Published: July 03, 2008 08:25 am         

In These Otsego Hills

We note that the annual Cooperstown Presbyterian Ice Cream Social will be held this year on Friday, July 11 from 5 until 8 p.m. on the lawn of the church, or, heaven forbid, indoors in case of rain. Hot dogs with macaroni salad, lemonade, coffee, ice cream and homemade cake are on the menu. Additionally, handmade and secondhand treasure items as well as plants will be offered for sale.

There will also be baked goods available for purchase. Games for children and musical entertainment will also on hand. Tickets for food items are available ahead of time from church members or at the event itself.

This year the social will also feature fair trade items such as jewelry, cotton and silk scarves, cards and paper, and possibly coffee, tea and cocoa. All fair trade items are from Africa, Asia and Latin American countries. Under the fair trade concept, those people who produced the items will receive their fair share of the sale price. Sylvia Summers and Mary Leonard, both of Cooperstown, once again cochair this year’s Ice Cream Social. We, of course, plan on attending and trust to see any number of people at this annual community event. The next meeting of the Literary Discussion Group, sponsored by the Women’s Club of Cooperstown, will be held on Thursday, July 24 at 2:30 p.m. The meeting will be held at the home of Pat Duncan in Roseboom. Carpooling to the meeting is recommended. For directions and car pool possibilities, please call us at 547-8124. The book for discussion will be “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card.

Congratulations go out this week to Jane and Ward Moyer of Beaver Street who have just celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary. Congratulations also go to the members of the CCS Class of 1938 who celebrated their 70th high school reunion at the CCS Alumni Banquet held at the Middle/ High School last Saturday evening. Those from the class in attendance included Dorothy Chase, Henry Ludlam and Grace Welsh. When asked to say a few words to the assemblage, Henry pointed out that they were but three in number but nonetheless very glad to be there.

We also wish to send our congratulations to the CCS Class of 2008 as they prepare to leave Cooperstown Central and move on to the work place, the military or college. We wish them well in their chosen endeavors. And we must say that we were most pleased to see how many members of the class were appropriately dressed in shorts to attend the Alumni Banquet. The he-we would most definitely have approved. Earlier this year, in March to be exact, we became quite upset with our electric bill as the last payment for the budget year was based on an absolutely outrageous estimate from the electric company.

We, of course, called to complain and were told it was based on last year’s bill. We then pointed out that the bill for the same month last year was also outrageous, a fact we had called about at the time to no avail. After a bit of discussion with the electric company, which insisted on holding the position that their estimates were correct, we decided to cancel our budget plan on the assumption that the bill would at least be correct every other month.

In April our electric bill, based on an actual meter reading, was in the neighborhood of $20.90, a somewhat large drop from the previous month of $109.45. When our May bill arrived, it, being based on still another electric company wonder estimate, was $110.21. At that point we actually thought we would take up reading the electric meter on the months that the electric company didn’t until we realized we did not have a prayer of being able to get to the electric meter to read it. So we figured we were stuck with the company’s crazy estimates. However, when our June bill arrived, it was obvious that the actual reading for June was less than the estimate for May. In fact, the May bill had been redone so that the payments for May and June were $65.02 and $56.19 respectively. As a result, given our whooping prepayment in May, our total bill for June was $11. We would hope that the electric company might well be working on its ability to estimate, however we certainly are not willing to place any kind of bet on it.

In closing, we are happy to report that in spite of the somewhat huge increase in the assessment of our little piece of Cooperstown real estate, we were able to successfully pay in June the first installment on our village property taxes. We duly noted that the village taxes, for us at least, had gone up just slightly over 10 percent since last year. And while we were not happy about that, we also were not devastated by it.

We think, if our figuring is correct, that we will also be able to pay the second installment in August. However, we do not feel particularly confident about being able to pay the school taxes in September. The school tax bill has always been our biggest tax bill. And we have no reason to think that is going to change. But, unlike other years, this year, with the new assessments, we have no idea what the school tax bill might be. And that does make it very difficult to know if enough money has been set aside to pay the tax bill. It quite makes us hope that this summer stretches out forever, pushing the ever dreaded school tax bill far into the future.

We remain,
In these Otsego hills,
The Ellsworths

The Ellsworths may be reached by mail at 105 Pioneer St., Cooperstown, N.Y. 13326, by telephone at 547- 8124 or by e-mail at cellsworth1@stny.rr.com. They look forward to hearing from you.