Editorial For Good Of All, Hope Marty Patton Right It may turn out Marty Patton made the right call, delaying opening of his Cooperstown All Star Village, the youth baseball tournament camp in West Oneonta, in hopes of salvaging at least some of the 2020 season. Things are happening so quickly. With this week’s Glimmerglass Fest cancellation, pretty much all of the major summer activities have been cancelled or delayed – mostly notably, of course, Derek Jeter’s July 26 Induction…
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Editorial First Cooperstown Village Election Was A Wild One Editor’s Note: The uncertainly surrounding this year’s village elections locally and throughout New York State, now scheduled six months late on Sept. 15, brought to mind the tumult surrounding Cooperstown’s first village elections, recounted in Alan Taylor’s “William Cooper’s Town,” which won a 1996 Pulitzer Prize. The (state) Legislature (in 1807) was considering two rival petitions to incorporate the village at the foot of Lake Otsego. Incorporation would provide Cooperstown with…
Editorial COVID-19 War Not Over, But Let’s Take Victory Lap Let’s take a victory lap. As of Monday, May 4, the coronavirus threat in Otsego County had been reduced to one case. One case in the whole county. It’s a battle won, not the war. Testing for the coronavirus identified 62 positive infections once symptoms appeared, through the Bassett Hospital hotline (547-5555) and other means. In all likelihood, though, there is still coronavirus in our neighborhoods. Testing for antigens, which…
EDITORIAL With Facts As Guide, Let’s Start Reopening As the headline has it, that’s what Governor Cuomo is doing. And he’s convincing. When on April 16, Cuomo announced he was extending NY PAUSE from April 29 to May 15, most of us probably thought that it would then be extended to the end of May, then mid-June, and so on. Upstaters, given the daily reports of New York City’s spiraling death code, were in that frame of mind. So it…
EDITORIAL Reprinted From This Week’s Hometown Oneonta, Freeman’s Journal ANDREW CUOMO FOR PRESIDENT He’s Ready For White House; Americans Ready For Him Andrew Cuomo for president. Already, he seems presidential, never more than this past Monday in announcing his collaboration with five other Northeast governors in a multi-state council “to restore the economy and get people back to work.” Let’s do it. In the five weeks of New York State’s fight against the coronavirus invasion, the governor’s shown all the…
Editorial Inspired By 5 Heroes At Fire Scene, Consider Joining Good Samaritans What’s happened in the past week is another opportunity to be impressed about the brave men and women who respond, in dark of night and bright of day, any hour, any day, when fires and accidents happen in Otsego County. Training and experience have made mishaps so rare, we forget – certainly the public, but volunteers and ambulance squad members, too – that every fire call and crash…
EDITORIAL Good News, Jobs Aplenty; Bad News, No Housing Anyone who’s paying attention around here has come to a double conclusion: ►One, pretty much every employer, big or small, has vacancies that can’t be filled. ►Two, if new employees are hired, they often can’t find a convenient, affordable place to live. No workers. No worker housing. A double bind. If misery loves company, then economic developer Jody Zakrevsky, CEO of Otsego Now, went to a jobs forum hosted by Congressman…
EDITORIAL Are Fossil Fuels Part Of Climate-Change Answer Some of you may have heard our Adirondack neighbor Bill McKibben’s NPR interview a year or two ago. Unless all buildings in the U.S. are made energy-efficient by 2030, the war against Global Warming will be lost, he said. The interviewer asked, is that possible? No, said McKibben, who is among the nation’s foremost advocates of stemming greenhouse gases. In different words, McKibben is saying, we’re lost. • Too much of the…
EDITORIAL ‘Sanctuary County’ Idea Understandable, Unwise What goes around comes around. When it does in this context, you have to wonder: Is a jurisdiction – 560 in 2018 – declaring itself a “sanctuary city” or town, county, village, etc., about anything such a good idea? Now, a Facebook drive is underway to make Otsego a “sanctuary county” – the idea is local authorities would simply not enforce New York State’s SAFE Act and its gun-control provisions. The effort was launched…
EDITORIAL On County Manager, Now Hard Work Begins By the time you read this, it’s very likely Otsego County will have created a job of county administrator, joining all but a handful of counties around New York State. Heading into the Wednesday, Dec. 4, monthly meeting of the county Board of Representatives, the momentum to professionalize government was clear. Six of the seven Democrats were firmly in favor, plus two Republican leaders – chairman David Bliss and Schenevus’ Peter Oberacker.…