From our family to yours: have a Blessed Christmas and best wishes for a Happy New Year.
Merry Christmas
From our family to yours: have a Blessed Christmas and best wishes for a Happy New Year.
From our family to yours: have a Blessed Christmas and best wishes for a Happy New Year.
The Lost Radio Ad
This is truly a piece of history. It is an actual radio ad for the Huletts Hotel from approximately 1956 to 1958. Be sure to listen to it before reading the rest of the post below.
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Only read below after listening.
The “gag” of the joke revolves around the fact that the keys for the hotel’s rooms would open more than one door. Our serious guest finds this out unexpectedly but during the last years of the Hotel’s existence this was a known fact. This harkens back to a more innocent time where the “gag” is on the guest who has never stayed in Huletts before. It speaks for itself that this was actually advertised. So we wanted to share a little history and a little fun. What a truly special place Huletts Landing is, where all the doors open with one key and you find friends in every room.
New Rules to be Considered Next Month
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The Lake George Park Commission will be releasing a draft of their proposed rules to protect stream corridors next month.
The Albany Times Union reports on it here. |
This article is a bit oversimplified because it equates runoff with only private property development. Most people don’t know that when the LGPC was created, it was not given any authority to regulate other government entities. The biggest factor in pollutants reaching the Lake is runoff from County and State roads, especially salt and oil. But the LGPC has no authority to regulate other government bodies. This past summer, Washington County dug trenches down the mountain to facilitate runoff from County Route 6. When they did this, they destroyed areas Ed had created to catch runoff from the road. He had dug mini-sediment-basins over the course of a few years to catch any salt before it entered any stream. In the course of about two hours all of these were destroyed. The County’s response was that they could do whatever they wanted to because the LGPC regulations didn’t apply to them – and they did.
While we agree that every stream should be protected, we would like to see the government subjected to the same rules that private property owners are. Especially, when road pollutants are the biggest factor in runoff reaching the Lake. Until they are, the biggest source of pollutants will continue to flow.
He Gets a Commission
One of our guests passed along this cute story about her young son. We share it here with you for the holidays.
After returning from their vacation in Huletts, her son started first grade. As one of his first assignments, he had to create a web-page about the things he had done that summer. This may be hard to believe that first graders are creating web pages, but the mother tells us it happened just like this.
Well he worked for a couple of weeks and diligently built his webpage. It was a montage of all the things he had done in Huletts, illustrated by pictures his family took. There were shots of him playing on the beach, him riding his bicycle, going to the soda fountain, etc. I’m sure you get the idea.
Well it comes time to present his website to his class and he pulls it up on his monitor with all his first grade classmates gathered around. On seeing all the things he had done in Huletts and what joy he had, his classmates were completely incredulous that there was a place where a first grader could have so much fun. Two asked simultaneously; “is that a real place?” To which he replied; “Of course, it’s a real place, it’s Huletts Landing and that’s where I go on vacation!” He then proceeded to pull up our website and show them how they could make a reservation. His mother said every child in the class said they were going to tell their parents.
Now how’s that for word of mouth advertising!
The Huletts Cookie
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If you’re looking for a good cookie recipe for the holidays, we pass this one along to you. We call it the Huletts Cookie. |
(Recipe may be halved)
2 cups butter
24 oz. chocolate chips
4 cups flour
2 cups brown sugar
2 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
2 cups sugar
1 8 oz. Hershey Bar (grated)
5 cups blended oatmeal
4 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. vanilla
3 cups chopped walnut
Measure oatmeal, and blend in a blender to a fine powder. Cream the
butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla, mix together with flour,
oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda. Add chocolate chips, Hershey Bar,
and nuts. Roll into balls, and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet.
Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees. Makes 112 cookies. Think of all the good
times you’ve had in Huletts when you eat it!
Cruella DeVille Would Be Happy
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Remember the cries of Cruella DeVille to “kill the puppies, kill ALL the puppies” in 101 Dalmatians? Well Governor Paterson is killing all the pheasants and closing the Reynold’s Game farm by the end of the year. |
The Reynolds Game Farm, is the last-of-its-kind New York game preserve where pheasants have been bred and released into the wild since the 1920’s. You won’t hear much about this in the mainstream press but this is the type of thing that makes upstate sportsmen really mad. The reason is that this preserve is funded by excise taxes collected on all firearm and ammunition purchases. Instead of releasing the birds into the wild in the Spring, they will be slaughtered and given away in the city and the Governor will claim credit for a free holiday bird. Sad but true.
