Changing of the Greene

COUNTY RULE. Republican members of GreeneLand’s legislature evidently have opted for change. Faced with the imminent retirement of long-serving chairman Frank Stabile Jr, they caucused recently to decide who shall preside over their governing body. Instead of making their choice on the basis of seniority, which would have put Bill Lawrence in the chair, they agreed, after a brief shuffle, to back Coxsackie’s Wayne Speenburgh. Similarly, in choosing a captain for their group, the Republican legislators did not retain Dorothy Prest, but instead opted for relative newcomer Keith Valentine (who received far more votes at the November 7^th election than any other legislature candidate). The choice of Mr Speenburgh portends change in the manner and the extent of supervision of county executives. It remains to be seen whether the Republicans' ideas about salutary change will jibe with the sentiments of the Democrats. When the post-election legislature convenes in January, the Republican contingent will shrink from 12 members of the 14-seat council to 9. The Democrats, including three freshmen, may have their own ideas about salutary leadership. In any event, the chairmanship decision will not be decided by a simple majority of the members. Votes cast by GreeneLand legislators vary in weight. As it happens, if the five Democrats were sgreed and were joined by any two Republicans, their seven votes would outweigh the votes of the other seven legislators.

LOCAL RULE. Also subject to substantial change may be the Village of Catskill’s governing body. The terms of two Trustees, Vincent Seeley and Angelo Amato, will expire next spring, and a third Trustee, Forest Cotten, will be resigning at the end of this year as he moves up to his newly won seat in the county legislature. Thus, three seats will be subject to contest. Mr Amato has said that he plans to run for re-election. Mr Seeley has expressed mixed feelings about serving another term. With regard to new candidates, our sonar detects stirrings of interest from former Trustees (Battaglino, Lewoc, Rosenblatt, Ulsht) as well as from the veteran manager of public enterprises, Peter Markou, and a firefighter, Patrick McCulloch.

CULINARY BULLETINS.

• The former Full Gospel Tabernacle, which in a venerable earlier incarnation was the First Baptist Church of Catskill, on Main Street across from the county courthouse, evidently is destined to become an up-scale dining and wine- and beer-tasting salon. A local couple, experienced restaurauteurs, just signed a purchase contract, with Wayne Kitchen (aptly named), of Rip Van Winkle Realty, as broker. Asking price for the spacious building had lately been reduced to $299,000.
• "Squat & Gobble" is what folks are invited, by way of a Main Street sign, to do at O’Fratello’s, which opened December 1^st, for breakfast and lunch, from 6 am., 7 days a week, in Catskill, two doors away from the erstwhile Tabernacle. The O is for O’Connor, as in Lewis O’Connor, the Public Works Department head and Town Council member. The Fratello is (are?) for Raymond and Carol. The partners are the latest in a long line of dispensers of food at that site. Before them, from late July to mid-September, it was Sonny’s (as in Sonny Ward). Before that, it was Tony’s Luncheonette, although it was Rick Saparata’s place. But we regress.
• A gastropub--think bistro, tavern, saloon with good food, rathskeller--could be coming to GreeneLand. Among decisions not made yet by the prospective operators is what to name the contemplated establishment. In honor of its model, the Spotted Pig in Manhattan, perhaps it could be dubbed the Spotted Piglet, or the Spotless Pig. If its home is the county seat, it could be The Catskeller, where customers quaff the house brand beer: Catskale.

ALSO HAPPENING IN CATSKILL, MAYBE:

• A small-construction equipment rental business on the east side of Maple Avenue (Route 9W) across from MacDonald’s.
• A seniors’ housing development on the west side of West Main Street, south of West Bridge Street, behind the racquetball court.
• A string of single-family houses along West Cauterskill Road.
• A 20-unit apartment complex on Water Street, in the former Oren’s Furniture warehouse. New owners Andrea and Jim Cunliffe, Saugerties residents and veteran restorationists (in Europe more than in America) are moving along briskly with this project, which may include a rooftop promenade that takes full advantage of the vista, and meticulous restoration of the façade, even to the extent of retaining a blacksmith to bring back the ironwork ornamentation. Chief contractor Keith Abrams of Olde Urlton Construction Inc., is a veteran restoration specialist (and, we are charmed to note, has an address on All Peat Beds Road).

AND ELSEWHERE:

• A subdivision of 100 half-acre lots for single-family homes south of Rip Van Winkle Lake, in Tannersville. According to Jim Planck in The Daily Mail (12/5), consultant Howard Bates, on behalf of Argent-Catskill LLC of New York City, has sought approval from Tannersville’s Village Board.
• ”Hamlet on Hudson” (condominiums, lots of them, especially for part-timers, around a golf course) in Coxsackie. Extensive drawings have been submitted to local authorities. No action has been taken yet on, among other things, developer Mark Salomon’s request to have the development site annexed to the Village of Coxsackie. That would save him money on water. How it would benefit the Village is not readily apparent.
• ”Mountain View Estates” is the name bestowed on a contemplated seniors-only development of 280 modular construction homes, with amenities, on a 108-acre site in Coxsackie. This project has evoked stout local resistance. The developer, UMH Properties of Freehold NJ, a specialist in manufactured home communities, has made headway to the extent of being allowed to erect a model, which opened for viewing on December 2d.

CATSKILL HUDSON BANK is located neither in Catskill nor in Hudson. Its seven branches are in Sullivan, Ulster and Orange counties. Until recently it was called the Community Bank of Sullivan County.

MARTHA CHRONICLES IV. GreeneLand’s premier grifter has been sentenced to spend 65 months in prison. She also has been ordered to pay $728,248 back to 231 victims of frauds perpetrated on would-be authors of books.

