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Saugerties Football Team is playoff bound

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If the Saugerties High School varsity football team was looking to make a statement with the playoffs looming, they couldn’t have played it any better than they did last Saturday with a dominant 63-0 Mum Bowl drubbing of visiting sectional foe Monticello. The annual home extravaganza saw the Sawyers firing on all cylinders, with senior quarterback Matt Bucci tossing a school-record six touchdown passes.

Bucci connected on 9-of-13 passes for 223 yards, with his favorite target, senior wide receiver Sean Costello, hauling in a pair of touchdown tosses. J.P. Monaghan, Jake Piratzky, Anthony Paff and Graeme Knisell were also the beneficiaries of Bucci’s scoring spree before a capacity crowd of Mum Bowl revelers and gridiron enthusiasts.

“Matt’s been exceptional this year,” said the Sawyers’ first-year coach Drew Carpino. “We kind of saw it happening with all the preseason stuff we did with Matt, the seven-on-seven work. He did really shine in that offseason stuff. He’s a third-year varsity starter, and I think he’s third in New York State in total yards for a quarterback. That’s unbelievable. I’m just lucky we have that, and the connection he’s made with our senior wide receiver Sean Costello has been awesome.”

Costello amassed 90 yards on three catches, while Piratzky picked up 70 yards on two receptions. But the Sawyers, who led 56-0 at the half, also scored on the ground, with Jimmy Heinlein finding the end zone on a 70-yard hustle and Anthony Owen rushing for a 15-yard score. The Sawyers ran the ball 14 times overall, with ten different players combining for an awesome 170 yards.

“It was our senior day, it was homecoming, and we just wanted to get everybody involved and active,” said Carpino of the impressive panoply of ground attackers. “Everything was clicking, and our offensive coordinator, Lee Meisner, did a great job. Six different guys scored touchdowns. We were spreading the ball around, and all our weapons were firing.”

Saugerties was also dominant on the defensive end, with Dan Ball and Craig Laurey each contributing five tackles to preserve the shutout.

The Sawyers are 4-2 overall, and 2-1 in Section IX, Class A, Division II competition. They have just one game, a road contest against league opponent Wallkill on Friday, before they head to the playoffs.

The win over Monticello was crucial. The visitors were looking to improve on a much closer defeat a year ago, when the Sawyers won 53-42.

Carpino said the home crowd played a key role in setting the atmosphere for the Sawyers on Saturday. If Saugerties starts the postseason on its home turf, Carpino is hoping for the same kind of turnout.

“It’s huge,” he said. “Most of our success so far this year has been on the road. It was good to come home and show the community that we’re clicking now. We want a home playoff game. We want our home fans to be with us and support us. And we want to win that playoff game at home.”

The home playoff game may be key. The team’s looking to put a cork in a long drought that stretches back to before anyone on the current roster was born. The team had its last win in a playoff game 24 years ago. They play Wallkill on the road Friday, Oct. 12 at 7 p.m.

“Everything is just coming together at the right time of the year. If we win this Friday night we’ll be 5-2 and we could secure potentially a home playoff game,” said Carpino. “That’s been the goal all along, to get a home playoff game and try to get that elusive first playoff win since 1994. That’s the goal, and obviously we’d like to keep playing after that. We’re getting better each game offensively and defensively, and we’ll see how it goes on Friday night.”


Saugerties schools hire experienced interim manager

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The Saugerties school district this week announced the hiring of Warren Donohue as interim business manager while school officials and the school board search for a permanent replacement for Lissa Jilek. 

“Warren brings with him a wealth of experience and knowledge,” said interim superintendent Lawrence Mautone in an e-mail to district staff on October 9. “He will be leading the business office and related departments and operations through December, helping with the hiring of a new official and assisting with the transitioning of that individual into our district.”

Donohue recently retired from Ulster County Boces after five years in the business office. He was previously a business manager with the Pawling and Cornwall districts and with Orange-Ulster Boces. According to board president Robert Thomann, Donohue is already somewhat familiar with the Saugerties district’s financial operations. 

“He has experience with our accounts through Boces,” Thomann said. Donohue’s role as a bridge between Jilek and the next business manager will be crucial. “We want him to check out our finances while we’re posting for the position and actively looking for someone to come in full-time.”

The district hopes to have a full-time business manager by the scheduled December 11 board meeting. Thomann said it was possible, though not preferable, that the district would need more time before choosing a new business manager. 

“It depends upon the feel of the candidates, their salary requirements,” Thomann said. “We’d like to have somebody permanent in by the first of the year.”

Jilek left Saugerties late last month for the same role in the Highland school district. She had been the district business manager since 2013, having previously served in the same position in both the Cairo-Durham (2007-13) and Catskill (2000-07) districts. 

Donohue’s first day in Saugerties will be Friday, October 12.

Ulster town board will try not to break tax cap

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The Town of Ulster released its tentative budget for 2019, with its $11.8 million total representing a 4.4 percent increase over the 2018 spending plan. The proposed tax levy of $8.6 million would come with a 4.2 percent tax levy increase. In its current state, passing the budget would require overriding the tax cap, a process town officials are preparing for even as they hope to avoid it.

A brief presentation of the tentative budget at Oct. 4’s meeting included talk about enacting a law overriding the tax cap, and how doing so might speed up the process by which municipal laws evolve.

“The budget as it is currently constructed does not meet the tax cap, and in order to avoid having a problem at the end of the process if we are unable to make changes that bring us into compliance with the tax cap, I am going to propose that the town take and start the process for the adoption of a local law in relation to the override of the tax cap for 2019,” said Supervisor James Quigley III.

Quigley explained that each January during the town’s reorganizational meeting, town officials establish a process for introducing a law, one which includes the scheduling and holding of a public hearing. Under the standard policy, a law can take anywhere from 60 to 90 days from introduction to resolution. But with budgets due to be adopted and submitted to Ulster County by Nov. 20, the standard policy may not apply.

“We do not have the luxury of time in this matter,” Quigley said.

But preparing to introduce a law overriding the tax cap and actually doing so are two different things. “This doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to exceed the tax cap,” said Councilman Eric Kitchen, who like other councilmen expressed hope that there was still room to further trim the budget. “Myself and Councilman [Rocco] Secreto have started meeting with department heads to go over their budgets.”

Quigley added that the discussion about overriding the tax cap was a necessity, whether or not it becomes a certainty.

“The town will work diligently to achieve a budget that does not exceed the tax cap,” he said. “But should we not be able to, the law will be in a position that the town board could adopt it if necessary prior to the adoption of the budget. This is purely belts and suspenders and is anticipatory of a problem.”

In its current state, the tentative budget’s tax levy is less than $9,000 over the tax cap. The town will hold a public hearing on the tax levy along with a budget workshop at Thursday, Oct. 18’s meeting. Two further meetings will be held on Nov. 1 and 15, and, Quigley said, additional budget workshops are also a possibility.

Among the increases in the 2019 tentative budget are wages in the Town of Ulster Police Department, up 8.7 percent to $1.95 million. The police department’s budget in the tentative spending plan is $8.7 million, an increase of around 5 percent. 

Benefits costs for town employees are set at $3.7 million in the spending plan, an increase of 5.6 percent over the 2018 budget. 

Other increases in spending include everything from road salt (up 16.7 percent to $70,000 after a particularly rough winter) to pollution insurance ($205,000, an increase of 10.8 percent).

But there are also areas where spending is going down, as in the overall budget for wages in the highway department, set at around $437,000 in the tentative budget, a decrease of 0.6 percent. And salaries for town officials would remain static in the tentative budget, set at $75,000 for the highway superintendent; $50,938 for the town clerk; $44,000 for the supervisor; and $10,000 each for the four town councilmen.

KHS football tigers keep playoff hopes alive

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C.J. Faircloth advances the ball as Warwick defenders close in. (Photo by Phyllis McCabe)

For the Kingston High School varsity football team, both the season and their senior night game last weekend are something of a good news/bad news scenario. But for head coach Quintin Johnson, it’s all good.

“Our effort as a team has been fantastic,” said Johnson following the Tigers 14-10 homecoming loss to state-ranked non-league opponent Warwick under the lights at Dietz Stadium on Friday night. “I tell the players not to focus on records or scores of games and focus on one play, one day at a time. I am thrilled with our response — they have played well at times and fantastic at other times. It’s a process that we are going through daily.”

It was a night where the Kingston defense more than did its part, holding a traditionally electric Wildcats offense to a pair of touchdowns.

The Tigers led 10-7 in the 4th quarter before Warwick quarterback Joe Miller ran the ball in from nine yards out with 3:51 on the clock, wrapping a drive that ate up most of the final frame. Kingston gave itself a chance with a bit of razzle-dazzle on the ensuing kickoff as Mahki Matthews lateraled the ball to Jackson Parker for a 38-yard return to midfield. But the home team couldn’t move the ball after that, turning it over on downs and seeing a stellar effort yield a tough defeat.

After the game, Johnson was effusive in his praise for the defense, which has taken some time to come together.

“Defensively, it has been a constant process of putting players in best position to be successful,” he said. “Our defense this season didn’t return any starters from last season so we put out 11 new players. It’s a process getting them to learn the crafts of their position and being able to do it well on a consistent basis. We showed how well we can play defensively against a very good Warwick team. We are starting to click defensively at the right time. It’s exciting to watch.”

On the offensive side, the Tigers were forced into a ground game with Collin Ford playing quarterback in place of injured Chapman Parker. Kingston ran the ball 42 times for 192 yards, with C.J. Faircloth (12 carries for 98 yards) and Tyleaf McGriff (21 carries for 84 yards) leading the way. 

