Common ground still hard to find

If you think the Winchester Board of Selectmen and Board of Education have found common ground and are working together well since the 2011 municipal election, you should think again. After all of the arguing over the minimum budget requirement (MBR) for the school system and the Board of Selectmen’s decision to fully fund it at $19.9 million, there are still points of contention that refuse to go away.The most recent disagreement concerns any potential penalties that may arise out of the Board of Education’s accounting errors identified in an audit of the 2009-10 school budget. Winchester selectmen have publicly announced their intention to fully fund the MBR, but if any penalties come from the state or federal government for the school board’s past accounting practices, selectmen have said they will hold the Winchester Board of Education responsible for paying the fines.That sounds fair in theory, but the school board is already on track to spend the $19.9 million in MBR funding that it has always expected for this year. At the end of the year, with that money spent, the school district will be left with a zero balance. If selectmen think the school board is going to do anything other than spend the money allotted to the schools, they are deluding themselves. School officials have repeatedly said they expect to spend the full MBR this year and are operating on that premise.At the same time, it is unlikely that you will find anyone on the Winchester Board of Education who will agree with the concept that they are responsible for accounting errors that occurred under the leadership of a previous superintendent. Blaise Salerno was at the helm when the accounting errors took place in 2009-10, and it was on his watch that the school system received federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to supplement state Education Cost Sharing (ECS) money. There are also new members on the school board who had nothing to do with the schools during the 2009-10 school year, so it’s hard to imagine how they are responsible for the past errors.The reason state and federal officials are looking into the matter at all stems from irresponsible suggestions by town Republicans that school officials are doing something illegal. Time and time again, the accusations have been leveled and shown to be false. State and federal officials are nonetheless completing their own independent audits of the books, which should not result in any penalties to the school district. Everyone but the GOP’s attack dogs will breathe a sigh of relief, and that will hopefully signify the end of the argument.

Latest News

Finding ‘The Right Stuff’ for a documentary

Tom Wolfe

Film still from “Radical Wolfe” courtesy of Kino Lorber

If you’ve ever wondered how retrospective documentaries are made, with their dazzling compilation of still images and rare footage spliced between contemporary interviews, The Moviehouse in Millerton, New York, offered a behind-the-scenes peek into how “the sausage is made” with a screening of director Richard Dewey’s biographical film “Radical Wolfe” on Saturday, March 2.

Coinciding with the late Tom Wolfe’s birthday, “Radical Wolfe,” now available to view on Netflix, is the first feature-length documentary to explore the life and career of the enigmatic Southern satirist, city-dwelling sartorial icon and pioneer of New Journalism — a subjective, lyrical style of long-form nonfiction that made Wolfe a celebrity in the pages of Esquire and vaulted him to the top of the best-seller lists with his drug-culture chronicle “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” and his first novel, “The Bonfire of The Vanities.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Art on view this March

“Untitled” by Maureen Dougherty

New Risen

While there are area galleries that have closed for the season, waiting to emerge with programming when the spring truly springs up, there are still plenty of art exhibitions worth seeking out this March.

At Geary Contemporary in Millerton, founded by Jack Geary and Dolly Bross Geary, Will Hutnick’s “Satellite” is a collection of medium- and large-scale acrylic on canvas abstracts that introduce mixtures of wax pastel, sand and colored pencil to create topographical-like changes in texture. Silhouettes of leaves float across seismic vibration lines in the sand while a craterous moon emerges on the horizon, all like a desert planet seen through a glitching kaleidoscope. Hutnick, a resident of Sharon and director of artistic programming at The Wassaic Project in Amenia, New York, will discuss his work at Geary with New York Times art writer Laura van Straaten Saturday, March 9, at 5 p.m.

Keep ReadingShow less
Caught on Camera: Our wildlife neighbors

Clockwise from upper left: Wildlife more rarely caught by trail cameras at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies: great blue heron, river otters, a bull moose, presenter and wildlife biologist Michael Fargione, a moose cow, and a barred owl.

Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

‘You don’t need to go to Africa or Yellowstone to see the real-life world of nature. There are life and death struggles in your wood lot and backyard,” said Michael Fargione, wildlife biologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, during his lecture “Caught on Camera: Our Wildlife Neighbors.”

He showed a video of two bucks recorded them displaying their antlers, then challenging each other with a clash of antlers, which ended with one buck running off. The victor stood and pawed the ground in victory.

Keep ReadingShow less