Readers’ Column for the week of November 11, 2018

You may call the Owego Pennysaver Readers’ Column at (607) 687-2378 24-hours a day, or e-mail comments to readerscolumn@stny.rr.com. We reserve the right to revise or reject any message. 

Are small towns, like Spencer, so poor that they can not afford to staff their Town Hall? It does not make sense to build a new Town Hall and then not have anyone work there. Yesterday I was met with a note on the door stating if I wanted to see a Code Enforcement Officer I would have to try from 5 to 8 p.m. To add insult to injury there was also a phone number that did not work. How can you operate a government like this? Taxpayers are entitled to better service than this. Junk cars and trash seem to be the topic of the Town. When are they going to enforce some of the laws they have passed? 

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Here is my Suez monthly bill breakdown after careful calculation: facility charge, whatever that is – is more than double per month. Water bill monthly charge now an additional $12.43 per month for the same ccf = +$149.16 per year. Just an FYI.

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The Town of Owego is holding a public hearing on the 2019 Budget on Tuesday, Nov. 13, at 6:30 p.m. at the Owego Town Hall. The proposed rate increase for the 2019 budget is as high as 24 percent and the Town Board is proposing spending up to $12 million on a new highway garage.

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I would like to say thank you to the sheriff who supervised or who was involved with Halloween in Newark Valley. He was wonderful and it gave us the feeling of safety with the children being out and everything. We are very thankful!

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This is to the person who was writing in about a huge difference between a so-called therapy dog and a service dog. Therapy dogs are just plain dogs with no special training. That’s not true. I had a therapy dog, we went to school, and we had training. I think she’s getting it mixed up with a comfort dog, which has no training. They just come up to you when you get anxious and you pet them. They don’t need any training at all. Service dogs do and so does therapy dogs. Therapy dogs need to be trained but you don’t have to go to school with them. 

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I was wondering why they couldn’t put that apartment complex where Trabucco Chevrolet was on Bodle Hill Road. I wonder if anybody has thought of that.

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Talk about speed bumps, there’s a real beauty out on Sulpher Springs Road. Oh, wait a minute, that’s not a speed bump, that’s the new bridge!

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I’m better known as the old man on the hill to the Town of Owego Highway Department. You can keep protecting Mr. Clark, but there are other people that print and your name will be in it.

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I’m calling to the person who had a therapy dog comment in the Pennysaver last Sunday. My granddaughter has put her dog through therapy training and I have some information on this. They have to have basic obedience training, that’s a have to have. You give them praise while you are training them; you leash them to walk next to you with a leash no longer than 4-feet. They can’t interact with other dogs during working or training. They do have to pass a test. The examiner observes them over three visits for them to be certified. Most of it you do yourself until you come to the test, then you get certification. 

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I saw in the most recent Pennysaver that the mayor of Newark Valley appears to be quite proud of the village not having a rating where they are in economic distress. Unfortunately what he continues to avoid is responding to citizens’ inquiries as to why there is a full time clerk in a village of fewer than 1,000 residents. It’s hard to understand why he won’t respond and there’s a real need for more transparency.

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I’d like to help the person in Owego who’s wondering what is going to happen with the old Sanmina plant with the contaminated ground water and everything that’s been going on there. I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. The village and the county are going to continue to come after overachievers, landlords, business owners and homeowners. They’re going to steal more money from you and you are going to pay for their problem. This is not an Owego problem. It’s an Owego resident problem. 

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It’s good to see the town of Berkshire has cleaned up a lot of junk cars.

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It’s nice to have a Dollar General store in Berkshire!

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I would like to know how, in good conscience, the town can threaten an 80-plus year old woman for not mowing her lawn enough but they’re willing to fix up the privately owned businesses on Front Street. Why shouldn’t those people be responsible for their property like everyone else is? 

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I’ve seen plenty of people in the grocery store with unruly grubby little kids handling raw food, their parents allowing them to poke holes in the packages of meat. Personally I would rather take a chance on food that a therapy dog has walked past rather than the food that was handled by those kids. 

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Black Friday bowling is coming up at Owego Bowl for all school age children. There will be free bowling, free soda, and free pizza. Hope to see you there!

National Political Viewpoints

Here’s an idea. How about Nancy Pelosi and the other Liberal Democrats, like our two Senators, volunteer to sponsor some of these “immigrants”, house and provide for them for a minimum of six months? I mean, IN THEIR HOME. Instead, they are all about letting anyone in because they want the votes, and the rest of us get to live near them, provide for them with our taxes, etc. All the while, the Liberals encouraged them to come, live in their gated communities with security protecting them from these immigrants.

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“Who knows? If the Department of Defense’s wasteful ways were ever brought under genuine scrutiny and control, people might start to question, for example, whether a country that already has the capability to destroy the world many times over needs to spend $1 trillion over the next three decades on a new generation of ballistic missiles, bombers, and nuclear-armed submarines. None of this would be good news for the contractors or for their allies in the Pentagon and Congress. Undoubtedly, from time to time, you’ll continue to hear outrageous media stories about waste at the Pentagon and bomb-detecting elephants gone astray. Without a concerted campaign of public pressure of a sort we haven’t seen in recent years, however, the Pentagon’s runaway budget will never be reined in, that audit will never happen, and the weapons makers will whistle a happy tune on their way to the bank with our cash.” “Only the Pentagon Could Spend $640 on a Toilet Seat” — William D. Hartung, April 11, 2016, The Nation.

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“My biggest concern is that we’re focusing on the wrong thing. What we need to be focusing on is violence. I can tell you as a trauma surgeon, I have seen people killed with any variety of objects. Guns make it a little easier perhaps. But I will tell you that a brick or a bat or a fist or a knife make you just as dead as the bullet does. Everyone talks about common sense gun control. I’m all in favor of that. I just don’t have any idea what it is.” Michael Foreman, Trauma Surgeon, quoted in the cover story for the Nov. 5, 2018 issue of Time magazine: Guns in America. Highly recommended.

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If anyone watched the Presidential news conference in which Jim Acosta from CNN was absolutely rude and nasty, you have an idea where the lack of civility in public discourse comes from. Cutting off his access to the White House is the least of what should have been done. There ought to be legal consequences, and stiff ones! If that kind of behavior had been exhibited with Barack Obama, there would have been Hell to pay.

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It’s not a surprise at all that another Kavanaugh accuser has come forward and admitted she lied. It was terrible what the Democrats had Mr. Kavanaugh go through.

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I would think it’s pretty obvious Donald Trump has no conscience. He doesn’t care about you, he doesn’t care about the people of the United States; he cares about Donald Trump. What does it take for you to understand?

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Now, after all these women took on the men and made themselves look like jerks, drunken 16 year old jerks, that the mothers didn’t care where they were, wrecked men’s lives and now I would be willing to bet you someone they call mother is behind this business with the girl scouts taking on the boy scouts. Stop and think about it. Another run around. There’s not a chance in hell for these men today.

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I cannot believe that the voters of Tioga County have given Tom Reed another four years as our representative. He has done “absolutely nothing” to help the people of this district. I guess, as long as you are a Republican, it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do you will still get elected. No wonder we live is such a depressed area of the country, we have no representation.