Transcript:

00:00 Hello, this is Melissa, Hale-Spencer, the editor of the Altamont Enterprise and we are doing the second year of what has become a tradition at the enterprise. We have the top experts gathered at the table, the top experts in local news and they are of course enterprise reporters and we're going to be taking a Janus faced look where we are looking both backwards at the year that is closing out 2018 and maybe a hint from the expertise around the table of what might be unfolding in our towns. So just to introduce our experts, we have Elizabeth Floyd Mair who lives in Guilderland group up in Guilderland lives, breathes, eats Guilderland, and covers guilderland. We have h Rose Schneider who takes on the Herculean task of covering all four Helder Berg, hilltowns, Berne, Knox, western low and rents surveil. And finally we have shawn will, Karen, who covers the town of new Scotland, the villages of ultimate and Borys Ville, and somehow manages to find time to do big, broad in depth look at regional issues as well. So what we're gonna do is just start off, I went through our stack of papers and picked out some of the main headlines month by month, but we're a free flowing group. We might just get off and talking about reporters, favorite stories for the years or what they most cared about in their coverage. But just to start with the new year, if you can remember back to January, we had elizabeth writing about huddles that had formed locally. Can you tell us what huddles were and why? They were news

01:57 out of the women's March, um, followed the election of Donald trump and they were, um, they are a way for small various sizes but very local groups to get together and try to work in a practical way on issues that, um, you know, keep alive the goals of, you know, helping women's equality and other issues that um, in some cases, you know, the current administration doesn't, you know, things like climate climate change and things that the administration doesn't believe are real.

02:42 So I think that seems part of a trend we've seen across our towns of local people getting very interested since trump was elected in national issues that perhaps had been on the sidelines before. So I'm, Sean had a story that first of the year

03:00 on a trend that we kind of noticed but haven't looked at and that's the burgeoning tech ed field students who are choosing to study in a different way. Can you tell us what you found out about those programs? Are some of the things that were most interesting? Um, I remember the phrase you came up with, one of the people had was the some college problem. What is that?

03:28 So that was the, I took a ride over to capitol region both and spent a few hours with the students going around to different classrooms and taking a look at what they're doing. Um, I was speaking with the administration who talked about the problem of some college where almost a third to maybe even more of kids who end up in college only go for a few years and they come up with only some college and no real skills. And huge debts, huge debts, the selling point of the capital region, Bossi cte school was that kids will learn a trade or a skill and then go onto either work or college and what they stressed at Capitol region, both cs was that an overwhelming majority of graduates go onto some kind of postsecondary education. So that info check nowadays is no longer a refuge for burnouts and kids are learning serious skills that they're taking with them to college so they can have another added skill.

05:00 Yeah. We're seeing that in all of our schools. It's, um, it's a really stern trend at rose in January. Had just a charming story on Elizabeth Gary, can you tell us who she is and why you wrote about her? Um, well, I'm trying to think back to it honestly. And remember, I'm Elizabeth. Gary was even appointed as a judge in New York state and she's now the presiding judge for the appellate division, third district. But she grew up. She grew up in the town of burn. And um, yeah, it still has. She now lives in western New York, but she still has quite a connection there in to the hilltown. She owns property in, I believe in Bern and people still know her as Harry Gary's daughter. Um, so it was, it was a pleasant conversation

05:58 with her. She just came across such a strong person, but yet such a humble person. Well, moving into February, Elizabeth had the start of what turned into a year long and it's still going strong. Look at development in Guilderland. She wrote about two of the six Guilderland golf courses closing and just tell us a little about the whole arc of your year, Elizabeth, when it comes to. So in February, I believe, had the arrest of Richard Sherwood, which started another huge story continues.

06:34 Um, but um, yeah, the development, you have several golf courses. The smaller ones in the area closed or a will work. So the one over here on her road by the transfer station that closed and the other one was preparing to close hiawatha trails was preparing. Those were both smaller golf course smaller than the town owned golf course. And Golf, golfing is changing, the demographics are changing and people are getting older than young people are not taking it up. So people were finding that they didn't have a lot of traffic. Um, and the person who owns hiawatha trills, um, Jeffrey, I think his name is Jeffrey Jeffrey Pianos. Um, he, uh, he says that the best solution, the best, the best thing that could happen to his land is that, um, uh, this proposed facility of senior, senior independent living apartments that should come in there which would allow 25 or so acres of the property to be dedicated over to the town for public use. Um, so yeah, that kind of introduced, that was one of the first projects that started this, you know, that that was the, at the forefront of this wave of apartment projects that came in and that is still going on. We seem to be reporting on a new one every week.

