Wurtsboro community members show they care

To the editor:

Due to state budget cuts, the possibility of closing an elementary school within our district has been looming. During the past two months, on two occasions, over 250 concerned parents and community members in Wurtsboro have attended the Monticello School District Firehouse Budget chats in both Rock Hill and Wurtsboro.

Faced with either closing a facility and/or cutting back on several forward-thinking effective programs, as one voice we offered cost-reducing solutions that we are willing to support, listened to our administration’s overview of our anticipated 2009/2010 school budget costs to taxpayers, asked questions about the budget formation and process, offered suggestions and presented the benefits of Chase Elementary School’s utilization supported by facts. Community members and parents showed they are willing to work with our school administration in order to find the best possible solutions for all our students during their K-12 educational careers in our school district.

Thanks to past school budget support, our school district continues to improve annually at all levels. Chase Elementary is well on its way to becoming one of the few public International Baccalaureate (IB) Elementary Schools in the state; our middle school, Robert J Kaiser, has been recognized by other state middle schools as a top-notch example of the effectiveness of creating positive learning environments; our high school’s Small Learning Academies have been recognized for their cost-efficient sustainability and utilization and our excellent music program, for the second year in a row, has been awarded “Best 100 Communities for Music Education in America.” All of these great strides could not be achieved without the support of positive, proactive caring parents and community members. They have shown that Emma Chase Elementary is not only a building, but it is the place where the pulse of our children’s academic career starts to beat.

No wonder

To the editor:

We have an inexperienced, idealistic president for whom, although I’m a Democrat, I did not vote; a poor excuse for a Vice President; a Secretary of State who thought she remembered landing in Bosnia under enemy fire; an Attorney General who helped pardon terrorists; and most astonishing, a tax cheat as the Treasury Secretary, who will also be in charge of the IRS.

With all these political cabinet choices and the obnoxious way the newspapers treat the President, plus a lazy speaker of the house who does not want to prosecute felonious legislators, it’s no wonder we have to worry where our taxpayers’ money is going and how it going to be spent.

P.S. I still haven’t received my application for a bailout.

Phil Mullen

Open letter to Obama

To the editor:

I am full of hope for the great changes that will come about in the United States and abroad due to our mutual efforts. I am hesitant to undermine this powerful progressive mood in any way, and, at the same time, I am very concerned about your wanting to send lots of troops into Afghanistan. I fear this action will waste the effort and resources needed to put our own house in order.

An invasion of Afghanistan was undertaken by the Russians in the 1980s. They spent 10 years there, destroying and being destroyed militarily and economically. This helped a great deal in ending the Soviet Union. I fear it will weaken us immeasurably both economically and morally. Will additional troops sent to Afghanistan weaken those who want to hurt the United States?

Not hardly. Like our catastrophic adventure in Iraq, it will increase the strength of those who wish to strike back at us for the bullying, economically and militarily, we have foisted on other peoples of the world in the last 60 years.

Please find other ways besides military and economic threat to protect the United States and at the same time help those in need in the world. Violence always breeds more violence. It never brings peace among peoples and nations.

Establishing a Department of Peace in your cabinet would help immeasurably. Such a department would be readily available to you to give another view of probable consequences of military action such as in Afghanistan.

Please take my message to heart, Mr. President.

Liberty, NY

The bigger economic picture

To the editor:

Your coverage of “the economics of gas drilling” was misleading. So called “economic studies” of the immediate benefits of gas industry development fail to account for a truer, longer-term reality.

Of course, energy extraction will bring some immediate, but limited economic benefit. A small number of workers will temporarily live in the area, with a similarly small impact on local businesses. A small number of property owners will also benefit from leasing and licensing, but probably leave in the process.

These “gains” must be weighed against irrefutable and broader economic costs. To name but a few, the universal decline of all property values, the inhibition of other businesses/industry/farming and the increased costs of the social and physical infrastructure required to sustain energy extraction.

Last, the longer-term cost of endangerment to, or some loss of, the area’s water resources cannot be estimated. As a consultant working extensively with The Coca-Cola Company, I am constantly made aware that Coca-Cola regards water sourcing issues as the greatest challenge to its business. Ditto Goldman Sachs, who describe water as the “oil of the 21st century.” The reality is that over the next 10, 15, 20 years, fresh water will become a more valuable resource than oil, gas or coal. New York State has a moratorium on drilling as a result of this macro-economic truth.

By definition, short-term reports about the local economic impacts of gas are just that. Short-term. About gas. And local. As such, they fail to take into account the proximity of a nationally vital water resource. Worse, they are irrelevant to anyone considering the longer-term implications for the region. Gas extraction directly threatens our most valuable asset. Fresh water.

Unfortunately, these considerations are not the focus of current economic surveys about gas in other areas. Your coverage of such should reflect this misleading reality.

A change in priorities

To the editor:

Your recent press releases concerning Delaware Valley (DV) athletes who were accepted at Colgate University got me thinking. While no one knows exactly how much DV spends on sports—the facilities are multiple-use, the coaches sometimes teach, busing and utilities operate under existing contracts, etc.—let’s say DV spends five percent of its budget on sports. That’s $3 million a year. (The number could be a lot higher but not much lower.)

That kind of money, if devoted to helping graduating seniors with their first year of college, would cover the entire graduating class at schools like Penn State, where most of them go. Or it could pay for 100 students at places like Colgate, Rutgers, UMass, UConn, USC, UCLA or Syracuse, all very good schools. At the extreme, it would cover all costs for 60 students at the nation’s most selective and expensive private schools—the Ivies, Stanford and MIT, for example. In other words, that money could be much better spent.

As for sports, we could make the facilities available all summer long with volunteer coaching and referees; let the kids knock themselves out 10 or 12 hours a day for 12 weeks, then have a huge DV Invitational Meet, give out medals and trophies and be done with it for the school year, when education becomes the priority.

Why is it we don’t hear much about education these days?