The Wildcats went up 7-0 in the second quarter after a 10-yard rushing score by Kyle Rooney. Kingston came back on the following possession, but couldn’t get the ball any closer than the Warwick 15 yard line. Junior Justin Longo nailed the first field goal of his high school career from 32 yards out, putting the Tigers on the board just prior to halftime.

The Tigers took the Wildcats by surprise, recovering a deftly delivered onside kick at midfield to open the second half. Faircloth rewarded Johnson’s risky call two plays later, running the ball into the end zone from 45 yards out. 

But ultimately, the Tigers came up short, falling to 2-5 overall, and 2-3 in Section IX, Class AA play. And yet their playoff hopes are very much alive, with a trip to battle Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association foe Pine Bush set for Friday, Oct. 19 in the regular season finale. A win and they’re in. A loss gives the two teams nipping at their heels for the fourth and final divisional slot a chance. Johnson said the Tigers are resisting the temptation to look ahead and are focusing squarely on the task at hand.

“We are getting ready for our challenge against Pine Bush by taking our preparation one day at time,” Johnson said. “I constantly encourage the kids to focus on preparation, not playing the time. The game will play itself out, but our preparation is what we should focus on. We certainly will have a great challenge ahead playing Pine Bush but we are looking forward to it. We have been challenged many times this year and our guys always answer the call. It would be very special to all of us to get this program back into the post season again.”

‘Outstanding’ fan support

Johnson said he was sorry the Tigers couldn’t pick up the senior night win at Dietz as it was likely their last game of the season there this year.

“Our fan support and community support has been and continues to be outstanding,” he said. “It’s such a great feeling knowing that no matter how tough a season we are having the community still shows up and supports this program. The atmosphere at Dietz is unlike any place I have ever been. The Friday night lights, the band playing, the energy, it is electric. All the more reason we are proud to be the Kingston Tigers and have our home be Dietz Memorial Stadium. I’d like to take a minute to thank all those fans who support us and our local businesses who support us as well. It is truly appreciated.”

Johnson also credited his team for their effort, adding Kingston’s record or where the chips fall when the season is over won’t tell the whole story of the 2018 Tigers.

“We have a very special group of kids playing this season for us,” Johnson said. “Regardless of our final outcome, they have made this community and program very proud.”

To win in the post-season, Saugerties-Coleman soccer squads must put the team first

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Saugerties captain senior Brandon Davenport rushes the ball as he is surrounded by FDR players. (Photos by Phyllis McCa be)

In two key games last week, the grand experiment of the merged Saugerties High and John A. Coleman Catholic High boys’ varsity soccer team showed promising signs. Players from both schools factored into key wins that propelled the team into the postseason. 

“I’m really pleased,” said team coach Michael Riley this Tuesday. “The goal from the beginning was to get them to play for each other. They started off strong, but we met our division, one of the toughest around with Wallkill, New Paltz and FDR. But we swept the second division and we were able to finish it off tonight.”

The Sawyers closed out the regular season an even 6-6 record after Tuesday night’s visit to Highland, where they trounced the home side 5-1. Saugerties sophomore Axel Gomez scored four goals, bringing his goal tally for the season to 21. 

“It’s unheard of,” said Riley. “A lot of that is because of Brandon [Davenport]. He occupies a lot of attention. Because teams have to put two or three players on Brandon, Axel gets into some really great channels and Brandon finds him.”

Davenport, a Coleman senior and co-captain, is the team’s engine in the midfield, assisting on four Sawyer goals on Tuesday night. A fellow senior Statesman, Jax Mautone, is a co-captain and the team’s stalwart goalkeeper. He turned away three Highland shots. 

“It meant a lot,” said Mautone of the win. “We worked hard this season, but we lost some games where we kind of dominated throughout. We had to come out and win this game.”

Saugerties junior Charles Baldwin ready to score.

Complementing Gomez on the offensive side all season long has been eighth grader Shaan Sekhon, who scored the Sawyers’ other goal in the Highland win.  

“The big surprise for me this season is the eighth grader,” said Riley. “We are actually starting him every game, and he rarely comes out. That’s a good sign for the future.”

Davenport has also been impressed by the Saugerties underclassman. “He’s only an eighth grader, and he’s making a huge impact on varsity,” he said. “By his senior year he’s going to be really good.”

While the win at Highland was crucial, a 3-2 victory over visiting perennial Mid-Hudson Athletic League powerhouse New Paltz four days earlier was the turning point for a Sawyer squad overcoming a midseason lull. “Winning against New Paltz was big,” said Mautone. “We thought we were going to get crushed and winning was impossible. Coming out of nowhere for the win was great.”

Gomez had a hat trick in the victory over the Huguenots, equalizing midway through the first half and giving the Sawyers the go-ahead goal just before the half. Offensively, at least on paper, it was a battle between Gomez and New Paltz’s Isaac Cherviyot, who put New Paltz up early with his first goal, then leveled the contest in the 65th minute. But it was Gomez who had the last laugh, scoring with just two minutes remaining in regulation off an assist by Davenport. 

Saugerties made the most of its opportunities after being outshot 10-5 and seeing New Paltz earn five corner kicks to their own four. Davenport dished an assist to Gomez in the win, while Mautone earned eight saves. 

The Sawyers will have to keep their momentum rolling if they want to make a deep run in the postseason. They’re heading off to battle top-seeded Minisink Valley on Monday, October 22. 

“It starts with defense,” said Riley. “If they can’t score, we can’t lose. And we have to be able to transition quickly into the attack. That’s going to be the key.”

Beyond the momentum the win provided, the New Paltz game may yield clues that will help Saugerties put up a good fight against Minisink. 

“We’re on a little bit of a roll right now,” Riley said. “After our win against New Paltz we’ve just tried to harness that. It was the biggest win of the season for us. We’re going to try and recreate some of the better moments from that game. The team we’re playing is very similar to that team.”

Mautone said it’ll be important for the Sawyers to recognize that a soccer game is a marathon of moments, especially after giving up an early goal against a very tough team. “We want to work hard and work smart,” he said. “And we need to stay positive even if we get scored on. If we stay positive and keep a good attitude, the scores will come.”

Davenport said he believes Saugerties can rise to the challenge on Tuesday if the team members work together. “We need to play faster,” he said. “Offensively we’re good, but defensively we need to work to play as a team, covering for each other. The main thing you want on a team is for everyone to be unselfish. If everyone is playing for themselves they’re going nowhere. If players are putting the team first, that’s where you find success and move forward.”

Saugerties captain senior Brandon Davenport kicks the ball ahead of the FDR players.

Cioni closing punted to November

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The Cioni Building (photo by Phyllis McCabe)

Due to the unavailability of the prospective purchaser on the originally planned day, the closing date for the sale of the Kingston City School District’s Cioni Building has been moved to Thursday, Nov. 15. School officials this week said they were fine with the delay and weren’t concerned that the deal might fall through.

“We haven’t really discussed that, to be honest with you,” said district Superintendent Paul Padalino. “We’re very confident that this is happening.”

Last year, the board agreed to sell Cioni to 61 Crown Street LLC, which is led by New York City-based developer Neil Bender for $4.25 million. Bender said he wanted to turn the coveted Uptown property into a boutique hotel and spa. In January, the board OK’d dropping the price to around $3.47 million following an environmental review which revealed a variety of structural issues.

Many months later, Padalino said that everything is proceeding deliberately, but without cause for concern. Hypothetically, though, with the sale of Cioni and the district’s efforts to convert the former Frank L. Meagher Elementary School into a new central office and pre-kindergarten hub at least theoretically connected, what happens if the deal with Bender falls through?

“If the world turned upside down and this didn’t happen, the construction at Meagher is not technically being funded by the income from selling this property,” Padalino said. “We would go forward with Meagher and we would probably re-list Cioni for sale. It’s not like property values in Uptown Kingston are going down these days.”

School officials hope that they’ll be able to break ground on the Meagher project this summer and move their headquarters there by the beginning of the 2019-20 school year. The terms of the Cioni sale gives them up to two years to fully vacate.

The pre-K program at Meagher is scheduled to open to students in September 2019. The project’s total budget is $4.23 million.

Padalino described work at Meagher as already being ahead of schedule.

“We’ve completed our asbestos abatement, which is obviously a huge undertaking in a building of that age,” he said. “We’ve ripped out the bathrooms and a lot of walls are coming down. A lot of demolition.”

Demolition has also included the removal of the facility’s boiler system, which dated back to 1937.

“We’ve got the new heating system that should be in place by the end of this week,” said Padalino on Tuesday. “That was supposed to happen later, but we figured if we can get it in now we should. It’ll be good for the workers over the winter.”

Padalino said that the pre-K program is slated to open with four classes, with the possibility of further expanding to six in the future. Each pre-K class has a state-mandated maximum capacity of 19 students, with one teacher and a teaching assistant in each. 

Some aspects of the district’s forthcoming pre-K program are already in place, while others are still unclear.

“As far as the program, the curriculum, we’re ready to go,” Padalino said. “We’re planning to run at least two dual-language classes where they teach one day in English and one day in Spanish. We’re actively recruiting teachers who are certified in those areas. And we’re recruiting teaching assistants who might have multiple languages. And obviously we’ll follow state guidelines for pre-K.”

But while the search is on for educators to work in the new pre-K classrooms, how to find the students is still being discussed.

“It’s so up in the air,” Padalino said. “It’s a really interesting exercise we’re doing here because we’re trying to figure out the right time and the right way to recruit students. We want to focus our recruitment on our students who are English as a second language (ESL) and on our students in that (Meagher) neighborhood who are on free and reduced lunch. Those students tend to be the students who aren’t going to the community programs. My assistant superintendent for elementary education (Stacia Felicello) has been at my door every day asking, ‘When are we starting?’ She’s anxious to get this going.”