Martha Ivery, 58, who during 1995-2003 had run her bogus publishing enterprise out of an upstairs office across from the Catskill Post Office, received that sentence last Wednesday, in Federal Court in Syracuse. Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr also meted out a three-year term of probation following incarceration, which is to commence on January 9^th.

The sentencing came in the wake of a conviction (a year ago) that based on a bargain in which Ms Ivery entered a plea of guilty to mail fraud and bankruptcy fraud. Judge Scullin also responded to investigators’ evidence indicating that the scale of swindling greatly exceeded what was immediately cited, and that Ms Ivery went on scamming even after being indicted. He imposed a sentence that fell mid-way in the range of possibilities (57 months to 71 months) that are specified in State guidelines for perpetrators of her kind and volume of white-collar crimes.

According to a report in The Daily Mail (12/1), Ms Ivery sent a letter to that newspaper on November 24th, apologizing for the “shame” of her “criminal wrongs” and lauding the local community’s “specialness.”

The Federal indictment that launched the prosecution charged that Ms Ivery extracted money from prospective book authors by making fraudulent claims and promises. She pretended to be a literary agent (“Kelly O’Donnell”) as well as a book publisher; extracted pre-publication fees for editing, illustration, special marketing and author copies, as well as representation by a literary agent; made false claims about book signings, book fairs, cruise vacations and television talk show appearances; and gave an inventive array of excuses for non-publication of manuscripts.

For more on the feats of this extraordinary swindler, check Seeing Greene entries of June 17, July 8, and December 9, 2005, and October 13 of this year.

SUPER SATURDAY (12/9) Up in Windham, the Greene Room Players will be staging a “Holiday Wishes” musical show at the Windham Civic Center, from 7:30 pm. Repeat performance on Sunday from 2 pm. But the place for GreeneLand action is Catskill.

The “Holiday Magic” stroll on Main Street (shops, galleries, goodies) starts at 11 am. A holiday party for kids starts at the same time at the Community Center on Main Street (Santa will attend) and afterward, at 1 pm., a live show unfolds at the Community Theatre, with Steve Charney and the Zucchini Brothers, skits and quips, followed by a “SpongeBob SquarePants” movie. At The M, a "Winter Blast" featuring the works of eight artists will open. Meanwhile, up the street at the Greene County Council of the Arts, Neil Smith and Patti Martin will conduct, from 1 pm., a writers’ salon. Two doors away, The Open Studio will be showing art objects that include, according to Dina and Julie, “a clock with time in abundance,” “a phone to call the moon,” “kitchen gods”and “gargoyles to protect you from bad neighbors.” Also starting at 1 pm., up hill at Cedar Grove (the Thomas Cole National Historic Site; Spring St), the holiday party will feature thespian Joseph Capone reading poems by Thomas Cole, together with cookies and punch and an open gift shop). A couple of blocks away, at the United Methodist Church (40 Woodland Avenue), roast beef dinners will be served, to seated diners and as takeaway treats, from 4:30 pm. Down on Main Street again, most galleries, shops and other retailers will offer Holiday strollers a rich array of merchandise accompanied by refreshments, while Swingshift, a barbershop quartet, conducts a musical patrol.. After nightfall, a new jazz joint, Stella’s Lounge, will open at Catskill Point, thanks to proprietor/musician Steve Tenner. Meanwhile, at the Wilder Gallery (375 Main St, upstairs) the art show (works by Carol Zaloom, Polly Law, Mikhael Horowitz, Jane Campbell) will be augmented after 9 pm. by live music (Lex Grey; Little Earl of Voodelic) and radical dancing.

SHERIFF STORY. GreeneLand’s sheriff, Richard Hussey, has entered a plea of Not Guilty to the charge of driving while intoxicated. That happened on Wednesday (12/ 6) in a brief arraignment hearing in the county courthouse before visiting judge Patrick McGrath (of Rensselaer County). It followed his indictment by a grand jury on the misdemeanor charge. The indictment came about after the special prosecutor, Kevin C. Kortright, who is district attorney of Washington County, decided not to go through with an intention to ask Town Justice William Simon, of Hunter, to hold a probable-cause hearing that would lead to a decision about whether the prosecution’s evidence suffices to warrant a trial. The arraignment before Judge McGrath, which is the latest step in a proceeding that dates back to September 2005, when Sheriff Hussey was arrested near his Jefferson Heights home on the DWI charge, evoked lengthy reports in local newspapers.

The Daily Mail story was distinctive in that reporter Andrea Macko said the prosecutor’s decision to seek an indictment from a grand jury rather than from Judge Simon came after the prosecutor learned that the judge had donated to Sheriff Hussey’s election campaign in 2004. In The Daily Freeman’s account, correspondent William Kemble reported that a special piece of evidence in the case—a videotape of Sheriff Hussey’s movements on the night in question—has gone missing. The videotape has figured prominently in accounts of the case. It was made by two civilians, Jeff Valentin and Damien Lameray, who had undertaken to follow Sheriff Hussey’s movements after learning of his departure from a party at the Elks lodge in Catskill. They had picked up the sheriff’s trail at the Creekside restaurant and bar, and had followed him to his home in Jefferson Heights. It was Mr Valentin, moreover, who called the State police barracks about alleged erratic driving, who guided the troopers to the whereabouts of the driver, and who said his videotape covered the sheriff’s driving and the police procedures that led to Mr Hussey’s arrest. The two trackers gave depositions about what they witnessed. Those depositions augment what the arresting officer’s report. Mr Valentin confirmed to Seeing Greene that he has indeed mislaid the videotape; “I wish I could find it.” He also suggested that it is superfluous; the report of State trooper Mark Prestigiacomo, including the sheriff’s refusal to take a Breathalyzer test, should suffice to clinch the case. The defense team now has 43 days in which to file motions and to prepare before a trial date is set.