First, it should be said that there’s a troubling lack of interest this year in running for the Otsego County Board of Representatives, whose reach, from road building to social services, touches all 60,094 of us.
In the 14 districts, there are only three contests coming out of the June 25 primary:
In District 2, the one-term Democrat, former Morris Town Board member Michele Farwell, is being challenged by Marcia Hoag, a former Pittsfield Town Board member who is running on the Voice of the People line, but says she is allied with Republicans.
In District 3, where former board chair Kathy Clark, R-Otego/Laurens, is retiring. Republican Rick Brockway, a retired ferrier and outdoor columnist, and Democrat Caitlin Ogden, a Baseball Hall of Fame grantsman, are both newcomers running for the vacant seat.
In District 14, where Democrat Jill Basile and Wilson Wells, a Libertarian, are seeking to succeed Democrat Liz Shannon, who is retiring.
Contrast that with 2017, when 12 of the 14 seats were contested, and there were some humdingers.
Sam Nader has that rare gift: When you talk to him, you feel there’s no one other than you he’d rather be talking to.
That, of course, is only one of the secrets of his success – there are many facets to his personality and accomplishment. Part of the rest of the secret is the City of Oneonta itself.
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In the years before World War II, it was an exciting vital place, with locomotives streaming in and out of the largest roundhouse in the world, the streets busy, people working, even in the Depression to a great degree – the railroads had to move.
In the Sixth Ward, new arrivals – Italians, Russians, Poles, Lebanese like the Naders – were becoming Americans, celebrating America, adding their strains of culture, and family life, and religion, and food – all of it – to a changing nation.
After Pearl Harbor, virtually every able-bodied young man went to war and they returned – the ordeal behind them – to the city they called home, loved like a home can only be loved. And then, they prospered amid the admiration of their grateful fellow citizens.
For decades, Oneonta was a city of out-sized men, soldiers, citizens and friends, the sons of the war and often their fathers.
Bombardier Sid Levine, businessman, philanthropist and Sam Nader’s partner in the Oneonta Yankees, comes to mind. B-24 pilot Lloyd Baker, the revered OHS athletic director and principal.
The cheerful Tony Mongillo, Navy radio man on an aircraft carrier, who recorded his hometown’s
history in pen for the rest of his life.
Gordie Roberts, another B-24 pilot who returned home to dominate the insurance field; to the end (in 2010) he seemed to be everywhere.
Everyone knew these men, admired them and – even more unusual, liked them. Even loved them.
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Time’s taken its toll. Today, two of the titans remain.
Tony Drago, 98, who returned from WWII to become Oneonta’s winningest coach, his OHS basketball team’s 1959-60 undefeated season still to be surpassed.
The other is Sam Nader, Drago’s friend of 85 years, who is turning 100 years old on Monday, July 8.
In everything he did, Sam Nader succeeded. At Bendix (now Amphenol), he was a counselor and mentor to many young Oneontans as he rose through the ranks to director of purchasing.
In love, the son of immigrants wooed a descendant of Oneonta’s first families, and their wedding at Colliscroft, the Greek revival mansion named for Collis Huntington, who from Oneonta became one of California’s Big Four, signaled the jointure of River and Walnut streets.
If not everyone got it, Sam’s elevation to mayor, despite being rebuffed by the then-dominant Republican Party, completed the inclusion of the “Lower Deck” immigrant families into the mainstream of Oneonta life.
Then in his baseball successes – he transformed Damaschke Field into Yankee Stadium North for a quarter-century – Oneonta got to know the National Pastime’s heroes, and the heroes Oneonta – simply cemented a legacy.
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Sam Nader will be honored in various ways in the days ahead, with a proclamation from
Mayor Gary Herzig, “Sam Nader Day” in Damaschke Field, beginning at 5 p.m. Saturday,
July 13 – and much more.
When the celebrations pass, Sam Nader’s story will still be a gift to Oneonta and surrounding communities: That despite the current cynicism all around us, Sam Nader’s grit, hard work, humor, love of family and community was rewarded with success.