While school officials are keen on the dual-language aspect of pre-K, Padalino said it also means looking ahead at how best to educate those students moving forward.

“We’ll have four-year olds coming into kindergarten out of a dual-language program, but we don’t have a kindergarten dual-language program yet,” Padalino said. “We’re trying to think three, four years out how we can do this.”

There’s also the matter of a potential reversal in a decade-long trend: After seeing its student population fall from over 10,000 to below 7,000 over a 10-year period, early reports from school officials indicate that the pendulum could be swinging upward again.

“Our buildings are filling up,” said Padalino. “We’re glad. We’re not at 100 percent capacity or anything like that anywhere, but we’re seeing increased enrollment, and a lot of it is spurred on by English language learners. We’re doing a lot of looking at what we need to do to expand this program and keep our buildings at 85-90 percent capacity, and keep our K-1-2 [class sizes] at 22 or fewer. It’s a Rubik’s Cube.”

Padalino said he understood that some community members who saw the district close four of its 11 elementary schools within the past decade might be concerned that they’ll suddenly find themselves needing another school building again, but he said any issue of overcrowding moving forward would likely be resolved by what he admits isn’t always a popular option.

“One of our issues is our attendance zones,” he said. “When you look and see that JFK is filling up like crazy and we’re putting art teachers and music teachers on a cart, and you look across town and there are schools with two or three empty classrooms. Some of it is looking at what our borders are, and then asking if we need to make any changes.” 

A talk with the student representative to the Saugerties school board

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Cheyenne Candlin

Cheyenne Candlin, a senior at Saugerties High, is the Saugerties school board’s student representative for the 2018-19 school year. She says that students are becoming increasingly interested in how the world around them works. She lauds the involvement. 

“Especially now, more young people are registering to vote, and more teenagers are just getting more active in politics in general,” Candlin said. “That’s a good thing. In the past you wouldn’t have seen this surge of young voters and people interested in politics in general, and in how their school or their country is going to be run. I love that.”

Candlin is busy. Very busy. She’s a member of the student council, treasurer of the SHS Class of 2019, president of the SHS computer video production program, and vice president of the science club. She’s a member of Key Club, drama club and the SHS choir. She was in the school play. She takes private piano lessons and works every day on her family’s horse farm. 

She was also chosen over the summer to represent Saugerties at the New York Empire Girls State, a government and leadership program sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary. “I was already very interested in government before Girls State, but attending the program definitely solidified my desire to pursue a future degree in political science,” said Candlin. “I’ve been involved in student government since tenth grade.”

A student council adviser told Candlin that serving as student representative to the school board would look good on her college applications. She said she’d have been intrigued anyway. 

“I’m just really interested in being more involved, in seeing how school officials are relating to teenagers, because it sometimes feels that they’re completely opposite in the way that they think and the way they do things,” Candlin, who’s taking an AP Government and Politics class, said. “Sometimes school board officials might implement new procedures that might seem ridiculous if you’re a student.”

Candlin grew up in Saugerties, attending Riccardi Elementary School through the fourth grade before transferring to the Good Shepherd Christian School in Kingston. Candlin has been at Saugerties High since the ninth grade. She’s the eldest of three kids. Candlin’s sister Marcella is a sophomore at Saugerties High, while her brother John is in the sixth grade at Riccardi.

Candlin said her interest in politics started when she was young. “From a young age I guess I would just watch the news, or be interested in what adults were talking about, or politics in general,” she said. “And then I realized that schools had student governments where they could implement school procedures.” 

Candlin thinks of her role as student advisor as an intermediary between the school board and the student body. “I write a report based on student activities within Saugerties High School and within the district and present it to the school board,” Candlin explained. “But they asked me if I could ask students questions so the board could answer them. I’m working with the student council to figure out a way for high school students and maybe even elementary school students to submit questions I could ask the board.”

She takes her responsibility representing the views of Saugerties students of all ages very seriously. “I get that a bunch of 50-year old people can’t understand the mind of an elementary or high school student,” the outspoken Candlin said. “Maybe they’ll ask my opinion on a topic, and I can give input on that.” 

At her first board meeting held earlier this month, Candlin’s classmates cheered her on during her report. 

All SHS seniors have to take at least a half-year government course, requiring them to attend a local government meeting, which could be at the county or municipal level, or within a school district. As an AP student, Candlin would have been required to attend as many as four meetings, a task she’ll fulfill as the student representative. 

“It’s cool,” she said. “I get my own nametag and microphone.”

Candlin plans to focus on political science in college, though she hasn’t decided where she’d like to attend yet. After college, she said she’d like to move on to law school.

Plaza progress at Kingston Commons site

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It’s taken a few years to get started, but work is finally underway at the future site of Kingston Commons plaza near the Thruway roundabout on Washington Avenue. When the project will be completed and who will be among its tenants is unclear, as its developer did not return press queries.

Conditional site plan approval for the proposed Kingston Commons plaza was given by the Ulster Town Board in April 2016. As initially proposed by the SAI Capital Group, Kingston Commons would feature a 6,490-square-foot multi-tenant retail space; a 3,190-square-foot bank with two drive-through lanes; a 4,430-square-foot fast-food restaurant with a pair of drive-through lanes; and a 2,200-square-foot coffee and donut shop with a single drive-through lane.The proposal also calls for 119 total parking spaces, along with a separate trash enclosure for each building.

The developer earlier this year sought approval to expand the size of the large multi-tenant retail space by 935 feet, which, along with developers trimming a sycamore tree on the site without permission, triggered another review by the Ulster County Planning Board. An easement through the property to give access to a planned county park was also negotiated, and as of press time, the wrinkles appear to have been smoothed out.

“Site work has commenced by the developer,” said Ulster Town Supervisor James E. Quigley III this week. “They’re in the process of putting in the subsurface materials to the access road, the access road for the county park, and part of the parking lot on the northern side of the site. We’ve gone back and forth with their contractor to make sure everything is in accordance with the approved site plan. And they’re just moving ahead.”

While some of the buildings in the plaza call for specific types of tenants, it’s unclear yet whether developers have secured anyone specific. Gene Rios of Gene Rios Realty said he was unable to comment at present, and neither Amit Patel nor Curtis Patel of SAI Capital Group responded to queries about the project.


Town of Ulster vs. ‘Dark Store Theory’

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A little over a year after the topic first arose, Ulster town officials are again expressing their support for proposed statewide legislation that would seek to curtail the use of the “Dark Store Theory” in determining property assessments for retail buildings.

According to the theory, the retailer restricts the deed on the property they’re vacating that prevents other competing big box retailers from moving in, thus forcing the potential sale price of the building down well below what they originally paid for it.

Town of Ulster Supervisor James Quigley III said the practice can have deep financial repercussions for municipalities which rely heavily on taxes from retail businesses. With the town already feeling the pinch from a reduction in the property tax assessments at both the Hudson Valley Mall and TechCity, Quigley said the impact of big box retailers applying the Dark Store Theory locally could be devastating.

“The Dark Store Theory is a theory of appraisal that applies to chain stores — Home Depot, CVS, and the like — where the appraisers go in and argue during a tax certiorari action against the town that value of the property is basically to the second or third user,” said Quigley at last week’s town board meeting. “And since these buildings have been custom built for Home Depot or CVS, the values are dramatically different, much, much lower.”

The Dark Store Theory could also negatively impact the Kingston City School District. According to a 2017 report by Education Week, a national newspaper covering K-12 education issues, the State of Texas has estimated that the theory could cost municipalities $2.6 billion annually and school districts $1.2 billion annually within five years. In Michigan, where the Dark Store Theory first gained traction a decade ago, around two-thirds of all school districts have lost an estimated $75 million because of the practice.

The town’s resolution supports a similar resolution from the New York State Assessors’ Association seeking action by the state legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to put an end to the use of the theory in New York.

“And since the town has been the victim of frequent tax certiorari actions by the likes of Home Depot, Lowe’s and Walmart, and they have asked for values that are clearly off the charts, and I mean the bottom of the charts,” Quigley said. “This is a policy that this Town Board, as we’ve discussed previously in 2017, would support.

The discussion was first brought to the board last year by Town Assessor James Maloney, who said the deed restrictions are potentially damaging to municipal tax bases.

“At the end of the day is you wind up with an indoor rummage sale or something like that, so the building sells for very, very little because it’s so deed-restricted,” Maloney said last year. “What people are doing is using the shuttered big box store that sold for $1 or $2 million as opposed to the $12 million that it cost to build it, and they’re using that as a comparable against the brand-new big box.”

Saugerties students produce morning news program, thanks to help from Jimmy Fallon

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After a few years of trying to put the pieces together, the SHS-TV’s morning announcements are now a part of the daily routine. Short professional-level reports on campus news is being broadcast directly into the classrooms. By next month, the Saugerties district’s four elementary schools will get their own school-specific daily news reports. 

“It’s pretty cool,” said Jackie Hayes, teacher of the first-period broadcast journalism class. Her class produces the news reports on camera and behind the scenes. Broadcast journalism is taught as the third year in the computer video production (CPV) course. Both in popularity and technological sophistication, the program has continued to evolve, much assisted by a 2017 donation of $100,000 by Tonight Show host and SHS Class of 1992 alum Jimmy Fallon.

“Jimmy Fallon came in and kind of saved the day for us,” said SHS business and CPV teacher Scott Wickham. “He got us the TVs for the individual [class]rooms. We were able to order 4K cameras for the classroom, which work perfectly with our TriCaster [a product that streamlines video production and streaming], which we got through another grant. It’s better now than it ever has been.”

