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Volume 11, No. 111
City of The Hills
MERRY CHRISTMAS! HOMETOWN !
E RE
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ONEONTA
& The Otsego-Delaware Dispatch
Oneonta, N.Y., Friday, December 21, 2018
Visit www.
AllOTSEGO.com
Unadilla’s Mrs. Claus Says Goodbye Cleaning out her mom’s apartment, Dawn Spinola found her dad’s Santa suit.
Stories Of Service To Community Live On In Her Family’s Memory By LIBBY CUDMORE UNADILLA
G
oing through her mom Mary Bunt’s things, her daughter found a box filled with Christmas ornaments she had bought on moving to an
apartment in 2014 after the death of her husband, Fred. “They were all Santas,” said daughter Dawn Spinola. “That tells me she really missed my dad.” Mrs. Bunt, 69, died Saturday, Dec. 8. She and her late husband had been Unadilla’s Santa and Mrs. Please See SANTAS, A3
Va. Educator New Provost At Hartwick
H
artwick College announced Dr. William J. Ehmann will be its next provost and vice president of academic affairs – the top academic officer. He succeeds Dr. Michael G. Tannenbaum, who is retiring. Ehman, who starts July 1, has the same title at Marymount University outside Washington D.C.. ►More details, A2
Ian Austin/HOMETOWN ONEONTA
Ian Austin/HOMETOWN ONEONTA
Alan Franks and Rachel Hansen play “Jingle Bell Rock” on the handbell as part of the annual handbell concert at the First United Methodist Church on Sunday. Dec. 16.
Kettle Drive $21M Short, Army Reports
W
ith only a few days left in the 2018 Red Kettle Campaign, the Oneonta Salvation Army has only raised $35,799.10 of the $57,000 goal, leaving the campaign $8,000 behind, according to Maj. Sharon Harford. The drive runs through Christmas Eve. Bellringers may be found at Walmart, Southside Mall and Price Chopper. THEY’RE TOPS: OPD Sgt. Eric Berger and Detective Joseph Tiemann were honored as City Hall’s Employees of the Quarter Tuesday, Dec. 18, by Common Council for conducting a successful active-shooter drill.
ON
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►A FRESHMAN FROM from Oneonta has been charged with a hate crime for posting 16 pro-Nazi posters at SUNY Purchase, where he’s going to school. ►ATTEMPTED-MURDER charges were filed against an Oneonta man for allegedly trying to strangle a woman. She also had bruises and bite marks, police said. ►PHOENIX MILLS’ residents were jolted awake at 4:30 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 15, when an SUV knocked down a telephone pole and hit a parked car. ►BASSETT’S ROLL-BAR program has saved at least 10 lives and $4 million in the past decade, researchers find.
NO CFA FOR GAS Governor Made Final Decision, Zakrevsky Says
The Spirit of
Scrooge
By JIM KEVLIN
A
$3.5 million grant application for a gas decompression station at Oneonta’s Pony Farm Commerce Park is so critical to economic development regionally, Governor Cuomo was called asked to decide its fate. “But the governor has a policy of limiting natural gas,” and wouldn’t support it, Zakrevsky said Jody Zakrevsky, Otsego Now president, who learned no money was forthcoming in the CFA grants Lt. Gov. Kathy HoPlease See GRANTS, A7
Scrooge was all over the county last weekend. Top, Mike Henrici plays the famous grouch in “A Christmas Carol” at The Farmers’ Museum, Cooperstown; Sharon Rankins Burd is the Ghost of Christmas Past. At left, Casey Thomas plays him in “A Christmas Carol: The Musical,” for Orpheus Theater at SUNY Oneonta’s Goodrich Theater.
TOP CONSULTANT ADVISES:
Oneonta Wants Theatre Saved, So Here’s How By JENNIFER HILL ONEONTA
O
f Oneontans surveyed by Webb Management Services, 97 percent said the Oneonta Theatre is worth
saving. The good news is Duncan Webb, WMS founder, told the gathered audience at Foothills that the 121-year-old theater is Please See THEATRE, A7
Ian Austin & Jim Kevlin/HOMETOWN ONEONTA
In Searing Experience, 11 Counsel 693 In Family Detention In Texas By KYLE S. MACKIE COOPERSTOWN
D
ull eyes of sick, exhausted children. A young mother breastfeeding her one-
year-old daughter in a cold interview room. A woman waiting in a crowded visitation trailer in hopes that her turn might be next. These are the images from the country’s largest immigration detention facility for families that 11 Cooperstown resident trav-
eled to during the last week of November to aid asylum seekers currently being held at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. The work was grueling: 13hour days with few or no breaks, processing a seemingly endless
HOMETOWN ONEONTA, OTSEGO COUNTY’S LARGEST CIRCULATION NEWSPAPER 2010 WINNER OF The Otsego County Chamber/KEY BANK SMALL BUSINESS AWARD