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HOMES EVERY WEEK! Times of Ti
April 20, 2019
suncommunitynews.com
• EDITION •
New home for Hudson Headwaters Clinic will move to new space at Ticonderoga ‘medical village’ By Tim Rowland STA FF W RITER
Elizabethtown Community Hospital President John Remillard and David Clauss, emergency medicine physician and UVM associate professor, show off architectural plans for space that will be leased to Hudson Headwaters’ primary care clinic. Photo by Tim Rowland
Budget dilemma Ticonderoga schools may have to break tax cap By Tim Rowland STA FF W RITER
Ticonderoga Schools Superintendent John McDonald Jr. explains budget options at a special board meeting last week. Photo by Tim Rowland
Preserving history Three historic Port Henry buildings to get attention By Tim Rowland STA FF W RITER
PORT HENRY | When people with physical challenges have business with the Town of Moriah they call employees in advance, who will then meet them outside the rampless office building at their cars. Or, on occasion, someone will pull up outside the office of Supervisor Tom Scozzafava and blow the horn. “We have curbside service here,” Scozzafava said. But the federal government is unappreciative of small-town-quaint, so Moriah will seek a $300,000 grant to bring the town hall into compliance with Americans with Disabilities law. The grant would pay for wheelchair access to the ground floor and a lift in the back of the building to allow access to the second floor. Two other important buildings in Port Henry will receive upgrades as well, including the former carriage house that now serves as a mining museum, and the limestone train station that still caters to passenger rail service operated by Amtrak. All three are historically and architecturally significant. “We’ve lost too many of these buildings, and we have to preserve what we have left,” Scozzafava said. “It’s our responsibility to be good stewards of the property.”
TOWN HALL, CARRIAGE HOUSE
The picturesque Town Hall began life in 1875 as the main offices for Witherbee, Sherman, and Company in the heyday of the region’s iron mines. Beautiful, in a spooky kind of way, it hangs heavy with architectural ornamentation from the Renaissance and Baroque eras, which melded into the French Second Empire period popular abroad and on these shores between the Civil War and the turn of the 20th century. The Carriage House next door — which also served in its day as an icehouse and a laboratory for testing iron ore — suffers from rotting wood throughout the exterior, including the cupola and upstairs doors. The elaborate crown molding on the front soffit areas will be replicated and replaced. The work is being done by Jeff Popp at Breed Hill Wood Products and Construction for $7,700. » History Cont. on pg. 3 “It’s a great price,” Scozzafava said. The Port Henry rail station with the Carriage House in the background. Three local 19th century buildings will be getting upgrades. Photo by Tim Rowland
ADVERTISE ·,
TICONDEROGA | The Ticonderoga Central School District could ask taxpayers to approve a levy increase of nearly 19 percent to close a budget gap largely attributable to escalating health-insurance costs. The board could also decide to come in under the tax cap, but would necessitate up to nine layoffs and cuts in school programming, as well as scrapping a plan for a school safety officer and construction to make classroom space more secure. Employees whose jobs would be potentially affected were informed Wednesday.
SHAKY FINANCIAL FOOTING
At a special meeting last Tuesday, Superintendent John McDonald Jr. said that without
an admittedly painful fi x this year, the board will go into next year on shaky financial footing as well. At a previous meeting, administrators prepared a sample, $23 million budget that called for a smaller increase in the levy, but also depleted the school system’s $1 million fund balance. McDonald said after the meeting that several board members had been concerned that wiping out the schools’ savings was too risky. The board, which will make its final decision April 25, could decide on a budget somewhere in the middle of the two extremes, although that might present less of a long-term fi x. McDonald said he was confident the full increase would bring the schools’ finances back to an even keel. » Budget Cont. on pg. 3
An app in the woods
Visitors to Newcomb can access activities on their smartphones By Tim Rowland STA FF W RITER
NEWCOMB | Downtown Newcomb, as downtowns are traditionally thought of, does not exist. It’s three miles along Route 28N of a house here and a business there, with a park or a government building scattered along the way. This, town officials say, creates the wrongful impression that there’s no reason to stay in Newcomb and no place to find a bed or a bite if you wanted to. What the town needed to do was clear up misconceptions and put all their assets in one centralized, easy to access location. Now, there’s an app for that. The Experience Newcomb app, available at Apple and Google app stores, or by snapping a photo of the app’s QR code, will provide tourists and locals alike with a wealth of information about the community, including local events, as well as places to stay, shop, eat, paddle, hike and have fun. There are plans to link websites of the other four communities of the Five Towns in the east/central Adirondacks — Indian Lake, Minerva, North Hudson and Long Lake — that are partnering to bring awareness of activities in their areas. “We’re trying to help people find where they’re going more easily,” said Laurinda
Minke, a graphic artist who helped develop Experience Newcomb. “People think there’s no place to stay, but in summer we actually have 10 places to stay.” Once people stay, they will find plenty to do, Newcomb Supervisor Robin DeLoria said. Travelers might be familiar with the Great Camp Santanoni — perhaps Newcomb’s most identifiable asset — and the app will point people to other, lesser known gems. “They might have been to Santanoni, but they don’t know how to get to Lake Henderson,” DeLoria said. “With the app you can click on the (icon) and Google Maps will open and tell you exactly how to get there.”
DIGITAL WORLD
Smartphones are increasingly driving Adirondack tourism, and what travel guides such as Fodors or Lonely Planet were to travelers a generation ago, apps are to people who today want to know where to go and what to do. “We’re trying to reach people in the digital world,” DeLoria said. “People who come here and don’t know the area will benefit.” That means, officials hope, that Newcomb and the Five Towns will benefit. » Newcomb Cont. on pg. 3
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TICONDEROGA | The Hudson Headwaters primary care health clinic in Ticonderoga will move from its present location into a new 10,300-foot facility at the Ticonderoga campus of the University of Vermont (UVM) Health Network-Elizabethtown Community Hospital, officials announced last week. The addition of a primary care clinic at the campus will provide a significant piece of the puzzle as the former Moses-Ludington Hospital is remade into modern, flexible facility that can treat residents for a majority of their medical needs locally, while rapidly sending those in need of advanced medicine to the nearest facility where it’s available. Construction will begin this summer, financed with the help of a $5.67 million grant from New York’s Statewide Health Care Facility Transformation Program. Hudson Headwaters will lease the space from UVM and when completed it will create a “fully integrated medical village, bringing together a variety of complementary healthrelated services in one convenient location,” according to a hospital press release. Hudson Headwaters Health Network is a Queensbury-based nonprofit that operates 18 health centers in the North Country, including the one in Ticonderoga. » New home Cont. on pg. 2