08:01 Yes, you do. And you're breaking most of those stories. And it led, it spawned the, started a citizens group, which is the first one we'd had since the escape protests. Um, what, tell us a little about the citizens group they came out of that. Well, it's impressive. Um,

08:20 it's a very impressive group of people from all different walks of life that are basically that live around the hamlet of Guilderland, around presidential state's campus club. You know, there are doctors, lawyers, judges, you know, teachers, people who knit very, very well who knew throughout the meetings. Um, there are just a real wide array of interesting people there and I'm speaking up at every meeting to applause from one another and I'm trying to suggest that the town should take a look at its own policies about development and perhaps slow down the pace of approving projects and that if, um, if there is no way for the town to slow it down, if the town's zoning code makes it so that the town needs to approve every project that comes along that suits it. Zoning code, know that, that fits it. Zoning code, the Navy, the zoning code should be changed. I think one of the big problems is that the zoning code allows for independent living residential projects. And so what, what the, what this group, the building citizens for responsible growth has learned to, we know twits dismay is that one of these projects, you know, I'm a senior living facility unit with 200 departments can basically be build in any residential neighborhood in Guilderland on any street, you know, so nothing is safe from one of these things.

09:53 Right? The core idea behind that was to let people age in their own neighborhoods, but I see that it's become a problem. You've tallied up how many new apartments who imposes? We're on, we wrote about apartment

10:07 in general in September there were 1200 and since then if the number has gone up to over 1600 apartments. So that's if you count together, apartments, senior apartments and all that. Everything together.

10:21 Quite an explosion. Another topic that first was broached in our paper in February and has been coming up, bubbling to the surface in many different ways. Both roles and Sean had stories that had to do with the opioid crisis. Rose had written about a challenge that the Albany County executive Daniel Mccoy had with big Pharma. And Sean took a trip to the Albany County jail at the time that Tonko, this is congressman Paul Tonko, um, had introduced a bill that was meant to help addicts in prison and actually talk to one of the inmates, which was quite a stunning interview. Do either of you have thoughts either about those particular stories or the opioid crisis in general? Well,

11:15 going to Albany County, jealous and experiencing itself. I've never brought home by the cops once when I was a teenager. So I've never had any real, any real experience with it. But it was really interesting and really seems like Albany County is kind of on top of programs like addiction and I know that they have a pretty good. I'm like forget the other one right now. But with the sharps program, they help, you know, in May to addiction to help them get clean. And then I know if I remember correctly, what Congressman Tom goes, bill would do, would extend a, an inmate's ability to receive, um, health benefits prior to exiting prison so that they will not have that window or lag in between where they can go out, get in trouble and start using again.

12:27 Do you want to comment a little on it wasn't just recoil, but it kind of movement to hold the drug companies responsible for the opioid crisis? Yeah, it was.

12:41 I think possibly I'd have to look it up, but I think it was possibly in the hundreds of different plaintiffs going against the drug companies and looking at the legal documents for it. It was the things that they were, you know, I don't to, if I want to say legend, you know, that was in the documents against the pharmaceutical companies was some of the stuff was pretty, if I remember, it was pretty shocking. Um, the way that they had been pushing for doctors to prescribe, um, you know, opiates back in the, I believe it was the two thousands. And it was interesting though to look at it from like this local's perspective of seeing like the county executive going to, I don't know if it was Washington was Ohio because it was an Ohio based judge and looking up like a news from the Ohio newspapers to find out what was going on there. Um, so that was a very interesting look at how all these different local entities were coming together nationally. So that was a very interesting look.

14:03 And then moving into march, while you're still at the microphone, um, you had, we devoted our whole front page. Joe Is such a fascinating story. It centered on a single veteran who had hoarded ammunition and guns, but um, you just did a stunning portrait of how his wife cope with it and problems in the system for getting help with mental health issues. Can you just kind of refresh our listeners to do the things you discovered in doing that?