How is Washington County Run?
With the recent votes by the Washington County Board of Supervisors on both the budget and the beach, I though it would make an interesting post to explain how Washinton County is governed.
There is no County Executive in Washington County. The County is run by it’s Board of Supervisors with each Supervisor having a weighted vote in proportion to their town’s population. Out of the 17 Towns in the County, Kingsbury is the largest with a population of 11,171 and Putnam is the smallest with a population of 645. Dresden is the second smallest town with a population of 677. Every 10 years, after the federal census, these numbers change. A simple majority of 2067 votes is needed for most issues. Special circumstances require a 2/3 majority vote. I contacted the County and got the weighted voting table for each town and supervisor. As you can see, Dresden is at a disadvantage because of our low population.
| Town | Weighted Vote |
| Argyle | |
| Cambridge | |
| Dresden | |
| Easton | |
| Fort Ann | |
| Fort Edward | |
| Granville | |
| Greenwich | |
| Hampton | |
| Hartford | |
| Hebron | |
| Jackson | |
| Kingsbury | |
| Putnam | |
| Salem | |
| White Creek | |
| Whitehall | |
| Total |
Winter’s Here – So is the Snow
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We got about another 10 inches of snow on Sunday. Here are two local accounts: Snow ushers in winter, officially Storm Dumps More Than a Foot of Snow |
Bald Eagle Coming Back
The Nature Conservancy has a neat slideshow about how the Bald Eagle was reintroduced into the Adirondacks and how their numbers have grown over the last 35 years. We have had an occasional sighting in the area but hopefully we’ll see more in the years ahead.
Lots of Snow
There has been alot of snow in Huletts over the weekend.
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Reported Fri, – Dec 19 8:09 PM Glens Falls, NY 12803 Inches of snow – 10 |
More expected throughout the day on Sunday.
This from Albany CBS6:
Plane slides into snowbank at Albany International Airport
Saturday Quote
“Family life is full of major and minor crises — the ups and downs of health, success and failure in career, marriage, and divorce — and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It’s difficult to imagine anything more nourishing to the soul.”
– Thomas Moore
Boys: Keep Your Eyes Open on the Beach
This video proves that it’s good to be nice to people you meet on the beach. We have a good source, who wants to remain anonymous, who tells us that when Ashley Tisdale was little she visited Huletts and swam on our beach. She’s now singing in High School Musical and at Rockefeller Center.
Wish you hadn’t gone golfing that day?
Gov’s Proposed School Budget Released – What You Need To Know
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Here is the press release from the Governor’s office on next year’s proposed budget and what it will mean to school districts across the state. Some points to note: |
There has been a 42 percent or $6.2 billion increase since the 2003-04 year in state aid to school districts. In spite of this, the Whitehall School district has raised property taxes over this period.
Next year state aid will be cut between 3% to 13% per district based on need, BUT “school districts have reported over $1.3 billion of uncommitted reserves for the 2009-10 school year, which have been building up over time. Over 87 percent of districts reported unreserved balances in excess of their proposed year-to-year reduction(s)”. This means that while their aid will be cut, the Whitehall district has much more than the proposed cut in reserve. It is the opinion of the Huletts Current that there should be no need to raise taxes at all next year with careful budgeting this year.
While other districts have been planning for this cut for months, the Whitehall Times reported in their December 11th edition that the Whitehall school district has been waiting until the Governor came out with this proposal. In the same edition, Superintendent Watson was quoted as saying; “We are not aggressively moving ahead until then.”
In the days and weeks ahead, we will be releasing a comprehensive plan on how we can make our voices heard in the school budgeting and taxing process this year.
The Lost Radio Ad – Now Coming Christmas Eve
We’ve gotten so many comments about the lost radio ad for the Hotel that we will be publishing it on Christmas Eve, a day earlier than we had originally told you. So, we’re getting close, but you’ll be able to make it. So plan on pulling up a chair with the whole family on Christmas Eve for some Huletts history and some Huletts fun. Only here on the Huletts Current.