By Joe Moskowitz
The battle between the little train that thinks it can, and Ulster County, which has the backing the state and federal governments, is heating up.

Ulster County Executive Mike Hein and the Catskill Mountain Railroad (CMRR) are on the same track, and right now, and that is not good.
Hein wants to tear the tracks up while the CMRR wants to lay down more.

By Jay Braman Jr.
Times are tough these at all levels of government, and things are no different in Fleischmanns, where the tentative budget not only strips the mayor of his salary but also cuts programs such as recreation and others.

At 6 p.m. on Monday, April 15 in the Skene Memorial Library on Main Street, the Fleischmanns Village Board will hold a public hearing on the village’s proposed 2013-’14 budget.
In a prepared statement, Mayor Todd Pascarella said the tentative budget he prepared contains no tax increase, but the plan still comes at a cost.

By Geoff Samuels
Walk into the American Legion Post 216 Hall in Margaretville right now and what you’ll see are concrete walls and bare studs. Don’t let that fool you. Don Kearney, the Legion’s finance director, says he hopes to start the Legion’s popular fund-raising Bingo game night back up at the hall sometime this May. He certainly has his work cut out.

By Jay Braman Jr.
After several weeks of being in charge at the Phoenicia Elementary School following the suspension of Principal Linda Sella, the district’s superintendant now says that an interim principal must hired to manage the Phoenicia school through to the end of the year.

Sella, principal of the Phoenicia Elementary School since 201, was placed on administrative leave in mid-February.

By Joe Moskowitz
Chicken, and rice pilaf with a side of politics were the order of the day at Roxbury Central School. New York State Senator James Seward stopped by for lunch at RCS on Thursday. He was already going to speak to two classes, but Superintendent Tom O’Brien decided that since Senator Seward was coming to town anyway, he would ask him to share a meal with some senior citizens. It wasn’t just any meal. It was the annual senior citizens lunch prepared by the RCS family/consumer service class.

By Jay Braman Jr.
With the ski season all but over, the staff at Belleayre Mountain Ski Center is already looking ahead to the 2013-14 season and they want your input.

Belleayre, which was run by New York State from the time it was built in 1949, underwent a management change last fall when that responsibility was handed to the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) which runs the state’s two other ski centers in the Adirondacks.

By Joe Moskowitz
New York State is on a budget roll. Governor Andrew Cuomo says that for three years in a row now, the state has a budget in place and on time. The spending increase is less than two percent more than last year. And, the budget is balanced.

The $136 billion spending plan was passed just prior to the April 1 deadline and means that the state expects to have enough money to pay its bills this year. The state still has long-term debt of more than $300 billion.

Following are some of the highlights of the state’s new budget.

By Joe Moskowitz
It’s school budget season as area administrators try to figure out how to pay for ever-increasing expenses while limiting tax hikes. This year, because New York State is in better financial shape than in recent years, there is some help coming from Albany, but bridging the budget gap is still a daunting task.

By Joe Moskowitz
Budget battles in Washington that have resulted in automatic cuts to government spending, popularly known as sequestration, may soon claim young victims in Arkville.

Project Head Start, a pre-school program aimed at kids from low-income families, is facing an income problem of its own. Sequestration is resulting in a five-percent reduction in funding for Head Start, and that is forcing the people in charge of area Head Start centers to make some serious choices.

By Geoff Samuels
“We want to get everybody on the same page” said Marjorie Miller, chair of the East Branch Flood Commission as she opened last Monday’s monthly meeting.

Topics of discussion at the meeting ranged from FEMA land buy-outs, to this summer’s Emergency Watershed Protection (EWP) projects, to the possibility of swapping parcels of land with New York City.

Kent Manual from the Delaware County Planning Department gave an update on the FEMA land buy-out program.