The Grove, a 12-unit apartment house, is planned in this copse of woods between Chestnut Street and Pine Boulevard, a half-block from the downtown. (Jim Kevlin/AllOTSEGO.com)
A sitting-room-only-on-the-floor crowd Monday, June 24, at the Cooperstown Village Board’s monthly meeting had a point: Why put an apartment house in the middle of one of the village’s finest single-family-home neighborhoods?
There it is. That said, who doesn’t have some mixed feelings, given that the developer, Josh Edmonds, intends to build a complex that is supremely energy efficient, as is his new home at 45 Delaware St., and to price it so young families with incomes in the $54,000 range can afford it?
10 Chestnut St. includes this building, formerly Smith Cooperstown, before the Ford dealership moved south of the village.
Nonetheless, don’t village trustees have a stewardship responsibility: to preserve Cooperstown as it is known and loved? Do they have to destroy the village to save it?
With some emotion, Sherrie Kingsley, co-proprietor of the Inn at Cooperstown with her husband Marc, read a letter he co-signed that contained a chilling conclusion: Concerned about “our quality of life as well as the value of our properties,” the couple had met that morning with Altonview Architects to discuss how they might convert two houses they own, 12 Chestnut and 180 Main, into apartments if necessary.
The Otsego Chamber of Commerce’s “Energy & Infrastructure Policy,” released last Thursday, June 13. The title sounds innocuous enough.
In effect, it is rank-and-file business owners’ Declaration of Independence.
The whole of the Otsego Chamber’s new policy appears in this newspaper, beginning at right. Read it. But there are a couple of key paragraphs.
The first makes common cause with every sensible person’s aspirations:
“As we head toward the inevitable move to renewable energy, the Chamber will continue to support and help implement all forms of energy including wind, solar, natural gas, hydro as well as geothermal, ground and air source heat pumps. The Chamber will also help connect businesses … with organizations that can perform energy audits and make upgrades that can help decrease energy usage as well as providing information for rebates and financing options. The Chamber can work with elected officials and state agencies … to implement renewable energies and technologies.”
Before you dump a Big Gulp in a downtown flower box, watch out for brothers Nate, left, and Eric Roberts: They take it personally.
Oneonta’s Roberts brothers have a point. Actually, they have a lot of points.
Walking down Oneonta’s Main Street sidewalk after an interview the other day, it was either Nate or Eric who pointed at the sidewalk and said, “That’s what we mean.”
He was pointing at a trail of dog droppings.
Four days before, someone had vomited in front of a nearby establishment. The vomit was still there.
And cigarette butts – count ‘em. No, there are too many to count.
“The ordinances aren’t being kept up with,” Nate said.
The Roberts brothers had been planning to run for Common Council, Nate in Ward 4 (north of Walnut Street) and Eric in Ward 8 (both sides of Lettis Highway and the downtown.)
But Democrats – Kathy Meeker in the Fourth and outgoing Council member Joe Ficano in the Eighth – challenged them on the party’s behalf, and the county Board of Elections last week removed the Robertses from the ballot.
Too bad, because the main impetus for their campaigns was the deterioration they see around them.
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For instance, Nate, 36, an entrepreneur – he operates Serenity Hobbies in the former Alpine Ski Hut – reports two men, either drunk or drugged up or both, in broad daylight, “yelling at cars and pedestrians in front of my store.”
He called the OPD. Fifteen minutes later, an officer still hadn’t arrived. By then, the men were taking off their shoes and throwing them at passing cars. Nate called again.
Another 15 minutes. By the time an officer arrived, the two troublemakers had “dispersed on their own.”
Eric, 34, obtained his master gardener certificate from Oregon State, returned home a couple of years ago and is a landscape management technician for City Hall.
When he sees a Big Gulp overturned in a downtown flower bed, he takes it personally.
City Hall will tell you, “You can use our public spaces,” said Eric, adding, “I haven’t seen a single professional having lunch in Muller Plaza since I got back.”
Moms with baby carriages cross the street to avoid the homeless, panhandlers and guys bumming
cigarettes, he said.
