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For 205 Years
VISIT WWW.ALLOTSEGO.COM Newsstand Price $1
Cooperstown, New York, Thursday, December 26, 2013
SHOOTOUT ROILS VILLAGE By JIM KEVLIN
ball card shop – inside the former Smalley’s cinema, 137 Main St. – and began menacing the owner, Vincent Carfagno, Police Chief Mike Covert would later report. As Covert later recounted it, Carfagno pulled out a gun of his own and fired a shot at the would-
HAS HE BEEN CAPTURED? Following developments at WWW.ALLOTSEGO.COM
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t 8:53 a.m. two days before Christmas, the 911 call rang.
A man wearing a black ski mask and brandishing a pistol had entered the Seventh Inning Stretch base-
be assailant, who is alleged to be Barry Renert, 62, a disgruntled former employee at the store. The shot missed, and the suspect hid and then fled, or simply fled. At press time late Monday evening, Renert was still at large. He Please See GUNPLAY, A3
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The Freeman’s Journal
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2012 otsego county yearbook
al firsT c o l k n i h T a GrEaT h T i W r a E all Y nEW forD a n o l a E D
Volume 205, No. 52
AllOTSEGO.life
For 205 Years
2013 citizen of the year
Tim Wiles rides in Induction Weekend’s Parade of Legends last July.
There’s No Joy In C-Ville With Wiles Leaving
building consensus on A PROSPEROUS FUTURE
COOPERSTOWN
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im Wiles, a familiar figure locally for his depiction of “Casey at the Bat” on Induction Weekends and baseball-related events, is leaving town. Wiles, director of research at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, has accepted the position of director at the Guilderland Public Library. He has been commuting from Guilderland since his wife, Marie, the former ONC BOCES superintendent, was named superintendent of schools there in 2010. More details at
When Otsego County’s state senator for the past 27 years, Jim Seward, R-Milford, is in the room, he’s First Citizen. Here, he is flanked by the county’s three assemblymen, from left, Bill Magee, D-Nelson, Cliff Crouch, R-Bainbridge, and Pete Lopez, RSchoharie, at a meeting of ONC BOCES superintendents Wednesday, Dec. 18, at the Otsego Area Occupational Center, Milford/IDS ON
WWW.ALLOTSEGO.COM
STATE OF STATE: This year’s State of the State breakfast, featuring a briefing of the county’s Albany delegation, is 8-10 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 7, at the Foothills. $25 per person; register at 547-4500. Sponsored by Otsego Chamber and Community Bank. QUIT SMOKING: Bassett Healthcare is offering a “Butt Stops Here” program in Oneonta and Cooperstown, eight one-hour sessions beginning at 5 p.m. Monday, Jan. 13. $40. Call 547-3028 to register. NEW TENANT: The Nail Club, a finger-nail parlor, has leased the former Savor NY storefront at 171 Main St.
SUPERINTENDENTS, SEE A2
Jim Kevlin/The Freeman’s Journal
For Senator, Keep Focus On People – And Everything Works Out By JIM KEVLIN
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o Jim Seward, floods are the most wrenching. “You arrive and people are taking their belongings and putting them at curbside,” he recalled. “Sometimes, all you can do is give them
a hug – and tell them they won’t be forgotten.” Listen for a while to Otsego County’s state senator since 1986, and you conclude: It’s not about ideology. It’s not even about winning, although he has won every race since, age 20 and a student at Hartwick College, he lost a Republican primary for assemblyman against Harold Luther of Herkimer. It’s all about people.
And Seward’s people skills – courting them, convincing them and, lately in particular, leading them – have been very much in evidence since that morning in December 2011 when, meeting with the newly formed pro-business Citizen Voices, he was challenged on “unintended consequences” of the bill he’d sponsored affirming Please See CITIZEN, A4
THE FREEMAN’S JOURNAL & HOMETOWN ONEONTA, OTSEGO COUNTY’S LARGEST PRINT CIRCULATION 2010 WINNERS OF The Otsego County Chamber/KEY BANK SMALL BUSINESS AWARD
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