Editorial, May 25, 2018 Who’ll Protect Us From Centers? News that Centers Health Care has raised the private-payer rate at the former county-owned Otsego Manor from $300 to $510 a day – $186,000 a year, the state’s highest – is almost too sad to contemplate. Gary Koutnik, county board vice chairman and chair of the board’s Human Service Committee, reacted with the standard response: Since the once-excellent facility is privatized, what happens at Centers, nee Focus, is no longer the…
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Editorial - Page 43
Editorial, May 25, 2018 Hail Doubleday! Historic Ballfield To Be Reinvented For 21st Century Fans’ Needs Too much discussion about Doubleday Field in recent years has centered on how it was once considered the Birthplace of Baseball, and now isn’t. That’s not a productive conversation. Let’s stipulate that boys played baseball in Phinney’s Field in the mid-1800s, as boys did across the country. Let’s stipulate that Abner Doubleday was at West Point in 1839, when he purportedly invented baseball here.…
Editorial, May 11, 2018 WERTENBAKER LAND TRUST PRESIDENT The Right Leader, At The Right Time? People generally recognize Otsego County’s geographic schizophrenia. (Schizophrenic, in the best possible way, of course.) To the south, there are 10 Interstate exits – 11 if you count Sidney’s – largely undeveloped (except Exits 14-15, at Southside Oneonta), ideal for commerce, manufacturing, distribution and other job-creating uses. To the north is the pristine Glimmerglass watershed, a national environmental icon, surrounded by pretty hamlets and villages,…
Editorial, May 11, 2018 How Can Anyone Process Eric Schneiderman’s Sudden Fall? The Cooperstown Rotary Club starts its meeting with song, and the first this past Tuesday went, in part: I’d like to build the world a home, and furnish it with love… I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony… I’d like to see the world for once, all standing hand in hand And hear them echo through the hills For peace throughout the land.…
Editorial, May 5, 2018 It’s Decision Time. But Is There The Will? Question: Can Oneonta Mayor Gary Herzig’s administration make tough decisions? For one thing, whether or not to condemn the Twelve Tribes’ blighted Oneonta Ford property has been hanging fire since before Herzig took office. He’s now in his second term. There is state money in hand to demolish what is a public hazard and state money to prepare the site for new construction. All that’s hanging fire is…
Editorial, May 5, 2018 If We Want Solar Energy, Let’s Get Serious About It If we care about solar energy, it’s time to get serious about it, don’cha think? Happily, Otsego 2000 may be doing just that, having taken a leadership role among local environmental groups on this matter. On Feb. 24, its board adopted a resolution that reads, in part: “Climate change, driven in large party by fossil-fuel use, is a significant threat to our region and way of…
EDITORIAL: April 27, 2018 Retiring Bright Light Is Inspiration To Rest Of Us A touching and inspiring event happened at Gilbertsville’s Major Inn last weekend: 150 wellwishers, from almost every town in Otsego County and as far away as London, England, packed the landmark mansion to express appreciation to a special lady, Erna Morgan McReynolds. For the past 30 years, Erna has been an investment counselor in Oneonta for Morgan Stanley (and its half-dozen predecessors), and thousands of clients have…
EDITORIAL: April 20, 2018 Sheriff’s Shown He’s Tough, Smart First, voters should want a county sheriff who’s steady under fire. Over the past 15 months, county Sheriff Richard J. Devlin Jr. has proved he is. With his son Ros, a guard at the county jail, accused in a workplace disturbance and ordered off county property by the county Board of Representatives, Devlin hung tough, arguing he was the target of a “political witch hunt.” That didn’t seem completely out of…
EDITORIAL April 20, 2018 NYSEG Must Provide Full Range Of Energy OTHERWISE, OUTMIGRATION INEVITABLE Let’s not be prophets of doom, but we’re all thinking people who can more or less put the pieces of the puzzle together. In her March 29-30 column, our colleague, columnist Cathe Ellsworth, alerted us to an Albany Business Review report that Upstate New York lost 2 percent of its population between 2011 and 2015. Seven counties gained population; 20 lost it. In our general area,…
Editorial April 13, 2018 Facing Trade War, Let’s Buy U.S. Pork, Apples, Wine When did tariffs become a dirty word? In the early days of the Republic, tariffs were used liberally to allow the development of such mainstay domestic industries as coal, iron and textiles in the face of Great Britain’s overwhelming advantage. When Henry “The Great Compromiser” Clay died in 1852, obelisks were raised in his honor: Not for saving the Union, but for championing the tariff. Beginning with…
