Assuming no other charges emerge in what is an ongoing investigation, the likelihood is the misdemeanor charges will be dropped “in the interest of justice,” and the chief will retire. The town board will deal with the repercussions.
Condolences
My second thought, after the shock and grief when his daughter told me best bud Bob Pritchard had died inFlorida, was the first time I interviewed him as city planner almost 40 years ago.
Pritchard, a civil engineer and planner-engineer for the city of Troy, had been brought to Kingstonwith some fanfare by then-mayor Frank Koenig. I was the Freeman’s city hall reporter, and it was my job to find out what was with this new guy.
I gave Pritchard about a month to settle in before calling on him for the official interview.
After some small talk — we had kids almost the same age — I asked, “So, you’re the city planner. What are your plans?”
He laughed out loud. “I don’t have any plans,” he said. “The mayor has plans. I carry them out.”
This is not to say the city planner — later senior engineer with Kingston professional engineers Brinnier and Larios — was anybody’s waterboy. Quite the contrary. Any legislator can offer up plans. Some do so at least once a day. Getting from A to Z takes some imagination, real talent, systematic planning and perseverance. And with politicians in charge, there’s usually not a lot of credit at the end.
Pritchard didn’t care much about credit. His joy was in the job, planning, design, construction, supervision, bringing it in on budget. Monuments to his work are all over town: additions toBenedictineHospitaland the YMCA, road, sewer and water projects too numerous to mention, the city’s modern bus system. The planner who didn’t make plans had quite an impact on his adopted community.
Because of our adversarial Mr. Inside vs. Mr. Outside roles in government, we didn’t much discuss shop. It would have been awkward for Bob. Our fun was in fixing up our houses. Bob actually built a wing on the first house he owned in Kingston, from foundation to roof. We were pretty good, what with Bob’s brains and me at the dumb end of the tape.
We raised kids, hacked up golf courses, wiped out beds of clams, and picked strawberries. Our golf buddies called us “Strawberry Fields.” Bob liked to boogie, though at six-foot-four he looked like Big Bird out on the dance floor.
Naturally, Bob gave his retirement and move to Florida(about three years ago) a lot of thought. He didn’t do anything impulsively. Neither did I try to talk him out of it, but as Dennis Larios, over at Brinnier and Larios, put it, “We missed him from the day he left.”
It took a while, but he settled in, made lots of new friends, took up tennis seriously, and got in shape. “You know, people down here [inVero Beach] understand that if you don’t keep moving you start to die,” he told me as we rode our bikes down some godforsaken swamp road last year.
In early March, I got a phone call that Bob had terminal cancer. What! How long? Six weeks. Six months. They didn’t know. I made plans to visit. We talked on the phone a few times. He sounded upbeat. One thing doctors are pretty good at with cancer is pain management.
There was, as it turned out, very little time. I was told to cancel my flight. On Memorial Day he was gone, about a month short of his 69th birthday.
It’s easy to get bitter and angry when these things happen to people we love, to question God’s judgment. But there’s no point. Life, as Jack Kennedy used to say, isn’t always fair.
Our condolences to Bob’s family, daughters Kelly and Kristen; their mother Lucille; his two grandsons, whom he adored. Kristen’s first child is due in October.
And condolences to his many, many friends and former colleagues in the area. He was a good man.
I make no apology for not being able to make it out to city hall;I have a valid excuse. So I will sit behind my computer a bit more, if you don’t mind….and if you DO mind….(use your imagination as to what my suggestion might be in that case)
Further, a good analysis also includes the fact that well, yes, abortion was the reason for this particular arrangement in the first place. And I happen to think a lot of the nexus for the place we are at now is that years ago, instead of maintaining daily control of its campus, the Benedictine Nuns well, “were mostly AWOL.” They did this by first stopping employing nuns at the hospital as employees thereof, and then started withdrawing any and all “real” oversight on a daily basis, some preferring to visit seasonally and then less frequently. The end result was a campus and mission they “owned” only in “legal ownership”. And as a result, they were not prepared to consider the situation properly three years ago when all of this happened–they were promised that a professional oversight company would run things, which to Nuns, meant people who graduated from something, thus making this a “sure bet”. Well, it hasn’t been anything close to a sure bet, and the reasons, while multifactorial, should be placed and would be placed at the doorstep of the CEO, where, the entire organization, having been a creation of the state, will likely remain essentially intact whatever changes are now made. Without the usual stuff of so much as reviewing the CEO’s performance–after all the salaries of others depend on this house of cards organization, “the Ponzis all related to the ‘Happy Days’ Fonzis” here, riding off on their motorbikes giving thumbs up and saying–if only under their breath these days—“Heyyyy eyyyyyyyy!”.
There does happen to be “something wrong” when, lacking Nuns running the place except in name, the most giving and competent physician to stroll by in a long time is given the heave-ho in what amounted to be nothing more than an intraoffice power struggle, and in so ruining that professional’s career, the laity of the Catholic hospital, upon whose shoulders the Benedictine Sisters’ AWOL-ity(is that a word?) was lain, exhibited a sort of behavior that only some wiser overseer could possibly oversee properly. The long-existing preference for Benedictine Hospital was thus mostly based upon the performance of yesteryear, but it surely resulted in better financial health than had Kingston Hospital at the beginning of this “alliance” era. Lundquist, a careerist hospital administrator who came to the alliance “as such”, took this, on balance, favorable situation, and somehow the end result has been this unfavorable. Nothing in my mind contributes to his contribution moreso than upgrading the information system to the tune of multi millions while he knew the financial situation was crumbling around him. Who reviews these decisions, and was there any alternative? Frankly, I don’t think ANYONE is “minding that store…”
But the question becomes, will there be adequate healthcare delivery in Kingston after the dust clears? I think the answer, based on history, is, as of July 8,2012: “we simply do not know”. The main reason reason we simply do not know is that we don’t yet know what possibly idiotic proposals from here the state will mandate. And therein lies the “rub.” Whether it’s a nice soothing massage—or a “backbeater”–only time will tell. States and especially New York though seem to have a penchant for coming up with the method and the means–with which to snatch regress out of the chance to progress, and I would counsel hefty skepticism as to what the state comes up with now–in some effort to counter the coming baloney we might have to face in similar fashion as to what has developed “the first time around.” They say that love is lovelier the second time around(or at least Tony Bennett always did), but I think we’ll just have to see about it on this.
Ed Ullman had a nice letter to the KIngston Times… lots and lots of content… did you see that? Ed points out how very rich the health industry is in terms of options and opportunity, programs, services… there is a great opportunity for management, actually there always is, vis, Gallo in KIngston, Paladino* in the School District, Tinti in the Police Department, Swanzee in the Office of Economic development.
*I’m not a fan of Paldino’s plan but his openness and communication is respectful, excellent…