Watertown Daily Times
By ANDREA VanVALKENBURG
 Staff Writer Staff Writer Thu Jul 15, 2010, 02:02 PM EDT

MALONE — A North Bangor man was jailed this week accused of raping one teen and abusing another.

Authorities believe Randy J. French was with the girls last weekend when he gave them alcohol and engaged in sexual acts with the pair.

When a family friend of the girls learned about the alleged encounter, they contacted Malone-based State Police, who lodged charges against the 21-year-old Wednesday morning.

French is now facing charges of second-degree rape, second-degree criminal sexual act and second-degree sex abuse.

He was also arrested on two counts of endangering the welfare of a child and unlawfully dealing with a child.

Police believe French had sex with one girl, who cannot legally consent due to her age, and later abused the other.

Both girls are younger than 15, police said.

After being arraigned in Malone Town Court, French was sent to Franklin County Jail, where he was still being held Thursday, unable to post bail or bond.

He is due back in court July 22.

Watertown Times  Petty-theft charge lodged

MALONE — State police charged two women with stealing items from the Wal-Mart Supercenter on Friday.

Nancy A. Parkinson, 45, of 102 Fort Covington St., and Michelle L. Marshall, 25, of 121 Valley Road, both were charged with petit larceny.  They are to answer the charges in Malone Town Court.

Taking over the Harrison buildings would be great.  It is a perfect site for one or two of the elementary schools but the cost of fixing/tearing down is prohibitive due to asbestos and lead in buildings.  It would also solve some problems since dropouts and older boys will wait there to meet girlfriends and or sell drugs.  I would never let my daughter walk through that area.  Some parents pick up their children there and that is okay as long as they student goes directly to the car. 

When the district was looking for a site for a new building, they looked at a site adjacent to Davis.  When they tested the land, they found it would cost more to prepare the land (it was brought to level by construction debris) than it would ever be worth.  Putting a road through there is no problem. 

Some many of the old buildings are prohibative to fix up due to the asbestos problems.  It is a fixable problem but not cheap to do.

I wish that were possible. The reason why the Harrison buildings sit unoccupied today is that no one car afford the cost of asbestos abatement needed. I have been told by some that have been inside, that the gym there is still in pretty good shape, and many areas wouldn't take much to get ready for use, save for the huge amount of asbestos caked pipes and floor tiles, among other things. It is really sad to see those buildings, and that lot, go to waste.

This is a good reason when you have times like this for the town to "Imminent Domain" the old Harrison building get them refurbished for class use. Take those building away form the jerk who bought them and doesnt even live in the area but taking out loans on the property.

The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico should have every american thinking about how we need to end our dependency on oil.

Has anyone done anything (solar, wind, water, etc) that has impacted the amount of oil you use?  Help the rest of us so we can follow your example.

I am disappointed that those in power in NY and Washington have not revved up the alternative energy engine and created a significant number of jobs.  It would be a great way to impact a number of different issues - oil use, alternative energy, the economy, air pollution and more!

Plattsburgh Press Republican
Victim pinned in car with no service in recent Route 30 crash
By KIM SMITH DEDAM
 Staff Writer

DUANE — When Jonathon Foster went off Route 30 in Duane, he was discovered by luck.

Pinned and critically injured, the 19-year-old was jammed inside his crashed truck for nearly 50 minutes on Aug. 17 before three forest rangers driving by with the windows down heard his screams.

With similar incidents mounting like a grisly tally, emergency-services personnel are troubled with the length of time it takes for people needing help here to reach it.

There is no cellular telephone service on that 35-mile stretch of Route 30, crossing through wetlands, ponds and forest between Gabriels and Malone.

It's a main thoroughfare for commerce, workers and tourists alike.

PINNED FOR 50 MINUTES

Duane Fire Company Vice President F. Gil Paddock said this was the fifth such incident since June 2009 to occur on Route 30.

"A young lad (Foster) who works at the Price Chopper in Lake Placid was coming home and fell asleep. He went off just north of the Lake Meacham outlet."

The crash tore the driver's side door right off, Paddock said, and the bent dashboard pinned Foster to the seat.

"It was about 5 p.m. when he went off the road. But cars going by couldn't see him. It was a group of three forest rangers from Lake Meacham with their windows down who heard him screaming.

"The family figures he was stuck there for about 50 minutes. We needed two sets of Jaws (of Life) to get him out."

NO COVERAGE

"In the 40 years I've been in the fire service, I have never seen an incident response go more smoothly," Paddock said of the serendipitous chain of events that started once Foster was discovered.

Nobody had cell service. But luck filled in.