14:42 Um, I don't know if we want to talk about the process of sort of developing the relationship with talking to the wife. No,

14:52 I think just about the things you discovered that were interesting for those of us in the public, the weren't aware, I certainly wasn't, have you think of the Va is being able to handle veterans problems and it really forced the wife to have her husband arrested in order to try to get the help that she felt and seemed was very much needed.

15:20 It was interesting that she was in an engineer and she, I remember talking to her and saying to him like, you seem very like already very knowledgeable about something that's, you know, in the psych, psychological of this in the medical field. And she's like, well, you know, it's what I do. She's like, I do my research, but she had to go and of find this stuff out for herself and find information out on her own. And it was just interesting that the resources for them wasn't there. And I think it was also interesting though. I don't know that I'm trying to word it, but basically it was interesting to hear. I don't know how to put it. Um, you know, he, he needed help and you know, basically didn't know how to ask for it and she didn't know how to get him to understand he needed, you know, you did that help part of the sickness, part of the psychological problems, but it was, but it was also like the stigma around, and I think I remember her saying that people told her like, you should just leave him, why do you, you know, if I'm remembering correctly.

16:39 Um, and that the stigma was there for mental illness and I think it's starting to go away. I think with the, in luckily in the age of the Internet where people are more in some ways can be a little bit more intimate about mental illness. That sort of thing is starting to go away. But it's still, it's still there. People don't want when

17:05 your story would happen, but making it, people think of it the way they do a physical and it is not something that's your guilt or shame, but something that needs to be cured. So Elizabeth started another chain that lasted all here in March and that was the Dr Krantz, which if you could just briefly tell us a bit about why that became such a. I wrote several editorials on it. You did a number of stories, just tell us a little about that. So the house was one of the, I guess, few tangible connections to the civil war that we have in the, in the east coast, in new and in

17:50 this area, New York state. Um, so it's, um, you know, it dates back, I forget when, but from civil war soldiers, people on their way to the civil war or coming back or within some failed about which, which it is, but I'm being treated by Dr. crowns there. And he was out to my first doctor, right. And the house was bought 10 years ago by the town and the village for the price of the back taxes on it, $40,000 or so. And um, it has been, um, there were great hopes for it in the beginning. And then in the last number of years it's been pretty much ignored and neglected. And hold a big hole is opened up in the roof and it's been just exposed to the elements for years now as the talent of the village try to figure out what if anything they should do to fix it and how much it would cost and whether people will agree to pay for that. Um, so there's been a lot of, a lot of, um, discussion and a lot of back and forth and they've put it up for sale and there was one person that was maybe going to buy it and that kind of. There was one citizens group that was thinking about buying it. Yes. A citizens group,

19:02 historic altima and plants to keep going into the future to help with preserving history. Then you wrote a story about the man that they had counted on a J. Cougar white cloud being all harnessed in and putting the tire, buying the house. When yellow jacket stung him and he had a way today and in that time they were told they could proceed the, that they were up on the roof and said, you can't be up on the roof and throw them out. It kept snowing and raining and snowing and there may now be

19:35 someone who's interested in taking over this

19:38 and we will be following up on also that month's Sean started a journey that no one else was on and no other media I had picked up. It had to do with Lawrenceville basketball coach and in March Mr Barron sued the school district to be reinstated. So can you just tell us a little about the arc of that story and where we might be in the future? Their coach Robert,

20:05 it had been the coach of the vorhees avail varsity girls basketball team for about 10 years. He started off with a lot of success. I think you won a state championship. He had quite a few middling years. Um, and I think he kind of got a little bit better at the end. He was known as a stern coach that was hard on his players. He wanted the best from them. He, he himself, you know, he expected it. He didn't, he would give them, you know, he would give them his all if they would give him, if they would give them his. There is, excuse me, um, she, in November of 2017 on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving at a planning, I had a school board meeting at seven in the morning. He submitted his resignation. Um, we found out about it because we've got anonymous phone call from a parent who told us that something may have happened with a player.

