The Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood (UHPP) chapter celebrates National Condom Week this year with a series of four "pub crawls," including one Feb. 11 on Warren St. in Hudson. UHPP outreach teams will visit Mexican Radio and Red Dot on Warren St., distributing "safer sex kits" and engaging patrons in a trivia game. Pub crawls are also scheduled for establishments in downtown Troy, and on Pearl and Lark Streets in Albany.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Sales tax income has become a key component for county budgeting."][/caption]How does one shift from governmental revenues based on income and property taxes to one where monies are added onto the cost of the things we buy, especially those not normally considered necessities? This question, and some local answers vis a vis local counties' fundraising through rising sales taxes, is the focus of a story by Patricia Doxsey of the Daily Freeman who has found that, "County lawmakers reluctant to increase property taxes to meet the financial needs of government long have turned to sales taxes as an easy source of revenue." The piece notes that with rare exception, counties now charge sales tax rates in excess of the state-imposed 3 percent limit for counties. Ulster, Greene and Columbia counties levy a 4 percent county sales tax, while Dutchess County imposes a 3.75 percent sales tax. In addition to the county sales tax levies, the state also takes another four percent.



Continued...

And in Dutchess County, which is in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority region, an additional sales tax of three-eights of a percent goes directly to the authority, which helps fund larger regional efforts to boost the local economy and keep up with infrastructrure needs. The only caveat, according to Doxsey? Every two years, counties must turn to their state legislators for permission to impose that portion of the county sales tax rate that exceeds 3 percent. "And every two years, counties wait with bated breath, hoping the state grants their request for 'temporary authority' to levy the additional tax." Which means the whole teetering tower of governmental finance could, like so many things, fall prey to recent Tea Party calls to cut all taxes, costs, spending, and budgets.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Homelessness Marathon banner, by Jeff Rountree."][/caption]The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a series of grants to keep local homeless assistance programs operating, although last year HUD gave our area substantially less funding. The Mid-Hudson News Network reports 16 programs have received $1.2 million in Dutchess County. In Orange County, 14 programs received $1.9 million. In Westchester County, 42 programs received $11.3 million. In Ulster County, nine programs received $1 million. Columbia and Greene counties together had only four programs that received a total of $110,000.


Continued...

WGXC will be covering this issue with The Homelessness Marathon, an annual 12-hour radio broadcast featuring the voices and stories of homeless people from around the United States that will air on WGXC Online Radio at www.wgxc.org starting at 7 p.m. on the evening of Wednesday, February 23, 2011 through 9 a.m the morning of Thursday, February 24, with additional coverage of the issue that morning on the wgXC Morning Show at 9 a.m. and "Tell It Like It Is" at 10 a.m.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="The Catskills, as seen in a Living Pictures' T-shirt image."][/caption]They loom over our western horizon, our Catskills. They draw us for skiing and endless wilderness adventures. They have provided inspiration to the creative among us for centuries. Now, they will be looked at, in an upcoming February 18 day-long workshop session being put on by the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development at Jay Ungar and Molly Mason's Ashokan Center in Olive, just off Route 28 in Ulster County, as a potential economic boon for the wider region. A story about that afternoon session on Feb. 18, starting at 1:30 p.m., is on the front of the Feb. 6 issue of The Daily Mail, outlining how "the economic benefits of having open space and parkland are always mentioned when the interests of municipalities, developers and environmentalists coincide in anything from a review at a planning board meeting to a community visioning workshop held to focus on the future." The presentation -- “Economic Benefits of Parkland,” is being planned in conjunction with Catskill Mountainkeeper and the Catskill Heritage Alliance, with the three groups acting together in partnership as Catskill Cornucopia. Among key topics will be “Adirondack Park Regional Assessment Plan: An Appraisal,” and a “Study of the Economic Impact on the Local Economy of Minnewaska State Park Preserve, Mohonk Preserve, and Sam’s Point Preserve.” For more information on the presentation, visit www.catskillcenter.org, or call (845)586-2611.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Catskill High School"][/caption]Dick May's Seeing Greene blog roared back with a February report on Friday, the 4th, that covered pretty much everything of import for the past month, from Coxsackie developments and Brian Dewan's 15 minutes of fame in The New Yorker to Sean Frey's resignations and a variety of cases swirling around the Greene Correctional Facility in Coxsackie. Of key interest to us was a snippet about the latest breakdown of boys and girls getting High Honors in 12th grade at Catskill High School, which May reports as showing "a gender division of eight boys and 11 girls" that represents "a gain on the masculine side, a climb toward equality of academic achievement." In 11th grade, he adds, the gender division at High Honors level was even with six boys and six girls. And at Cairo-Durham High School, girls out-numbered boys by a 3-2 margin: 18 to 12 among High Honors students in Grade 12, while at Hunter-Tannersville HS, four of the seven seniors who achieved “Superintendent’s Honor” rating were girls, while 18 seniors achieved grade averages of 90 or better, 11 of them girls. May later takes the statistics wider into Ulster County, finding similar patterns. Interesting...

