The Trumansburg Volunteer Fire Company is having its annual Pancake Breakfast to Benefit the
H. Peter Kahn Memorial Scholarship
H. Peter Kahn
Sunday, March 21, 2009
7:30 AM to 11:00 AM
74 West Main Street, Trumansburg
Adults $6; 5-12 $3; under 5 FREE
Peter was a member of the Trumansburg Fire Company for over 20 years when he died in the line of duty at a motor vehicle accident on February 16, 1997. This scholarship has been established in his memory to assist children and/or step children of members, and/or members of the Trumansburg Fire Company who plan to continue their education after high school.
If you are interested in making a gift to the scholarship, please send to:
Laura Keefe, Treasurer
PO Box 418
Trumansburg, NY 14886
Sweet Land Farm is offering a special deal this month. Come to the farm, just to the north of Trumansburg on Route 96, on March 13 between 1:00 and 3:00, and sign up for a share of vegetables grown on the farm for this year, and you’ll receive either a bag of fresh greens, just picked from the farm’s greenhouses, or a four-pound bag of root vegetables.
It’s a reassuring thought, that even now in the closing hours of winter, there are still good things to eat being taken from the ground nearby.
The spring book sale at the Ulysses Philomathic Library may seem like a long while off now, but preparations for the event are already underway. In order to have a successful book sale, there need to be quality donations from the community. The time is now to get those donations in.
The sale will take place on April 23 to April 27, but the deadline for donations is April 3. Books, music, movies, audio books, puzzles, games, and computer software in good condition are accepted at the front desk. Textbooks, encyclopedias, magazines, condensed books, romances and damaged items are not accepted.
The library is also looking for volunteers for the sale. A sign up sheet will be posted in the library in early April. Call 387-5623 or 387-6562 for more information.
2 Commercial Panini Presses $200 each
17 Cubic foot, frostfree freezer $400
Artic Air Commercial Refrigerator, 22 cubic foot $650
GE frostfree brushed stainless freezer/refigerator with ice maker 18 cubic foot $350
1 white dorm style refrigerator $50
1 dorm style silver refigerator with freezer on top $75
8 foot Boos worktable with shelf underneath $400
Pottery Barn cement topped table $400
Pottery Barn galvanized magazine racks $25 each
All Books
Softcover Childrens .25 Adult $1.00
Hardcover Childrens $1.00 Adult $3.00
Bookshelves $50 each
Glass topped side table $150
Stone topped side table $100
Rubbermaid Wheeled Bins for flour etc. $25 each
Stainless work table with shelf and side hooks $85
Coffee Presses (used) Large $4 Small $2
Beehouse Teapots (used) $3
Pottery Barn Ladder Shelf $75
Huge assortment of Dishes, Glasses, Cups Bowls, Cookware, Etc.
Decorative Items
Casio Cash Register $150
20% of all new retail
Metal Shelving units
Nova Cart baking molds
These are some of the items that will be on sale at the Artisan Cafe this Saturday, from noon to 4:00 PM, as the business prepares to go close.
Those of you out there who are into cooking may find some really great deals for your home kitchen in this sale, but don’t miss those books either. There are some good quality books in those shelves, and at a great price.
By now, following days of thaw and nights of refreezing, the snow has become much more crusty. Last week’s snow days, however, brought a soft, warm, clinging snow that frosted the entire gorge surrounding Taughannock Falls.
Wall Street executives have had their bailout and bonuses, but though the fiscal crisis in our state was caused by risky behavior by Wall Street, our schools aren’t getting a bailout. Our schools are getting budget cuts instead. The consequences for our community will be severe, if Governor David Paterson’s plan goes through. Our school district’s Superintendent, Paula Hurley, describes the problem as follows: “We’re in our budget process currently, and we’re looking at approximately a 5 percent reduction in aid from New York State… That will translate for us into reductions of staff, the use of some of our reserves, as well as an increase in our tax levy.”
This Saturday (March 6), there will be a public forum held in the auditorium of the Trumansburg High School from 10:00 AM until Noon. It’s a regional forum, so people from an area ranging from the South Seneca School District to Dryden will be attending. It’s an opportunity for people to speak out in protest of Paterson’s proposed budget cuts to the state education budget.
Either I’ve fallen down another rabbit hole, or all 3 Republicans running for Village offices, are to the left of the 3 Democrats, on the most important issue in front of the Board. John White(R) is running for Mayor against the incumbent Democratic Mayor, Marty Petrovic. Debbie Nottke(R) , incumbent trustee, and Matthew Taylor(R) are running for the two open trustee spots, against Deborah Watkin (D) and Blake Reid(D). I went to the Candidate Forum last weekend and put this question to the Democrats,
The news from Washington looks really bad for the majority of us that want a single payer health care system. It’s looking like we won’t even get a public option. I’ve been writing congressmen, and signing petitions, but I’m not very optimistic. So I turned to local politics, because I at least have a chance of being heard, but the actions of the Village Board on this issue are even worse than in Washington. We have a single payer EMS right now. If you begin ambulance billing you will risk lives, discourage volunteerism, raise insurance premiums and contribute to the obscene profits of insurance company CEO’s. Is there not one candidate here with the common sense, and empathy to take a principled stand against EMS privatization?
The answer from all three Democrats was no.
I just had a meeting with John White, the Republican candidate for mayor. He said that if he had to vote today on whether or not to implement the fee for service system, he would vote no. He said that he needs more information, and he didn’t think that all the aspects of this important change had been sufficiently studied. Marty Petrovic, has already voted in favor of moving forward towards implementation. Oddly, this puts the Republicans well to the left of the Democrats on this issue. John is not promising that his position will never change, but he is currently opposed to the proposed changes to our EMS. I didn’t think I was going to bother voting in March. I’m pleasantly surprised. It’s looking like I might vote a straight Republican ticket.