21:11 And when we confronted the superintendent, Brian Hunt, he told us that that situation had happened. He was investigating it, which led to that Tuesday meeting where he resigned fast forward to March. He sued the school for a number of different things, um, which kind of grew with every success, every file filing. Um, but he wanted his job back. He was suing for his reputation. He's, I'm well known in the community and he felt that he, what people were talking about, what he may have been accused of was not so great in the court filings. It came out that he had tried to set up practice for the week after Thanksgiving or Christmas and one of his star players said that she couldn't make it at the last minute. He said something to the effect of, if I had a gun, I'd shoot you to, which he actually in the deposition said that he said he meant it in jest, but the player took it a different way and went to her mother I believe was a teacher in the school and that started the whole ball rolling where he got fired and this all came out in the court documents.

22:48 He also made the claim and the deposition at the same girl was bullying other people which led to a different investigation which led nowhere and as of July there were no other court filings and a new coach has taken over subsequent to the coach who took over for coach Barron's. So they are on their third coach in two seasons.

23:23 Thank you. And Sean will continue to follow that story. Rose in April had a story that fit any year and it was about conversion therapy, which is something that I was completely unfamiliar even existed. Can you tell us a bit about the viewpoints that you gathered on that and what the county

23:46 ended up doing? Yeah. Um, well I was thinking about this because I just checked on my phone a bit and I know not to backtrack, but the first question that you had with me about Elizabeth Gary, um, I realized I kind of skimmed over it. And what was the other interesting thing about herself and this is sort of relevant, is that she was the, I think in New York state. I'm going to look at it again. I'm the first openly lesbian presiding justice in the state, which she had said in the past that her identity shouldn't be a defining factor and a judge. But I think when I spoke to her later on, she said it is still his historic, um, which I guess leads into the next thing about conversion therapy, which is when I was skimming the agenda for, um, the Albany county legislature. And I saw this item that said, um, and basically a proposal to create a law that would ban conversion therapy for minors in Albany County.

24:55 And I believe I brought that forth, you know, to you. And we were both thought this. It's 2018 in a relatively progressive county. Where on Earth would conversion therapy, you know, fit into fit in here where you know, where would exist. Do you want me to define what conversion therapy is? Okay. So conversion therapy is essentially, um, and you know, many, many psychological associations don't consider this therapy. They denounce it, but it's basically in an effort to change someone's sexuality. Someone's sexual orientation or gender identity, um, can be done through some kind of sort of like a religious entity or it can be done through therapy. Um, there, I believe I'm a, I'm my recollection recollection of this is fuzzy, but you know, there's some pretty horrible ways people have done in the past or trying to get someone to change their, um, sexual orientation or gender identity in it.

26:15 It's been deepened. But, um, and you talked to someone who had been. Yeah, well that was interesting as I was trying to find something that I was using different search terms to try to find, you know, because there's different things that, that's code for conversion therapy. Notes like searching the Internet, trying to find it. Um, and I searched just Albany conversion therapy and I found that a former. We've councilman, I'm coming councilman in Albany. I'm judd crasher. Grew up in burn and he was no longer a minor. He was 18, but he was still in high school. He had been approached by two people who found out that he had recently recently come out as gay and they, um, you know, we're told him that they wanted him to consider going through this conversion therapy and he, I spoke to Mr Thrasher and you know, he went over basically this happening and I, I don't believe he's particularly, he's not very old.

27:23 Um, I'm not quite sure how old he is, but I don't believe it was that long ago that this occurred. Um, and the other kind of stunning thing I'm related to this is I was putting out calls to different places and one call that I put out, two was an organization called courage international. And courage international isn't, it doesn't, it's not conversion therapy, but it's basically a support group for people abstaining from having same sex, same sex relationships. Um, and someone actually called me Wednesday night before we were going to publish, I remember because I was waiting to get food. I'm with my boyfriend and we, um, I basically left behind, um, which it wasn't too happy about and you know, basically talk to this guy in my car. I'm like with my boyfriend, drive me home and then sitting down and continuing to talk to him for, I must have, must have been over an hour about his, you know, basically his viewpoint, which is that he, um, you know, he said that he hadn't gone through conversion therapy himself, but he knew people who had and he was in favor of it.