Cascino pays fine for open burning
The Columbia Paper has a story on the latest fine paid by the owner of Bronx Recycling for burning wood pallets in a Copake drainage ditch in mid-December, around the same time he was being acquitted of illegal dumping in Clermont.

RPI revives business incubator
The Albany Business Journal has a piece about how Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is shifting back from a virtual to a brick and mortar incubator program located in downtown Troy, which nurtured more than 250 software, video game design, technology and pharmaceutical companies in its 30 years of operation and now hopes to do more.

Two men charged with operating marijuana grow house
Mid Hudson News Network is running a story about two Ulster County residents, 36 year old Jay Debberman, 36 and 64 year old Joe Barton, charged early February 4 with operating a marijuana grow operation in an apartment in rural Saugerties where officers found two pounds of processed marijuana, 26 marijuana plants, drug packaging material and scales. What makes this story interesting, and missed in its MHNN coverage, is that Barton is a longtime proponent of legalizing pot who has faced numerous similar arrests and built a history fighting each one through the courts, claiming a need for medical marijuana, as well as a veteran's wish to simply make a living.

Family displaced by fire
A Greenport home on Route 23B suffered fire and smoke damage Saturday afternoon, February 5, after a couch burst into flames from a faulty electrical outlet, leaving three homeless for the time being... and closing the highway for several hours.

Icy roads cause multiple accidents
The Daily Mail's Jim Planck takes a look at the numerous fender-benders, roll-overs, and other mishaps caused by yesterday's icy rains, albeit without too many details, due to the ongoing nature of the messy weather.

What Could Hudson Do With $10 Million?
Gossips of Rivertown references a North Country Public Radio News story about Gov. Andrew Cuomo's possible plans to sell up to ten state prisons and reimburse their host communities with cold hard cash.

According to the National Weather Service today will be partly to mostly cloudy. Temps nearly steady in the mid 30s. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph. Tonight will see considerable cloudiness. Low 23F. Winds light and variable. Our next snow, besides some showers on Monday, isn't expected now until Tuesday.


Astronomical bodies
TIDES Hudson: High, 5:11p.m./Low, 11:38 p.m.
SUNRISE/SUNSET 7:00 a.m./5:19 p.m.
MOONRISE/MOONSET :16 a.m./9:05 p.m.


Birthdays
FEBRUARY 6 Bob Marley, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Michael Pollan, and Kate McGarrigle.

A Radio Cartoon by Gus Murphy.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Hilary Hawke of the Ravena News-Herald caught this great image of two Black Hawk helicopters in a New Baltimore field by the Thruway, published on the front page of the Daily Mail."][/caption]Everyone seems to have picked up the one about the UF-60 Black Hawk helicopter that landed and then got stranded in the middle of a field of snow in New Baltimore between the Thruway and Route 9W on Friday morning, February 5. The The Daily Mail reports that a crew of two Army National Guardsmen from the 3rd Battalion, 142nd Aviation Regiment were out on a training mission when they got a warning signal on one of the dashboard controls. By the time they landed, New Baltimore businessman Eric Hoglund had called Greene County Sheriff Greg Seeley and made it out to the chopper on snowshoes. Seeley, in turn, arrived with officers from the New Baltimore Sheriff Substation and Town of Coeymans Police Chief Gregory A. Darlington, and set up crews to keep people from slowing down to "rubberneck" the scene. A rescue helicopter was dispatched with a crew of mechanics "whose job it was to tweak the Black Hawk so it could fly out safely and return to Albany." Everything was over, it's been reported, by 1:15 p.m.

