Greenway sounds good

To the editor:

Do you know a greenway—through grants—will help to keep the Route 97 clean and green? If you think there is a way the towns would be threatened, lose control of their area or compromise their authority, I cannot see how.

Senator John Bonacic has suggested this greenway designation to allocate money into the area that we would not be eligible for without the greenway—just as the Upper Delaware Council (UDC) and the Upper Delaware Scenic Byway has done for the people of the towns. The Greenway will make millions of dollars available that would not have been there.

We have not lost control of our land with the UDC and the State Scenic Byway, and we will not lose control with a greenway.

Senator Bonacic, thank you for all your efforts to make Sullivan beautiful and fund money to do so. It is amazing how some people make an issue out of something good.

John J. LiGreci, Supervisor

Town of Lumberland

Glen Spey, NY

Boucher is no gift to the community

To the editor:

I read Charlie Buterbaugh’s interview with William Boucher with disbelief. Boucher’s donation of land to the school district was not a gift, it was an investment. He talks about open space like it’s something we don’t have and he’s giving it to us. ‘He is going to protect it with his sword.’ What does that mean? He knows better than most that the pen is mightier than the sword. He sounds to me like another greedy developer with itchy palms.

Cluster development is a good way to preserve open space, but it should not be used to circumvent the zoning law. Without donating the land, he would have had enough to build 71 houses. He now wants to build 74 houses on land that’s zoned for 47.

A bedroom community of 74 families would raise the taxes more than most of the people now living in Cochecton could afford. He sounds like the kind of con man who cheats retirees out of their life savings. Beware Cochecton, he’s after your life savings.

Chris Holden

Lava, NY

Our country has been disgraced

To the editor:

As a veteran of Operation Desert Storm, I must say it stuns me that we could so mistreat Prisoners Of War—while we profess to uphold the standards of the Geneva Convention—as was so evidently the case at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq.

Such mistreatment will surely be visited in kind on any of our POWs so captured. The senior commanders responsible for the prison seem ignorant (or was it incompetent?) of what their subordinates were doing. This is nonsense. As the official charged with the responsibility of administering all Iraq coalition prisons, Reserve BG Janet Karpinski cannot escape censure for this debacle, which will continue to embarrass the nation, the President, and our army. This scandal erases our image as liberators in Iraq. BG Karpinski claims “not to have known” of abuses and “not to have been aware” of the misconduct. As so senior a commander, she must know and must be aware. For such dereliction of duty, she ought to be dishonorably fired. The resultant furor over this disgrace will never be repaired through mere political spin or semantics.

SSG (Ret.) Joe Hammell

Waynesboro, PA

Sullivan West budget is a myth

To the editor:

As usual, the budget being presented to Sullivan West voters is a myth. For the fourth year in a row, the fiscal masterminds at Sullivan West have found a way to cut—excuse me, reduce—programs while retaining millions of dollars in unspent funds.

Last year, the district presented a “tight” budget that proposed the elimination of 20.5 instructional positions. However, the school board recently considered paying down long-term debt by $2 million, meaning that the district under spent this year’s budget by at least that amount. Obviously, like every budget since the merger, this year’s budget is scandalously “padded.”

At the April 22 board meeting, business administrator Paul Nienstadt showed that the 2004-05 budget is similarly padded. A two-year revenue analysis projects $611,144 in available fund balance at the beginning of the 2004-05 school year and $3,329,261 at the end, for an increase of $2,718,117 during the year.

Because fund balance increases to the extent that revenues exceed expenditures, Sullivan West apparently plans to underspend the 2004-05 budget by $2.7 million. There is no reason to budget $13.2 million in taxes when $10.5 million will be sufficient.

Outgoing superintendent Michael Johndrow admitted as much in presenting the budget to the Delaware Valley PTSO on May 4. “We could have reduced taxes, but then there would be a huge tax increase in 2005-06. We want to keep tax increases level from year to year.”

For the sixth year in a row, Sullivan West will levy excess taxes. The continued, deliberate accumulation of fund balance is disturbing. If the district will not return excess funds to taxpayers or invest them in education, then what will it do with them? What can possibly justify sacrificing current student needs?

The proposed Sullivan West budget does not support education. Vote “No!”

Ken Uy

Callicoon, NY