MILLERTON — Tuesday, March 20, is Election Day here with four candidates vying for the two, two-year village trustee terms currently held by Yosh Schulman and Debbie Middlebrook. Both Democrats, Schulman and Middlebrook are running for re-election. They are challenged by Republican candidates Dave McGhee and John “Jack” Thomas. Dave McGhee McGhee recently lost a re-election bid for the Town Board after a 12-year run as a councilman for the town of North East. Now he’s looking to serve on the Village Board.“I’ve had voters ask me to run, who want another voice at meetings, and since I’ve had experience at the Town Board [I decided to do it],” he said. “I’ve been known to bring up issues that were overlooked, and if elected I will bring up what is addressed to me. All residents deserve to have a voice and I think I would be an asset to the Village Board.”As far as what issues the village is facing these days, McGhee said “holding the budget and taxes in place, without raising them,” is crucial.“With the economy, people can’t afford it,” he said. “There’s just no money to go around. Don’t raise taxes, I say.”He also said he’ll make sure to bring those issues up at meetings and in executive sessions, always keeping village residents in mind. Jack Thomas Thomas is a former village trustee who was appointed by past Mayor Mike Cawley in 2005 to fill an unexpired term, which led to one subsequent full term under the leadership of current Mayor John Scutieri. Thomas put his own name forward at the Republican caucus this year, to fill the spot, he said, and make sure there were two candidates representing the GOP. When asked why he’s running, his response was simple.“Because nobody else wanted the job,” he quipped, before taking a more serious note. “Which is unfortunate. But I think I can add a little bit of discussion to the present board and bring up different viewpoints and try to move things along to better the government within the village.”One of the main issues facing the village today, according to Thomas, is the state of the water system.“Upgrading, repairing and replacing it,” he said. “But rather than repairing let’s do something so it doesn’t leak for the next 50 years. One day I hope it never happens that you go to flush a toilet and it doesn’t, and you get no water return. I would say it’s a critical issue. The pipes are old, we have constant breakdowns and leaks. It affects people directly.” Debbie Middlebrook A Democrat and an incumbent, Middlebrook has already served two, two-year terms and is now running for her third term in office. She said the reason is simple, she “likes giving back to the community.” That sense of altruism has served the community well. Middlebrook has worked on numerous projects while on the Village Board; she’s particularly active in helping the municipality pursue grants, as is her running mate and fellow trustee, Schulman. If re-elected, Middlebrook wants to continue her work in that department, with a focus on infrastructure.“That is always my main issue,” she said. “We’re a small community and don’t have a lot of resources. We tend to rely on grants to improve our infrastructure, and I see that as a continuing issue, to try to find money for sidewalks, especially. We’re a walking community, and we were able to repair several sidewalks last year but unfortunately didn’t receive any block grant money to do that this year.”That’s got Middlebrook on a mission for 2012 and beyond. The village applies for money from the county’s Community Development Block Grant program on an annual basis; she regularly advocates for those funds to go toward sidewalk repair and replacement.“It’s hard because we’re limited on what we can raise taxes for people on and we can’t afford to have extreme tax increases, and the state limits what we can increase taxes for,” she said. “I think the only way we can subsidize those costs is through grants.” Yosh Schulman Also successful in the grant department is village Trustee Schulman, the second Democratic incumbent seeking re-election come March 20. He’s already served two full terms plus a partial term. One of Schulman’s biggest successes was the village’s receipt of a New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) grant. The village garnered more than $315,000 to install photo voltaic solar panels on the pump house. Better yet, as the cost of electricity goes up every year the village now has to buy less and less, so its savings also go up. Those are the kind of cost savings and green concepts Schulman wants to cultivate if re-elected.“I’d like to continue helping develop forward-thinking policies for the village as well as find innovative and efficient ways to do things we need to be doing,” he said. “The solar panels save villagers $15,000 every year, unless electric prices go up, then it would save us even more. I’d like to do more work with our natural resources in the area, protecting our watershed.”The main issues the village must now face, Schulman said, regard economic prosperity and vitality.“That is affecting our entire region and nationally, as a whole, and I believe having a focused local economy encouraging smart growth and being able to address the needs of Millerton’s residents and visitors is a prime concern,” he said. “It is in Millerton’s benefit to be thinking several steps ahead of all the issues instead of taking a reactive step.” Election Day Village elections fall on Tuesday, March 20. Village residents may vote at the Nutrition Center, located at Village Hall at 21 Dutchess Ave., at the side entrance. The polls are open from noon to 9 p.m.
Latest News
Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.
Adamah Farm crew members planning out the day’s tasks on a late September day.