Smoking, drinking and littering are supposed to be prohibited in the city’s lovely parks – Neahwa, Wilber and the rest, but it’s routine, said Eric, who spends his working days there.
A single officer walking the Main Street beat from 9 to 5 would resolve much of this, said Nate. “What happened to the bike cops?” added Eric.
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The Robertses have interesting personal stories. Both graduated from Edmeston Central, but their dad was food manager at RSS’ Oneonta Bagel Company for 17 years, so they frequented the city since boyhood. (Nate has been doing the job part-time for the past several months.)
The brothers were drawn to the City of the Hills by its music scene – bands aplenty from SUNY’s Music Industry Department, and venues aplenty.
“We want to create that opportunity again,” said Nate.
In college, Eric got a call from a pal in a band that needed a bass guitar, and spent 10 years on the road, with the combo winning gold and even platinum disks. Nate spent time in New York City, and ran a booking service for a while when he got back to town.
As it happens, Nate was inspired to run for Common Council when the two attended a meeting alerting the city fathers they plan to open The Pale Horse Public House in what was formerly The Alley on Water Street
Yes, there will be live music.
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This could go on. For instance, the two are bruised by the challenges from the Democratic Party – Eric had double the required signatures; Nate triple – and have a lot to say about the process. For instance, if a double signature is stricken, it should be stricken from the Democratic or Republican petitions too.
Common Council has come through a pretty sleepy time. When was the last time a Council member proposed an exciting initiative from the floor? Committee meetings are routinely
cancelled for lack of a quorum or agenda items. What’s going on?
After the Nov. 5 elections (a primary is June 25), the Robertses won’t be there to add pizzaz, but five of the incumbents are leaving and there are plenty of candidates vying to replace them. So maybe we’ll see some Roberts-style freshmen.
Sure, the DRI – the state’s Downtown Redevelopment Inititiative – has sucked up a lot of the oxygen. Little’s been done, and next month it will be three years since state Economic Development czar Howard Zemsky – he resigned a couple of weeks ago – announced the $10 million grant.
While we wait, must great be the enemy of good? Listening to the brothers, routine enforcement needs beefing up, a little broken-window policing, maybe.
Most entrancing about the Robertses was, despite their specific complaints, they love Oneonta. Now home again, they don’t intend to leave. There’s a lot of that, and that’s an asset.
As Eric put it, “The city isn’t the way I remember it. It’s gone.” But he added, “I don’t want to say anything bad. It needs help.”
Marijuana is many times more powerful than it used to be and a danger – particularly to our children, Ben Cort, a substance-abuse and marijuana-commercializatoin expert from Colorado told a LEAF-sponsored forum locally. (Jennifer Hill/AllOTSEGO.com)
A visitor to Otsego County from Vermont a few days ago described what seems to be a sensible end to marijuana prosecutions in the Green Mountain State.
Smoking pot has been decriminalized, not legalized. Folks who smoke it are allowed to grow enough for their own use. End of discussion. Live and let live.
Alas, poor New York State, where we’re focused, not on live and let live, but on extracting the maximum in revenues from a prospective $3 billion industry and spreading it around among our partisan friends.
After months of smoke and fiery rhetoric over marijuana legalization, Governor Cuomo Monday, June 3, doused hopes, saying it probably won’t happen this year.
hometown oneonta In the midst of the back-and-forth about the future of the former CVS property at 100 Main St., Cooperstown’s Rena Lull shared a copy of the December 1984 edition of Town & Country magazine, which featured a shopping tour of the downtown by the former Mary “Cissie” Busch Hager, who was also featured in the cover photo and a feature story on the Hager family of Cooperstown. The variety of shops downtown was impressive. Clockwise from upper left are The Gazebo gift shop; The Market Place deli; Around the House, doll house miniatures, antique toy replicas and Christmas ornaments; Augur’s Bookstore; Terrace Café; Church & Scott pharmacy; the Baseball Hall of Fame; Bland’s Sporting Goods; The Short Stop coffee shop; Straws & Sweets, handmade candles, wicker baskets and party decorations; Schneider’s Bakery, and the Red Nugget Ice Cream Saloon. It HAS been 35 years, but only the Hall of Fame and Schneider’s remain downtown, and Church & Scott at the south end of town. (AllOTSEGO.com photo)
First and foremost, welcome back!
