EDITORIAL Unite In Making Plan Work Doesn’t it remind you of what happened to Hartwick College President Margaret L. Drugovich? No sooner had she arrived in 2008 on Oyaron Hill, when the Great Recession hit. Within a few months, the fledgling president, with no chance to build a reputation or support among staff and faculty, had to begin laying people off. The faculty balked. Criticism abounded. Drugovich did what she had to do. Things settled down. The economy eventually rebounded,…
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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 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,…
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…
EDITORIAL Action Needed, And Responsible Majority Acted 9 ACCEPTED IMPERATIVE; 5 DIDN’T Sometimes things have to be done. Imperatives, they’re called. Such is the regrettable layoff of 59 county workers, a decision made May 20, a week ago Wednesday, by the Otsego County Board of Representatives. The layoffs go into effect Monday, June 8, the day county government is allowed to reopen. The vote was 9-4-1, with the nays all Democrats: a veteran county rep, Andrew Stammell, Town of Oneonta,…
EDITORIAL As With 9/11, City Folks Will Flee Upstate When Pandemic is Over Small businesses in small towns like ours, and the small City of Oneonta, are taking a hit right now. But for businesses that make it through, there may be better days ahead. At one of the daily briefings of local community leaders by the Governor’s regional representative, it’s said, a Power Point showed how multiple infected travelers – pinpoints, charted through tracings – flew in from Europe…
EDITORIAL Every Business Should Build On DMCOC’s Smart Marketing It’s been hard to approximate layoffs. Business owners don’t want to announce them, and the monthly figures seem so theoretical. Bassett Healthcare Network, people figure – and have heard anecdotally from time to time – has certainly furloughed and cut back hours after closing two floors and halting elective surgeries while coronavirus was considered a pending local emergency. But it doesn’t want to brag about it either. So the county Board…