The Oneonta Warming Station is now at the First Presbyterian Church, 296 Main Street. Guests should walk up the drive toward the back and look for pink signs for the entrance. The Warming Station opens at 5:30 p.m. each night.
In three short years, $500,000.00 in grants and awards from the Community Foundation of Otsego County have gone to Otsego County nonprofits. This major milestone was marked by a $15,000.00 award to Catholic Charities of Delaware, Otsego and Schoharie Counties for the Oneonta Warming Station. The Community Foundation of Otsego County was founded in 2019 by a group of 15 local citizens who share a vision and believe in the potential of a community foundation. CFOC is dedicated to enriching opportunities for all residents of Otsego County.
While in the midst of the initial $2 million Founders fundraising campaign, COVID struck. CFOC rose to the immediate challenge, gathering and distributing more than $200,000.00 to county nonprofits and businesses hit with unexpected and unbudgeted costs related to the pandemic.
Few may know that the third full week of February is “Through with Chew Week,” an annual campaign that raises awareness of the dangers of using smokeless tobacco (chew, dip, snus and dissolvable tobacco) and encourages users to quit for the week or just one day. In fact, the Thursday of TWCW is the Great American Spit Out, when users are encouraged to quit for the day and probably the only time chewers and dippers are celebrated for spitting it out. This year, Through with Chew Week runs from February 19-25, with GASO on February 23.
Chewing tobacco and other smokeless tobacco products are often promoted as safer than cigarettes because they aren’t linked to lung cancer, but using them is not a safe alternative to smoking. Smokeless tobacco has more nicotine than cigarettes, making it highly addictive, especially for youth. The American Lung Association reports that smokeless tobacco contains at least 28 cancer-causing chemicals (carcinogens) and has been linked to the following diseases and risks:
This Thursday, February 9, the Susquehanna Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is hosting a Community Cat Forum at the Foothills Performing Arts and Civic Center in Oneonta. The event begins at 4 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
“Community cats” is a term used by the American SPCA to describe outdoor, unowned, free-roaming cats. They can be friendly, feral, adults, kittens, healthy, sick, altered and/or unaltered, and may or may not have a caretaker. A caretaker is a person who monitors and provides care to a community cat, but who is not the legal owner. The only outdoor free-roaming cats who are not community cats are those who have an owner, by the ASPCA’s definition.
It is not news to anyone that we, as a nation, are in the midst of the worse overdose and drug-related death crisis in the entire history of our country. Based on numbers from the Centers for Disease Control, we have lost 107,000 people to drug overdose in the last 12 months. That number would equal losing about the same number of people who live in Chenango and Otsego counties combined…in one year.
It is a slow-rolling tragedy that causes moms, dads, brothers, sisters, spouses and children to bury a human that is precious to them. There have been over a million (yes, 1,000,000.00) overdose funerals since 1999, the identified beginning of this crisis. It is a real human tragedy that receives far too little attention.
The Clark Dairy Farm and Creamery, located near Delhi, dates to 1907. It is operated by fifth-generation dairyman Kyle Clark, in partnership with his father, Thomas. In an earlier era, the farm also ran a creamery, long closed, where their milk was packaged for local retail sale.
After graduation from SUNY Morrisville in 2018, where he was introduced to modern creamery operation (and automated milking), Kyle began refurbishing the old creamery as a niche experiment. Opened in 2020, demand took off, partly because of the pandemic-related shortage of milk in local groceries. Soon he needed to install a refrigerated self-serve stand, where more than 200 gallons now sell out daily.
Clark Creamery also self-distributes to more than 60 grocers and restaurants across several counties. It sells whole milk, 2% milk, chocolate milk, whole cream, half and half, and butter. The creamery currently packages over 600 gallons of milk daily and will do more with upgrades of milking and creamery equipment.
Welcome to Oneonta. Welcome new businesses and new members of our community.
We’ve been waiting for you, and we are so glad you’re here.
Welcome to the Apple Express, which finally fills the empty space that was Friendly’s.
The ice cream shop was an anchor for the neighborhood, and the Apple Express is a terrific candidate to fill that role for the future. Providing convenient, small grocery shopping to an area that doesn’t have it, is bound to make it popular. And as a high-traffic space it will play a role in bringing together neighbors, new and old.
