receive a preliminary estimate of $263,324 available over a 27-month period through the stimulus measure, according to the New York State Education Department and the Office of Gov. David A. Paterson. The money can be used to support teaching and learning improvement efforts. Final allotments will be announced later in the year.

“Any penny we get goes a long way,” Farrell said of the coming money.

She said the money, and additional funds through the Dyson Foundation in conjunction with Greene County Mental Health, will help implement an extended-day elementary school program that could be used for tutoring sessions or homework assistance.

She said the district will begin a search for additional staff to provide more opportunities for secondary students to prepare for Regents examinations or attend tutoring sessions, to receive counseling and to possibly pass failed courses through Online instructional services.

Farrell said further funds would come to the District through the Individuals with Disabilities Act.

According to the department, approximately 700 New York schools, mostly in lower-income areas, will receive more than $900 million through the Recovery Act.

Greene County schools will receive $788,464 in the following amounts:

- $138,042 for the Cairo-Durham Central School District;

- $263,324 for the Catskill Central School District;

- $133,728 for the Coxsackie-Athens Central School District;

- $122,019 for the Greenville Central School District;

- $85,132 for the Hunter-Tannersville Central School District;

- $46,219 for the Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School District.

But, as Cairo-Durham Central School’s Business Manager Lissa Jilek pointed out Wednesday, the funding is not guaranteed. Schools must still apply for the funds, she said.

Allocations were determined based on a “No Child Left Behind” program count of qualifying children including those in families living below the poverty line, living in foster care or in institutions for the neglected and who are receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

According to program data gathered, 6.86 percent of qualifying children in New York reside in Greene County with the following break-down:

- 1.15 percent in the Cairo-Durham Central School District;

- 2.40 percent in the Catskill Central School District;

- 1.14 percent in the Coxsackie-Athens Central School District;

- 0.96 percent in the Greenville Central School District;

- 0.80 percent in the Hunter-Tannersville Central School District;

- 0.41 percent in the Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School District.

Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, D-NY, said in a statement that education is one of the most important investments that can be made for the future of New York.

“These federal dollars will help give New York students the education they need to succeed in the 21st century by providing more early education, extended learning opportunities, better training for teachers and a stronger role for parents,” she said.

What goes around comes around
Defying tough times, local amusement park entrepreneur roars back with new Junior Speedway
The Daily Mail
Sept. 2, 2009

A popular Cairo attraction reopened this summer and as the season winds down, its owner is already thinking of next year.

Dave Osborn, the long-time owner of the Carson City theme park and resort, brought Junior Speedway, on Route 32, in Cairo back to life this July. The park, which has been closed for a few years, offers a number of new attractions and has been host to many community events, camp outings and parties.

Osborn said he and staff spent more than 18 hours a day for three months readying the park for operation.

“We had so much work to do,” he said.

Work included upgrades to the park’s office and snack bar as well as the installation of a Ferris wheel, a children’s train ride and inflatable bouncing games. The park also features a go-kart track, swing rides and a miniature golf course.

Osborn said the Ferris wheel, go-karts and a “water wars” balloon toss with slingshots have been very popular with the summer’s visitors.

He said area residents and vacationers have constantly trickled in — a good turnout for a first year, especially during an economic downturn, Osborn said — with many visitors arriving from the region’s many resorts.

One day, he said, about 200 children from a nearby camp arrived wanting to play every game during just a two hour stay.

“That wasn’t easy,” he said with a laugh.

Osborn said he has heard many times that people are happy that the speedway has returned.

Visitors enjoying the afternoon Tuesday said the same.

Elana Butler, of Brooklyn, said the nearest place devoted to children’s activities is in Saugerties, a longer trip from her family’s vacation spot in Tannersville.

Cynthia Abrams, a long-time area resident, agreed, which is why she chose to bring her family to the park to celebrate her grandson’s birthday.

She said children need more types of attractions that the speedway provides.

“What better place can they be taken to,” she asked of her family’s children.

This summer, Osborn has been open from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. every day and has hosted a 1950s car show and karaoke every Saturday night.

After area schools open again, the speedway will cut back its hours to Thursday and Friday nights and full weekend days.

Osborn, who also owns an entertainment company, visits trade shows every year and has been working on ideas to make next season even more exciting.

He plans to add two new attractions, one that has already won the approval of his 11-year-old daughter.

More than 30 years after Osborn took over Carson City, in 1978, he still sticks to his plan for success of rising early, working hard and advertising.

“I don’t feel I work anymore. I love it,” he said.

Local firm selected for Puccini/Coppola world premiere
The Daily Mail
Aug. 24, 2009

For several years, the Inter-Cities Performing Arts, Inc. company has staged musical performances at the Altamura Center for Arts and Cultures, in Round Top. This fall, the company will perform the world premiere of “La Coupe et Les Levres (The Cup and the Lips),” a transformation by conductor and composer Anton Coppola of Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Edgar.”

