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After the dedication of Clint Taft Memorial Field at the rec center yesterday, I headed over and watched the boys team play their first game of the season, and for three quarters, there wasn't much to watch. However, the team cut a 20-point deficitto five with one minute left to play, but were not able to get over the hill, losing 49-41 to Bolton. Defesnively, this team can pressure the ball and force turnovers. They are a fast squad, but lack the big time threat from the outside. On the inside, Cory Christian scored 16 points against a group of three players who were all taller than him and grabbed 7 rebounds. He should have a good season.
I forgot to get something up for the girls on Wednesday, so here is a little extra on their season preview. As noted in the headline of the story in the paper, the key for this team will be their height. There are four players who will play the 4-5 positions on the floor, and I think that the Railroaders are going to surprise some teams with their offensive sets this season. In the past, the way to beat Whitehall has been to go to a 2-3 zone and pack it in around St. Clair - but this year there will be more bigs to defend so if you concentrate on just Brittany, there will be Mackenzie Trevellyan and Katie Paddock on the week side to pick up some easy offensive boards and put-backs. Also, the team will look to use St. Clair's athleticism more on the perimeter as well. The main question the girls have is when will their point guard, senior Shelby Cuomo return. She has tried to come back form a soccer injury already but keeps suffering set-backs. Hopefully, she will be out there soon. I'll write about the boys team after I see them play Bolton today at 2 p.m.
In the first of our enhanced previews for the 2008-09 winter sports season, I am going to grapple with the wrestling program. Last year was the first time I had really covered wrestling at any level, and I was very impressed with the sport. So was my son, who I took to one match and had plenty of blurry pictures afterwards because he was jumping all over me while watching the Railroaders matches. First of all, it is obvious that the 1/2-point loss to Duanesburg in last years' Class D finals is still on their minds. How could it not be, that's the slimmest of possible margins you could lose by. Add to that the fact that now sophomore Grant Gebo had his guy in the finals flipped, turned and begging for mercy on the floor and was awarded NO POINTS - costing him the match and the team the title, and this is a team that knows they can get the job done. Add in the fact that the Class D finals will be held in the friendly confines of Whitehall, and this team is very anxious to get started. There is a lot of talent returning from the 2007-08 team, starting with the three state finalist who return to the squad in Curt Thompson, Zach Diekel and Ty White. Each will be moving up at least one weight class this year and will face new challenges, including the target that each wrestler in the league and section will picture on their backs. Overall, it should be a pretty good year for the Railroaders on the mat, with several wrestlers having their sites set on a Class D title as well as a birth into the state tournament, to be held this year back at the Times Union Center. Also, a preliminary thank you to Victoria Diekel, who will again serve as our wrestling expert. She definitely helped me get into the sport with terminology and stats and was a great help covering the state tourney in Rochester last season.
The town of Whitehall will officially dedicate the recreation field in honor of the late Clinton Taft on Friday, Nov. 28 at 1 p.m., right before the opening of the 2008-09 winter sports season. Jerry Taft, Clinton's son, called to tell me the the monument would be delivered today and the ceremony would take place on Friday. I said before and will say again, it was a pleasure to meet the Taft family when Clint was inducted into the hall of fame.
The Whitehall town and village boards will be meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 3 at 7:15 p.m. in the town recreation center to disucss possible ways to cosolidate services. If you want to discuss this matter with the combined boards, this is your chance.
Since we have early dealines, I was assigned to the county board meeting today. Luckily, it was the LONGEST MEETING THEY HAVE EVER HAD!!! It started at 10 a.m. and ended right about 2:30 p.m. or so. The board membersdid do a lot of looking at the budget, passing all of the resolutions they acted on at the finance committee last week. there will be a targeted hiring freeze, there will be no increase for exempt county emplyees, and there will be no funding for the county beaches (for Whitehall, that means there will be no funding for teh Hulett's beach, though town supervisor Bob Banks says it will be open one way or another). The board also voted in their salaries at a zero percent increase. The mileage issue was again deabted, with all but three supervisors opting not to budget for travel reimbursement. Whitehall will get a $1,000 reimbursement, while Dresden and Cambridge will get $2,000, based on hte request of their supervisors (Scribner, Banks and Trinkle). Once again, early dealines this week, so I will not be in on Monday. I'll next be at the office on Wednesday. Call me at 499-1500 or 800-354-4232 if you need anything.
Vernon Scribner said that the town will hold off on calling the new York State Comptroller over the matter at the town garage because of the inventory audit that was recently completed by new highway superintendent Louis Pratt. So far, give Pratt a lot of credit for jumping into his new position head-first and making sure that things run not only smoothly, but what happens and what is being used is on the record books. What that means for the next step is anyone's guess. It appears that town councilman David Waters is setting the stage for some type of legal action against the former superintendent and possibly others. The key for any further motions made on the matter is that there are now five memebrs of the board, so no vote will end in a tie, which is something that has concerned waters in past meetings, especially the recent budget workshops. Either way, this will be a topic at the next board meeting, planned for Dec. 10 at 7 p.m.
I was not able to write on the blog yesterday, so here is the recap from Wednesdays meeting. It was announced that Jim Putorti won the election for town board by a final total of 14 votes over Jiem Rozell. He was sworn in for his first meeting on Wednesday. Louis Pratt gave reports to the board that inventoried the town garage and said that he is looking to have an entire inventory done soon. He said that if anyone wants to see the reports, they can stop by the town garage whenever they want. Fred Trelstra was there and said that he was open to negotiating on selling the former Garden Time building to the town.
