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AS INN AT FLY CREEK, ESTATE REBORN AGAIN/B1
HOMETOWN E!
E FR Volume 11, No. 32
ONEONTA
& The Otsego-Delaware Dispatch
Oneonta, N.Y., Friday, May 17, 2019
‘OLYMPICS OF ART’ INCLUDES UNALAM PIECE
City of The Hills
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sculpture that uses Glulam, Unalam of Unadilla’s extrastrong layered plywood product, was used in “Swallowed Sun,” which adorns the U.S. pavilion at La Biennale Arte in Venice, Italy, considered “the Olympics of Art.” Details, type “unalam” in search line at www. OTSEGO.com
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Visit www.
AllOTSEGO.com
NEWBORNS DIED LAST SUMMER
Twins’ Mom Indicted By LIBBY CUDMORE DECATUR
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n Saturday, May 4, Kimberly Nicole Steeley wrote a poem on her Facebook page, titled, “If I knew x Two,” “If I knew it was the last time I would hold you x2,
Steeley
If I knew it would be the last time I kissed you x2... If I knew love that Deeply x2, If I knew I would Have tried to save you x2,” she wrote. On Wednesday, May 8, Steeley, 27, Decatur, was arrested and charged with two counts of seconddegree manslaughter in the 2018 deaths of her twin infant children, Liam and Bonde Steeley, barely a month old whey they were found dead in their basPlease See TWINS, B6
Updating
TRADITION
SUNY ONEONTA’S NEW PRESIDENT, BARBARA JEAN MORRIS, PRESIDED AT HER FIRST, AND THE COLLEGE’S 130th GRADUATION SATURDAY, MAY 11, AND CONTINUED TO SIGNAL SHE’S BRINGING NEW APPROACHES TO THE 6,000-STUDENT INSTITUTION.
During a rare tornado watch Friday, May 10, Jill Poulson, New York City, visiting parents Bob and Peggy Poulson’s home alongside Otsego Lake, snapped this image from the backyard. The storm passed without damage.
BUDGET VOTE MAY 21
OHS Schools Cutting Help For Neediest By JENNIFER HILL ONEONTA
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VOTE NEAR
neonta High School students may be happy to hear that there won’t be any summer school this year, but Superintendent Joseph Yelich yelich sees it as a bigger ► VOTE ON problem. City school “We used to have budget, 200 students attend- school board ing summer school, vote noon-9 but it’s now down to p.m.Tuesday, 50,” he said. “Some May 21, Footkids will go the hills. first day of summer school and not show up after that. It costs $150,000 to run the program.” The Oneonta City School District’s 2019-20 budget, to be voted on next Tuesday, May 21. The Please See BUDGET, B6
Father, 3 Kids Homeless After Pittsfield Blaze PITTSFIELD
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widower and his three children fled their burning home on County Route 13 at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, May 14. Pittsfield, Morris and New Berlin firefighters responded, but the home was destroyed. Richard Morris’ wife Sharron had succumbed to cancer in February. His sister-in-law, Shannon, is seekin clothing for the family. Details at
AllOTSEGO.com
www.
ON
AllOTSEGO.com
► BRADLEY MORELL broke OHS’s discus record with a toss of 163’ 8”,during the Yellowjacket Invitational on Friday, May 10. The previous record was held by Jim Hurtubise in 2003, and was 163’ 3”. ►CHOBANI FOUNDER Hamdi Ulukaya donated $50,000 to the Warwick, R.I. school to ensure all students receive a hot meal after the school threatened to stop serving them to students with outstanding balances. ► OTSEGO COUNTY has a redesigned website, where you can read about board Chair Dave Bliss and Sheriff Devlin in Japanese – and 90 other languages.
Ian Austin/HOMETOWN ONEONTA
The week she released a new 13-word student-focused mission statement, SUNY Oneonta’s new president Barbara Jean Morris, top, continues to signal she plans to take a fresh look at how the campus is doing things, choosing not to delivery the traditional President’s Message at the 131st Commencement Saturday, May 11. The commencement also featured two alumni speaking on hot-button issues, Crystal Williams ’77, American Immigration Lawyers Association CEO, and James Zachos, ’81, a geologist reconstructing the Earth’s climate history. Above, graduate Angela Brindley, daughter the new Oneonta Superintendent of Schools Thomas Brindley, hugs mom Angela./MORE PHOTOS, A3
Task Force’s First Case: Pigs In Pittsfield By LIBBY CUDMORE HARTWICK SEMINARY
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t was a scene Stacie Haynes has seen play out before. Two pigs, skinny and without food, water or hay, trying
to eat the corpses of two dead pigs in a trash pile at a farm on County Route 18, Town of Pittsfield. “They were shivering and cold,” she said. “We got called out there at night in a rainstorm, and we seized them.” Now playfully dubbed Please See PETS, A3
HOMETOWN ONEONTA
Sonny, right, and Cher feast at the SSPCA after they were found, starving, in Pittsfield.
Fly Creek UM Composes Letter Voicing ‘Dismay’ But Pastor Doesn’t Sign On By JENNIFER HILL FLY CREEK
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ome members of the Fly Creek United Methodist Church have allied with their Oneonta colleagues, penning a letter expressing “disappointment and dismay” that the international church has affirmed bans on gay pastors and gay marriage. Thirty-seven regular attendees also Please See METHODISTS, B6
HOMETOWN ONEONTA, OTSEGO COUNTY’S LARGEST CIRCULATION NEWSPAPER 2010 WINNER OF The Otsego County Chamber/KEY BANK SMALL BUSINESS AWARD