The Altamont Enterprise

Friday 24 May

Laurel Dover Searle

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Pulling For History

img 7714-web The Enterprise — Michael Koff
Just like the old days: The restored grader is put to work during a demonstration at the Altamont Fair. It was made by Climax Road Machine in Marathon, N.Y., north of Binghamton, a factory that ran from 1887 to 1890. Andrew Tinning plans to display the horse-drawn grader in June at the Gas-Up in Gallupville, and in August again at the Altamont Fair.

img 7717-web The Enterprise — Michael Koff
Period piece: “Little Winner,” the antique road grader restored to its former glory by Andrew Tinning, looks right at home in front of the also restored village train station, now home to the Altamont Free Library. The grader will be at the station at least through April 9 when, from 10:30 a.m. to noon, Judith Wines will give a presentation called “Tours and Trains in Altamont.”

img 7712-web The Enterprise — Michael Koff
Rallying round the antique grader restored by Andrew Tinning, second from left, holding a whip, are, two grandsons of Casper Wagner, the grader’s original owner — Merlin E. Wagner at far left, and Bernard H. Wagner, at far right. The grader, which Tinning discovered, forgotten and neglected, on property behind his house on Dunnsville Road, was originally used to groom Guilderland’s roads before it was used for ditching at the Wagner farm. At center, is Steve Oliver, Guilderland’s current highway superintendent. Next to him is Judith Wines, the director of the Altamont Free Library, now housed in the village’s historic train station. The grader originally arrived in Altamont by train.

Guilderland

As Clerk Centi steps down, GOP ramps up

Details: Published on Monday, 20 May 2013 15:20

By Anne Hayden

centi-web — Photo from Rosemary Centi
The only Democratic clerk in the history of the town, Rosemary Centi is retiring at the end of her term, on Dec. 31. She has been Guilderland’s clerk for 13 years, and ran for six two-year terms unopposed. Matthew Nelligan, the chairman of the Guilderland Republican Party, hopes to get a Republican back in the position for 2014.GUILDERLAND — For the first time in a dozen years, the town’s Republican Party will run a full ticket in the fall election.

That will include a candidate for the position of town clerk — Rosemary Centi, the first Democratic clerk in the history of Guilderland — is retiring after 13 years. She ran unopposed in the past six elections.

“We are absolutely planning to run someone as clerk,” said Matthew Nelligan, the chairman of the Guilderland Republican Party. “There is no question about it.” He declined to name any of the GOP candidates.

Centi ran in a special election in 2000, to fill out the term of the prior clerk, Kathy Sickler. Sickler, a Republican, quit after claiming that the Democratic supervisor, Kenneth Runion, and the all-Democratic town board, were conspiring to edge her out, by taking some of her responsibilities and delegating them to other Democratic employees.

Centi served as town clerk in a Democrat-controlled town for eight years, before two Republicans — Mark Grimm and Warren Redlich — ousted two incumbent candidates for seats on the town board in 2008.

When the Republican victories were declared in 2008, on Election Night, Centi cried, and said that Grimm’s campaign had been “a little bit of truth, wrapped around a lie.” Grimm, who did not run for re-election to the board in 2012, recently announced his candidacy for town supervisor for 2014.

“Nothing in particular sparked my decision to retire,” said Centi this week, though she said she wants to be able to spend more time with her grandson.

“I just felt it was time,” said Centi, who will turn 60 this year. “That’s what I told our committee — it just felt right.”

Centi described the town clerk as “the hub of a wheel” and said that nearly everything in the town comes and goes through the clerk’s office.

“I think my biggest accomplishment is that I’ve carried myself with dignity and represented the people of Guilderland the way this office should represent them,” said Centi.

Her favorite parts of the job, she said, have been the everyday meet-and-greets with members of the community, as well as the group of women with which she has worked.

A bird in the hand helps gauge reclaimed Pine Bush

Details: Published on Friday, 17 May 2013 20:54

By Melissa Hale-Spencer

pict0028-web The Enterprise — Melissa Hale-Spencer
Banded: Neil Gifford, conservation director for the Pine Bush Preserve, gently holds a robin in his left hand as he attaches a band to its leg. The robin was caught Tuesday morning on land the preserve is reclaiming. Data on the robin was recorded and will become part of a record of re-emerging life on the reclaimed land.GUILDERLAND — A mountain of garbage formed the backdrop Tuesday as clusters of eager students learned how to gauge life returning to a once-barren sandy plain. The land is being reclaimed by the Albany Pine Bush Preserve.