Janna Siller
Over my 15 years of growing vegetables in Falls Village, I’ve exerted my will over all kinds of conditions, from drought to humidity to crows with a taste for cantaloupe. That’s what farming is all about. You zip around the field, hopping on and off tractors, moving hoses and chasing weeds, all in an effort to arrange conditions in favor of your crops. It is the crops’ job to gulp up sunlight and move water through their stems, to transform solar energy into your next pesto or ratatouille or butternut squash soup. It is the job of the farmer to irrigate just enough but not too much, to slice dandelion leaves without damaging delicate cabbage roots, to pander and pamper and stay in tune with what plants need to thrive.
The easy part of farming is trusting plants’ resilience. I have seen bright green shoots barrel ahead out of a plant torn to shreds by hail. I’ve watched wilty, heat-stressed seedlings turn rigid overnight and greet the next morning with vigor. The hard part is letting go of what you can’t control. As our crops lapped up Friday’s gentle sunshine and I considered the weekend forecast, I imagined roots holding tight to wet earth and branches supporting each other in sideways, pelting rain. I made sure all of our storage crops were already harvested and tucked away. I battened down the sides of our greenhouses and wished the remaining field crops good luck.
The nor’easter didn’t materialize too dramatically in our corner of New England. A few broken branches and debris blown about, nothing like the July Fourth storm that sent half a tree crashing onto the deer fence and left crates of fresh veggies in coolers without power.
Fall storage crop harvests amid soil building cover crops at Adamah Farm in Falls Village. Janna Siller
Farming is an exercise in acceptance. To do it well and return year after year, you have to balance hubris and humility. The prize can often be a certain equanimity, a training in the art of moving into the next day even when the last one scrambled all your plans.
Epic change is not always about the unexpected. It also comes like clockwork on the seasonal calendar. As I type, the last of summer’s watermelons wait naively on the vine for a few hot days to finish ripening. Broccoli are holding their leaves wide as they did in June and July, only to find that the hours of sunlight decrease with each earlier sunset. Plants can’t pick up and go south or call the manager to order a bonus round of sunshine. Their growth slows and they get a resigned look to the hue of their leaves, so different from the frenzied growth of summer.
The release of fall is not tragic or gloomy. It is not an ending because so many fall tasks are about setting up for the new beginnings in spring.
We turn the vines that yielded thousands of pounds of fruit into the soil, where healthy microbes feast on their rotting stems. Then we plant cover crops — a mix of cereal grains like rye and oats and legumes like peas, vetch and clover. Cover crops hold the soil and its nutrients in place over winter, feeding the soil food web and adding organic matter that next season’s crops will need to grow.
We sort sprinklers and repair hoses. We inventory tarps. We take notes about which plants did well where and how we might try a new approach for this or that. We stack crates of cured garlic and onions and winter squash in a cool, dark room.
We save seeds from tomatoes and beans and lettuce, carefully labeling each variety for next season’s long, sunny days.
Janna Siller is the farm director at Adamah, a community farm in Falls Village offering CSA shares, educational programs and a food access program.
Pickett and Prueher on stage.
Provided by Found Footage Festival
Back in 1991, the duo found a discarded McDonald’s custodial training tape in their home state of Wisconsin, and since then, they’ve been collecting all the VHS tapes they could find and mining them for untapped comedic gold. Today, they are the undisputed champions of lost media, having collected and archived over 15,000 videocassette tapes.
The Found Footage Festival is a “celebration of the videos that time forgot.”Provided by Found Footage Festival
Prueher and Pickett’s brand of comedy values the missteps and accidents that come with amateur video productions more than it does the carefully crafted wordplay of the comedic superstars of our time. But it’s not just bloopers from birthday parties that they find. Some of the most popular clips come from instructional videos, taped religious services, fully produced movies, music videos and, of course, the ever-popular news bloopers.
For more than eight years, Pickett and Prueher have been hosting a video podcast they call “VHS Party,” complete with their own rabid fans who send them tapes and comment along online with the streams. Their YouTube page is chock-full of interesting clips, many of which are featured and discussed on “VHS Party” with their two co-hosts and occasional guests from the comedy world, including Jon Glaser, Jo Firestone and David Cross.
The duo started the Found Footage Fest in 2004 as a way to raise money for their documentary, “Dirty Country,” about a vulgar country music performer looking for a bigger audience than his garage. Since then, they’ve taken the show on the road, bringing new selections of their favorite clips and their signature comedic stylings to theaters around the world.
For tickets to the Found Footage Festival, visit thetriplex.org.
Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.
