EDITORIAL Was Polling Place Big Enough? In a tiny village of 1,800 people, should voters, many of retirement age, have to wait in in the rain for a half-hour to vote? Certainly, no. And yet that was the case Tuesday, Sept. 29, as voters lined up to exercise their franchise at the Cooperstown fire hall on Chestnut Street. It may have been turnout, given the high interest in breaking the tie in the Mary-Margaret Robbins/Mac Benton race for village trustee.…
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Editorial - Page 21
EDITORIAL Sterling Mayor’ Legacy Suggest: Are City Managers Needed? Maybe it’s apocryphal, but the story’s told of a former mayor of Oneonta who, elected decades ago, discovered some department heads were taking hour-and-a-half lunches to work out at a local gym. The mayor gave everybody raises, at the same time advising the department heads: Game over, be back at your desks in an hour. That worked for six months, then the particular department heads starting slipping, the story goes, and…
EDITORIAL Turmoil At Bassett, But It’s Good Turmoil. And It Can’t Be Avoided Intriguing news is filtering out of the vicinity of One Atwell Road, Cooperstown, as Dr. Tommy Ibrahim, new Bassett Healthcare Network president/CEO, takes hold. Some people are leaving, voluntarily or not, which is common in this kind of transition. But there’s a particularly intriguing addition: A tech guy, Michael Thompson, VP/systems improvement, recruited from Integris, Ibrahim’s former employer, based in Oklahoma City. Last week’s announcement described his…
Public, Private Colleges Both Must Thrive It’s been reported that SUNY Oneonta’s volunteer quarantining was a SUNY-wide policy. If so, then we can expected similar COVID explosions at Cobleskill, Delhi, Binghamton and across the 64-campus system, unless the campuses can quickly apply SUNY Oneonta’s new regimen of 100-percent testing and a two-week hiatus. Throughout the pandemic threat, there have been calls for uniform policies and instruction from Washington D.C. (or the CDC in Atlanta), so a nation of 320 million…
Let’s Stay Flexible, Collaborate, Decide To Move Forward 20-20 hindsight is easy but… Aug. 21-23 was critical. That was the first weekend back for SUNY Oneonta’s 6,500 students. For Hartwick College 1,200; but, as it turns out, that was less impactful. For Oneonta Mayor Gary Herzig and Common Council, the focus had been on bars and gatherings on Main Street, but that turned out to be under control. Yes, there were students there, but the heightened public concern, and tavern…
EDITORIAL SUNY Oneonta, City Hall: Patch Up Relationship President, Mayor Divided, Particularly On Bus Issue This is a time for unity against an implacable foe. Five months into the COVID-19 threat, it’s hard to see the future clearly. There have been worldwide epidemics before, but not since the Flu Pandemic of 1919, and not in a world so interconnected by travel and commerce. A vaccine will eventually surface, but how soon, and how quickly would it become widely available? Still,…
EDITORIAL Freshman County Rep Shows Guts, Consistency Let’s give credit where it’s due. In our May 29 edition, County Rep. Clark Oliver of Oneonta was tweaked in this space, along with his fellow Democrats who voted against 59 layoffs without offering an alternative. They ducked a hard decision, thus losing credibility with their colleagues, it was argued. • Last Wednesday, Aug. 5, the county board was considering a measure to set aside New York State’s 2-percent property tax cap –…
EDITORIAL Extremism Threatens George Floyd’s Legacy In our nation and county, we have a moment of opportunity. George Floyd’s death – and, in particular, the graphic video, 8 minutes and 46 seconds of it – caused every American of good will, black, white, Hispanic, even, yes, Indians, to say, enough is enough. The mechanisms of reform are starting to turn on the question of the moment: How do we retool our police departments so it, finally, once and for all,…
IN APPRECIATION Giles Russell, Good Citizen Giles Russell was the kind of citizen – active, engaged, sure-footed in the projects he undertook – that any community would welcome and cherish. “Giles was a very hardworking, very caring – I can’t think of anyone who cared more for the village than Giles; and a lot of people care about the village,” said Deputy Mayor Cindy Falk. To Cooperstown’s gain, he and wife Jane chose “America’s Most Perfect Village” as their new…
EDITORIAL In Nation Under Duress, A Verb To Live By The verb, “to accept.” The verb became action at 8:30 a.m. Monday, June 1, when Public Works Director Mitch Hotaling climbed a ladder and hung the Pride Flag on Cooperstown Village Hall. When the Village Board, with some rancor, voted last July to fly the flag during Gay Pride Month, trustees couldn’t know how the verb, “to accept,” might resonate today after three months of pandemic and a week of…