In determining the effectiveness of charitable nonprofits, it is critically important not to evaluate the delivery of services, but rather measure the results that those services are aiming to achieve. It sounds pretty straightforward, but the diverse nature of charitable nonprofits and their missions can complicate things. For example, a foundation can measure results by the amount of money it raises or distributes. A homeless program can define results by how many homeless people attain safe, affordable housing. But it gets trickier when programs provide emergency services, because the results are harder to measure over periods of time. More and more, donors and contractors are looking at how nonprofits measure results before making contributions or authorizing grants.
The celebration season has begun! It is time for festivities, holy days, gatherings, traditions, family, parties, events and maybe a little football. With that, I wish a great big happy holidays to all who are reading this. I also hope for each of you a safe and joyful season. If you follow LEAF at all on Facebook (please do!), you will see that our theme for the month is, “Celebrate Safely!” We have been sharing tips and suggestions for making sure that everyone has a good time and gets home without incident.
Here are the highlights for hosting an event:
Let’s start with this: It is always okay to celebrate without alcohol! We are fully aware that our culture nearly demands that alcohol be present at any gathering. However, gatherings without alcohol tend to be less expensive (and who’s not trying to save a buck these days?) and less prone to a spirits-infused incident. It’s a win-win, so it is worth consideration.
Family Service Association, located at 277 Chestnut Street in heart of Oneonta, is sometimes referred to as the “Area’s Best Secret.” FSA is a privately funded human services agency, with an annual budget of just under $300,000.00. The agency is staffed by three full-time employees, volunteers and college interns. Most popular for our Clothing Room, FSA offers a host of other programs to help people and families in need of assistance.
The Clothing Room is open to the public and set up like a thrift store, but all items are free. Donations are accepted from community members, stores or other organizations, and neatly displayed for “shoppers” to take at no cost. FSA’s Clothing Programs also provide specific items to individuals for employment, school or health needs.
In my last “News from the Noteworthy” column, I wrote about the wellbeing struggles that are keenly felt across the workforce. I shared the results of a recent survey where business leaders, managers, and supervisors told us they are spending an average of 39 percent of their time on issues such as employee burnout, fatigue, stress, anxiety, mental health, and substance misuse issues. That number went up as high as 70 percent for some owners and supervisors.
The midterm elections are over, or mostly over, as tight returns leave many state and federal races close and uncertain. I, for one, am very glad that pre-election coverage and political mailings have ceased and we have voted.
We can now get back to our jobs, our community, and our lives, where real things happen, where we can make a difference to a person and to our community.
The cost of doing business and staying in business is rising these days. It’s not just inflation, supply chain, COVID fallout and keeping the lights on. For most business owners and managers, that would be more than enough to contend with. We also know that it’s about the workforce and the overall wellbeing of the people we work with and work for. We are emerging from a dual pandemic (COVID and overdose deaths). Together, they have taken a significant toll on working adults and their families.
In a recent pilot study of central New York businesses (https://doi.org/10.1177/08901171221112488c), we found many hidden costs related to the wellbeing of people in the workforce. I identify them as hidden because they don’t typically show up by name in the usual metrics that are tracked by businesses.
Otsego County Office for the Aging serves approximately 2,500 individuals per year on a variety of levels. Some of the major programs offered by Office for the Aging include:
In-Home Services: Services are provided to assist older adults who want to remain at home, yet need assistance with daily activities such as dressing, bathing, personal care, light housekeeping or meal preparation. Personal Emergency Response System units are also available to allow an individual to contact emergency help by pushing a single button. PERS units provide peace of mind for individuals who may live alone or be at risk of falling.
Lately, I find myself thinking about those generations past and especially the one dubbed the “greatest.”
How would they deal with this moment we’re in?
I think it’s a safe bet that many would step up and pitch in to support the effort.
That’s what much of a generation did in the 1940s. And I am betting on their descendants, in this 2022 version of Oneonta, doing that again.
This time, it’s not the forces of an army that threaten us, but the gloomy reality of a post-pandemic world. Where a decades-long demographic shift — an exodus from the city, the town, the county, the state, and the northeast — coupled with an equally challenging worker shortage, has put us very much at risk.
The summer of 2022 will be remembered as the year our beloved Lake Otsego first suffered a Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB).
The conditions which allow a HAB to occur are known. This column reviews Village of Cooperstown public beaches, boat launch sites and most importantly, Village drinking water.
The SUNY Oneonta Biological Field Station (BFS) has monitored lake conditions for decades. This summer, when Glimmerglass State Park first noted an algae bloom on July 27 and closed, BFS began twice weekly testing at locations around the lake. The results of those tests are on their website — suny.oneonta.edu/biological-field-station.
