& Albany County Post - The Altamont Enterprise

More documents

Recommendations

Info

8 The Altamont Enterprise – Thursday, September 27, 2012 ...A cliffhanger: Will rock climbing be allowed at Thacher Park (Continued from page 1) short climbs. It disassociates local climbers from one another–– they have no home. When you travel to an area where people have access to a climb and can go there after work, you can see it creates a community,” said Wallen. “Albany doesn’t have that but Thacher could be their home.” Currently, Thacher Park, with its 75-to 250-foot limestone cliffs, prohibits recreational climbing along the Helderberg escarpment. “There’s been an assessment going on; there’s no conclusion at this point.” Park Manager Chris Fallon said rock climbing was one of the activities being considered for inclusion in the master plan. The office is due to release a draft master plan in October and a final review and adoption of a plan is to take place by the end of the year. “There’s been an assessment going on; there’s no conclusion at this point,” said Fallon. Park planners have already had meetings with the coalition and officials are studying the issues involved, such as accessibility, environmental impact, liability, and safety, said Fallon. He said a decision on rock-climbing could be announced when the park’s draft master plan is released next month. However, rock climbers could be seen on Thacher’s escarpment earlier this month when emergency crews practiced steep search and rescue operations at the park. Since 1994, the Albany County Sheriff ’s Office Search and Rescue team has been training up and down the cliffs, said its Photo by –– Stanley Axelrod High-angle rescue: Members of the Albany County Sheriff’s search-and-rescue team prepare to descend down the Helderberg escarpment at John Boyd Thacher Park as part of their regular training this month. The team is trained to responded to cave, ice, and water rescues in rugged terrain. leader, Captain John Layton. The 15-member group of police and paramedics trained for eight hours on Sept. 11 on a 75-foot cliff in the park, said Layton. The team made multiple revolutions up and down the rock face as part of training to retrieve lost, injured or missing people from rugged areas. The team recently responded to a location in Albany to scale a steep gorge beneath a bridge to search for a missing man, Layton said. The team trains at other locations besides Thacher and responds to a wide variety of special emergency situations, including ice, water, and cave rescues. Layton said most of the group’s work is in wilderness search and rescue. “It’s a highly specialized team of skilled individuals,” said Layton. When responding to a call, such as the man in the gorge, rescuers might have an idea of where the victim may be but no exact location. Layton said the team trains together regularly at least once a month, often at Thacher. Though, the search and rescue team are not the first to climb Thacher’s cliffs, said Wallen. “Our parents’ generation had the freedom to climb there, said Wallen. “The restrictive laws of New York State were put in place during the 70s because of the growing influences in the legal community.” Wallen believes the current laws which fine visitors of the park for climbing the cliffs or even walking off the paved path, infringe on the rights of citizens to be treated as adults. “It’s about lawsuits; it’s about liability. It’s about our out of control legal culture where a drunk can fall off a cliff and sue the state for it,” he said. “The laws don’t make people responsible for their actions and so the state is afraid to give regular citizens any responsibility or freedom,” said Wallen. Wallen said court rulings had made it difficult for climbers to sue because their sport is considered a dangerous activity. “The idiot who falls off the cliff because they’re drunk and sues is stealing from us –– stealing where climbers could go. He said these routes would be selected by climbing and safety experts to avoid potential dangers such as loose rocks. They would also place the routes in areas less sensitive to damage. “People think rock climbing and they imagine free climbing. Not many do it –– a very low percent,” said Wallen. Free climbing is when rock climbers make climbs without the aid of any equipment aside from a small bag of chalk they dip their fingers into periodically to help avoid slipping. “It’s pretty crazy and most climbers don’t do it. The mentality of most climbers is taking calculated risks. We use ropes “The idiot who falls off the cliff because they’re drunk and sues is stealing from us –– stealing money from the taxpayers, and they’ve also indirectly stolen our access to the park.” Photo by –– Stanley Axelrod Climbers considered: As the John Boyd and Thompson Lake State Parks develop a master plan for future programming at the park, rock climbers are asking for access to the escarpment. Though recreational climbing is prohibited at the park the Albany Sheriff’s search and rescue team (above) frequently uses the park’s cliffs for training. money from the taxpayers, and they’ve also indirectly stolen our access to the park,” he said. “We have climbers in our group who’ve even climbed the Alps. It’s hard for people who have climbed 20,000 feet in South America to understand why they can’t go in their backyard at Thacher.” Wallen is also very concerned with the environmental impacts of climbing on the geology and plant life but said climbing methods and practices had evolved to minimize any impact. “In climbing, we have certain routes; we don’t have people going all over,” he said. Wallen said Thacher, like other parks, should establish a local climbing authority to issue climbing permits and maintain the climbing routes. The authority would establish predetermined routes and safeguards. It’s really safe when compared to jumping off a 60-foot cliff into water. There’s more of a chance of getting into a car accident than a climbing accident,” he said. Another point Wallen raised was that, on average, a rock climber has to spend between $1,500 and $2,000 on his equipment and they almost always climb with at least one other person. “These are not just people who live in the city and randomly decided it was a nice day to go for a hike. They’re experienced outdoor users. They’ve tried a sport, loved it, and have invested in it,” he said. Wallen said he and his group remain optimistic about climbing at Thacher one day and are continuing to engage park officials on the issue.