Company and Altamura Center co-founder Carmela Altamura announced the performance Sunday during a “150th Anniversary Tribute to Giacomo Puccini” concert of the composer’s arias.

“I was just overjoyed and felt a tremor of great responsibility,” she said of the partnership between her company and Coppola. “No one living has seen a premiere of a Puccini opera. It is an historic event.”

The murder mystery will open appropriately on Oct. 31, 2009 at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College.

Last year, Anton Coppola decided to rework the libretto and touch the operatic score to transform the opera, which reportedly had been a disappointment to Puccini, into a new work.

The final product, Coppola said, is a supposition or conjecture on what Puccini would have wanted. He explained that the title referred to happiness and the idea that something may happen after a cup is raised but before it touches the mouth.

Franco Alfano set a precedent for making his mark on Puccini’s music by completing “Turandot” after the composer’s death in 1924, at the age of 65.

The performance will feature this year’s winners of the upcoming Altamura/Enrico Caruso International Voice Competition and will be directed by Michael Philip Davis.

Davis, Coppola and several past competition winners presented a staging of Puccini’s “Il Trittico: Gianni Schicchi” Sunday, along with an aria from each of the composer’s other operas.

Although “Gianni Schicchi” was originally set in 1299, the cast wore modern clothes and played in a modern bedroom.

“As you can see, it is no longer 1299; it is 2009,” Coppola told the audience before raising his baton.

Coppola said that although he has conducted Puccini’s music several times, each performance is unique.

“We are not machines,” he said.

And, he said, he always learns from the performers with whom he works.

The opera’s director, Michael Philip Davis, who has spent a significant amount of time in his family’s Columbia County home, met Coppola while attending the Manhattan School of Music. Although he has worked with Coppola on other projects and has directed Puccini before, Davis said directing this show has been different.

“Everyone learns when you work with Maesro Coppola,” he said.

The afternoon ended a summer workshop featuring classes instructed by Altaumra and Camille Coppola, no relation to the conductor, and her husband John, of the New Rochelle Opera.

The group spent two weeks practicing in New York City before coming to Round Top last week. Performers lived together at the Altamura Center in the days leading up to the performance.

Altamura described to the audience that the company is run like an Italian opera, in the back, or dining room in this case, she said, indicating the rest of the house behind the stage.

Davis said the intimacy of the space allowed him work out details with the cast. Detail, he said, is very important to a comedy.

And an hour before curtain, the cast ate lasagna, meat, salad and fruit around two tables and in the kitchen, speaking in English and Italian with the Altamuras and each other. After eating, cast members disappeared to other parts of the building, their vocal warm-up routines audible in the kitchen. Davis advised one tenor on intonation of a specific musical passage after attending to another performer and dressing the stage.

Carmela Altamura said both Sunday’s performance and the upcoming premiere was a special honor for Greene County. Various local organizations and residents have provided a lot of support for the company. Greene County residents will have an opportunity to watch an abridged version of Johann Strauss’ “Die Fledermaus,” in English, at the Altamura Center on Aug. 30.

“Arts have held a place from the very beginning,” she said, adding that on stage, performers represent the meaning of what it means to be human.

“If actors were excellent or transformed into their characters, the audience will leave different than they came in,” she said.

Rescue squad disputes outstanding ambulance bills
The Daily Mail
Aug. 17, 2009

CAIRO—The Town of Cairo Ambulance wants the Greenville Rescue Squad to pay it roughly $16,000 owed by Greenville residents with outstanding ambulance bills that have gone into collection.

But the Greenville squad continues to refuse to pay on the basis that they do not act as an insurance company.

“If it was an obligation of ours we had agreed to in advance, we will pay it,” Rescue Squad Treasurer Jim VanAuken said. “We think it is bad policy and, from what we can tell, question the legalities of it.”

VanAuken took issue with an Aug. 5 letter from Cairo Attorney Tal Rappleyea that stated a contract Cairo had with the squad had expired.

He said the squad and Cairo had no contract that required payments to expire.

VanAuken said the squad would not have agreed to making payments without a written contract.

“It was never a contract, it was never a gentleman’s agreement, it was never discussed,” he said.

Cairo Ambulance Service and Greenville Rescue Squad, Inc. signed a Greene County Emergency Medical Service Mutual Aid agreement in 2003, which does not have an expiration date but can be terminated by either participating party.

Cairo Ambulance Chief Reay Mahler acknowledged that the 2003 agreement did not describe a payment plan, but said other emergency response services recognize the duty to pay for the services when patients do not or cannot.

“We are not asking them to do anything different than we ask other towns to do or we do ourselves,” Mahler said. “It stands to reason that if we provide a service that we get paid for it.”

VanAuken explained that the squad is funded by billing patients and through fundraising efforts and, unlike Cairo, does not bill other agencies when it responds to calls in other districts.

Squad life member Bob Lampman said the squad has no issues with services in Coxsackie, Durham and Westerlo, but only with Cairo. He said those services do not have issues with each other and again, the issues appear to surround Cairo.

