Our Opinion: Board made right choices

Opinion

Discussion

COMMENTING ON STORIES:

Welcome to our story comments feature. We welcome your thoughts and your opinions, including the unpopular ones. We only ask that you keep your conversations clean, civil and on the topic of the story you are commenting on.

Coinciding with our websites redesign, we launched our new story comments feature through Disqus.

Disqus gives users the ability to log into our story comments feature so that they may be able to track their conversations, receive emails when their comments get a reply or to even have your comments update onto your Facebook or Twitter accounts.

For the time being, our story comments feature will continue to have the ability to post comments anonymously. We reserve the right to require registration in the future using your name and verified email address.

Not all comments are deemed printable. Some are disqualified at the newspaper’s discretion for a number of different reasons. Please follow our Online Rules of Conduct at all times.

RULES OF CONDUCT:

We reserve the right to remove comments that are unacceptable, to wit:

1. False and inacurate statements.
2. Personal attacks. Explicit name-calling.
3. Harassing, harmful, vulgar, obscene and defamatory language.
4. Threatening statements or statements that suggest violence.
5. Hate speech of any kind.
6. Intolerant comments on religion, race, age, gender, sexual preference or disabilities.
7. Accusations of criminal activity.
8. Content that is harmful to children and minors in any way.
9. References to any type of sexual activity and other private matters.
10. Random and inflammatory statements that are off topic.
11. Advertising of any kind.
12. Typing in all caps.

WE ENCOURAGE REASONABLE AND COURTEOUS COMMENTS THAT:

1. Create conversation on issues of interest and concern to fellow readers and local community members.
2. Express opinions and contrarian views.
3. Stimulate debate with respectful language.
4. Stay within the boundaries of these rules.

WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO SUSPEND OR TERMINATE ACCESS FOR:

1. Violating any of these Online Rules of Conduct.
2. Deliberately disrupting discussions with repetitive messages, meaningless messages or spam.
3. Misrepresentation of identity or impersonating another user.

WE WELCOME:

1. Flagging violations of these rules that you observe to our attention.

MONITORING:

We monitor comments regularly Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Approval of comments outside of this time will be sporadic.

comments powered by Disqus

July 3, 2012

Our Opinion: Board made right choices

The Cooperstown Crier Tue Jul 03, 2012, 08:58 AM EDT

The village board made two good decisions Monday night. Both votes required a tiebreaker from Mayor Jeff Katz.

The first was a proposal to halt the long-standing tradition of the noon whistle, or siren.

The whistle signaling noon, or lunchtime, may have been a more important part of life decades ago, but today was carried on primarily as a tradition.

It turns out that tradition is not such a healthy one, especially if you are anywhere near one of the two sirens when they sound off. Trustee Dr. Walter Franck did some investigating and found that the noise level near the sirens exceeds what the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would consider permissible. The research led Franck to conclude that the siren is “environmentally hazardous to our citizens.” He said he believes it would not be responsible to continue to use the siren for anything but emergencies. To use something that can harm people to carry on a tradition would be wrong, he said.

We would agree with Franck that the piercing wail of the siren should not be used to mark noon if it poses a threat to the health and well-being of residents and visitors. The second decision was one regarding parking on portions of Fair and Lake Streets.

Two months ago, at the urging of residents, the board of trustees limited 40 parking spaces to two-hour parking. In May, many of those spaces were empty and with the south trolley lot closed during Gateway Project construction, the public safety committee recommended changing back to all-day parking.

The residents who asked for the two-hour limit returned Monday night to ask trustees not to change back to all-day parking. The residents told board members that if they return to all-day parking it will simply become an employee parking lot and unavailable to residents or visitors.

It is understandable that parking spaces may be at more of a premium than they normally are, but there are still options available for parking. To return to all-day parking would make it more convenient for the employees of local institutions, but do little to improve the lives of village residents.