"The guys that found him ran up to the road and sent cars north and south to make a 911 call going eight to 12 miles depending on the direction. The one going south stopped at an EMT's house, someone he knew.

"And our chief, Ned Lemeuix, was on Route 30 going home when he heard the call on his fire radio. We were able to reach LifeFlight through county dispatch, and within a couple minutes they said the helicopter would be taking off. We landed them right in the road right below the accident scene. Twenty minutes later, he (Jonathon) was in Burlington at Fletcher Allen.

"This was extremely life threatening," Paddock said. "The EMS people are doing a great job. But we need to get to people sooner. Had those guys not been driving with their windows down and heard him, Lord knows."

TOWER PERMIT

Last week, the Town of Duane issued a building permit for the 80-foot Verizon Wireless cell-phone tower approved by the Adirondack Park Agency in February.

But even that tower's signal wouldn't have helped Foster or any of the four previous victims.

The proposed cell-coverage area does not even reach far enough south to cover Lake Meacham, a busy state camping area with 224 campsites.

"The most desolate section of Route 30 from the north entrance of Lake Meacham to the Visitors Interpretive Center still will not have any coverage," Paddock explained.

"Engineers' propagation maps show that at least a 160-foot tower would be needed to provide coverage to Route 30 in Duane."

TALLER TOWER

Verizon Wireless has asked for a permit modification to make the Duane tower taller.

"They were planning to put a base in for a larger tower and then the first sections up to 80 feet. It would be able to be extended," Paddock said.

Verizon Wireless spokesman John O'Malley said they are doing internal work to prepare to add the site to their construction schedule.

"I don't have a timeline for when that will happen yet."

But at 80 feet, the Duane Fire Company can't even put an antenna on it.

"We can't place our antenna at the height we're licensed for because it will interfere with theirs and we need 10 feet between the two," Paddock said.

With frustration mounting, firefighters say the effort to protect a forest view shed by making a tower shorter is ludicrous.

"What will it take?" Paddock said.

"Human life is worth more than somebody's uninhibited view."

RADIO SERVICE

Franklin County Emergency Services has been awarded $775,000 from the Department of Homeland Security to make emergency-communication improvements.

"We have to update a few things, and then the county will have to accept the award," Emergency Services Director Ricky Provost said Thursday. "I would say we're six to eight months away from starting."

Improvements will help fire and EMS dispatching agencies, Provost said.

"It doesn't have anything to do with the cell service, though."

By JESSICA COLLIER, Enterprise Staff Writer
POSTED: September 3, 2010
MALONE - The Franklin County Legislature decided to wait to see what Essex County will do before voting on a contract that includes raises for North Country Community College's workers' union.
The contract between the college and its Civil Service Employees Association, which includes 24 clerical and maintenance workers, was rejected Monday by the Ways and Means Committee of the Essex County Board of Supervisors. The contract may be brought up to the full Essex County board next Tuesday, or supervisors can let it die.
Both counties contribute to the college's budget, and both must approve the contract or it will go back to the bargaining table. The contract would not affect either county's 2010-11 contribution of $1.2 million.
NCCC is funded through tuition and county and state contributions, with a main campus in Saranac Lake and satellite campuses in Malone and Ticonderoga.
On Thursday, the college's vice president for fiscal operations, Bill Chapin, presented the details of the contract to the Franklin County Board of Legislators.
Workers in the union make between $21,000 and $37,000 a year, and total payroll for union members adds up to about $700,000.
The contract includes a $1,000 flat raise the first year and a 3-percent raise the following two years, averaging out to about a 3.1 percent increase per year. Chapin said that's less generous than the .2 percent average of raises over the expiring contract for the previous three years.
The raises would total about $24,000 in the first year and $68,000 over all three years.
Chapin compared the contract to Essex County's with its union, which included a 4.25 percent raise for employees, significantly more than the NCCC contract.
Chapin said the contract was approved by everyone at NCCC and was the result of lengthy negotiations that at points involved a mediator.
"This contract has been worked through for over a year-and-a-half," Chapin said. "This is a fair contract. There's been concessions. We reached an agreement where we're sharing the costs."
Franklin County Legislator Paul Maroun, R-Tupper Lake, said if the county supported the college employees getting a 3 percent raise, he would feel morally bound to giving county employees 3 percent annual raises as well, which he said the county cannot afford.
The contract also includes an 8 percent health insurance contribution for new hires. Chapin said the college is moving toward having all employees contribute as insurance costs rise.
Maroun said he didn't feel comfortable supporting a contract in which some employees don't contribute to their health insurance.
"That's about as unusual as eating ice cream in the Sahara Dessert and not thinking it's going to melt," Maroun said.
Legislator Tim Burpoe, who represents Saranac Lake, home to the main NCCC campus, said the contract is an internal document between the college and its union.
"When it comes down to internal negotiations, I think that we can probably equate that to the state of New York coming in and questioning our union contracts between our union entities here with Franklin County," Burpoe said. "I'm thinking that they've done the best they can on these agreements."
He said the county's time to control costs at the college is when NCCC comes to the county annually to get its overall budget approved.
Burpoe noted that CSEA members are probably the lowest-paid workers at the school.
"I certainly wouldn't want to not give employees, that are being paid probably a minimal amount, a pay raise when the cost of living has gone up significantly," Burpoe said. "I wouldn't want to have employees working for me that are on food stamps."
He noted that the cost to renegotiate the contract could be the same or more as the raises included in the contract.
Burpoe offered a resolution to approve the contract from the floor, but the board decided not to vote on it because members wanted to see what Essex County's next move would be and take time to make up their minds. Burpoe withdrew the resolution so he could offer it up again at the next meeting.

