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August 31, 2007 School district launches Inclusion program
By Margaret Menge -- Mike Brooks, the assistant superintendent for instruction, announced at a meeting last spring that the school district was “not making the grade” with special education students in grades 3-8. The scores on the standardized tests were low, and had to be brought up. So the district, he said, after much discussion with teachers and administrators, was proposing to adopt an ‘Inclusion’ model of education, where special education students would rejoin their classmates in the regular classroom. Those mixed classes would be taught by a teaching team, to include a regular teacher and a special education teacher, with a teaching assistant shared between two classes. By saying 'yes' to the budget on May 15, voters approved the funding of this program, with $225,000 going toward the hiring of additional teachers, and the rest of the money going for teacher training. Read the full story in the August 31, 2007 issue.
Judge: No felony for soccer punch
By Margaret Menge -- Judge Robert Freehill dismissed the felony assault charge against Jasmin Crespi of Wallkill last week, while upholding the second assault charge, a misdemeanor – downgrading Crespi’s chances of facing serious consequences for punching Ashley Thorpe of Cornwall in the face following a soccer game on Oct. 31, 2006. “The message that’s being sent out is that she’s getting away with it,” said Nicole Thorpe, Ashley’s mother, after reading about the judge’s decision in the Record. But the Orange County District Attorney’s office says they’ll “likely” appeal the judge’s decision to dismiss the felony, and that the Attorney General’s office may weigh in to defend the 2000 state law under which she was charged, part of the Safe Schools AgainstViolence in Education (SAFE) Act.
Read the full story in the August 31, 2007 issue.
Planning Board to hold hospital hearing By Ken Cashman -- The proposed Cancer Treatment Center (see rendering on Page 1 of this week's Local) will help St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital expand its service to the community. But any new construction is likely to change the appearance of a building that has been a landmark in Cornwall since 1931. On Sept. 5, the public will have a chance to comment on the plans for the new wing at a public hearing before the Town of Cornwall Planning Board. The hearing will be held in the second floor conference room of Town Hall starting at 7:30 p.m. Read the full story in the August 31, 2007 issue.
Sports -- Tuesday, August 28, 2007 Scrimmages Scott Strine went out to Montgomery for us on Saturday and took some great photos of the football team in scrimmages with Valley Central and Middletown. Click the photograph below to see more shots.
Sports -- Thursday, August 23, 2007 The Cornwall Dragons started their second week of practice on Monday. Click on the photo below to see more shots.
BREAKING -- Wednesday, August 22, 2007 Protter: uncertain future for Local Development Corporation
By Margaret Menge -- Village attorney Howard Protter gave the Board of Trustees a briefing onLocal Development Corporations on Aug. 20, and ended up telling them that the village's LDC, formed in 1998 to manage RiverFest, is out of compliance with state law and that its future is "in question." Protter gave the briefing at the request of Mayor Joe Gross, who'd been critical of the LDC in a letter to the editor of The Cornwall Local just before he announced his run for mayor last summer. The mayor and two trustees present, Bill Fogarty and Peter Miller, asked questions of Protter following the talk, as did some of the village residents present. Deke Hazirjian, president of the LDC, was the last one to speak on the topic from the floor. Read the full story in the August 24, 2007 issue.
SPORTS -- Tuesday, August 21, 2007 Starting linebacker to miss season opener
Mike “Mookie” Maggi, a co-captain of the varsity football team, broke his hand on Saturday and is now expected to miss the first few weeks of the season, which starts Sept. 1. The injury occurred during Saturday morning's intra-sqad scrimmage at the high school football field. Maggi was playing offensive guard and was lined up one-on-one against his teammate, Steve Henderson. As Steve tried to break through the line of scrimmage, Mike’s left hand slapped against his shoulder pad and his ring finger was pushed back. Trainer Craig Olejniczak later diagnosed the injury as a fourth metacarpal fracture. Coach Marcus Hughes has not decided who will fill in for Maggi at linebacker and offensive guard.
BREAKING -- Monday, August 20, 2007 Presbyterian church vandalized
The Cornwall Presbyterian Church was vandalized by an apple thrower early the morning of Aug. 15, with apples picked off a tree behind the church and used to smash through one of the rear windows and damage an air conditioner. Apples were also thrown at a lower side door of the church, leaving debris on the surface. Police are investigating. The Cornwall Presbyterian Church, founded in 1856, sits at the bottom of Hudson Street, next to Cornwall-on-Hudson Elementary School. The church's pastor is the Rev. Daniel Russell, an active member of the community who has participated with the Communities That Care program that seeks solutions for problems with youth in Cornwall.
