Is the town doing enough for its youth? If not what you add or change?
Lorin Rose. “I want to put them to work by giving my ‘Not the Loosest Cannon in Town’ T-shirts to the Youth Center and helping kids generate funding for youth projects by selling those T-shirts on the Internet and elsewhere and designing new ones,” said Rose, alluding to an early campaign slogan of his that adorns the shirts in question. “I’m willing to do things with local youths, not necessarily for them. These are tough times and people must help themselves.”
Jeremy Wilber. “We have two populations of youth: one, ages 1 to 12, is generally well served by sports programs and other activities, and another, age 18 and over, which is always an area for improvement,” he said. “It’s not easy to address because such kids generally like to be left to themselves. I’m not sure how much the town can do for these kids because it’s also a parenting issue. The town can’t be a parent, but it can do much more to give kids a sense that they are part of the community and there are people to turn to.” Wilber added that he recently discussed youth-related issues with three people who are knowledgeable about such matters: Eric Glass, former director of the Youth Center; Russell Richardson, the center’s former program director; and Sam Magarelli, a onetime county legislator and current community volunteer. If elected, said Wilber, he would again consult with those officials about how best to serve the older age group.
What would you do about providing cellular service to the western part of Woodstock?
Jeremy Wilber. “The last thing I would do is make a promise I can’t keep,” said Wilber. “I just read that the surcharge collected by the federal government on wireless services is devoted to expanding Internet access, as opposed to cell-phone service, in rural areas. I will pledge to make an unstinting effort to track down every available technology to bring people closer to a semblance of wireless service. The problem is that the town doesn’t own any property for a cell tower. When the California Quarry tower was built, we knew very well that it wouldn’t serve the western part of town. The thinking was, Let’s get one foot down and then plant the other.” Topography, he noted, is a significant obstacle, in that only a series of towers between Bearsville and Willow could surmount the signal-blocking effects of intervening mountain ridges. Cellular carriers have concluded that a presence on the former RNN tower atop Overlook Mountain would not be sufficiently profitable. Meanwhile, the tower’s legal status under the town’s zoning law remains cloudy.
Lorin Rose. The first thing to do would be to see about getting a transmitter on top of Overlook,” Rose stated. “I have (map) overlays at home showing the extra coverage that would generate. It wouldn’t entirely solve the problem with the mountain ranges, but it would help. There are new technologies coming and I would welcome studies of them. I’m not completely in love with my own ideas. I’m more willing to get experts working on a problem, as long as they can explain it to me. Many people have sent their ideas, unsolicited, to me during this campaign. The town government has been so exclusionary. The door has been slammed on people, and people in the town have been driven apart. It’s a great thing when a community works together.”++