Farnsworth Middle School students, taught by Alan Fiero, who for 15 years has developed hands-on science projects in the Pine Bush, are in the vanguard

“It’s a pilot project. We hope to do it with other groups,” said Sara Poggi, an environmental educator. “The data will be useful for us.”

As the state legislature over the years has allowed the expansion of the Albany landfill, used by many local municipalities, the plan has been to eventually cap the filled sections and return the land to a state similar to the adjoining Pine Bush.

But how?

Fiero’s students, over the course of the next few years, will help answer that question.

Working with the preserve commission, Fiero secured a $5,000 grant from the Bender Scientific Fund that paid for research equipment, including binoculars, books for identifying wildlife, tools to capture invertebrates, and chemicals to analyze water.

In an era when, Fiero noted, “Grants are drying up,” he’s pleased to have the equipment and hopes to continue the monitoring in future years when most of the remaining cost will be for transportation. On Tuesday, a school bus took the class to the reclaimed land, off of Washington Avenue Extension, wending its way down a long, sandy road.

Whether the capped dumping grounds can be restored remains to be seen, Fiero said. “It will be the biggest dune in the area,” he noted.

Fiero’s four classes of seventh-graders will return three or four times a year to work with preserve staff in monitoring the returning birds and aquatic life as well as literally testing the waters and capturing photographic images of the evolving terrain.

The story of ‘polio pioneers’ propels Visker to National History Day Contest

Details: Published on Friday, 10 May 2013 20:16

By Melissa Hale-Spencer

pict0004-web The Enterprise— Melissa Hale-Spencer
“Crusading Chemist”: Katherine Wallace, an eighth-grader at Farnsworth Middle School, points to a 1906 news article that exemplifies the opposition Harvey Wiley faced from food companies as he pushed for passage of the country’s first Pure Food and Drug Act. The story from The Spokane Press is headlined “Adulterated Food Trust Throws Bricks.” Wallace presented her prize-winning History Day project to the Guilderland School Board on Tuesday.GUILDERLAND — Pride shone bright at Tuesday’s school board meeting.

The board started by admiring the work of several students who had placed in the regional History Day competition, then heard that Guilderland High School was ranked 511th among the 2,000 best public high schools in America by Newsweek and The Daily Beast; and finally learned that the state’s recently released School Report Card data, based on test results from last year, shows that Guilderland has met all the progress requirements.

Katherine Wallace, an eighth-grader at Farnsworth Middle School, was intrigued when she read The Jungle by muckraker Upton Sinclair. As a reporter at the turn of the last century for the socialist newspaper, Appeal to Reason, Sinclair surreptitiously worked in Chicago meatpacking plants, gathering information for his novel on the life of an immigrant family trapped by poverty.

“As I began researching, I kept coming across Harvey Wiley’s name,” said Wallace, who likes science. “I found his story to be extremely interesting.”

This led to her exhibit on “The Forgotten Father of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.”

Life Savers for Pets Faced with Fire

Details: Published on Monday, 13 May 2013 20:35

img 8072-web The Enterprise — Michael Koff
The right fit: First responders will administer oxygen to a pet when there is fire or health-related call by using one of three different-sized masks. Here, a pet mask, right, which was donated on Sunday afternoon to Westmere Fire Department and North Bethlehem Fire Department, sits next to a firefighters’ mask that Westmere volunteers had previously used to save pets.

img 8066-web The Enterprise — Michael Koff
Thinking about the pets: After a recent house fire in Westmere where three dogs were rescued, both the North Bethlehem and Westmere fire departments will be carrying oxygen masks to fit pets, donated by Invisible Fence. Here, Westmere Fire Department Chief David Szary, right, holding his puppy, Gotti, and North Bethlehem Assistant Chief Paul Furino accept the donations from Kim Bellizzi of Invisible Fence of the Tri-Cities in Hudson Valley.