Notice -- Saturday, August 18, 2007 Village bridge repair to start on Tuesday The Department of Transportation will begin work on Tuesday to repair the old WPA bridge on Route 218 at the bottom of Bayview Avenue. They'll keep both lanes open to traffic over the bridge, but will close the small extension road at the triangle that connects Dock Hill Road to Bayview. Temporary concrete barriers will be set up to separate traffic from the work area. The bridge was built in 1938; the state is covering the total cost of the repairs, with field stone facing similar to the original. The project is scheduled to take at least two months. BREAKING -- Friday, August 17, 2007 Bridge Street bridge closed to traffic after discovery of cracks, crumbling mortar and leaks Town Supervisor Richard Randazzo ordered the road closed over the Bridge Street bridge early this afternoon after inspectors from the state's Department of Transportation found crumbling mortar, bowed out and sagging stone walls and cracks and water leaks on the underside of the stone arch. The cracks were initially discovered on Wednesday, Aug. 15 by Pat Hines of McGoey, Hauser & Edsall, who was inspecting the bowed out stone wall that had come to the attention of the town in June. The Town Board held an emergency meeting at 5:30 p.m. today and passed a resolution 3-0 (Mazzocca and Clark absent) to close the bridge (circa 1876) on Bridge Street to all traffic, except for the parking spaces next to Hazard's Pharmacy and Clark & Associates, until further notice.
BREAKING -- Friday, August 17, 2007 Guilty Plea in Little League Arson Case Colin Marron, age 19, pleaded guilty to third degree arson this week, a class C felony, admitting that on Feb. 1 of last year he intentionally set fire to the Little League concession stand. Frank Phillips, the Orange County District Attorney, anno Marron was arrested on Feb. 27 of this year after a year-long investigation and charged with three felonies: arson in the third degree, burglary in the third degree and criminal mischief in the second degree. He was indicted by a grand jury in March. Marron will be sentenced by Judge Robert Freehill on Nov. 1. Because he was 17 at the time he committed the crime, he will be eligible for youthful offender status. If the judge confers YO status, the record of the incident and plea will be sealed and Marron will not be considered to have been found guilty of a crime.
August 17, 2007 Buyer’s market: 142 homes for sale in Cornwall By Margaret Menge -- Cornwall real estate agents say the town hasn’t been affected much by the national collapse in the sub-prime mortgage market, but that homes here are selling slower, and for less than they would have a year or two ago. “They’re definitely sitting longer than they used to,” said Ellen Kelly, of Smitchger Realty on Main Street. “I can tell you there are a lot of properties out there that are priced really well and they’re still sitting.”
Read the full story in the August 17, 2007 issue.
Town employee arrested, suspended By Margaret Menge -- Paul Gilardo, a long-time director of Little League and an employee of the town’s Highway Department, was arrested on Aug. 10 after an inspection sticker from a town vehicle was found on his white BMW, and a second one found in the glove compartment of the car. Gilardo was charged with two misdemeanors: petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property.
Read the full story in the August 17, 2007 issue.
By Ken Cashman -- Bagel lovers in Cornwall will soon have a new Bubba. David Rothstein is due to take over what once was Bubba’s Bagel Shoppe.
Read the full story in the Aug. 17, 2007 issue.
BREAKING -- Wednesday, August 15, 2007 Attic fire at home on Oak Tree Drive
By Margaret Menge -- Firefighters from five fire companies rushed to the scene of a house fire on Oak Tree Drive off Mine Hill Road this afternoon and doused flames that were shooting out of the attic of the two-story home belonging to the Perro family. No one was home at the time of the fire. Kevin Hines, assistant chief of Highland Engine Co. #1, was first on the scene with four firefighters as flames were leaping out of either side of the gabled roof. They were able to knock out the fire by the time the other fire companies arrived on the scene, but crews worked late into the afternoon to clear the smoke from the attic and clean out the charred items so that the fire investigator could begin work to determine the cause of the fire. Mine Hill Road was closed to traffic as firefighters from the five companies, including Storm King Engine Co. #2, carried fire hoses a half mile up Mine Hill Road from the water source on Angola Road. As three firefighters were finishing work on the roof, to clear the smoke from the attic, Chief Pat Hines began shouting for oxygen and a stokes basket for a female firefighter who had collapsed inside the home. She was carried out by firefighters and members of the Cornwall Volunteer Ambulance Corps, placed on a stretcher, and taken by ambulance to St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital. The fire was called in by Eddie Suarez, a retired New York City fireman who lives at the end of Oak Tree Drive. “I was driving by, I thought they were barbequing,” he says. “I walked around the back and it [smoke] was coming out the vent.” Suarez entered the home, shut off the electric, and rescued the family dog and two cats. Suarez’s own home caught fire four years ago, and has since been rebuilt.