John has some first hand experience with ambulances as a patient who did not have health insurance at the time. The Trumansburg ambulance transported him to Cayuga Medical Center for emergency surgery. He ended up owing tens of thousands of dollars to the hospital, and anesthesiologists and surgeons etc. etc. It took him a long time to pay off that debt, but he at least didn’t have a bill from our EMS. What if he had had a high deductible policy? Would he have made that call, and incurred that debt? He understands how these things might affect some people, and it concerns him.
a couple hours later
Just got off the phone with Matthew Taylor. Matthew is a volunteer with the Fire Department and he sometimes drives the ambulance. His day job is director of facilities at Schuyler Hospital. Apparently all of the Republican candidates have more first hand experience with this issue of emergency medical care than any of the Democrats. Maybe that’s why all three are against ambulance privatization. Matthew believes that if the community feels that we are paying too much for the level of care we receive (and that’s a big if) then we ought to first look at increasing volunteerism and then decreasing paid staff. He believes that this is possible, and he should know, because unlike any of the other candidates, he is part of the volunteer corps. He, like John, said that if the vote were today, he would vote to leave it the way it is, and he would advocate for investigating other methods of saving money. It seems to me that it would make a lot of sense to elect Matthew Taylor and ask him to be the trustee whose task it is to oversee the Fire Company. Let’s let Christopher Thomas do something else for a while, and see if we can get a fresh perspective on this.
Debbie Nottke is the incumbent trustee. She is the retired head nurse of the Cayuga Medical Center Emergency Room. She was there when John White was brought in years ago. She was the sole dissenting vote when the Board voted a couple months ago to move forward with billing. She is taking the strongest anti billing stand. I had thought that she voted no, just to give the Town more time, since the new Supervisor and two Town Board members were in the audience that night, requesting more time. But she assures me now, that there is more to her opposition than that.
I’m suggesting that the Republicans are to the left of the Democrats in the sense that concern for the well being of the people is usually a left, or Democratic position. Nationally, you can usually count on the Republicans to side with the Corporations rather than the people, to a greater degree than the Democrats do. Perhaps the corrupting influence of corporate lobbyists doesn’t reach this deep into the grassroots. The 3 Republican candidates here in Trumansburg, seem more empathetic to the plight of the underinsured, than do the Democrats. It’s a topsy turvy world.
This is not a one issue election, but the ambulance issue is by far the most urgent. The impending attack of the gas drilling corporations is very important but all of the candidates seem equally opposed to that. I have advocated for much stronger action to stop them than the sitting Board is willing to take. Maybe this change could be for the better on that front as well.
I went to the candidate forum on Sunday. None of the Republicans showed up, but all of the Democrats did, but that’s about the only good thing I can say about them. All of them are in favor of ambulance privatization. Mayor Petrovic spent some time explaining to me why it wasn’t really privatization. He can call it whatever he wants. I call it privatization. If George Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security was called privatization (in spite of the fact that the government would still own the facilities and pay the bureaucrats) then getting the bulk of our funds from private for profit corporations, and hiring a profit making billing company, should also be called privatization.
But that’s just semantics. The important part is that if they do this it will risk lives, discourage volunteerism, increase insurance premiums, and contribute to the enormous wealth of insurance company CEO’s.
I’m not voting for anyone who will not take a position against ambulance privatization. So, unless by some miracle one of these Democrats sees the light, I cannot vote for them.
I just called Debbie Nottke, the Republican incumbent for trustee. She said very emphatically that she is opposed to this. She’s got my vote. She also seems willing to take a stronger position against the gas drilling corporations than the Democrats did. Marty Petrovic said that the board passed a resolution that said that they would not sell water to these corporations for use outside of the Village, but that it was not legally possible to refuse to sell to them for use within the Village. I don’t believe it. There is no way that we can refuse to sell millions of gallons of clean water to a corporation that intends to add toxic chemicals to it, and pump it down into holes they drill in our Village?! And we should just accept that?! You’ve got to be kidding me.
This resolution not to sell them water for use outside the Village passed 4 to 1 . Rordan Hart is the trustee that thinks it’s a good idea to facilitate the rape of the environment.
Our two younger children were born in Trumansburg – not in the hospital down the road, but actually in Trumansburg, upstairs in our own house. It was a relaxed, positive birthing experience, far and away superior to our experience with the birth of our older child in a hospital. Midwives help make home births possible, but regulations in New York state make home birth a difficult choice for families and professionals alike.
Yesterday afternoon, Free Our Midwives presented a family-friendly benefit concert right here in Trumansburg, at the Rongovian. The concert provided social and financial support to Birth Net of the Finger Lakes, a group that helps families as they seek out alternatives to birth in a highly regulatory medical setting.
The benefit concert is over, but the opportunity to help this organization’s work remains. You can donate financially, or through your grassroots activist efforts.
By Allen Carstensen, on February 27, 2010, 3:28 pm
Sunday, February 28, 4:00 pm at the Trumansburg Fire Hall
On Tuesday March 16, the Village of Trumansburg will hold an election for Trustees and Mayor. Please come out and hear what the candidates have to say. You will have the opportunity to ask questions. Make sure you know where the candidates stand on the issues that matter to you, and vote for those who will enact your agenda.
All Trustee and Mayoral candidates have been invited.
If you have any questions, e-mail us at community@BackToDemocracy.org
Recent Comments