According to Dener, about 20 persons in New York State die every day while waiting for a transplant. At the same time, fewer than a fifth of the population signs up for the program.
Here’s a thought. Wouldn’t it be weird if I croaked and some of my parts wound up in Butch Dener, or worse, vice-versa?
Maybe next year.
Fighting town hall
Given that it reported out in less than three months, a special Ulster town committee on finding a new town hall did a pretty good job of exploring the various options.
The bottom line is that a new $15 million town hall and police station, the most expensive proposition, would result in a 10 to 15 percent increase in the town property tax for at least 20 years. And nobody’s crazy about that.
The present building has a history. For years, Ulster residents were satisfied with sharing the trooper barracks across Route 9W in what would become Adams Fairacre Farms. But town supervisor Carmine Sabino argued that a growing town needed a modern town hall, so he put it on the ballot. Tight-fisted townsfolk voted it down. Not to be denied his edifice, Sabino squirreled away some $300,000 in the town budget and shortly there after (around 1973) began construction.
Lots of things have changed since then. Current Supervisor Jim Quigley reminds us that back in its heyday IBM was assessed at $300 million and paid a third of all town property taxes. Developer Alan Ginsberg bought the whole shebang in 1998 for a penny on the dollar. IBM employed about 7,200 people at its peak.
One would think that finding 25,000 square feet at TechCity for a town hall would be a cinch with all those acres of empty space, even if Ginsberg does drive hard bargains. However, the notion of renting their town hall is anathema to many residents.
A building off Grant Avenue just outside the IBM complex caught the committee’s eye for a possible leasing arrangement. The price looked right, and renovations would be minimal. But there was a glitch: the owner owed over $1.5 million in back taxes.
Quigley, who pays the bills, seems ambivalent about a new town hall. “One choice is not to make a choice, but very clearly you can’t do nothing,” he said. Currently, the police department is operating out of a pair of trailers adjacent to the town hall.
Right now, the appearance of doing something (that is, studying the problem) will have to suffice. The cheapest fix might be jacking up the existing building above the flood plain and praying another major storm doesn’t hit.
Cahill has been nominated for next year’s John F. Kennedy Profiles in Political Courage Award for sticking to his guns on the Safety Net issue. And he DESERVES TO WIN IT and collect it personally at the JFK Library in Boston next year. Hein was and remains a wimp and a liar and all the while a perennial smiler– who hides behind the facade of daily press releases which overall amount to very little–and certainly nothing along the lines of political courage on the entire topic, which he predictably just tries endlessly to milk for pesonal political gain. Hein hasn’t once–not once–paid any attention to the daily operations of the county except for the water issue. That’s it. He counts on the notion–thus far apparently successful– the public will have water on its brain over daily county operations.
BTW Hugh—it’s spelled “doozy”. “doozie” sounds like an invention of an ad agency describing a sugar and corn syrup laden piece of something resembling either a cookie or a mashed potato or combination of both, although it is considered slang–which is not really the style of Hugh–you’re more respectable than the slang form, which in reality in sucking up to you subjects moreso than lambasting same, seems highly inappropriate for you, unless you are simply losing it in your old age. “Doosie” may also be used in the slang. However, to be fair, it most certainly is more formal even in the slang, than that exclamation Hugh has used in the past of “WTF”. Of couse, everyone knows this means “Weather That Friday(in anticipation of the weekend)!!”