The Altamont Enterprise – Thursday, September 27, 2012 9 Still at an impasse with teachers, BKW board plans update soon By Zach Simeone BERNE — A year has passed since Berne-Knox-Westerlo taxpayers got a detailed update on negotiations between the school board and the BKW Teachers’ Association on their publicly funded, multi-million dollar contract, which expired more than three years ago. But BKW School Board President Vasilios Lefkaditis said this week that the public would soon be apprised on how their money may be spent in the next contract. “Up until this point, it’s been professional courtesy” t o w a r d s the teachers’ union, he said of why there has not yet been an update. “But, at some point, we are going to come forward.” Article II of the BKW teachers’ contract, which outlines negotiating procedures, states, “Both parties agree that there be no release of information in regard to the negotiation to the public without prior notice and agreement to a joint press release or until impasse is declared.” Negotiators reached an impasse in March 2011. They brought in a mediator from the Public Employee Review Board, but to no avail. In the fall, the school board’s negotiator from the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, Kevin Harren, updated the public on the respective parties’ terms; the teachers’ union did not make a public “Being candid.” presentation of its own. Kelly Smith, president of the BKW Teachers’ Association, could not be reached this week before press time. She told the audience at a packed budget forum in 2010 that the union had offered to accept a freeze in the teachers’ salary schedule — “And we haven’t slacked,” she told the crowd. “They got back to us at the end of April,” Smith told The Enterprise shortly after, “at which time we gave them a counter offer, and that’s the last we heard from them. In their defense, there have been a lot of things going on.” The BKW administration was in a state of flux then, as it is now. “So, that did put a kink in the works as far as negotiations go,” Smith said then. “But, there’s always going to be something.” The Triborough Amendment of New York State’s Taylor Law requires that employees work under the old contract until a new one is agreed upon. The contract that expired in 2009 includes 30 steps, and teachers climb one step each year; on the first step, a teacher earns $38,350; on the 30 th step, a teacher earns $86,874. Teachers continue to receive their step increases under the old contract when there isn’t a new one. Jay Worona, attorney for the New York State School Board Association, talked this week about the rationale behind the Enterprise file photo — Zach Simeone “We haven’t slacked,” said Kelly Smith, president of the Berne- Knox-Westerlo Teachers’ Association, responding at a packed budget forum in 2010 to BKW residents’ sentiment that teachers were not shouldering enough of the budgetary burden. Salaries and benefits for all district employees total more than 75 percent of the BKW budget. confidentiality of contract negotiations. “Being candid,” Worona told The Enterprise, “knowing that they don’t have to posture so that they will be perceived as being tough and being consistent with what they each might believe the public and/or union would be expecting them to do, in terms of how they express themselves, it makes people a little more motivated to be honest with each other, and waste a lot less time.” Such ground rules, like the requirement of confidentiality, vary among districts. “There are some schools where bargaining agreements don’t operate that way; they’ll be totally open,” said Worona. “It really depends on the climate of the community, and the expectations for the way things have been done in the past. What yields the best possible result It’s almost like family members in an operating room; you want to know what’s going on in there. But, even if you were in there, you wouldn’t feel any less nuts. They’ve got to do their thing.” Moreover, a contract being expired for three years is not unheard of. “In Buffalo, they’re out eight years right now without a new contract, so, we don’t see this all the time, but we see it often enough,” Worona said. “If you have a contract that was negotiated when economic times were great, and they have lucrative economic provisions in them, it’s hard to convince people to come up with a contract that gives them a lot less money. And, unlike people in business who want to keep their profits to themselves, people running districts want to dole it out to the staff, because they want to attract the best and the brightest for the community.” Lefkaditis said Monday that he was unsure of when the district’s next negotiations update might be. “But we would let the bargaining unit know before we do so,” said Lefkaditis. “Several members from the gallery have addressed that concern, and we’ve made clear that it’s going to happen sooner rather than later.”
Page 1 and 2: The Altamont Enterprise $1.00 & Alb
Page 3 and 4: The Altamont Enterprise - Thursday,
Page 7: The Altamont Enterprise - Thursday,
Page 15 and 16: The Enterprise — Michael Koff Ali
Page 23: The Altamont Enterprise - Thursday,
Page 26 and 27: 18 The Altamont Enterprise - Thursd
Page 36: 28 The Altamont Enterprise - Thursd

& Albany County Post - The Altamont Enterprise

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?