Alright, rant time. Can we get through Thanksgiving, please? IT"S NOVEMBER 12TH!!!! I don't even want to think about how to put more Christmas into my life until the turkey is well digested and the Lions are soundly defeated in the annual football game. I am not a bah-humbug-er. I love Christmas and the holiday season - love it even more now that I have kids. But there is no need for lights, Bing Crosby, Jimmy Stewart or reindeer until after Turkey (well, there is a need for reindeer as far as my parents are concerned, but that’s for hunting purposes). True story! I’m getting ready to watch the BYU football game on Saturday, Nov. 1 – one day after Halloween – and there were four straight commercials telling me to get out and buy for Christmas – ON NOV. 1!!!!! Want one worse? Last year, I was driving home from a meeting and there was 24/7 Christmas music on one of the radio stations – ON NOV. 2!!! This missed the “Way too early” exit three ramps ago. Now, lets understand, what is the true measure of the holiday season according to all these marketing folks who say the ads need to be out now. That’s right, our children. As for my household, the kids don’t even have a rough draft for a Christmas List yet. The only things I have heard is that Blake wants something to do with Ben-10 and Malynda keeps her face buried in the newest American Girl Doll magazine – but she does that every time one comes out. Here’s my rule: If it’s not Thanksgiving Day, it’s not the holiday season. I’ll go as far as to give you the Monday before, but I start my holidays off on the last Thursday of November. That’s when the food gets good, the football gets good, and the weather actually feels like the holidays. Heck, Thanksgiving night is when we put our Christmas Tree up at the house and kick off the holidays – but not before. So to Home Depot, K-Mart, Wal Mart, Lowe’s, and all the other stores – please excuse me while I change the channel off your ads – at least until Nov. 27.
For the fourth week in a row, the Whitehall town board will hold a meeting. This time, it is the regular meeting. By the time tha tthe meeting happens, we should know the identity of the fifth member of the town board. I tried to get a story into the Whitehall Times for this week about who officially won the election, but the county board of elections had not counted the absentee ballots yet. As soon as I find out, I will post it here.
In my home town of Westport, the former town clerk has been found to have taken over $5,600 in dump tickets and other money and to have "diverted" another $2,000 into personal checking accounts in a state Comptrollers report. Gee, where have I heard that before. I'm not going to comment more on that situation ecause my mom has been elected to fill the town clerk position in Westport, but i will say the towns of Dresden, Hampton and all over better review their oversight on the clerks office because I am getting tired of all of these stories. It's the persons fault for taking money that's not theirs, but its also administrations fault allowing there to be rope to hang themselves.
The town board passed their 2009 budget by a 3-1vote, with David Waters voting against the spending plan, saying there were more areas to cut from then they did. The board then went into executive session for 1 hour and 50 minutes - all of which I will never get back. Afterwards, Louie Pratt was named the town highway superintendent and thre was no move on whether or not Bob Putorti would remain as the deputy. For next Wednesday, the town board will be talking about moving out of the Pavilion and their options. Vern said that he didn't want to bring it up tonight because they had enough on their plate. It was the third straight meeting that ended right around 10 p.m. in as many weeks, and I have been there for every minute of it.
Nothing has been determined in the race for the Whitehall town board, with only 13 votes separating Jim Putorti and Jiem Rozell - it will be next Tuesday before anything becomes official and the absentee ballots are added up. As for what di happen, 2,173 people voted in the presidential election in the towns of Whitehall, Hampton and Dresden. Based on census population and taking away children and people who may live here but vote in a different district, I would guess that over half of the regisitered voters here went to the polls, which is highly commendable. So, who did you pick? To start, the Whitehall Times readership did not feel the same way the country did concerning preisdential politics. Whitehall cast 808 votes for John McCain compared to 706 for the President-Elect. Hampton voted 177-153 McCain, and Dresden tallied 159 votes for McCain and 139 votes for Obama. Add it all up: 1,144 for McCain and 998 for Obama, with 31 votes going to other presidential candidates, like Ralph Nader. However, the three local towns did vote with the majority when it came to US and state representation. Whitehall voted 949-477 to sen Kirsten Gillibrand back to the United States House of Representatives over Sandy Treadwell, while Hampton voted 163-121 in favor of Gillibrand and Dresden followed suit with a 169-110 margin. Totals: 1,144 votes for Gillibrand and 708 votes for Treadwell. Whitehall village attorney Tony Jordan will now represent the village and local community on the state level as an assemblymen, and locals agreed. Whitehall gave Jordan a 743-484 edge over opponent Ian McGaughey, while Hampton voted 165-95 for Jordan and Dresden cast 146 votes for Jordan compared to 104 for McGaughey. Totals: 1,054 for Jordan and 683 for McGaughey. Congratulations to all of the winners, and we'll report on the Whitehall town board race as soon as we get new numbers.
Well, the final game of te 2008 season saw the Railroaders take an early lead, only to watch it xlip away in a 40-18 loss to finish the season at 0-9. First off, in a way, this season was not a failure. Everyone knew that this was going to be an extremely tough year for the team, and those who didn't were fooling themselves. It had to be touhg for Kevin McDonald and Justin Phillips, the only two seniors that even saw a glimpse of the varsity field last season. I heard someone say that this team was a very good JV team, which means it still has some simmering to do. Second, the drive in the third quarter showed somehting. They'll learn, they'll advance, and they'll grow. The team was coached well this year, and now the players know what to epect. There's still two years of buulding to go before thereturns start to be seen, as far as I can tell.
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