28:43 Um, and it was a, it was a very, very interesting conversation to have. I'll say I'll put it that way. Um, and they did ultimately in the Albany county legislature passed this law to ban conversion therapy and it just for minors, for children. Um, so it was just interesting to find that even in a place where you, you think that this doesn't exist anymore. There are people who not too long ago thought that it would be better to, um, um, you know, tell a teenager that he should try to find ways to not be gay or you know, someone who is gay but feels that is

29:42 wrong and that they should abstain from that, you know, it's still, it still exists and it's still out there. So it was fascinating. It was an interesting thing. Google's and Sean, the next month did another look at a county deal and this was about paid sick leave were in typical John Passion. He said it in a context of larger issues. Do you, can you just recall a little about, um, the, the paid sick leave.

30:12 The county was trying to require companies that worked in the county to offer paid sick leave to their workers. The reports I divide, the county said that somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of workers in Albany County did not have access to paid sick leave. It became a real issue last year because the flu epidemic was the worst in decades. Um, they basically came down to labor versus capital. The businesses in the area as well as the local non for profits, chemo against the paid sick leave, saying that it was going to put them in the red and that they couldn't afford all of this extra money for these workers to help them stay healthy. Workers made the argument that no, it actually helps us because we get to stay home. Um, somewhere between, I want to say 18 and 30. Municipalities and states have instituted their own paid sick leave laws and study after study have shown that there is no effect on business work, growing profit when you offer a few extra days of paid sick leave. Um, but I don't even know where it went from.

32:04 Here's the thing. Our time is almost up and we're not even halfway through the year, but that's because our reporters, as you can see, do depth and they do intelligent, thoughtful analysis. But I'd like to conclude because I know Elizabeth said she had a favorite story she wanted to talk about. I don't know if rose in Sean do or not, but if you do, great. And if not, we'll just hear from Elizabeth because lots of the stories that mean the most to us as reporters and sometimes to the community aren't the ones with the big headlines on the front page. There are things that we come across. I'm

32:40 just human being to human being. So two favorite stories this year that will sort of, you know, the obscurity and they weren't like, you know, have great import to large numbers of people. But, um, one was, um, they were smaller stories, but one was, um, a story about the two Chen brothers who were killed in that quadruple homicide a few years ago on Western avenue. And it was, uh, their parents were killed with the parents were killed with them. Um, and uh, it was a Chinese family living in Guilderland. And, um, there was a teacher at elementary school who had one of the brothers in his class for two years for. He was in the second year of the same teachers, you know, having the same teacher again for the, for the next grade. And so he, the boy was killed, um, at that time. And the teacher did a lot of different things with his students to remember the boy and um, talked to the teacher and um, learned a lot of the things that the children had done in honor of the boy that was killed and learned a lot about the two boys that were killed and just how much the teacher loved him, how much he loved his students who was killed.

33:54 Um, so that sort of I liked, I mean, it sounds awful, but I mean it was moving to me to talk to that teacher and to learn about those boys who we didn't know anything about before. It was only for all of us and they loved gardening and goals. And, um, anyway, then the other story that I enjoyed doing was sort of about, it was our home and garden section and it was um, it was a story that came to us because a person had called us saying that he had had things stolen from his room at the grand in Guilderland Center. So we started to look into it and found out some, you know, that was a little small, tiny part of the story, but it became a story about what it's like for someone who's a massive collector of items to have to compress their life into half a room at a nursing home.

34:48 And um, he was really a character who loves Johnny Cash and um, and stars, country stars in general had met lots of them and recounted over and over the times he had met them and I'm just had so much memorabilia, paraphernalia having to do with, with stars and Country Western music. Anyway. Um, I had stopped over there today, coincidentally to try to give him some chocolates because, um, you know, I just really felt for him that he, um, is there just by himself, doesn't really have too much family that's using contact with. Then I learned that he had died just three weeks after that story ran so well. So for writing and Elizabeth, because now we can have that to remember him. I think he said his obituary was just

35:38 three lines, which are nice to have that trail services. He was a character. Memorable. So rose, did you have a favorite story you wanted to share? I think the most memorable one, and maybe this is just because it is more recent than the others, is um, I guess the two most recent stories, um, both centered around agriculture and first being the story about the dairy farmer who had you give up, you know, running a dairy farm. And actually the thing I, one of the things I like about it is because, um, it kind of came together very organically. Elizabeth, you actually showed me the facebook posts and um, that the um, and the facebook post was made by the daughter of the dairy farmer who was the subject of the story and it was a very angry, heartfelt post. I'm basically asking people why, you know, why they failed dairy, the dairy farm wife, you know, why aren't people buying more low, you know, buying locally more often.

