America has always been a society of joiners, and it was in that spirit that Ulster County executive Pat Ryan last Friday signed resolutions at the historic Volunteer Fireman’s Hall on Fair Street in Kingston to authorize up to $6.2 million in bonding for construction of a public safety training center on Ulster Landing Park in the Town of Ulster.
In a historic legislative session last month, New York lawmakers passed a long-bottled flood of progressive bills covering everything from early voting to rent control. But legalized recreational marijuana failed to make the cut, despite support from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and strenuous efforts by Democrats in the state’s two houses.
About 15 residents of Big Indian and Oliverea came to the July 1 Shandaken town board meeting to protest the town’s failure to clean up several properties in the hamlet of Big Indian, despite complaints at the June meeting about a junked car lot, a perpetual yard sale, and a stripped-down, unsecured store.
Woodstock Library trustees delivered on their plans to present a 2020 spending plan with no tax increase, mostly through the application of surplus funds and adjusting items that have come in under budget in the current fiscal year.
Pete Mauney lives in Tivoli, watches the night sky, and makes art out of the sort of wonderings so many of us have each summer. His solo exhibition opening at the Kleinert/James Arts Center this week, Pete Mauney: Nocturnal Transmissions, captures that moment when fireflies appear to morph into stars; the vivid visual arrays some of us take our kids to see, when very young, at airports; as well as that special beauty which occurs when we closely watch a singular stretch of landscape for a long time.
Selina Woodstock, formerly The Lodge, has started renovations prematurely according to a ruling from the Woodstock Zoning Board of Appeals, announced Thursday, June 27. More importantly, the ZBA decision written by member Gordon Wemp and okayed on a 4-1 vote of the board says that the town code enforcement officer, Ellen Casciaro, was in the wrong when she issued two new building permits for The Lodge/Selina in late March, when she said she had the right to revoke past stop work orders and orders to remedy at her own prerogative.
Since the untimely death of Lasher Funeral Home director Ken Peterson in May, the Woodstock business is still in operation by staff members Scott DiMicco and Ralph van Hoesen. Ken’s mother, Janet, and his brother, Carl, hope to sell the business to a qualified funeral director, although Carl remarked that no one could replace the historical perspective Ken brought to his work, with his lifelong knowledge of the community and its history.
A State Supreme Court justice approved the pistol permit over the strenuous objections, on the grounds of the killer’s repeated run-ins with town police, of Sheriff Juan Figueroa, Sheriff’s Chief Civil Administrator John McGovern and Saugerties Police Chief Joe Sinagra.
Woodstock Library trustees may present voters with a zero tax levy increase if it uses its surplus funding from prior years and finds cuts in other places.
Tom Auringer writes to clarify what he says were inaccuracies in our article and in some of the comments at a recent meeting concerning a proposed manufacturing facility on Rt. 28 in the town of Kingston. In a separate letter, Maxanne Resnick, executive director of the Woodstock Land Conservancy, writes that the proposal should receive the highest level of scrutiny.