There are over 100 students in the CVP program. Fewer than 20 of them are in the broadcast journalism class that produces the morning news reports, two or three minutes of morning announcements that are taped early in the period, broadcast into first-period classrooms, and posted to the Saugerties High page of the district’s website. 

Like most of the kids in first-period broadcast journalism class, junior Matt Morgan starts his school day a bit earlier. “I get there kind of early every morning,” said Morgan. “I’ve always said, ‘Hey, can you show me how to do this? I want to do it so you guys don’t have to worry about it any more.’ As that went on I started getting more interested in how everything works behind the scenes. And then I’m asking how to do other parts, and anyone else that knows how to do something will teach other people how to do that.”

Putting together each day’s broadcast is a streamlined process. “Teachers submit their morning announcements,” said Scott Wickham. “We have students compiling them every morning when they get into school. They’re put up on the teleprompter, and we’re rocking and rolling. We’ve trained the kids to close-caption them so they’re compliant with federal regulations. It really is a process.” 

Images from various SHS-TV News broadcasts.

With the school year just two months old, the students in broadcast journalism are still trying everything out, moving from the control room to cameras, lights to teleprompter, and ultimately behind the newscasting desk. Two students fill that role each morning in a broadcast which opens with the SHS News graphic.

On November 5 Erin Blank and Madison Cunzio sat behind the desk delivering school information with the poise of professional newscasters. 

Hayes said it was important that each student in the broadcast journalism class get an opportunity to try all the roles involved in putting the news broadcasts together. Later in the school year, students may have opportunities to focus more often on specific areas. 

“They may not even know what they’re interested in until they try it,” Hayes explained. “It’s just as important to find out what you don’t want to do as it is to find out what you do want to do.” 

The plan is to expand the morning announcements and create daily school-specific episodes for each of the elementary schools by December 3. Hayes said it should be fairly easy to move from the high-school announcements to those for the elementary schools. 

“The morning announcements at the high school are done before 8 a.m.,” she said. “The kids are in by 7:40, and by 8 they’re done recording and they’re up on the website. The announcements for the elementary schools will come in in the same way to SHS-TV. That’s just a matter of sitting behind the desk and saying, ‘In Grant D. Morse…’, ‘In Riccardi…’”

It would be a bit more work, Morgan said, and perhaps a bit more stress as well. “With all of the elementary schools it might be a little nerve-wracking to broadcast to them, to people I’ve never met before,” he said. “But maybe some of those kids will see it and say, ‘Wow, I want to do that,’ and go through the same thought process that I’m going through currently.”

Morgan thinks that he’d like to study filmmaking and broadcast journalism in college. 

“I never would have thought about it before I joined the [CVP] program,” said Morgan. “Now that I’m in broadcast journalism I’m thinking I’d love to do this every single day of my life. It would make it so much easier to go to work. I keep looking at colleges and wondering if they have a film major, and if they don’t I’m not sure they’re the right school for me.” 

Also in the works for December is a monthly newsmagazine.

“The announcements are kind of like the network news: ‘Who, what, when and where,’ said Hayes. “And then in their news magazine pieces they can get more into the how and why, and you can delve into things deeper.” 

An audition process will determine which students gets to produce newsmagazine stories. Morgan said he hopes he’ll make the cut. 

“There’s a story I’ve had in mind for a couple of months now,” the junior said. “There are so many different memorials around our school, and a lot of kids don’t necessarily know what they are. There’s just so much news and information about our school that people should know about.”

Saugerties cross-country runner was thrilled to compete at States

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Chloe Hanson

Chloe Hanson, the sole runner from Saugerties High School at the New York State Public High School Athletic Association cross-country championships this year, placed 40th in a field of 113 in this past Saturday’s Class B race. Hanson said she was hoping to a better result. 

“To be truthful, I intended to place top 20, but missed my goal by a lot of girls,” said Hanson. “During my race I felt unwell, so I never felt a strong level of confidence to tackle my competition. I was able to pass ten girls in the last stretch of the race, but my final spot was not what I wanted. Although States did not go as planned, I am still happy with my performance.”

Hanson, a senior, moved to Saugerties when she was a baby, going to Cahill Elementary, where her father Bill is a sixth grade teacher. With her father’s support, Hanson ran the Cahill Classic 5K as a sixth grader. 

“I ran a 24-minute 5K without any experience or training, so my family and I realized that running was something to pursue,” she remembered. “I began running varsity track in seventh grade and varsity cross-country in eighth grade. I’ve been running competitively on the varsity level ever since then.” 

Six years since she first began running, Hanson said she was still hooked. “For me, distance running is my freedom,” she said. “As a Type One diabetic, running helps me manage my diabetes and maintain my health. Running is also a sport you can do anywhere, so I have always loved I can step out in a pair of sneakers and escape from the world for a little while.”
She loves the team environment. “There is nothing better than a supportive team that pushes each other to grow and compete at our best,” she said. “My team is like that.”

Hanson plans on studying biology and health sciences in college. She hopes to become a physician’s assistant. She plans on continuing running wherever she goes to college. 

“I definitely will be running competitively after high school,” she said. “I have a few schools in mind, but I am unsure where I will be running yet. Whatever college I end up running for, my goal is to become the best runner I can be.”

Hanson is on the Saugerties track-and-field team as well. Distance running is her sole athletic interest. At the state championships at Sunken Meadow Park on Saturday, Hanson picked up steam near the end of the three-mile course, finishing in a crowd in 20:29.7, a little over two minutes off the winner’s pace. The runners who place between 24 and 60 all finished within a minute of one another. 

With the Nike Cross Regionals and New York Regional Championships scheduled for November 24 at Bowdoin Park in Wappingers Falls, Hanson’s season isn’t over. And it’s fair to say it’s all gone a lot better than it might have. 

“I had come back from a hip fracture not long ago and had spent the summer doing a lot of intensive training to prepare myself for my final season of cross-country,” Hanson said. “I ended up getting two personal records this season, placed second in the league, got fifth [place] in Section IX Class B, and made it to States. I can also proudly say our girls’ team got second in the league, which was a historic moment for Saugerties cross-country that we worked very hard for all season.”

Hanson’s trip to the state tournament was her first. “For me, making it to States was a huge goal,” she said. “I had wanted to go since eighth grade, missing my opportunity to go during my eleventh grade year due to my hip fracture. I felt as though finally making it to States proved all my hard work and dedication in my sport had paid off. Despite my diabetes and my hip fracture, I managed to reach a goal that sometimes felt impossible.”

In 1959, English writer Alan Sillitoe published a short story called “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,” which a few years later was turned into a popular film. The field was crowded for her race at the state tournament. The acute feeling of being on her own was fairly apparent at Sunken Meadow. 

“All my teammates and coaches told me to just enjoy the race, but I found it difficult to ignore the intense competitiveness at States,” Hanson said. “I definitely missed having my teammates by my side on the starting line, especially since we have been competing the entire season together.” 

It was her first time running at States, and Hanson felt intimidated. She was not used to running in a race with so many fast, highly competitive runners. The course, one of the hardest in the nation, was a challenge of its own. “The runners were also very aggressive,” she said, ”but I am used to aggressive racing because of track.”

Hanson found that she belonged at the state tournament.   

“Overall, I was thrilled to compete in a race at States,” she said. “Every girl there was very talented and fast, so to run amongst the best was an awesome experience.”

Tenants of Ulster apartment complex say new landlords are awful

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Sunset Garden (photo by Phyllis McCabe)

Renters at Sunset Garden Apartments in Ulster are speaking out about numerous maintenance and billing issues they say they’ve had to deal with since the 217-unit complex was purchased by New York City-based E&M Management in March.

During a meeting of the Ulster Town Board on Thursday, Nov. 1, two Sunset Garden residents spoke during the public comment period about some of their concerns. It began as a discussion about how tenants are facing what they believe to be questionable water and sewer charges, but they made it clear there were plenty of other concerns as well.

“This is a much broader issue than just the water and sewer charges,” said Town Supervisor James Quigley III. “It ranges to maintenance issues and so forth.”

E&M Management purchased Sunset Garden at 45 Birch Street and Lakeshore Villas, a 151-unit property in Port Ewen, from Morgan Communities in March for $44 million, expanding a local portfolio which also includes Kingston Waterfront and 30 Black Creek Road in Highland. According to the E&M Management website, most of their other properties are in Nassau County and Far Rockaway, a Queens neighborhood not far from their headquarters in Lawrence. E&M Management did not respond to queries for this article from the Kingston Times. 

At the Nov. 1 town board meeting, Barbara Rice said the problems began almost immediately after E&M took over Sunset Garden, saying that most tenants feel they’re in no position to complain for fear of not having their leases renewed.

“Not five minutes from here we have 357 residents who are literally terrified to come here and speak,” said Rice. “We have been intimidated. We have had our leases absolutely violated. Myself, I had no air-conditioning for most of the summer, although I continue to pay my nearly $1,200-a-month [rent] faithfully. I am in what is in my lease called a no-smoking building, and that means not just in common areas, but clearly stated throughout the apartments, etc. … Now they have brought in a lot of cigarette smokers. It’s throughout the building. It comes through all of our ventilation systems. I have asthma. I have not been on medication in six years. Now I’m on a respirator at night. I’ve called them. I’ve tried to get help. They have said there’s nothing they can do.”

Rice and others spoke about two specific representatives of E&M Management: Yitzhak “Yitz” Horowitz, identified on the company’s website as director of property management; and Richard Thompson, who is not listed on the E&M website, but was identified by town officials as the Sunset Garden property manager.

Rice said she’d reached out to Horowitz when her air-conditioned stopped functioning over the summer and said she was told she should get a lawyer. Rice added that after having no air-conditioning during the hottest months of the summer, she had to fight to get her heat fixed when temperatures recently dipped.

