Chester – The Hambletonians earned a Section 9 Class D championship with a 24-14 win over Eldred on a damp night in Middletown. With a week off after being suspended for their part in a skirmish with Onteora, the Hambletonians didn’t miss a step in the contest.

Eldred took the lead when Ian Halloran capped a scoring drive with a 14-yard run for paydirt. Teammate Bob Warden iced the kick to give Eldred a 7-0 lead.

Hambletonian quarterback Matt Balzano uncorked a 34-yard bomb to Victor Cruz. And the duo hooked up again for the extra point to stake Chester to an 8-7 advantage to close the first frame. In the second quarter, Balzano ended a scoring drive with an eight yard touchdown strike to Danny Conklin. Pat Perry muscled his way in for the conversion and Chester took earned a 16-7 lead heading into the half.

After the break, both squads had trouble offensively as the defense took center stage through the third quarter. Eldred broke the scoreless streak in the fourth when Bryan Henry hit Charles Wolff with a 30-yard pass and Warden’s kick made another extra point to cut the Chester lead to 16-14.

But the Hambletonians ignited their running game as Tyler Dieudonne found the endzone from five yards out with a little over five minutes left in the game. Pat Perry made his second two point conversion to afford Chester their 24-14 margin of victory.

The win sets Chester against Section 1 champion Tuckahoe in a state tournament first-round game on Nov. 15 at Dietz Stadium in Kingston.

Scoring Summary

Eldred: 7-0-0-7—14

Chester: 8-8-0-8—24

Dear Readers:

The Chester school board and superintendent do not want to hear what you think.

In a special meeting on Nov. 6, they decided that the Chester schools should stop providing any information to The Chronicle about what’s going on in the schools — not good news, not bad news, not any news.

We think this is an unfortunate step because The Chronicle must continue to report what’s going on, whether it is with officials’ cooperation or not.

By way of background, Superintendent of Schools Helen Anne Livingston, Village of Chester Mayor Phil Valastro, and some school board members are very upset about the tone and language of some of the blogs posted by the public on our Web site.

They are not wrong.

We have worked hard (and will continue to work hard) with your help, and on our own, to take down in a timely way the most odious and personally hurtful comments. In fact, we have removed more than 700 blog comments in the past four months. Should you wish to see the pile, stop by our offices at 20 West Avenue.

For those who have suggested we should limit which stories are open to blogging as a way to control discussion, the fact is that people will blog on whatever and wherever they please, whether on The Chronicle’s Web site or elsewhere. For those who suggest that we should require registration, the fact is that registration doesn’t change the tone of the blogs. It simply gives officials a sense that they may be able to force us to determine who is saying what.

The school board and the superintendent are wrong to try to starve The Chronicle by refusing to discuss the intricacies of the school audit, provide background on constructive peer-to-peer mentor programs in the high school, and allow honor roll students to get the recognition in the newspaper they deserve.

It would make our lives easier if they would work with us. But even though it would make our lives easier, and satisfy them, we cannot stifle the reasonable (though difficult) discussions going on in the blogs about whether school property is private or public, about whether our schools enfranchise the popular kids and disenfranchise others, about appropriate decorum on the playing field.

The olden days — when political officials, school officials and the media were in charge of what you knew and when you knew it — are gone. That is the reality of this Internet age and the nature of communication in 2008.

What is not gone, we hope, is a sense of decency and community in Chester. The school board and superintendent share our sense that we all need to encourage greater civility and respect on the Internet.

We urge school officials to lift the ban they have imposed on the right of school employees to talk with us and to allow all of us to get on with the jobs the people have a right to expect us to do: school officials to worry about educating our children well and cost-efficiently, The Chronicle to report what’s going on fairly and honorably.

What do you think? We’d love to hear from you. My phone number is 845-469-9000. My e-mail is nyoffice@strausnews.com. Our address is 20 West Avenue.

Regards,

Jeanne Straus, President

The Chronicle

School cuts off communication with The Chronicle

By Linda Smith Hancharick

Chester — The Chester school board called a special meeting last Thursday to address what it called the “malicious, outrageous, vicious, disgusting” postings on The Chronicle’s Web site.

At the end of the meeting, the board followed the lead of Superintendent of Schools Helen Anne Livingston and banned providing any school information to The Chronicle. In addition, the board and superintendent urged the community to pressure The Chronicle to disallow blogs.

Over the weekend, an e-mail was circulated to a group of about 30 involved Chester parents, urging them not to patronize the newspaper’s advertisers because of community posts on the Web site.

Board President John Pasichnyk, who had the backing of members Joan Donato, Judi Burger, and Frank Sambets, as well as Superintendent Livingston, said The Chronicle was allowing vicious attacks on Chester School District personnel and children and hiding behind the First Amendment. “The Chronicle is not a good community member,” Pasichnyk said.

Upon hearing what transpired at the meeting, Jeanne Straus, president of Straus News, which publishes The Chronicle, said: “We think it is very unfortunate that the Chester school board is taking this approach with our reporting and with the community members who have commented on our blogs.

As the CFO of this business that employees 140 people, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barack Obama will be our next
President, and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way.

To compensate for these increases, I figure that the Clients will have to see an increase in our fees to them of about 8%.

But since we cannot increase our fees right now due to the dismal state of our economy, we will have to lay off six of our employees instead.

This has really been eating at me for a while, as we believe we are family here and I didn’t know how to choose who will have to go. So, this is what I did.

I strolled thru our parking lot and found 8 Obama bumper stickers on our employees’ cars and have decided these folks will be the
first to be laid off. I can’t think of a more fair way to approach this problem.

These folks wanted change; I gave it to them.

If you have a better idea, let me know.

Great idea Carole, is there any way I can get my 4h Club to take part in your idea. These are children that range from the age of 5-10 yrs old.

BTW thank you for your extremely informative posts.

Please provide specific unit numbers so that we can understand better what you are referring to here. There are lots of 2000’s – where do you find the general ambiance and look of the area to be so run down?

YOU WROTE: So the homeowner who throws trash on his porch and rents a front unit on the main road directly influences the price of my home.

Please advise unit number.

YOU WROTE:
Why are we segregated and split into 4 groups?
Carole Condo 2 Response: The community was built in phases, each phase was set up as its own corporation – there are four phases and four corporation but we are not segregated all of our common business is managed by the same HOA with representation from each of the Condo Group corporations.
You wrote:
Why do they allow rentals here?
Carole Condo 2 Response: This is in our charter and makes our units more salable as investment property. This could come in very handy in difficult economic times – Example if an owner resident changes jobs at a time when the market is low and they bought their unit at a time when the market was high they are not forced to sell the unit if they can no longer live in it because they need to relocate for their job. They can rent the unit and wait for the pricing to increase again before selling or rent for a while to recover their loss in value and then sell without taking a loss.

I hope that you find this helpful.

Carole Condo 2