The half-million or so visitors who will be coming to Greater Cooperstown over the next 13 weeks – for Dreams Park and Cooperstown All-Star Village, for the Baseball Hall of Fame, for The Fenimore Art Museum, The Farmers’ Museum and Hyde Hall, for Glimmerglass Opera, for fishing and boating and summering on Otsego Lake, for hiking and canoeing.
While our visitors are here, pretty much everybody prospers – the restaurants, stores, the rental and hospital business, banks, the hospitals and urgi-cares, every form of entertainment.
Because of you, our visitors, the rest of us get to experience things a rural area generally wouldn’t, from rock and roll (Herb Ritts at The Fenimore and Ommegang’s offerings) to chamber music and opera, baseball stars, to dozens of restaurants, many attractions, lots of golf courses and, of course, more fireworks per thousand population than any community in the country.
Future Congressman Delgado with mom Thelma and younger brother Kito during his Schenectady boyhood.
“There are no second acts in American lives” has been attributed – some say misattributed – to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Antonio Delgado – as he recounts in his splendid commencement address last weekend at his alma mater, Colgate University – is a contradiction in point.
His experience as hip-hop artist AD, The Voice, which he assesses here for the first time we’ve seen, very well could have ruled him out as a prospective Congressional candidate, particularly – as he puts it – in the 19th Congressional District, which is 90 percent white.
Still, his first-rate credentials – they include a mother’s love, which he touchingly revisited in his speech – plus Colgate, Oxford and Harvard degrees. And his experience – as a litigator, not a lobbyist, he’ll tell you – with a top-flight law firm, certainly qualified him as a successor to the consensus-building Chris Gibson of Kinderhook and – projecting ahead – to the canny and effective Sherwood Boehlert of Greater Utica.
That Delgado is black was, in itself, never disqualifying in the 19th District – certainly, not in Otsego County, which – split a third, a third and a third Republican, Democrat and independent – voted twice for Barack Obama, with folks generally, if not unanimously, thrilled to do so.
The March 8 announcement of $2 million in downtown grants took a backseat to protests about D&H-yard redevelopment. Attendees, like Environmental Board chair Mark Davies, picked up the list on the way out the door.
There’s a lot going on in the City of Oneonta right now, as City Hall’s DRI (the Downtown Revitalization Initiative) begins distributing $10 million in state money, leveraging it in a way that attracts many millions more in private investment.
Certainly, there are time pressures. There are conflicting agendas. There’s not ever going to be enough money to make everybody happy. Lately, environmentalists are ready to swoop down on any development that may require more energy, (which is every project).
So from time to time, it may be hard to remember this is the fun part.
During New York History Day, a Rockland County family strolls past Cooperstown’s downtown CVS, once an anchor, but vacant since November 2017. (AllOTSEGO.com photo)
Editor’s Note: This is reprinted from this week’s Freeman’s Journal and Hometown Oneonta editorial pages. Click here for related editorial. What do you think? Letters to the Editor welcome at info@allotsego.com
In a couple of weeks, we won’t remember that Cooperstown’s Main Street is a ghost town from Columbus Day to Memorial Day. The 500,000 visitors will begin arriving in earnest with Dreams Parks’ June 1 opening.
By the time we again become Coopers(ghost)town, the opportunity will have been lost.
The opportunity, of course, is 100 Main St., a gap in the village’s set of most perfect teeth since CVS moved to the southern edge of the village in November 2017 –yes, it’s almost been two years.
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 play with.
It should contract with the Cooperstown Chamber to develop a merchants association that includes everyone, regardless of chamber membership. $50K maybe? $75K? Let’s get serious.
With a new chamber executive director, Tara Burke, has the freshness and energy to take it on.
All downtowns that are coming back have merchants’ association. Cooperstown needs one. The only entity that can make it happen needs to step forward: The Village Board.
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 more sensational.
It felt great be alive, and to be in Upstate New York.
