SECONDARY EDITORIAL Village Hall Should Also Fund Strong Merchants’ Association While we’re at it, downtown Coopers(ghost)town needs a strong merchants’ association. So far, it’s always been a Catch-22. The Cooperstown Area Chamber of Commerce has been adamant: We only serve our members. Unfortunately, too few of downtown businesses are members to make the chamber an empowered entity to promote downtown. The result: No coherent, year-‘round downtown strategy. Again, the Village Board has $400,000+ plus a year in found money to…
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Editorial - Page 31
EDITORIAL D’oh, Homer, You Got It Wrong. Comeback Coming To New York If you had driven from Cooperstown to Franklin late Sunday afternoon, you would have been greeted by one lovely scene after another. The sun had broken through. The brilliant light green trees promised the leaves that may be out by the time you read this, contrasting with the solemn evergreens. That panorama from the top of that back road leading from Otego’s I-88 exit into Franklin was never…
EDITORIAL Officers, Use Judgment: Law Allows To Provide Mugshots To The Public The recently completed state budget contains a measure, championed by Governor Cuomo, that prohibits police departments from releasing mug shots of suspects. The other day, Monday, April 22, Trooper Aga Dembinska, Trooper C spokesman, declined to release a mug shot of Gabriel Truitt, 33, suspect in the Dec. 29 arson fire on Oneonta’s Walling Avenue, where former city firefighter John Heller was killed. Dembinska advised that, while the…
EDITORIAL With Brainy, Creative Execs, Otsego County’s Future Secure A couple of months ago, Gerry Benjamin, director of SUNY New Paltz’s Benjamin Center and an expert on Upstate New York, saw the region’s economic future in nurturing and growing what we have. Craft brewing and yogurt production, in particular, are developing nicely, he said, although neither is generating sufficient jobs at sufficient salaries to begin replacing the manufacturing behemoth that was the Mohawk Valley. The advantage to incremental growth, of…
EDITORIAL Boys, Welcome To Baseball Mecca – Have A Joint The other day in downtown Cooperstown, a kitchen worker stepped out onto Main Street’s sidewalk in the middle of the day, lit a joint, took a few tokes and went back to work. You might think, get used to it. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Legalization of marijuana, which the ascendant Democratic majorities in the state Legislature and Governor Cuomo expected to become law in January, has foundered…
EDITORIAL All Richfield Folks, Not Just A Faction, Should Map Future As it stands, regrettably, the Town of Richfield’s proposed Comprehensive Master Plan hasn’t yet accomplished its mission. So the Town Board – it meets on the second Monday of each month, and may act on the plan in either April or May – should put it on hold, at least for the time being, until the community’s will can be dispassionately determined and the plan revised to reflect it.…
EDITORIAL The Pride, Exhilaration Of Championship Run Belong To All Of Us Forever A columnist – a dad, too – wrote in Psychology Today a few years ago: “My hope is that their involvement in sports will help to build their character in positive ways. I’d like them to learn to cooperate with others, work together for a common goal, respond appropriately to victory and defeat, and grow in virtues like courage, humility, patience and perseverance.” Why did the CCS…
Herzig: Act Today, Look To Tomorrow In response to an outpouring of criticism at a public hearing on the GEIS Tuesday, March 5, to Oneonta City Hall and Otsego Now’s plans to redevelop the D&H railyards, Mayor Gary Herzig had an elegant reply. Development on the 50 acres suitable for job-generating enterprises will: • One, be as energy efficient as construction technology currently allows. • Two, use as little natural gas and fossil fuels as possible. • Three, use as…
Please, County Reps And Trustees: Get Chief Covert Help He Needs How often do any of us, over the course of our lifetimes, get the opportunity to save another human life? But the Otsego County Board of Representatives and Cooperstown Village Board have been presented with that opportunity in the case of Mike Covert, 58. Covert, a 25-year county employee (mostly as a deputy sheriff) and village police chief since 2013, has suffered the health travails of a modern-day…
IF FUNDED, IT WON’T WORK Where’s $93 Trillion Coming From To Pay Bill For A Green New Deal? I was struck by a news clip showing Elizabeth Warren speaking to a crowd and telling them we need to remove the control over our lives from government and put it back into the hands of the people. This is the same woman who is supporting Bernie in his call for socialism. Socialism is a system based on government control over the…