Official responds to Ross

To the editor:

I was dismayed by Richard Ross’s story, “Officials let play get out of hand as game is marred by injuries,” in the September 21 issue of The River Reporter. The story is a departure from Ross’s usually excellent writing regarding sports and youth activities in general. This story presents a misimpression that the officials assigned to the soccer game between Eldred and Livingston Manor did little or nothing to control the game. I was one of the officials assigned to this game. I would like to make several points in contradiction to this story.

1. Soccer is a contact sport. Shoulder-to-shoulder contact is permitted. Pushing, tripping, kicking etc. are not. In addition, if a player on the offense is fouled and calling the foul by a defensive player would take away the advantage from the offense, the foul is not called. Yellow cards and or red cards are given for excessive fouls or violent play.

2. Ross wrote that “officials limited their calls to questions of possession and an occasional push.” This is not correct. I personally called many fouls, especially in the second half, as the physical nature of the play increased. Every violation of the rules that was observed was called.

3. None of the fouls that were called were of a nature to call for a yellow or red card. One yellow card was issued toward the end of the game for a serious pushing offense.

Officiating all sports is a difficult job. Officials in all sports and at all levels are criticized for making calls or not making calls. Soccer is particularly difficult, as it is a contact sport in which the protective equipment for the players is limited.

I have officiated school soccer since 1987. Believe me, every time officials take the field, our goal is to do the best job possible. The lack of competence that Ross implies in his article is not helpful in our attempts to do the best job possible working with our student-athletes.

Drawing the line

To the editor:

Keep Cochecton Rural is a new group of homeowners in Cochecton dedicated to preserving the rural quality of life that residents of the town cherish. The group was formed in response to a “Catskill Homes” development project, a wildly over-ambitious 42-home cluster plan on 108 pastoral acres at the intersection of New Turnpike and Cross Roads.

They plan to clear more than half the land, put in new roads, and cluster the houses tightly together on one-acre lots. Can you imagine waking up to find a major Rockland-County-style suburban subdivision planned next door?

The so-called “conservation scheme” might work in an area that has already been sprawled over, protecting some of the little open space left. For us, however, it amounts to forced suburbanization that certainly does not benefit Cochecton, and is offensive to our bucolic country setting. While the developer considers Cochecton to already be suburban, we townspeople know better.

We are not opposed to growth. There are pressures from people who want homes in Sullivan County and residents who need to cash in on large holdings. We think Cochecton should develop plans that truly conserve our natural resources, not in name only as the current code does.

We need a careful and thoughtful plan that allows for reasonable growth, at a reasonable pace, with adequate safeguards and enforcement. Future growth must adhere to these simple principles. The cluster development, with all the houses similar or identical, only makes an area look ticky-tacky and suburban ugly. We didn’t choose to live in Cochecton to be surrounded by that. We don’t want to stand by while speculators turn our gorgeous rural community into a sprawl similar to Orange and Rockland counties. We are determined to fight this fight from the start, and not be forced to play catch-up after so much damage is done that we no longer recognize our town.

We ask for your support. All residents will benefit from planned growth. For more information visit www.cochecton.org.

First things first

To the editor:

It is amazing that the Sullivan County legislators can all of a sudden find $15 million to invest at Sullivan County Community College to build a “Technology” Park. We probably need that park about as badly as we need to put men on Jupiter, but they can’t find the money to sign a new contract for the underpaid sheriffs deputies to make a living wage. Where in heck are the priorities of our illustrious elected officials?

Phil Mullen

Not a man for the masses

To the editor:

At one point Ted Yeomans had a series of signs on 17B just below the corner clock tower on land in which Steve Dubrovsky has an interest, promoting him as “a vote for all, not just a few.”

That immediately caught my attention, since Dubrovsky supported a fundraiser for Ted Yeomans, candidate for the Bethel Town Board, at the Bradstan. I have seen them, heads together, at town board meetings, so one can guess where the money comes from.

More than 200 people came to the September meeting of the Smallwood Civic Association, when local candidates for election present themselves, but Ted Yeomans did not appear. The friends of Toronto raised a few hundred dollars at that meeting to support the struggle for public access to the Toronto dam site, which is currently blocked by Dubrovsky.

In the Town of Bethel, Smallwood has the largest single bloc of voters, so I do not see Yeomans as representing the public interest. His series of signs on 17B have now wisely been changed to signs that merely urge everyone to vote.

Smoke and mirrors

To the editor:

I write this letter as a non-partisan, not affiliated with any organized political party, and hoping to be given credence as someone who enlisted in the armed forces before World War II and as a combat veteran of that war.

It is unbelievable how many people in our society have lost the know-how to see through President Bush’s pathetic public speeches, Vice President Cheney’s war, and political advisor and manipulator Karl Rove, seeking to influence the public with their devious, pathological minds.

It should be obvious to anyone with a grain of sense that we find ourselves living during one of the most dangerous moments in our nation’s history, with a figurehead of a President who exercises more red-herring skill with words than any other ever to take the oath of office.

Too many of the media that dominate the public exchange of opinion cater to Bush’s regime, drawing the public’s attention away from the foreign policies, devised by the con artists in the White House, that get us into ever more self-inflicted predicaments.

Remember this, too. The pundits and columnists of the day seem to agree that the 9/11 struggle declared by the Muslims against the United States was brought about by our unquestioning support for Israel in the Middle East. It is dishonest to pretend that those past crimes committed in the Middle East had nothing to do with the 9/11 incident.

A terrible price in human life and in material armaments has been paid to satisfy Israel’s demands for its own state in Palestine and in Iraq, while our men and women in service are being killed and wounded defending a conflict of choice, even as body bags return to our country almost daily.

The big-time capitalists have pressured our government unceasingly to continue our wasteful involvement in the Middle East. And now, it looks like we will get involved in Iran as well, knowing that at this time the only way we can conduct an invasion is by re-adopting a civilian conscription program to expand our existing armed forces.