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Volume 210, No. 12
COOPERSTOWN AND AROUND
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Venerable, The Otesaga Evolves As Times Change Otesaga General Manager Jim Miles pauses in the hotel’s elegant lobby.
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth of eight profiles of the first inductees into the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce’s Hall of Fame. By LIBBY CUDMORE COOPERSTOWN
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hough central heating and telephones are hardly luxuries today, 108 years later, The Otesaga is still reinventing how to bring old world charm to a modern hotel. The Freeman’s Journal “People come up here and they
A smiling Ellen Tillapaugh Kuch and Lou Allstadt celebrate their reelection to the Cooperstown Village Board.
2 Incumbent Trustees Win At The Polls COOPERSTOWN
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ncumbent Trustees Ellen Tillapaugh Kuch and Lou Allstadt were reelected to the Village Board Tuesday, March 21, tallying 318 and 285 votes respectively. Second-time challenger John Sansevere got 104 votes, fewer than the 131 he garnered in 2015, but he drove turnout well over 300, a recent record. In 2014, when there was no contest, only 94 people voted. COUNTIES SPARED: U.S. Rep. John Faso was among five Upstate Republican congressmen who got a Medicaid Local Share Limitation included in the Obamacare replacement act to prevent New York State from passing an estimated $2.3 billion in Medicaid reductions on to counties like Otsego. NOTABLE PASSING: J. Mason Reynolds, former president of Bendix and a Cooperstown resident since retiring in the 1990s, passed away in Stuart, Fla., Saturday, March 18. Obituary forthcoming. IN APPRECIATION: For tribute to former county Rep. Betty Anne Schwerd, R-Edmeston, who passed away Saturday, March 18, see B6
say, ‘I can’t believe I’m still in New York,’” said General Manager Jim Miles. “The air smells fresher, the stars are brighter, they’re just totally relaxed. They say it’s like stepping back in time.” The Otesaga is one of eight local businesses in the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce’s first Hall of Fame class, to be honored April Please See OTESAGA, A6
Ian Austin/The Freeman’s Journal
4-Town Merger Positions County For $20M Award From Ashes,
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orship renewed
By JIM KEVLIN
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uring the go-go years after the American Revolution removed the threat of Indian raids and settlers poured in from crowded New England, the Otsego County towns of Maryland, Westford and Decatur were born in 1808 from the mother town, Worcester. After a half-century of going-going years in Upstate New York, what was may be again. Governor Cuomo’s Department of State has rolled out a Municipal Consolidation & Efficiency Competition, and the four south Please See MERGER, A3
A tearful Emily Welsh, Oneonta, shares memories of Milford’s First United Methodist Church during a service a week after it burned.
In Church Fire’s Wake, 4 Congregations Gather
If Passed, Trump’s Budget Would Hit County Poor Hard
By JIM KEVLIN MILFORD
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ludgeoned by a raging all-night fire on Sunday, March 12, Milford’s First United Methodist Church Pastor is beyond repair. Barrett But the three stained-glass windows that were a source of inspiration to Pastor Sylvia Barrett the morning after the fire – particularly, on depicting Christ at Gethsemane – can likely be saved as a centerpiece in a replacement church, if and when it is built. Please See CHURCH, A7
Decatur, Worcester, Maryland, Westford Talks Interest State
Jim Kevlin/The Freeman’s Journal
Mom Logan Schultes, now living in Otego, brought her family to the congregation where she grew up for the first service after the fire. With her is husband Philip, dad Lorin Campbell, and daughters Macie, 9 months, and Cellie, 2½.
f Congress were to pass the Trump administration’s “skinny budget,” Dan Maskin of Oneonta, the general in Otsego County’s battle against poverty, his Opportunities for Otsego would have to shut its doors. “If all of those were zeroed out, that could be the ball game,” said Maskin, OFO’s chief executive officer. More optimistically, he added, “I don’t anticipate it’s going to be even close to that.” Trump’s 2018 budget calls for the Please See OFO, A7
THE FREEMAN’S JOURNAL & HOMETOWN ONEONTA, OTSEGO COUNTY’S LARGEST PRINT CIRCULATION 2010 WINNERS OF The Otsego County Chamber/KEY BANK SMALL BUSINESS AWARD