The New York Times had a piece in its regional section this week that's started going viral upstate, and elsewhere in small town America. Entitled "District Liked Its Earmarks, Then Elected Someone Who Didn’t," the piece by reporter Raymond Hernandez is all about what's happening now that a Republican Congress is actually cutting projects that were deemed helpful, and even necessary, in rural areas like ours. They chart what's happening in the 19th Congressional District, won by Tea Party-backed Nan Hayworth from former musician John Hall, where "projects have drawn strong support from community activists, business leaders and local politicians of both major parties. But the stream of federal money that has long financed such projects, in this Hudson Valley district and elsewhere in the nation, is about to dry up." It gets a number of Republican local officials to go on the record against the past week's Congressional action, "prodded by outspoken newcomers like Ms. Hayworth," to essentially ban all money for projects that individual lawmakers slip into major Congressional budget bills to cater to local demands. "Now, civic activists, local officials and residents are scratching their heads, unpersuaded about the soundness of scrapping a system that has provided the district with money for libraries, parks, roads, bridges and the like." Interesting when abstract concepts hit real world examples. More on local projects started by Rep. Scott Murphy before losing to our newest Congressman Chris Gibson, who also ran against earmarks...

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Landfill methane extraction in action. "][/caption]The Times Union has a story out about new discussions centering on ways to harness the methane gas escaping from local capped landfills. "Efforts to harness the methane and convert it to energy have bounced around in Albany at least since 1987, but for years the city's attempts to cash in on it have proved costly and disappointing," the story runs. "In the mid-2000s, while Albany engaged in a lengthy legal battle with the former operator of the landfill's gas-to-energy plant, Minnesota Methane, over the system's inability to adequately trap the gas, neighboring Colonie struck a deal with a company that in 2007 generated more than $1 million in revenue for the town from its landfill on the northeastern part of town near Cohoes and the Mohawk River." The state Department of Environmental Conservation is currently weighing an application by Fortistar, a Westchester County company that bought Minnesota Methane, to build three, and possibly four, more electric generators at the Colonie landfill capable of churning out 6.4 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 6,400 homes. The power will be sold through the New York Power Authority to the village of Solvay in Onondaga County, outside of Syracuse. The EPA says landfill gas-to-energy programs, when properly run, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, cut odors and improve local air quality, and also indirectly reduce air pollution by offsetting the need for energy produced from nonrenewable sources. It seems further efforts are now underway to profit from old garbage elsewhere in the region...

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Taconic Hills School District recently received a Lowes' grant to help with building of a new greenhouse for its growing gardening programs."][/caption]Taconic Hills Middle School has received grant from Lowe’s Home Improvement store for a greenhouse program. The Register-Star reports that the $4,900 will pay for tools, equipment and materials to construct an outdoor shed and an arbor, as well as outdoor furniture and annuals, perennials and shrubbery and represents the first such grant given to a Columbia County school as part of Lowes’ Toolbox for Education program. In the grant application, the school district noted that the program started in 2010 as a school garden focusing on vegetable produce to serve in the cafeteria, and has now expanded “to a full learning complex that includes an orchard and a garden pathway.” The garden was christened “The Pizza Garden,” and recently won Taconic Hillls a New York State Farm Bureau Award. Lowes’ Toolbox grants were created to help fund parent-intitiated educational projects nationwide. Since 2005, about $25 million has been awarded through more than 5,000 grants to schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Ken Kearney, Kearney Realty Group, cuts the ribbon on a similar "multigenerational" development he recently completed in nearby Red Hook. "][/caption]The Greene County News has a story this week about a recently unveiled mixed use development being shepherded by the Greene County IDA that could bring a $50 million investment to the Town of Coxsackie, according to proponents. "IDA and town officials have been negotiating for a year with developer Kenneth Kearney to create the 100 acre development, known as Fountain Flats Park, located adjacent to State Route 9W and Bronck Mill Road, south of the 9W/81 intersection and behind the Martin Trailer Park in Coxsackie," the story runs, noting how a focus of the development is will be 73 units of affordable housing, dubbed Lime Hill Homestead, including a 24 unit senior housing building, an additional 48 townhomes and one additional two-bedroom unit for a building superintendent. “We have been working a long time to bring affordable housing to Coxsackie,” IDA Executive Director Sandy Mathes said. Additionally, the 100 acre lot will eventually become home to a commercial development, which could include a distribution center, office buildings, commercial endeavors and possibly even retail stores. In addition to the 100 acres the IDA has owned for 18 months, the agency is in talks with the owners of adjacent properties to see if a deal can be struck that would increase the property’s size to 200 acres. The Kearney Group will build and manage both housing components, which are known as “intergenerational” housing.
Mathes said the permitting process will likely begin this summer, with construction anticipated for either the fall of 2011 or at the latest, spring of 2012.