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 governor has yet to apply his signature to that part of the state budget that will make mug shots closely held in the future, the Department of State Police, which is under the governor’s administration, has put it in place, anticipating its approval.
“No one will get anything from us anymore,” she said. Granted, she and Maj. Brian Shortall, Troop C commander, are simply following orders from headquarters, as they must.
At the time, Truitt was at large. As it happens, he was wandering in our midst. But without the mug shot, how could anyone have identified him? This newspaper circumvented the ban by obtaining Truitt’s mug shot from a 2018 arrest report, but that’s going to be harder to do as time goes on.
Originally, Cuomo had intended to bar release of all police reports, in effect enabling secret arrests, anathema – and historically unprecedented – in our system of open justice. And so is the mugshot ban.
Welcome to the Cheka, Albany style.
In proposing the mugshot ban, the governor put it this way in an interview on WAMC, Northeast Public Radio:
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 course, is that it can be absorbed organically, with job along I-88 incrementally reviving the declining community centers to the north.
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Springbrook, of course, is the poster child, growing to over 1,200 jobs on a simple concept: Better care for handicapped children can be provided more humanely and at lower cost in proximity to their New York State families. Win, win.
Paul Landers, Pathfinder Village president/CEO
Two more examples of growing in place – growing and excelling is more like it – may be found in the two organizations that will be honored at the Otsego County Chamber’s annual Gala & Celebration of Business Thursday, May 2, at Foothills. (Reservations, call 432-4500, ext. 2.)
One, venerable Pathfinder Village, is vigorously placing its Down syndrome and otherwise handicapped residents in real jobs, filling real employer needs. For instance, with Astrocom in Colliersville unable to find workers, Pathfinder is deployer a half-dozen trainees and two supervisor daily to that aircraft parts fabricator.
Former Pathfinder residents are also working at Golden Artists Colors, Price Chopper, Silver Dollar Optical, NYCM and NBT Bank.
Two, Les Grummons arrived in Oneonta in 1970, having acquired the Rotherby-Murphy Funeral home, and knowing virtually nobody.
He quickly developed a strategy: Get on friendly terms with as many people as possible. He joined the Rotary, the Elks, Moose and Eagles. He pursued his interest in the Sons of the Legion, rising to state commander. He served on the board of Catholic Charities, St. Mary’s and Hospice. He rose to the state Funeral Directors Association presidency, cementing his reputation in the industry. He was elected to Common Council.
Les Grummons, 49-year proprietor of the Lester R. Grummons Funeral Home
In the process, he solidified the Lester R. Grummons Funeral Home among the front ranks of such local institutions, a solid business that has provided service and employment to many over almost a half century.
As detailed on Page B1 of this edition, Pathfinder will be honored at NBT Distinguished Business; Grummons, as Eugene A. Bettiol Jr. Distinguished Citizen.
The state Comptroller Office a few years ago reported that only 29 jobs had been created in Otsego County in 2016 but, one, state data lags and, two, it doesn’t reflect the groundwork that was being done to make way for growth we’re starting to see now.
For instance, Custom Electronics is creating 50 jobs for to make high-storage batteries, building blocks of a renewable future. A grant has ensured Corning’s 175 Oneonta jobs for 15 years. Cooperstown Distillery and Andela Products, Town of Richfield, are anticipating expansions and 10 new jobs each. Some 50 jobs are unfilled at Amphenol in Sidney. A little bit of natural gas would allow a distribution center to bring 300 jobs to Schenevus in short order.
Plus, the colleges, schools and hospitals provide a stable base.
And with Paul Landerses and Les Grummonses among us, the current downward trend, we can confidently hope, is temporary.
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.
Just what we need: An American Needle “Male High” snapback baseball cap.
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 over a number of issues.
When trouble arose, the governor’s fallback plan was to include legalization in the FY20 state budget that passed April 1.
A state budget is a cloak for a myriad of controversial issues. The single budget vote, required by April 1 under the state Constitution, gives assemblymen and state senators deniability if constituents try to make them accountable on any single issue – like, say, legalizing pot.