36:55 Um, and it was all, it was also centered around this, um, family farm day that was happening. Like, I don't know, it must have been like a few miles of. It was, it was very close by, like up the road that all of these politicians were posing at this event. I'm at a kind of thriving beef farm and she knew she was also saying, here are these politicians that have also failed us and you know, my dad, you know, I'm never going to be able to, you know, wake up to the smell of like, you know, manure or on a or, you know, here the cows.

37:32 And basically I went from there to talking to her father and, you know, looking at that kind of, I guess on an emotional level as well of um, you know, having to move on from working as a, as a dairy farmer, all your, all your life as well as the daughter. Kind of sort of like looking back as her, of her life growing up on a farm. Her Dad always being like this, um, you know, seeing is identity identity. And it was interesting to me because she was very, I think he was very close in age to me and I don't know, it was almost like, I don't know, to me, I was like coming into age and wait for her and we went to the farm. You took pictures. But also I'm looking at it and on broad scale of why, because I had kept it.

38:23 I kept, I kept hearing about it. Um, you know, I was covering some local elections before and I kept hearing issues about dairy farmers and, you know, they're suffering what, what should we do to help them. And so I started looking at it on April, on scale of, you know, basic of basically why are, why is milk wines, dairy, not making a lot of money anymore. Um, and essentially it's that we have too much of it. There's huge operations that are producing lots and lots of milk and dairy products. Um, countries around the world aren't necessarily taking our products any more at the time. There was the trade deal going on with Nafta and China. And um, that was also central to that as well. Especially with um, Canada and when I spoke to people in the state level, the answer's kind of, we're kind of unsatisfying.

39:25 Tests were mediocre. I mean they were talking about branding, local products, that sort of thing. And I remember asking, you know, what if we had something that I'm forgetting what the actual name of it is, but you know, that would limit the amount of milk that a farmer could produce and he said farmers don't want that. And I went to the farm and I spoke to the farm and he kind of just laughed. And he's like, yeah, the big farmers don't want that, you know, not someone like me. Like I think that would, you know, he said he thought that would help and I thought it was interesting. Yeah. So that was interesting as well as um, and I'll just mention this quickly as well. Last year I did on the invasive, I'm too invasive plants that are um, sort of devastating local farmers, which are the spotted knapweed and the wild poisonous parsnip. And the spotted knapweed is problematic because it is just spread so quickly and you know, basically chokes out crops like hey, and the poison is personal because it just gives sort of devastating burns if you come in contact with it. So. Oh, it up there because I realize we're kind of running.

40:36 Yeah, short on time was also a powerful story because they had local farmers that were hurt by this larger issue. And again, no satisfying answers. So we'll keep, keep at it and hope they come up with some answers. So Sean, you're going to close us out. Our year end or two favorites. Actually,

40:58 one was the story of seven year old Ben Long Gail, who heard of through Maddie's mark. I'm a not for profit, who read, who gives a local kids wishes. He now is seven years old and had survived a rare form of cancer as well as to who will liver transplants. Um, he'd had his first one I think within a few weeks of being born. And then at three years old had cancer. The cancer was so bad that it destroyed his transplanted liver. And he spent months, I believe, at Boston Children's hospital. He's totally fine now, but it was just sitting there watching your child who,

41:54 who

41:57 was next at death's door for years, just not a care in the world, was just one of the most moving things to everyone

42:08 when you took great pictures of him in this little tree house and I remember you wrote, he was like in an older man because he's wish he wasn't to go. I don't know where kids want to go to Disneyland. Maybe it's wish was to have a back yard and it was. It was just a really moving story. And then my other favorite was

42:31 mm,

42:33 recently not that recently on the traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall, came through Guilderland towers on the park and I got to talk with a veteran Ed Zoo cray for a number of hours and he did not want to not answer one of my questions and I would ask. I started to ask you since you were letting me. I started asking more and more questions, tough questions, and he was more than willing to answer them on a therapy session. What he answered the questions that a lot of people wouldn't answer and he was just one of the best people I've ever met. Wow.

43:21 Well thank you. Our three intrepid recorders and we look forward to our readers and our listeners tuning in for 2019 and we'll be back at the end of the year to tell you all about it.

43:40 Thank you Melissa.

 
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