“It was 36 degrees outside,” Rice said. “It took me close to two weeks to get heat. I only got it by calling the Ulster County Health Department, who then contacted Richard Thompson. It was 48 hours later that I got heat.”

Another tenant, Juanita Velazquez-Amador, said the problems are widespread, both in apartments and across the common areas as well.

“We have holes in all the walls in every hallway,” said Velazquez-Amador during an interview with the Kingston Times. “Children can step up there, you trip, your hand falls in the hole, you can get electrified. People are living with black mold. We’ve got rats. We’ve had all this going on ever since they took over.” 

‘Matters of infestation’

The town’s building inspector, Kathryn Moniz, said there have been so many issues at Sunset Garden since March that she’s had to devote an entire day each week to walking the common areas and, when accessible, apartments.

“I have matters of infestation, both rats and roaches,” said Moniz. “I have floors that are lifting. We’ve had sewer backups that were not taken care of like they’re supposed to be, which led to an issue of sanitation. We have handrails in common halls that serve no purpose because one is attached at the top but not at the return. I have big, gaping holes in the hallways that I’ve asked to be fixed because it’s a fire issue. They’ve taken out a laundry facility, and now I think there’s one for the whole complex. We have lighting issues.”

Moniz added that the property’s owners hadn’t effectively responded to the winter storm which swept across the Hudson Valley last week.

“They did not plow and they did not clear the sidewalks until very, very late in the day,” Moniz said. “We have elderly people that could be visiting a tenant or living there, and that’s not good. We had people who couldn’t get out to go to work.”

Another tenant, Laura Hartmann, has lived at Sunset Garden for 11 years. When her lease ended in July, she was not offered a new lease and has instead been living there on a month-to-month basis. Hartmann and other tenants said they believe this has created an atmosphere where some residents are afraid to complain about maintenance issues in fear of facing reprisals via eviction. That atmosphere, said Hartmann, was not in place when Morgan Communities owned Sunset Garden.

“I don’t think any landlord is perfect,” she said. “But the really great thing about [Morgan] that we don’t have now is they had a staff of two people that were here six days a week. They helped create the community here. When we had maintenance requests we would just go to the office and they would get them done. They were responsive to us, and it creates a very different dynamic. And we desperately miss that here. This company that is here now has a very different philosophy about addressing maintenance requests in that they don’t like to do it.”

Moniz said her office has seen its focus on issues at Sunset Garden go from zero-to-60 since E&M came to town.

“Before they purchased this complex I never had a complaint from Sunset Garden at all,” she said. “And I’ve been here almost six years.”

Little cooperation

And despite the prevalence of orders to remedy composed by her department, Moniz said she hasn’t had a great deal of success in getting the owners of Sunset Garden to comply.

“I devote a whole day each week to going through these things, but I can’t seem to put a stop to any of it or get them to respond quickly,” she said. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I’m really surprised because I’ll usually gain compliance pretty quickly because I’ll work with you. But it does not seem to me that they’re even attempting to address the issues we have.”

Moniz added that some issues, like dumpsters used for residential trash being overfilled with debris from apartment renovations, have been taken care of. But she said that was only a small fraction of the problems she’s tried to bring to E&M’s attention.

“When I make the phone call to Rich [Thompson], he tells me he’ll take care of it,” Moniz said. “But I’ve seen issues like one apartment where the rain comes through the window that I’ve asked him to take care of, and sent an order to remedy to the owners, and it still has not been addressed.”

Water billing concerns

At the Nov. 1 meeting, tenants said water and sewer fees have begun being added to month-to-month rent bills, but they questioned how they were being calculated with single meters for each building rather than individual meters for each unit.

“What they’re saying to us is that they’re taking their full water bill and they are dividing it up by apartment depending upon how many people are on the lease,” said Hartmann. “Which is not fair, because what about the common areas?”

Councilman Eric Kitchen, a realtor with Win Morrison, said he believed the water billing method being used by E&M is illegal.

“In my real estate and rental experience, this is not allowed,” he said. “We’ve been dealing with incidents like this for many years. You live in an apartment with maybe one other person, and let’s say there’s three or four or five living in a bigger apartment in the same building, how are those costs being broken up? I don’t believe there’s a legal basis in my experience that this is even, should be allowed. I believe it’s illegal. There’s no way they can determine your usage without a meter. I might take two showers a day, you might take one, because I sweat more than you. There’s no way to come up with an exact figure.”

Rice said that she was told by Thompson that Sunset Garden is trying to appeal to younger tenants in the future.

“I was told by Richard that they wanted millennials only,” Rice said. “They had no interest in anyone else being in there. They wanted no one that was home during the day, no one who didn’t have a job.”

Get ’em out

Rice, whose lease expires at the end of December, said that since E&M took over, Sunset Garden has begun losing its appeal to longtime residents, many of whom have simply moved on rather than deal with the issues those who’ve stayed have faced.

“My building sits with four empty units out of 12,” Rice said. “People are moving to Florida, people are moving in with relatives, they’re doing anything to escape what’s going on. There’s no housing for us. We don’t want to leave this area. This was home. And they have taken over.”

Kitchen said the Hudson Valley has recently been experiencing a housing boom brought on by the kind of tenants Rose said E&M is seeking for Sunset Garden.

“There used to be older retirees moving up here or looking for second homes,” Kitchen said. “What I’ve been seeing for the last year going on here is a lot of young people are moving up here from the city, and they’re buying up everything. I’m seeing landlords in Kingston that have given their tenants notice that they have to get out, because they’re putting these houses on the market and they’re selling in 24 hours. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing. But there is a downside to that. Now you have a lack of housing for local people that have been a part of this community for years.”

Moniz said that she has recently begun meeting with groups of Sunset Garden tenants to assure them that the building department is on their side. She added that her office is hopeful that the owners of Sunset Garden will rectify the many issues she’s brought to their attention before it becomes a legal matter.

“If something has been taken care of we’ll close out an order to remedy,” she said. “But we’re coming really close to summonses to appear at our local justice court, and at that time there can be a fine imposed.”

Health Quest gets OK for new facility at Hudson Valley Mall

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The Ulster Town Board granted site plan approval earlier this month to Health Quest in the company’s bid to open a medical facility in the former Macy’s at the Hudson Valley Mall, a project that would cost around $20 million to complete and might not be finished for two years.

During a presentation before the town board on Monday, Nov. 19, Architect Douglas DeGroat described some of the anticipated features in the facility.

“This is just a general floor plan right now that we’ve worked out, showing the different modalities, with urgent care right by the main entrance, imaging, a phlebotomy lab, primary care … a physical therapy gym, oncology, cardiology a lot of ‘ologies’ actually coming through here, specialty practices,” said DeGroat. Around 40 healthcare providers are anticipated in the facility upon completion, with the likelihood of between 120-150 employees on the site.

In the current plan, the space formerly occupied by Macy’s will be separated from the rest of the mall during construction and renovation, with roughly 40,000 square feet of the existing 110,000 square feet earmarked for demolition, leaving a space of around 90 feet between the Health Quest facility and the southern portion of the mall that the owner of the mall, the Hull Property Group, reportedly plans to fill in with grass. Further landscaping improvements are also in the works said Brandee Nelson, project manager on the Health Quest proposal.

“We’re going to remove some of the landscaping that is overgrown and messy and replace it with new landscaping,” Nelson said. “Where a sidewalk is being removed in front of the old egress door we’ll fill in with landscaping to match the existing landscaping.”

Town Supervisor James Quigley III said this week that while he’d heard speculation about Health Quest coming to the Hudson Valley Mall for nearly two years, it was only around the time that the company signed a lease in September that he felt more confident that it might materialize.

“It was promised for a long time,” Quigley said. “It finally came together and we look forward to the first steps in revitalizing the mall. Here’s the issue, quite frankly. I kept hearing Health Quest, Health Quest, Health Quest, but I never heard from Health Quest. And it was only in the last two months that Health Quest came forward and actually initiated a conversation between themselves and the Town that gave me any assurances that it was in fact going to happen.”

The supervisor described the proposal as relatively straightforward, one which takes into account the existing structure.

“It was really a simple process,” Quigley said. “It’s an adaptive reuse of an existing footprint. We got it done expeditiously.”

Nelson agreed. “It’s very limited in the way of site improvements because it’s mostly an adaptive reuse of an existing building,” she said. “The site improvements are going to be limited to reworking exterior egress doors.”

Next summer for primary care

While the entire project, including its ambulatory surgery center, could take two years to complete, the plan is to have some parts open by the summer.

“Primary care, we’re shooting for a June occupancy date,” said DeGroat. “The rest will follow.”

The urgent care portion of the facility will not be open around the clock. “You’re probably looking at 8-8,” said DeGroat. “They’re going to have extended hours, but not 24 hours.”

With the former Macy’s headed toward a new use, two hubs at the Hudson Valley Mall remain vacant: JC Penney closed its doors at the mall in 2015, while Sears shuttered earlier this year.

Saugerties superintendent explains the process of closing school when the weather’s bad

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When an early winter storm hit the Hudson Valley in mid-November, Saugerties closed its schools. Some parents were puzzled by the resulting three-day weekend. School district officials explain that the process in determining how best to respond to inclement weather is more complex than people might think. 

In a letter sent home with Saugerties students following the decision to close schools on Friday, November 16, interim superintendent Lawrence Mautone detailed the means by which school officials decide whether the weather warrants closure, or whether the kids should come in an hour or two late, or go home early. Sometimes classes proceed as usual, but after-school programs, athletics and other recreational activities on the school grounds are called off. 