What with all the snow, it may not be the first item to catch our eye... but on Thursday, Feb. 17, New York State Office of Climate Change policy analyst Mark Lowrey will discuss strategies that every local community and resident can use to save tax dollars and help the environment at a free program being offered at at the Stuyvesant Town Hall by the Columbia County Environmental Management Council at 7 p.m. Lowrey will outline the benefits to towns that join the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Climate Smart Communities Program, which assists communities statewide in curbing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to global climate change act by adopting a 10-point pledge. Each point addresses a specific area of action that can save tax dollars, and promote health and safety, affordability, economic vitality and quality of life in those communities. The Climate Smart Communities Program also helps citizens create local climate action plans, reduce utility bills for municipal facilities and operations, cut municipal energy use for transportation, engage in green buying practices, and incorporate climate change considerations into comprehensive plans, Simonsen added. And remember, climate change makes for shifts in the weather in all directions, including great precipitation and cold snaps. It's something to pay attention to...

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Old Field Farm in the Greene County community of Cornwallville has won another award for its sustainable and humane new methods of farming."][/caption]Old Field Farm of Cornwallville has received a Good Husbandry Grant from the Animal Welfare Approved program to improve the welfare of animals by promoting pasture- and range-based farming. Old Field Farm will use the funds for genetic improvements to its herd of pigs and for purchasing new farrowing huts that will help improve the health and well being of their pigs. Animal Welfare Approved’s Good Husbandry Grants help promote innovative, forward thinking farming techniques, with funds awarded to farms and processing plants across the United States. Twenty-eight grants ranging from $600 to $6000 were awarded this year to farmers and slaughter plants working with or seeking to work with AWA farmers. Old Field is run by the Nadin family, is located on 160 acres, and mixes arts activities with farming... and sells its products, including butchered meats, to key private groceries in New York City, as well as its own buying club.

Under Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed budget, New York's school districts would be hit with a $1.5 billion cut in state aid for the 2011-12 school year. However, those cuts won't take effect unless approved by the state Legislature. LoHud.com has put up a database that shows how much each school district in the state could lose in funding under the proposed cuts. In Columbia County, the amount of aid coming from the state to Ichabod Crane School District in Kinderhook would drop from $13,067,676 to $11,327,337, a loss of $1,740,339, or 13.32% of their current aid package; in Hudson, aid would go from $20,993,870 to $19,292,336, a loss of $1,701,534 or 8.10% of what the district gets now; in Chatham, this year's $6,581,604 in aid would be $5,877,148 for the coming year, a cut of $704,456 or 10.70%; in Germantown, the current figure of $4,854,985 would become $4,378,482, a drop of $476,503, or 9.81% in aid; in Taconic Hills, a current aid figure of $10,067,763 would become $9,637,360, a loss of $430,403 or 4.28%, while in New Lebanon, the cut would be from $3,508,895 to $3,282,705, a loss of $226,190 or 6.45%. In Greene County, the Cairo-Durham School District will see its aid drop from $14,240,653 to $12,217,446, a cut of $2,023,207, or 14.21%; Catskill will see its aid go from $16,143,409 to $14,703,411, a cut of $1,439,998 or 8.92%; in Coxsackie-Athens, aid will go from $8,448,344 to $7,261,513, a loss of $1,186,831 or 14.05% in school aid; in Greenville, the amounts go from $10,654,474 to $9,619,096, a drop of $1,035,378 or 9.72%; Hunter-Tannersville will see aid go from $2,510,875 to $1,934,974, a cut of $575,901 or 22.94%; while at Windham-Ashland-Jewett, the aid goes from $1,450,874 to $1,187,609, a cut of $263,265 or 18.15%. Other involved districts in our coverage area include Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk, where state aid goes from $16,907,275 to $14,503,308, a cut of $2,403,967 or 14.22%; and the Dutchess County district of Pine Plains, where aid shifts from $6,265,215 to $5,647,884, a cut of $617,331 or 9.85%.

Snow days put school to the test
The Daily Mail, along with most of our local papers, looks at what Catskill school superintendent Kate Farrell and others are thinking about how to make up for snow days, with all allotted days for the white stuff now expended. Watch out for the upcoming February and Easter breaks disappearing...

History happened here: The crime commission comes to town
The Register-Star's Andrew Amelinckx has a fine look back at the days when Hudson's Columbia Street was still named Diamond, and a major center for prostitution and other vices, focusing on one great bust and a major crime commission investigation into city corruption.