The pair said the perception that they have been unresponsive to Cairo is incorrect. In a June 16, 2008 letter, they notified Cairo of their position.

“Greenville Rescue Squad does not now or expect in the future to bill other towns or EMS services for transport of patients. Since no agreement was ever discussed in regards to this situation we will not be held responsible for any bills,” the letter states.

The two services have corresponded since that time.

VanAuken suggested that perhaps towns or other services are paying Cairo for similar calls without questioning why.

According to Catskill Ambulance Chief Matthew Leibowitz, Catskill and Cairo have had a gentlemen’s agreement regarding the payments for at least five years. Representatives from services in Durham and Coxsackie did not respond to interview requests by time of press.

VanAuken and Lampman argued that by paying Cairo, responders there would essentially being paid twice for running calls in Greenville.

But Mahler said this is not the case. The money Cairo Ambulance is asking from the Rescue Squad is to offset the costs incurred they pay other ambulance services for covering calls in Cairo when Cairo’s responders are already on a call, he said.

Unless payments are received, Cairo will cancel the 2003 agreement on Sept. 1 and Greene County Emergency Control will be notified not to dispatch the Cairo Ambulance Service to Greenville except in the case of a major emergency, Mahler said.

Cairo officials mull hiring grant writer
Town board decides trained consultant is needed to manage complexities
The Daily Mail
Aug. 7, 2009

CAIRO — Over the past few months, Board members have voiced their desire to hire a new grant writer or have current employees apply for grants.

Councilwoman Janet Schwarzenegger organized a grant-writing team of Cairo residents with various backgrounds during the spring. The group successfully applied for a received grants for items such as 10 bottle recycling bins, which it received in May.

The Town’s Bookkeeper Luann Arp has begun the preliminary application process for a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant for sewer project funding.

But, Schwarzenegger said Thursday, the group learned about a number of opportunities after their submission deadlines had passed. And future grant applications may be too difficult for an untrained grant-writer to complete.

So the Cairo Town Board met with Steven Kirk, president of DBS Planning Consulting, at their Workshop meeting to discuss the possibility of him helping complete the grant and work on future grants the Town may pursue.

Kirk described some of the projects for which he procured funds in Catskill, Athens, with the Greene County Industrial Development Agency and in Columbia County, including work on community centers and a theater. Kirk said he had proposed some projects underway to municipal governments after he recognized the potential of empty buildings.

“We are fairly productive in what we do,” he said. “I take a lot of pride in how we work with municipalities to help them see what kind of opportunities are out there for State funding.”

At times, the meeting seemed more like a free consultation than a job interview, with Board members asking Kirk how they might proceed on a host of projects such as building a new library building and turning it and the municipal building into a Town campus. Other possible projects include work on a kitchen exhaust system in the Acra Community Center, various renovations to the adjacent St. Edmund’s Chapel and a sidewalk extension on Main Street. Schwarzenegger said an ice skating rink, among other things, could be built in Angelo Canna Park.

“That is what I would like to see done in two years,” Schwarzenegger said.

“The wish list is very long,” Town Supervisor John Coyne added.

Kirk described the grants for which the Town could apply to cover some expenses for each project. He explained that a multi-coordinated meeting with representatives of different funding agencies could go a long way toward knowing what grants would fit various projects.

Kirk said he would not get paid upfront for his services as might other grant-writers, a complaint some on the Board had with Cairo’s former grant-writer.

At the close of the meeting, Coyne said a decision on whether Kirk would be hired to work on the USDA grant would be made at the next Board meeting.

Bid for sewer funding edges toward completion
$2.5 million would be supplemented by money from other sources
The Daily Mail
Aug. 5, 2009

CAIRO — The preliminary application for a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for sewer expansion and upgrade work from is coming along and could be completed later this month.

Cairo Town Councilwoman Janet Schwarzenegger said Tuesday that the grant could go a long way toward funding the ongoing project.

“I do not think the USDA grant will cover the whole project but it will help us defray the cost,” she said.

Money could come from other grants or sources, she said.

Town Supervisor John Coyne said last week that the preliminary application would be completed in-house as opposed to by outside grant, which will save the Town money.

Coyne, Schwarzenegger and Town Bookkeeper Luann Arp met with Adrienne Hull, a rural development specialist with the USDA, in July. Schwarzenegger said Hull provided the Town numerous materials to help with the grant-writing process. She also offered to help if needed, Schwarzenegger said.

Coyne said the Town was “more than capable” of doing the preliminary application.

“It should be very easy,” Schwarzenegger said, adding that she hoped the package would be submitted to the USDA later this month.

Arp said Tuesday she was working on the application.

Adrienne Hull said that once the preliminary application was submitted, it will be reviewed and Cairo will be notified of whether it could receive any grant money. She said at that time, she would visit Cairo again to discuss the grant and any loan options interesting the Town.