“Winters in the Hudson Valley can bring changes in the weather that leave winter sports enthusiasts smiling and parents of young new drivers feeling uneasy and nervous,” wrote Mautone. Dealing with the uncertainties of weather and road conditions, and making the call for delays and cancellations is one of the most challenging tasks of a superintendent. “A lot goes into making calls like these,” Mautone wrote. The decision on how best to handle how the weather impacts the district is always based on numerous kinds of information. 

In a district like Saugerties, that information is gathered across a considerable amount of real estate, not all of it as flat and compact as the village, where many students can walk to Cahill Elementary or to the Jr./Sr. High School campus. Student safety is very important. A kid living in a hillier, less traveled part of the district faces different challenges than a student living a literal stone’s throw from Grant D. Morse Elementary. “There are several different factors that are considered when making the decision to close, delay opening, or release early,” said Mautone. “Members of our district team hit the roads early, sometimes by 3 a.m., to assess conditions. Their assessment, along with conversations with the local highway departments and neighboring school districts, is vital to the decision-making process.”

Beginning the process early is crucial, Mautone said. Word needs to get out long before anyone is standing around in a blizzard waiting for a school bus that may not come. 

“We make every effort to get notifications of school delays or closures posted to our website and social-media platforms between 5 a.m. and 5:15 a.m.,” the interim superintendent said. A further level of notification follows. “The school messenger robocall will be sent out starting at 5:45 a.m. Parents are encouraged to use these forms of notification for information regarding school closings and delays.”

Mautone said the best options for parents or students who don’t want to wait for the robocall are to check in on the official social-media platforms used by the district (@saugertiescsd on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook). The district’s official website (www.saugerties.k12.ny.us) and local TV and radio stations are also recommended as ways to get information about school closures.   

The district also has the option of opening each school day an hour or two later than usual, resulting in a shorter school day with shorter class times. “Two-hour delayed openings mean all schedules will be delayed by two hours,” Mautone noted. “Bus pickups will be approximately two hours later than the normally scheduled time. Please continue to monitor announcements of delays as they could turn into school closings, depending on the weather.”
A delayed opening has the added layer of not impacting the district’s allotment of six snow days factored into its annual calendar. Going over or under six snow days has ramifications in the spring, shortening or adding to breaks for which many families have already planned travel. School officials said that a delayed opening is only used when the extra time is needed to ensure the safe travel of all students.

Letting the kids out early is also a decision that isn’t made lightly. It will have an impact on the schedules of parents and guardians. If an early dismissal is in the conversation, Mautone said, the decision is made as early as possible, with the same notification system, including the robocall, used. 

“Dismissing school early is even trickier,” Mautone said. “I know that it is an inconvenience for many parents and guardians to arrange to meet their children when we have an early dismissal, so this decision is never made lightly. Typically, the decision is made by mid-morning for an early-afternoon dismissal. When an early dismissal is being considered, after-school activities are typically cancelled. Notifications of early dismissals will be posted and announced through the same forms of media as our delays and closings. We know that delays and closings can be inconvenient for families. However, the safety of our students and their families is our top priority.”

Sunset Garden residents detail complaints against new landlords

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Sunset Garden (photo by Phyllis McCabe)

A tenants meeting for disgruntled renters at Sunset Garden took place at the Russell Brott Senior Center in the Town of Ulster on Monday night. On hand were municipal leaders and local legislators. Also in attendance were a handful of residents of other area apartment complexes recently bought by E&M Management, the landlords which have been, the tenants say, the cause of their disgruntlement.

Long Island-based E&M Management purchased Sunset Garden at 45 Birch Street and Lakeshore Villas, a 151-unit property in Port Ewen, from Morgan Communities in March for $44 million, expanding a local portfolio which also includes Kingston Waterfront and 30 Black Creek Road in Highland.

At Sunset Garden, some residents say they noticed an almost immediate deterioration in services after E&M took over.

“That morning we had our staff and maintenance people in the office as usual,” said Laura Hartmann, a Sunset Gardens resident for the past 11 years and one of the organizers of Monday’s meeting. “By noon they were gone, removed from service. The office phone was disconnected, the office shuttered and locked, and all we had was a list of numbers and names from E&M Management. They took over on a Friday, and that weekend it felt like we were completely adrift. No one to call in an emergency. That first experience was telling in how they would continue to treat us.”

The stories were similar to those told by Hartmann and other tenants during a meeting of the Ulster Town Board earlier this month, with many of the issues confirmed by Town of Ulster Building Inspector Kathryn Moniz, who said she spends one day each week dealing with problems at Sunset Garden.

“I have matters of infestation, both rats and roaches,” said Moniz last week. “I have floors that are lifting. We’ve had sewer backups that were not taken care of like they’re supposed to be, which led to an issue of sanitation. We have handrails in common halls that serve no purpose because one is attached at the top but not at the return. I have big, gaping holes in the hallways that I’ve asked to be fixed because it’s a fire issue. They’ve taken out a laundry facility, and now I think there’s one for the whole complex. We have lighting issues.”

Sewage horror

A May sewer backup in a laundry room at Building 14 was detailed on Monday by Liz Shapiro, a tenant who said she’d tried for over a month to get E&M to tackle an issue she believes led to the backup.

“The entire month of April and part of May I called the office daily, I told (them)…that there’s leakage coming up through my floors,” she said. “‘They’re wet, they’re wet.’ It’s spreading, it’s coming in through my carpets, through my kitchen, my kids are sick, my dog is sick. May 26th is when the backup happened in the laundry room, and now raw sewage is gushing up into my apartment. And that’s what it was for that month-and-a-half.”

Shapiro said she was unable to reside in her apartment for six weeks, staying in hotels due to a catastrophe she says she didn’t cause. 

“I’m in the middle of a lawsuit for that because I’ve never been reimbursed [by E&M] for anything,” she said. “And they’re actually trying to come after me for money saying I owe them money for the time I wasn’t living in the apartment.”

Uncertain futures

Many tenants have said their leases have not been renewed, putting them on a precarious month-to-month basis which they say subjects them to intimidation by E&M, particularly Yitzhak “Yitz” Horowitz, identified on the company’s website as director of property management; and Richard Thompson, who is not listed on the E&M website, but was identified by town officials as the Sunset Garden property manager.   

John Mortenson, a Sunset Garden tenant who described himself as a frequent Google reviewer, said that both Horowitz and Thompson recently confronted him about negative feedback left about the apartment complex.

In his Google review, Mortenson — who was also critical of former property owner Morgan Communities — said that after E&M took over, “the place has been going to HELL. We have no laundry room, the pool is not open and it is now June 21, and management does not care. They say that there is a lot of repairs to do to the property and they do not have time. We had a meeting with the tenants and management on May 31st and we were told that the pool would be opened within the week, Still waiting.  July 13, 2018.. DO NOT RENT HERE…. THIS PLACE HAS TURNED INTO A SLUM.. I Will be moving when I can…”

Mortenson said that Horowitz and Thompson tried to get him to remove his review from Google, but he declined.

“I’m not going to be intimidated,” Mortenson said. “My wife is not going to be intimidated.”

But others say they have been intimidated. “People are afraid of speaking up for fear of being evicted as they now do not have a lease,” said Hartmann. “Residents are afraid to report the maintenance problems they are having in their apartments for fear of being evicted. They are afraid to come to meetings to ask for help for fear of being evicted. Their fears are justified.”

Complaint, then eviction

Hartmann said that after her dissatisfaction with trying to get E&M to repair a leak in her kitchen that was shorting out the ceiling light, she went to Moniz to report the problem.

“I reported this to the building inspector on October 15,” Moniz said. “On Nov. 14 I was given a 30-day notice to vacate my apartment by Dec. 31. E&M is evicting me. In 11 years I have never been late with my rent and have taken very good care of my apartment. There is no good reason to ask me to leave except for the fact that I have been a leader in our tenants’ association, I have reported problems to the building inspector, and I have been outspoken about what we are dealing with here. Not renewing a lease or two is an oversight, but doing it as standard practice is on purpose.”

Shapiro said she also received a notice to vacate by the end of the year.

“I’m a single mom with two kids and absolutely nowhere to go,” she said. “But because I’ve been complaining and standing up for myself I now have until Dec. 31 to vacate my apartment. Which I’m not going to do. I’m not in a financial position, I have no family, I have nobody here. I have nowhere to go, so I’m going to ride it out and just hope that when we get to court the judge sees this as retaliation.”

In spite of their tenuous living situation, some of the tenants at Monday’s meeting said they felt invigorated by coming forward, hoping that it will lead to more residents of Sunset Garden to come out of the shadows. With no rent stabilization or just-cause evictions available for market-rate dwellings, coming together to change the law may make a difference not only locally, but across New York State.

“I’m here in support as a community member,” said Nina Dawson, commissioner of the Ulster County Human Rights Commission.

“As a community, if we stand together as a community, this man, he won’t be so eager to use his bully tactics with you guys,” she said. “Gentrification is wrong, I don’t care what direction it’s coming from.”

Don’t give up

Lynn Eckert, an Ulster County Legislator representing District 5 including the City of Kingston, said that continuing to bring issues to Ulster Town officials is a good collective step.

“Keep going back, keep going back, keep going back, so the cost of doing this kind of dirty business is too high to stay,” she said, adding that she hoped a change could be made higher up the legislative food chain that would benefit communities in New York. “I don’t think this is OK. We need many legislators, irrespective of whether they have an apartment complex in their area or not out to be upset about this. It’s not right.”

Town Supervisor James Quigley III said that while a change in the law would have to come through Albany, there is plenty a municipality can do on its own, provided it hears from local residents like those at Sunset Garden.

