by Kieron Kramer
The focus was on youth at the joint meeting of the Petersburgh and Berlin Town Boards, held in the Petersburgh Town Hall on Monday, February 22, to discuss how the sharing of programs would benefit both towns. Petersburgh Town Supervisor Peter Schaaphok and Petersburgh Board Members Amy Manchester, Bill Seel and Dick Snyder were present as were Berlin Town Supervisor Rob Jaeger and Berlin Board Members Sheila Hewitt, Carl Greene and Richard von Schilgen. Petersburgh Town Clerk Callie Crisp took the minutes of the meeting. After finding that they were philosophically and pragmatically on the same page regarding the benefits of working together to provide quality programs and activities for the youth of both towns, the group decided to form an ad hoc committee consisting of Bill Seel, Sheila Hewitt, Cindi Mars, Director of the Petersburgh Youth Programs, and Tammy Osterhout, Director of the Berlin Youth Commission. Of course Mars and Osterhout, neither of whom were at the meeting, would need to agree to participate. If they do, this committee will meet to iron out the practical matters that will arise from coordinating the two programs.
The decision to share youth programs is prompted not only by the recent TRACS meeting where it was revealed that the rate of substance abuse by students in the Berlin School District is higher than the rates in surrounding districts but also for economic reasons. Both Schaaphok and Jaeger have been in touch with Pierce Hoyt of the County Youth Services who informed them that Stephentown had declined to apply for County funds for their youth program, freeing up $1,240 for use by Berlin and Petersburgh. Currently the County funding for the Petersburgh program is $1,486, and for the Berlin program it’s $1,052, according to Schaaphok. With the higher County funding and with the amounts in the Berlin and Petersburgh budgets for youth programs, there is close to $20,000 that can be spent on youth activities. He said that some of this money would be used to support the running of the Petersburgh Veterans Memorial Community Center (PVMCC), where many of the activities would take place. At present the Berlin youth group uses the Watipi building which can only accommodate 50 people and because the space is shared by the Berlin Seniors Club and others some friction is created. The PVMCC is a much larger facility which at present hosts well attended Teen Nights with music and games on various Fridays. Also, according to Sheila Hewitt, Berlin’s program is not eligible for County funding because the educational content doesn’t meet the County requirements which are much higher than they used to be. “We need to restructure our [Berlin’s] youth programs to get the funding,” she said.
Hoyt also informed both Town Supervisors that their swim programs could use Dyken Pond or Grafton Lakes State Park. This is good for GLSP because it is part of the State Park system that has been under the budget cutting knife recently. Swimming at either park would be significantly cheaper than renting the Town of Hoosick pool. Sharing transportation would reduce costs, but providing a certified swim director and lifeguards is an additional expense.
Presumably, the committee of Mars, Osterhout, Seel and Hewitt will address practical issues of transportation costs, staffing and scheduling. They will have to schedule around the Berlin Central School summer programs that pull students away from the Town activities. They will have to design programs that meet the County’s requirements for programs with an educational component. Bill Seel thought that Mars would be willing to oversee the program and do the paperwork, but that remains to be seen. Osterhout’s knowledge of the needs of Berlin’s youth will be critical. She recently emailed Jaeger expressing her commitment to the Berlin Youth Commission. Jaeger noted that New Lebanon has a very successful youth program that gets private grants to help fund its activities. He suggested that Petersburgh and Berlin could cooperate in finding and applying for private grant money for the youth program.
There is no better starting point to revitalize the cooperation between Petersburgh and Berlin than serving the area youth. The towns already share the transfer station, administered by Berlin and used by Petersburgh residents as well, to the great benefit of both. But providing activities for both communities’ youth is crucial at this time and can be fun, too. Next the towns might turn their attention to sharing Senior Club resources. In jest Schaaphok quoted “an old lady in Berlin” who told him, “Nothing good came out of Petersburgh.” However, the seniors from both towns attend meals and go on trips together already.
