“Safe, clean, affordable.” I doesn’t matter who said it first or last — maybe it was Joe Marchetti, but he is right.
Bill Berardi, Kingston
Hometown proud
Greetings! Just a quick note to say thank you to Kate Heidecker and Kingston Times for the great article, “Pride of the Town,” published Oct. 20, 2011. What a joy to see such a well-written article. As your reporter could tell, we here in the Town of Ulster as well as the County of Ulster are very proud to have Annie honored as the New York State court clerk of the year!
Thanks again. Keep up the great work!
Susan Kesick & Marsha Weiss, Town of Ulster justices
Can of worms
Would you run your business this way?
Imagine you invented a superior can opener and want to manufacture and sell your product in Ulster County. You look around, there are 13 locations in the county that could be the right place to start your business. You can’t decide on any one location and instead set up 13 locations each with a CEO, assistant CEO, deputy assistant CEO, directors, managers, office staff and suitable work spaces. You accept the fact that organizing in that manner will cost you $65 million per year, $65 million that can’t be used to manufacture and improve your product. But you decide to add that expense to the price of your can openers and trust the buyers won’t notice.
Now I ask you, would you organize your business that way? If you did, just how long would your business survive? But that is exactly how we structured public school education in Ulster County. In the above, substitute the title of CEO with school superintendent. In doing so we spend $65 million per year on 13 school district administrations. According to State Education Department reviews, that money would be better spent on students in the classroom.
Back to the can-opener dream. As a business person you would decide on one location for your headquarters and staff. You would recognize the geographic area of Ulster County, divide that area into three districts and place a manager reporting to you to manage the day-to-day business in that area. In doing so you would save $50 million per year and still manufacture can openers in Ulster County.
As to staff at your headquarters you would recognize the fact that government agencies were going to tell you what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. So you would hire overseers to keep up to speed on what you had to do next.
Join the family! 