Community mobilizes to help family which lost house to fire
The Ravena News-Herald gets to the core of what keeps our small towns together in a piece about how neighbors are helping out a Coeymans Hollow family who lost their home.

Not an emergency?
The Woodstock Times' Violet Snow has a great piece about how the state has refused to go along with a plan from officials and residents of flood-ravaged Phoenicia, in Ulster County, to clean out where two streams meet so as to protect their Main Street from reoccurring high waters. The DEC says the application was incomplete...

State jobs pacts in play
The Times Union's Rick Karlin reports on talks, now underway behind closed doors, between Gov. Andrew Cuomo's people and the unions representing state employees, who have been warned about major cut backs in the coming months. Expect the press releases and marches to start soon...


State prison inmate indicted for seeking $650 million in federal refunds
The Mid Hudson News Network has a little item on an inmate at the Greene Correctional Facility in Coxsackie, 47 year old Ronald Williams, being indicted on eight counts of filing false claims against the United States for payment of over $650 million in tax refunds.

It is now official the Year of the Hare.

The National Weather Service says today will involve wintry precipitation this afternoon. High around 35F. Winds light and variable. Chance of precip 90%.Tonight rain with some snow mixing. Low 31F. E winds shifting to WSW at 10 to 20 mph. Tomorrow cloudy with high of 35.



Astronomical bodies
TIDES Hudson: High, 4:32 p.m./Low, 11:06 p.m.
SUNRISE/SUNSET 7:03 a.m./5:17 p.m.
MOONRISE/MOONSET 7:53 a.m./8:06 p.m.


Birthdays
FEBRUARY 5
Adlai Stevenson, Charlotte Rampling, William S. Burroughs, and Laura Linney.

Members of the Coxsackie-Athens Student Council and the group Students Against Destructive Decisions, or S.A.D.D., have teamed up to start a new “No Phone Zone” program, and went before theirBoard of Education the final week in January to present their ideas, and to get the board’s stamp of approval. “No Phone Zone” is a new national program that warns youngsters about the dangers created by “distracted driving” – driving a vehicle while talking on a cell phone, or making or receiving text messages. In a Daily Mail story about the issue, and recent presentation, Student Council President Jack Whiting noted that one in three teens ages 16-17 years old text while driving, and 40% of youngsters ages 12-17 have been in a car while the driver was texting or talking on a cell phone. Half of the teens studied admitted they talk on a cell phone themselves while behind the wheel. “Every day, 16 people are killed by distracted drivers who are texting or using their cell phones while driving,” Whiting said. That equals approximately 6,000 deaths each year. On February 18, the two student groups will co-host an assembly at Coxsackie-Athens High School where students will learn about distracted driving, watch videos and take a personal pledge that they will never text or talk on a cell phone while driving. In addition, a sign reading, “No Distracted Driving”, will be installed at the triangle in the front entrance of the school.

You wouldn't normally look to a monthly meeting of the city of Hudson's Common Council Youth and Aging Committee for news... but then again, not every municipality sees senior yoga and aerobics programs as an area for lively political discourse. The Register-Star reports that at the February 3 meeting, it was announced that those same yoga and aerobics programs, which had been offered at the city's youth building until they wanted their program spaces for themselves, would continue to be offered free of charge — even after a fee schedule worked out with seniors was proposed. The yoga and aerobics courses offered at the city’s Youth Center have been the subject of a heated, months-long discussion fueled by seniors who were devastated to learn that the Hudson River Bank and Trust Foundation decided to no longer fund the programs and concentrate on youth programming. However, at Mayor Richard Scalera’s request, the foundation agreed to allot some of the money toward the cost of senior programming, as well as the construction of a new senior center (for which the city also received a $400,000 Community Development Block grant). At a meeting with seniors in December, Scalera committed to covering more than half the cost of senior yoga and aerobics from his special account to be used for municipal purposes at the mayor’s discretion and per council approval. Since Scalera collects a state pension, he is not permitted to make more than $30,000 per year, and since the mayor’s salary is budgeted at $45,000, he requested the extra $15,000 be put into a contingency fund. A resolution was passed authorizing $8,000 from the account to be put directly toward the cost of senior yoga and aerobics. Now the foundation is being approached again to cover the $3,000 shortfall that remains. Meanwhile, meetings onnthe new senior center proposal will be held on the second Tuesday of each month at 12:15 p.m. at the Youth Center. Let's hope they stay civil....