Village opens the door to river swimming By Margaret Menge -- The new mayor calls the waterfront here the “Cornwall Riviera.” And while he may be the only one who makes that leap – comparing the waters of the Hudson River to those off the coast of Monte Carlo -- the water here has improved to such a degree in the last 20 years that it is now swimmable from the north tip of Manhattan to the northern boundary with Green County. People in the Village of Cornwall-on-Hudson have been talking for the last year about how to make better use of the riverfront. And waterfront access for swimming, though it hasn’t been in the forefront of those discussions – it’s hardly been mentioned – may soon surface as something the village wants to consider. A grant application was sent to the Hudson River Estuary Program last month, asking for $25,000 for planning for the riverfront. And one of the things mentioned is opening up “the first legal and safe swimming area” on Cornwall’s riverfront. Read the full story in the August 10, 2007 issue.
By Margaret Menge -- Supervisor Dick Randazzo laid into the state’s Department of Transportation at the Town Board work session on Monday, Aug. 6, saying they’re doing the Laurel Avenue intersection “on the cheap,” and creating a hazard by narrowing Route 9W to two lanes, one in each direction. “We’ve been waiting for years for the traffic light and when they finally told us the traffic light was approved, they said, ‘Well we can’t put it in until we construct turning lanes.’ So we all figured they were actually going to construct turning lanes,” said the supervisor. Read the full story in the August 10, 2007 issue.
Hall co-sponsors censure resolution By Margaret Menge -- Congressman John Hall signed on as co-sponsor of a bill introduced by Ulster County Rep. Maurice Hinchey last weekend to censure the president and vice president for the run-up to the war in Iraq and for the conduct of the war. Hall is one of 19 co-sponsors on the bill, introduced in the House on Saturday, Aug. 4, during heated debates over two energy bills and a bill to expand the government’s wire-tapping authority. Censure expresses condemnation, and carries with it no power to effect any action, or to stop anything from occurring: it is merely an expression of sentiment.
Read the full story in the August 10, 2007 issue.
August 3, 2007 Teen Arrested for Smashing Prima By Margaret Menge -- A 17-year-old from Cornwall was arrested on Tuesday, July 31 and charged with a felony for throwing a rock into the plate glass front window of Prima Pizza sometime the night before, and attempting to break in to the Main Street pizza parlor. “I would like to find out why he did this to us, and why he tried to get in,” said Anthony Scalise, Prima’s owner. Anthony Scalise got a call early Tuesday morning from Town of Cornwall police, who told him that his restaurant had been vandalized. He drove down from Newburgh, where he’d been at a business networking breakfast, and arrived to find police cars, and broken glass and a big rock lying on the sidewalk. There were big droplets of blood on the sidewalk in front and blood on the inside of the dead bolt on the front door, where a glass panel had been broken in an attempt, Scalise says, to enter the restaurant. Read the full story in the August 3, 2007 issue.
By Ken Cashman -- Kids in town are discovering a new hangout that looks like a corporate computer room. On a hot Monday afternoon, eight of them have wandered into Gamestation on Main Street. They have entered as small groups or as individuals. Now they are craned forward on plush chairs and focusing on the computer screens in front of them. They are competing as two teams in Counter-Strike – a game in which counter-terrorists pursue terrorists. Todd Grausso and his assistant, Chris Hawkins, held the grand opening of Gamestation on Saturday, July 21. Since then they’ve hosted a birthday celebration, organized an in-house tournament, and entertained a room full of kids at an all-night party. “It’s a nice safe place for the kids to have a good time,” Grausso said a few days after the all-night bash, “and Mom and Dad don’t have to worry about where the kids are.” Read the full story in the August 3, 2007 issue.
Sollami to run on his own By Margaret Menge -- Jim Sollami confirmed this week that he’s running for town supervisor this fall. But he says he wants nothing to do with the Democratic (or Republican) party. In fact, he wants to do away with the parties, locally speaking. Sollami told the Local this week by phone that he is “certainly done with the Democrats in Cornwall” and is planning to form his own party, to be called The Freedom Party. He says he’ll try, in the next week, to fill a slate of candidates to run with him under that label. And if he can’t find people to run for Town Board as members of The Freedom Party, Sollami says he’ll still run for supervisor, but as a write-in candidate. He says that in forming his own party, or running as a write-in candidate, he hopes to “get a movement going” to move away from partisan elections in the town, and move toward non-partisan elections, as in the Village of Cornwall-on-Hudson. Read the full story in the August 3, 2007 issue. |