Fences Don’t Make Good Neighbors
Berlin Board Member Richard von Schilgen asked, “Where did all these fences come from? When I grew up at Peter’s [Schaaphok’s] house we had a Fourth of July parade in Grafton, then in Berlin, then in Petersburgh.” Most people don’t know where the town lines are anyway, he added. Jaeger said that the sign on Plank Road for the Berlin town line, erected by the County, is 300 feet east of the actual line. Schaaphok said, “The guy who Petersburgh is named after lived in Berlin although it wasn’t Berlin then.” Well, it seemed at this meeting that both town boards are interested in tearing down those fences. If sharing the youth program works well, the boards will look at other ways of combining resources.
A Different Point Of View
Heinz Noeding, who at one point described himself as “a banker from the city” and who has recently built a house in Petersburgh, made some suggestions about how the towns “in the valley” could work together. He suggested that they cooperate on economic development and said that they were too passive in this respect. One idea he had was that towns in the valley could encourage the development of a wind farm. Schaaphok replied that the residents of the valley are very protective of their “view shed” along the Taconic ridge. (View Shed – another example of modern jargon that sounds like an oxymoron.) What Noeding doesn’t know is that about six years ago Berlin would not allow even a temporary wind tower on the ridge as part of an academic study by Williams College. And Jaeger pointed out that the valley has gotten cell phone coverage only very recently.
Noeding suggested that the towns in the valley synchronize their zoning and code enforcement. The building inspectors in the valley enforce the International Building Code and the NYS Property and Maintenance Code. Regarding zoning, Schaaphok replied that of the towns in the valley only Petersburgh and Grafton have no zoning regulations and that Noeding should have been present at the public hearings when the profound animosity by residents against zoning was expressed. Noeding seemed to think that the violent opposition to zoning was an exaggeration, but he wasn’t at the Grafton hearing on zoning in the 1995 when an ailing, elderly man showed up at the hearing with his oxygen tank on a cart and tubes in his nose to speak passionately, between gasps, of the evil of zoning. One could have added that Berlin’s zoning regulations were written in 1988 and many attempts to rewrite them and bring them up to date have failed.
When Schaaphok reported that the Petersburgh website is up and running and that a summary of the Town’s regulations is on it, Noeding urged that entire laws not just their summaries be on the website. He asked why the building codes weren’t being enforced in Petersburgh and focussed particularly on the garage across Rt. 2 and slightly east of the Town Hall which looks like it is sliding down the hill into the Little Hoosic River. Schaaphok replied that the governing legal authority is the NYS Property and Maintenance Code which can be enforced by the Town, but he sees the avid enforcement of it as opening a Pandora’s Box that will harm many of the residents in Town. Noeding maintained that the code standards should be enforced. “Maybe you folks don’t care about your property owners,” he said. Petersburgh Board Member Amy Manchester replied, “We care about people in town, and we have lots of seniors on fixed incomes.”
At the core of Noeding’s suggestions is the idea that zoning and code enforcement will encourage investment and raise property values and increase the tax base. He is absolutely right in the abstract – that is how communities grow, but the reality of the valley is quite different. It seems that he sees his property primarily as an investment whereas most people in the valley see their property as a home, perhaps passed down through generations and to be passed down to future generations. At one point Noeding said that he had spent money improving his property. “It seems like some people who were born and will die here don’t care about anybody who has moved in,” he said. To which Manchester replied, “They mind their own business.” What outsiders learn is that families who moved into the valley 25 years ago are still considered newcomers.
The irony of this lengthy exchange was that Noeding said he had moved to Petersburgh because of its rural nature which reminded him of his youth growing up in a rural area of Oklahoma. In the decades since he was a youth in Oklahoma the quality of life in Petersburgh and Berlin hasn’t changed all that much, which is why he finds it reminiscent of his youth. But he wants it to change. And so we all reside in the present, yearning for the past, dreaming of the future.