Adirondack Daily Enterprise
By JESSICA COLLIER, Enterprise Staff Writer
POSTED: September 4, 2010
People who ride the late run of the Franklin County bus system are upset after being given one week's notice that their regular route will be cancelled.
But as far as county transportation officials are aware, the cancellation isn't even happening yet.
The Franklin County Transportation System is run by the county but contracted out to the Association of Senior Citizens of Franklin County.
Gerald Warren, who oversees the bus for the association, did not return several messages left for him Friday.
County transportation department head Mary Shanty said as far as she knows, officials are just reviewing numbers to see where money can be saved.
"There are no plans to shut down that route as of right now," Shanty told the Enterprise in a phone interview.
But county Legislator Paul Maroun has a different story. He said he did talk with Warren Friday morning, and Warren confirmed to him that the run is scheduled to be shut down due to a lack of riders.
"He said, 'Paul, I just can't justify a run for one person,'" Maroun said. "Everything comes down to money, and he's trying to balance his budget until the end of the year."
Maroun said it's unfortunate that it's impacting people, but money is tight and the bus system has to do what it can to stabilize itself.
"This is what happens when everybody starts cutting back," Maroun said. "You can't have everything."
Maroun said Warren told him the run was averaging one to two riders a night.
But Tupper Laker John MacAbee said he doesn't think there are that few riders.
"Depending on which day you look at - sometimes there are, sometimes there's not," MacAbee said. "But I think the average overall is higher than they're saying."
He said there were six people on the bus Wednesday, with three riding all the way to Tupper Lake, and the driver told him another night this week there were five people who rode the full way to Tupper.
MacAbee, a full-time student at North Country Community College, said he set up his course schedule based on the bus routes. He said the alternative, taking a taxi home, would cost $35 per ride.
Saranac Laker Larry Harris is another regular late-night rider. He has worked for three years at the Marriott Courtyard hotel in Lake Placid from 3 to 11 p.m. He takes the bus there and back.
He already has to pay $24 for cab rides to get to work on holidays, as he will this Monday.
"I get paid like $9.50 an hour, so that's going to be a little piece of my check," Harris said.
There are two late-night routes: one running from Tupper Lake to Saranac Lake to Lake Placid and back, and one from Malone through Saranac Lake to Lake Placid and back.
The Tupper Lake run is set to be cancelled, Harris was told by the bus drivers, but the Malone one is set to stay in service. A shuttle from Tupper Lake to Paul Smith's College that connects to the Malone run is also set to be shut down, Harris said.
Harris said the driver of the Malone bus usually just goes to the municipal parking lot across from the post office, but he was told the driver might be able to make accommodations to pick him up.
But that doesn't satisfy Harris.
"It's not just about me; it's about the people that live in Malone and in Tupper," Harris said. "If one falls, we all fall."
Maroun said he's trying to work out a solution that would go out later or somehow combine the Malone route with the Tupper Lake route, hoping to find a way to accommodate everyone.
In the meantime, Harris said he is getting petitions signed by everyone he can that call for the route to stay in service.
"The more people know about it, maybe something can be done," Harris said.

Other law enforcement groups love to grab up people after they have been trained by some other group.  They all go to the same school so when you graduate, the expectation is that you are going to work for who trained you - at least for awhile - to help compensate for the high cost of training. 

It is not unusually for one branch to train them and then someone else hires them away and the group that paid for the training is left with the expense.

Doesn't seem quite fair but it happens a lot.