EDITORIAL: We’re All In ‘It’ Together, But Tackling ‘It’ Differently

1-29-10  
 
Spending a couple of days in Stamford underscores the inter-related nature of the towns in and around Otsego County today, historically and – more to the point – tomorrow.
To begin with a little inside baseball, it was interesting to discover that Simon Bolivar Champion of Bloomville, a hamlet between Stamford and Delhi, apprenticed in Cooperstown in the 1840s for John Prentiss, then publisher of The Freeman’s Journal.
He applied the lessons he learned to create the Bloomville Mirror, which he later moved to Stamford.  It evolved into the Mirror-Recorder, and continued to publish into 1992.

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Like many of our downtowns – not Cooperstown’s, thankfully – Stamford’s has been challenged in recent years by the opening of I-88, Scotch Valley Ski Resort’s bankruptcy and the ease in getting to Oneonta just a few miles west on Route   23.
This year alone, however, Stamford (and nearby Hobart, to a lesser degree), has obtained $3.5 million in state Main Street and Restore New York grants to renovate venerable, but deteriorating, downtown buildings.
While Hobart is getting only $500,000 of that, it’s enough to redo six buildings, including the former Delaware Valley Propane Co. plant, which will then house the Liberty Tree Book Store, expanded to 85,000 volumes.
Hobart is becoming ever-more success as “Book Village of the Catskills” – a brand it’s been promoting for five years – but promoter Don Dales believes Liberty Tree’s expansion will hit “critical mass,” catapulting the tiny village into the book-selling stratosphere.
Brand-wise, Stamford is taking lessons from Hobart.  Oneonta, which is undergoing a brand-building exercise now, could likewise benefit.
That tiny Hobart – it’s about the size of Schuyler Lake – can make big things happen means Cherry Valley, Springfield Center, Middlefield, Milford and Hartwick can as well.

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Another lesson:  attorney Mike Jacobs, believing Stamford’s population of 1,200 – Cooperstown has 1,900 – was too small to support a fulltime police department, was able to convince the powers-that-be in Albany to assign two more troopers to the area.
When former mayor Anne Slatin pressed ahead with plans for a full-time police department regardless, Jacobs ran for mayor in March 2009 and defeated the incumbent.
There’s a question worth asking as the Otsego County Sheriff’s Department and Cooperstown village police press to expand:  As costly local forces grow, does is simply mean state police will cut back their presence?
In other words, does more local money investing in police mean no greater police protection?
Mayor Jacobs would have an opinion or two on that.

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Another quick one – we could go on and on – is the Catskill Watershed Corp.’s $2 million renovation of Stamford’s historic Delaware Inn.
As former Oneonta Mayor John S. Nader discovered with Bresee’s, private financing alone couldn’t make the project viable.  The public piece – investment, if you will – was needed.
(Delaware County’s Clark-Foundation equivalents – the Robinson Broadhurst and O’Connor foundations – are in the thick of all this; could the Clark play a fuller role in economic development here?)
The Delaware Inn experience brings to mind the $7.5 million in public money obtained to make Bresee’s viable.  It closed the gap, allowing a private developer to take on the project and make money.
Once complete, Bresee’s offices and apartments and the Delaware Inn’s conference center will be catalysts for the revival of their individual downtowns.  It’s not Communism, but simply common sense.

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There’s an intrinsic logic to all of these projects – Eklund Farm Machinery’s owners are planning a processing plant for the Stamford area’s organically grown meat, an idea that would make sense across our rural region.
One community’s ideas can inspire another.  One community’s experience can show another community it’s on the right path.
Once a month during 2010, our reporters will be spending a day or two in a town in our region that most of us might not usually happen to visit.  From the Stamford experiment, we can anticipate the rest will have a lot to share as well.




Don’t Play Ball; Play Ball
It’s a shame to hear that, by the time you read this, the Oneonta Tigers will probably have announced the team is moving to Norwich, Conn., leaving Damaschke Field bereft of Minor League Baseball.
When you look at what’s happened in our county’s one city lately, it’s a shame.
Not only the Tigers, but the National Soccer Hall of Fame is within days, it seems, of selling off its facility and moving for good.
Like northern Otsego’s Glimmerglass Opera, the new Foothills Performing Arts Center has been battered by more than $100,000 in cuts at the state and county levels.
Local institutions that survive these trying times – and not-so-trying times alike – often have one thing in common:  a firm local foundation – founders, directors and a broad base of public support.
The Tigers are a case in point:  The new owners promised to keep the team in Oneonta through the 2010 season.  Some promise; out-of-county and -state backers could care less about this locality or any other.
In short, there’s no substitute for self-reliance.
Happily, the anticipated Cooperstown Hawkeyes are being founded by Tom Hickey of Fly Creek.