Editorial ‘Yes’ on budget votes New York State annually reserves the third Tuesday of May for voters to cast their ballots on local school district budgets and board of education seats. It’s an important opportunity for the community to participate in shaping local education policy, and we urge all eligible voters to take a few minutes and do so on May 17. We urge readers to visit the website of their local school district — each has a good description…
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Opinion - Page 100
Editorial Great Choice, Governor [Editor’s note: This week’s edition goes to press just as the news about Rep. Delgado is breaking; we offer here a brief analysis of the situation as it stands on the morning of May 3.] For Otsego County, Governor Kathy Hochul’s May 3 announcement appointing Rep. Antonio Delgado as her new second-in-command in Albany is nothing short of politically seismic — a move that could send aftershocks throughout the entire state and even into Washington, D.C.…
News from the Noteworthy The importance of local news Hello from Arizona and Jim Kevlin A few days ago, the first edition of the Tempe Independent – Volume One, Edition One – showed up in the mailbox. Inside, I learned local Congressman Greg Stanton presented Tempe City Council with a $500,000 check to renovate the Rodeway Inn on Apache Boulevard to accommodate up to 200 of the city’s 380 homeless people. I learned miles-long Warner Boulevard, a major east-west road…
Column by Ted Potrikus The unifying power of baseball My wife and I stopped by the Stax Museum of American Soul Music as we passed through Memphis, Tennessee on Saturday — we’re on a long-planned, twice-delayed drive from Cooperstown to Charleston to Tucson to visit our kids. “Where ya from?” the clerk asked. “Upstate New York,” I said. “Cooperstown, to be exact.” “The Baseball Hall of Fame!” he said happily. “I drove up there a few years ago. Loved it.…
Letter from Pat Patterson Thanks, power heroes On behalf of everyone, I would like to extend a genuine, heartfelt, thank you to all those whose tireless efforts resulted in the restoration of our power. While the rest of us kept warm, dry, and illuminated as best we could, these hometown heroes were out there day and night, struggling through that deep, wet snow. No doubt there were times when they encountered nearly as much snow hanging over their heads as…
Letter from Nick and Jeniffer Raphaelson White West Oneonta needs a guardrail On Friday April 22, for the second time in two years, we had a car drive off State Route 23, crash through our fence, and land in the culvert on the corner of our property in the Hamlet of West Oneonta. The first incident was due to distracted driving. The most recent incident was due to a medical issue. Our five-year-old and dog play every day in the…
Letter from Mitchell Owens Editorial Unfair! The editorial that appeared in The Freeman’s Journal/Hometown Oneonta on Thursday, April 28, 2022, regarding the Otsego County Democratic Committee’s Ukraine fundraising, sparked many a reaction in my mind. Most important of them: What an astonishing example of performative outrage, high dudgeon, and holier-than-thou-ness. I do hope that the newspaper will apply equally outraged scrutiny when any seemingly altruistic local Republican initiative comes to your attention — and then devote an equal number of…
Column by Dr. Richard Sternberg Out of My Shell Last week, I took a major step for myself and poked my head out of my shell. I decided that the situation with COVID is really not going to get much better. It is going to be endemic like the flu or the common cold and we’re going to have to deal with it. It’s time to get life back to as normal as possible. I decided to take a trip…
Column by Ted Potrikus ‘At Rest’ bill needs to rest, permanently History will forever remember cocktails-to-go as one bright spot amid COVID’s Darkest Age. We might not have been able to dine out, but we could order take-out and our favorite beverage too complex to craft at home. It’s not like Those Who Imbibe weren’t also giving plenty of business to retail liquor stores (mercifully deemed ‘essential’ from the start of the pandemic shut-down) and the wholesalers that serve them,…
Editorial Hardly noble We can think of no one other than Vladimir Putin, conspiracy theorists, or tin-foil-hatters who doesn’t support Ukraine these days. Otsego County has stood up large for a nation thousands of miles away, a noble testament to our region’s inherent benevolence. This newspaper has published several reports about people doing good things on behalf of Ukrainians everywhere and, we’ll be honest, we’ve reported only after hearing about the events almost by chance. Maybe we saw a social…
