As mayor of Cooperstown, it is my honor to be asked to speak every year at our community’s Memorial Day Ceremony. I often note the memorials in our village to honor and remember those who travelled far beyond our small community to defend the principles and freedoms of our nation. The Soldiers and Sailors Monument, where the Memorial Day ceremony takes place, was erected in the early 1900s not by the village but by Otsego County in memory of all…
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Mayor Ellen Tillapaugh was the lone vote in favor of amending the law. Read a full account of the meeting in this week's "Freeman's Journal" and "Hometown Oneonta," which hit newsstands on Wednesday afternoon.…
As a Vietnam veteran who has lived in Cooperstown the past 37 years, I, too, do not need or want to purchase—or pay for though taxes—a banner to hang on a pole with my dated photo to acknowledge my service.…
A pillar of Cooperstown’s economy is tourism. People come to visit our museums and experience what life was like in a less complicated past. Simply put, Cooperstown sells nostalgia.…
In summary, I encourage the Village Board of Trustees to carefully review the many positive comments received at the public hearing and approve the proposed change to the current village sign law to allow these Hometown Heroes banners.…
As a veteran of the United States Air Force Security Service, who volunteered twice for Vietnam, and served at a CIA station outside of Afghanistan for 15 months, I do not want a national, commercial, for-profit company trying to make money on my military service by trying to sell me a custom-printed banner with my picture on it and then trying to get the Village of Cooperstown to let me put it on a utility pole.…
Cooperstown officials say the village is “historic,” which is defined as “famous or important in history.” Last I knew, the wars these men and women fought in were both historic and historical, which is defined as “something that is connected with the past or with the study of history, or something that really happened in the past.”…
Comments ranged from support of the current sign law and concerns that the banners might be too distracting and therefore likely to cause accidents, to those in favor of the proposed amendments so that veterans could be further honored here in the village, to the need for funding for veterans services.…
Given all of the regular challenges Cooperstownians deal with living in a town dedicated to tourism, the Hometown Heroes banners seems like an ideal opportunity for the town to give back to those of us who have chosen to call Cooperstown home and their family members willing to lay down their lives for it.…
The village trustee meeting on Monday, July 22 begins. I read my request and the questions start. I had the representative from the banner company come to town to answer any questions the trustees had. I used the words “Hometown Heroes,” so they wanted to know why just veterans. My reply was that I was only working with veterans—that anyone else who wanted to take on others could.…