“We are responsible for enforcing the state building codes and the electric codes, and we are responsible for enforcing local life safety codes,” Quigley said. “Kathy [Moniz] spends one day a week at this project. Ever since [E&M] took over we’ve been spending one day a week. The other day when the water line broke, it was the town water department that fixed it, because we got there, we found out what it was. They [E&M] called me, they told me it was on their property. I said, ‘I don’t care, I want it fixed, I want it fixed now.’ And we fixed it. And I sent them a bill for $5,000, and we got a check.”

Representatives for E&M were unavailable as of press time, though the Kingston Times is making arrangements to speak with them in time for next week’s issue.


Saugerties Builder’s Club learns about making the holidays better for others

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Kids in the Jr. High Builders Club

The Saugerties Junior High School Builder’s Club last month donated 15 boxes of food to St. John the Evangelist Church as part of its annual homeroom food drive contest. The kids in Drew Carpino and Kimberly Petramale’s home rooms split the grand fundraising prize, a breakfast from Dunkin’ Donuts. 

Hope Antonelli, a ninth grade English teacher, is the faculty adviser to the Builder’s Club, which began the annual pre-Thanksgiving food drive in 2000. The club, a sister organization to the high school’s Key Club, is Kiwanis-sponsored. The seventh and eighth graders are limited to the kinds of fundraising and events with which they can get involved.

“Key Club does more out in the community, like the Garlic Festival, but my kids don’t drive, so we try to focus most of our stuff in school,” said Antonelli. “We do a lot of bake sales, and then we donate the proceeds to local families or charities. It’s like their first real experience in raising funds or collecting funds for people in need.”

At the start of November, each of the 14 classrooms in the junior high school involved in the fundraising efforts were given a large cardboard box festooned in seasonal wrapping paper. Carpino said the Builder’s Club made the contest itself fun. 

“Every morning during announcements they would encourage all the homerooms to get as much donations as they could and say who was in the lead etc…” he said. “So it made it really exciting.”

Antonelli said that the most popular items are generally boxes of cereal, and instant or canned food. The 47-member Builder’s Club tries to work with a different local group or organization each year, from houses of worship to food pantries. 

“Somebody from Catskill reached out to us and asked us if we could do it with them next year,” Antonelli said. 

Carpino’s class filled five boxes. While the class enjoyed the donuts and hot chocolate, they found the reward of selflessness was greater.\

“Of course winning the Dunkin’ Donuts was awesome for the kids, but more importantly they gathered together a ton of items for donations to help families around the holidays, which was really rewarding. I was proud to see my students work as a group and put in the effort to make the holidays better for others who are less fortunate.”

The Builder’s Club has moved on to its December drive, collecting toys for kids at Albany Medical Center. “Every member brings in a toy, and it doesn’t have to be expensive,” said Antonelli. “We encourage the homerooms and anybody in the school to get involved. Kiwanis is actually giving us a monetary donation to go out and purchase toys.”

Donating toys to Albany Medical Center is a relatively recent addition to the annual toy drive, one Antonelli said makes sense because the hospital has taken care of plenty of local kids.

The hospital is not always on everyone’s radar around the holidays. “I think a lot of people miss the hospitals at Christmas,” she said. “There’s so many other toy drives. We decided to put up theirs, and they were so elated.”

The Builder’s Club toy drive runs through Monday, December 17.

Cioni Building deal closes

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It took nearly 18 months, but the sale of the Cioni Building, the Kingston City School District’s administrative HQ, to developer Neil Bender has finally closed. On Thursday, Nov. 15 — “at 1:30 p.m.,” said Superintendent Paul Padalino — the deal was done.

“We are now officially tenants,” said Padalino this week. “We’re no longer owners.”

In July 2017, the school board approved selling its current administrative headquarters to 61 Crown Street LLC, which is led by New York City-based Bender and filed a bid as BRE Properties. The original sale price of $4.25 million was reduced to $3.47 million after some structural issues with the edifice were discovered.

Bender could not be reached for comment.

It took some time to get closure for the building, which the developers say will be converted into a boutique hotel. This week, Padalino said, he never lost faith.

“Never say never and never say always,” Padalino said. “But the conversations with the purchaser and the commitment he made with the due diligence they did and the investment they made in researching the project that they want to go forward with, I was feeling very, very confident that this was going to go through. A couple of delays here and there but nothing that made me ever think that they were in any way going to step away.

Still, was there a sense  of relief to get the deal across the finish line? Letting go a breath Padalino didn’t realize he’d been holding?

“It was nice to have it done and get the check in the bank,” he said. “But I really never had a doubt.”

Though technically two different projects with one not wholly depending upon the other, the perception as the Cioni sale and the administrative move into the former Frank L. Meagher Elementary school were often discussed simultaneously was that they were linked. Meagher will also house a pre-kindergarten hub.

In April, the district received the first review of architectural plans for Meagher from the State Education Department, giving school officials hope that they’ll be able to break ground on the project this summer and move their headquarters there from Cioni by the beginning of the 2019-20 school year, though the terms of the sale of their Crown Street headquarters gives them up to two years to fully vacate. 

Work relating to classroom space and other student-specific areas at Meagher is eligible for building aid from the state, and the project’s plans were approved by the department earlier this summer.

The school board has OK’d four contracts totaling roughly $4.06 million for the Meagher project, with its pre-K program scheduled to open to students in September 2019. The Meagher project’s total budget is $4.23 million.

Padalino described work at Meagher as already being ahead of schedule, with asbestos abatement and demolition of the facility’s boiler system, which was installed in 1937, completed. Installation of a new heating system and bathroom renovation is also under way.

“I visited there a couple of weeks ago,” said Padalino on Tuesday. “It’s moving forward. And there’s a big difference between the high school or other schools: They can show up at 8 in the morning and work until 5 in the afternoon seven days a week and they don’t have to work about hard barriers for students and noise situations. They’re able to move a lot more quickly in a vacant building than they are in schools, where they can only work like that in the summer or around student schedules.”

Selling Cioni put the district on a two-year clock to fully vacate, though school officials are hopeful they can beat the Nov. 15, 2020 deadline by over a year.

“This summer, depending upon what we can do,” Padalino said. “We’re really guessing that we will be able to get into Meagher by Aug. 1. Depending upon our maintenance guys and custodial people who have so much work going on, is it possible we’ll be in there by Sept. 1 of next year? Possible, yes. Probable, eh. We’ll see.”

Padalino said that pre-K program is slated to open with four classes, with the possibility of expanding to six. Each pre-K class has a state-mandated maximum capacity of 19 students, with one teacher and a teaching assistant in each. The curriculum is already set, and at least two dual-language classes are planned. The parameters of the search for students are still being discussed, but the district is already trying to identify good teaching candidates.

Sunset Garden owners say they’ve been maligned, defend their record

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Daniel Goldstein, managing partner of E&M Management, the owners of local residential properties like 217-unit Sunset Garden, said his company has been painted in an inaccurate and unfavorable light by some residents and Town of Ulster officials.

“I know me, per se, not just our team,” said Goldstein in an interview. “We’re the type of landlords that care very, very much.”

E&M Management purchased Sunset Garden at 45 Birch Street and Lakeshore Villas, a 151-unit property in Port Ewen, from Morgan Communities in March of this year for $44 million, expanding a local portfolio which also includes Kingston Waterfront and 30 Black Creek Road in Highland. According to its website, most of their other properties are in Nassau County and Far Rockaway, a Queens neighborhood not far from their headquarters in Lawrence.

Residents from some of those properties, including Sunset Garden, met at the Russell Brott Senior Center last month, a gathering attended by municipal leaders and local legislators. They described a property falling into disrepair and a property owner unwilling to do anything about it. They said tenants were not having their leases renewed to put them in a more precarious position of being subject to eviction on a whim as retaliation for speaking up, and at least two tenants said that was exactly what had happened to both of them. They said intimidation was used as means to an end, the dismissal of residents who might be home during the day, older tenants, and those who challenged E&M with the hopes of replacing them with potentially deep-pocketed millennials.

Goldstein and Yitzhak “Yitz” Horowitz, E&M’s director of property management, said the claims against them are categorically untrue, and say both their behavior and paperwork prove it.

“When we first took over the building, of course the building was [in] neglect,” said Goldstein. “The first thing that we did is, we installed smoke detectors in the hallways, with emergency lighting, we changed all the lighting to LED lighting, and we started painting the hallways. That was over $100,000 right there. We’re still not done with the hallways, we’re painting them. It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of buildings, and to do that kind of work it’s a big undertaking.”

Goldstein described other work E&M has undertaken at Sunset Garden, including replacing sewer mains in three buildings (between $35,000-40,000 for each), the replacement of numerous terraces with rotten wood ($30,000), apartment renovations (over $150,000), fixing concrete in exterior stairways ($25,000), and pool repairs ($30,000).

“Then we went ahead and we installed a playground,” said Goldstein, which he said came with a $120,000 price tag and was the result of an informal survey of tenants during a community barbecue in the spring. Goldstein added that the playground will not be complete until the spring, because while the structure has already been installed, work to complete the safety foam surfacing surrounding the playground cannot be undertaken until the threat of snowfall has passed.

“And I can promise you this, you can go to any county, any town, any village, any city, you won’t find any municipal park as nice as hours,” said Horowitz. “The school district should bus their kids in to play on our playground. That’s how nice it is. I’m not kidding. If I had this park in my backyard as a child, it’s like a dream come true.”

Goldstein said that the claim that most tenants have not been offered new leases is inaccurate, adding that it wouldn’t make financial sense as a property owner to lose tenants.

“We need to pay the mortgage,” he said. “Because if we can’t pay the mortgage then we can just go to bankruptcy. We need the tenants, we want them to be happy, we don’t want the turnover. Why in the world would we want to go there and upset the wheel? That is not our intention.”

Horowitz also disputed claims that he opposed the idea of a tenants’ association, saying that he’d attended their first meeting, but that he hadn’t been invited back, something he said may be contributing to the perceived disconnect between tenants and management.

“It’s unfortunate, because the whole idea of a tenants’ association is that you do want to get things done, and you do want solutions, and you do want answers,” he said. “I don’t understand what else is the reason for it.”

There was also a claim by tenants that E&M has been arbitrarily charging tenants water and sewer fees without having the means to determine usage. Horowitz said that tenants were being billed for water and sewer by Morgan Communities before E&M bought the property, and that the practice is encouraged by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to give consumers a sense of the impact their choices have. Furthermore, Goldstein added, E&M isn’t coming up with the figures they charge tenants, it’s done by American Utility Management, an Illinois-based company that coordinates billing for multifamily properties.

“They have sensors on each riser that goes to the apartments, and they measure somehow the water,” said Goldstein. “We don’t do it. They bill us for each tenant, we pay the master bill and then we bill the tenant. They show us what they charge. We have no way of doing it. This is an outside company that does it for everyone.”

But it’s not just tenants who are seeing issues at Sunset Garden, it’s also Town of Ulster Building Inspector Kathryn Moniz, who said she spends one day each week dealing with problems on the property.

“I have matters of infestation, both rats and roaches,” said Moniz last month. “I have floors that are lifting. We’ve had sewer backups that were not taken care of like they’re supposed to be, which led to an issue of sanitation. We have handrails in common halls that serve no purpose because one is attached at the top but not at the return. I have big, gaping holes in the hallways that I’ve asked to be fixed because it’s a fire issue. They’ve taken out a laundry facility, and now I think there’s one for the whole complex. We have lighting issues.”

E&M acknowledges that some of the issues raised by Moniz are true, but they added that they’re problems the company inherited due to a poor maintenance record by the previous owner and that they’re still trying to work their way through them.

“And it’s going to take time, of course, to bring it back up to where it should be,” said Goldstein. “Obviously it can’t happen overnight. But one thing I can tell you is that by the spring most of these issues are going to be fixed. Because it takes about a year once you take over to do all the repairs.”

E&M said tenants may still be getting used to how they maintain a property, preferring to have an on-site superintendent rather than an office that’s only open during regular business hours. They added that the super, Richard Thompson, is a licensed plumber who can deal with numerous issues that might arise, narrowing the response time because they don’t always have to seek assistance from elsewhere.

Goldstein said that there’s a reason people are wary of landlords, though that necessarily doesn’t mean all landlords are bad.

“There are a lot of landlords out there that are not good, that give a bad name to landlords,” he said. “And I personally don’t like them myself, and I don’t want to even be associated with those people. Yet on the other hand, we are not those kind of people. We care in everything that we do. We are large landlords, yes we are. But we care. But obviously there’s always going to be some complaints somewhere, especially when we’re the size of landlords that we are, of certain tenants.”

Horowitz said that the impression people may be getting of E&M from disgruntled tenants is incorrect.

“We’re all about transparency, we’re all about just, you know, getting the truth out and working together with everyone,” he said. “That’s all we’re trying to do.”

Dior Johnson confirms a return to Saugerties

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Dior Johnson having fun.

The Sawyer boys’ varsity basketball team has been struggling in their first season without Dior Johnson, the phenom who played two varsity seasons in Saugerties before accepting an offer to play at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida for his freshman season. This week it was revealed that after considering other local public schools Johnson would return to the Sawyers, where he averaged 31.1 points, 3.5 steals, 3.1 assists and 4.6 rebounds last season, helping lead the team to the Section IX, Class A title game.

Sports reporter Sean Lynch broke the news on Twitter that Johnson was planning to return to Saugerties, and would return to practice as soon as he completed the necessary paperwork. Johnson confirmed the news by retweeting Lynch’s tweet. 

Johnson amassed 1098 points in two seasons of varsity basketball at SHS, becoming the youngest-ever boys’ basketball player to cross the 1000-point threshold in New York State history. Johnson has already gotten offers from 16 NCAA Division I schools to play point guard when he graduates high school in 2022.

Saugerties coach Mike Tiano could not be reached for comment. 

The varsity basketball team dropped its second straight game on Tuesday, falling 64-38 to visiting league opponent Red Hook. The defeat gives the Sawyers a 2-3 record early in the season. The team hopes that a relatively light holiday schedule can help the players recapture their rhythm. 

The Sawyers were led in their losing effort against Red Hook by Liam Schoonmaker’s 16-point effort, with Caleb Edwards (8 points) also pitching in. For Red Hook, Branden Cahill (24 points), Jason Davis (16 points) and Chris Yearwood (13 points) all scored in double digits. A full game report was unavailable as of press time. 

The loss to Red Hook came four days after another lopsided Sawyer defeat on a road trip to Wallkill. The Sawyers fell 59-44 in spite of a 17-1 third period run that pulled them to within 43-29. Schoonmaker and Dylan Walsh scored a dozen points apiece in the loss, but it was not enough to overcome double-digit nights by the Panthers’ Mat Shea (21 points), Kyle Krebs (11 points) and Brian Cross (10 points). 

Saugerties’ last win came on Wednesday, December 5, when the team came away with a 49-46 non-league win against Rhinebeck after Schoonmaker banked a three-pointer with just 1.3 seconds remaining in the game. The contest saw momentum swing wildly in both directions, with the Hawks up 20-16 at the half before the Sawyers went on a 25-5 run after intermission.

Boces consultant hopes Saugerties superintendent job will be filled by springtime

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District Superintendent of Ulster Boces, Dr. Charles Khoury.

Candidates for superintendent of the Saugerties school district must submit an application by next Monday, December 17. There is a target date of Tuesday, March 12 to offer the district’s first choice the position. 

Ulster Boces has helped direct the search. Boces head Charles Khoury said this week that as many as 18 candidates have begun the application process, with interim superintendent Lawrence Mautone ready to throw his hat in the ring after serving as deputy superintendent in Saugerties for the past five years. 

“Most of the applicants are [from] outside the district,” said Khoury. 

Candidates are able to begin the process and stop to consider their answers at their leisure before completion. “We can see whether an application has been started or is in process,” said Khoury. “It’s probably a 20-to-30-minute exercise to finish the application because we ask some narrative types of questions. So somebody can start it and then come back and finish it multiple times.” 

Plenty of qualified candidates are showing an interest in the district, Khoury added. “Just a quick look at those folks, they’re a cross-section of assistant superintendents and people who were in leadership positions around the state, but I haven’t even begun the process of making phone calls and checking references. I’ve e-mailed some people that started applications and in reviewing their resumes they look interesting, and I’ve encouraged them to complete the application.”

The application indicates an anticipated starting salary range of between $170,000 and $195,000 based on experience and training. The criteria indicate a wide range of qualifications for candidates to consider. One request is “a desire to become an integral part of the Saugerties community, including having a highly visible profile and becoming an active participant in community-related groups and activities. Residence in the surrounding area is encouraged.”

Other qualifications include a high level of professional experience in school administration, a commitment to innovative educational ideas, and a commitment to be a public advocate for the district’s students. Other qualities are still being culled from a public survey designed to generate feedback from members of the community. 

As of December 10, 410 people had taken the survey. “I’ve done a few of the searches in similar communities, and that’s probably the highest number that I’ve seen,” Khoury said.

With the survey still active, the results are unlikely to be revealed until Khoury presents a report to the school board at a community forum in the high school library next Tuesday, December 18. 

The survey includes questions about past experience in areas like working in a high-performing school district, a socio-economically diverse district, capital projects, special and alternative education, gifted education, and strategic planning. Skills such as public speaking, labor relations, school finance, special-education program coordination, and educational planning are also significant.

Beyond the professional criteria, the public is also being asked to consider a candidate’s personal characteristics, such as whether they feel living in or near Saugerties is important, how visible they feel a superintendent should be in the schools and community at large, and whether they have humor, wisdom or compassion. 

After presenting his report this month, Khoury plans on returning again on Tuesday, January 8. “By the first board meeting in the new year, my plan is to have completed some reference checks, preliminary screening interviews, and to present to the board a kind of rank ordering of the candidates in terms of strengths vis-a-vis the characteristics the community has indicated are important to them,” Khoury explained. “And then it’s really up to the board where they want to go from there.”

What usually follows is a first-round screening interview with as many candidates as trustees would like to speak to. Three applicants are usually heard in a single night, a process Khoury said he expects would happen in the second half of January through the beginning of February. 

Khoury said the schedule begins by figuring out when the new superintendent would officially begin the job and working backward from there. “So if we are looking at a July 1 start date, if a candidate is coming from outside the district and they’re presently an administrator, most administrative contracts call for a 60-day notice that they’re not continuing their employment,” Khoury said. “So that backs you up to May 1.”

To keep to that schedule, the school board would have to make an appointment some time in April. Contract negotiations would take place between the anticipated March 12 offer and the April appointment.

“When you get into contract negotiations, and that usually involves lawyers,” said Khoury. “And once you involve lawyers you could add a week or two. That just gives them wiggle room. It could be a very simple negotiation. They [the school board] could make an offer, an outline of a contract and the person could say yes, and it could be sooner. But I’ve been in situations where each party is represented by a lawyer and then the lawyers have to check language, and the turnaround can take a couple of weeks.”

The school board will also have to focus around that time on the budget proposal for the 2019-20 school year. A budget workshop is scheduled for Tuesday, March 19, and an adoption vote on April 9. The spending plan then goes to the public on Tuesday, May 21, by which time the next superintendent will have been chosen. 

“You want to get the selection of the superintendent done before they totally focus on getting their budget passed for the following school year,” Khoury said. 

For more information, visit: www.ulsterboces.org/careers/saugerties-superintendent-search.

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