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General News: Town To Appraise, Study NYMA
June 11, 2010
The Cornwall town council took another step forward in its effort to determine whether it will purchase the New York Military Academy when it met on Friday evening with trustees from the military school.
After two closed-door meetings with the trustees, town supervisor Kevin Quigley announced that the town council members had agreed to hire a town planner to develop a public use for the property after the purchase and an appraiser to set a value on it. Quigley added that the terms of the lease of the school back to NYMA must also be worked out and a bondsman must approve the sale as well. All of these plans will be voted again by the town council on Monday night.
The town council is acting quickly to avoid a closure of the 121-year-old military academy, which could happen as soon as June 30th. On Thursday, 21 employees of the academy were laid off, most of them administrative, as the contracts for most teachers expired on Friday.
Captain Robert Watts, the superintendent of NYMA who will retire at the end of this month, said that although employees had been informed that they had a job until June 30th, the critical cash flow at the school forced the layoffs two weeks ahead of schedule. .A total of ten people are still on the NYMA payroll, he said.
As the town board met in closed session, concerned residents and parents and alumni from the school discussed their hopes that a solution to the financial crisis could be found.
Lt. Colonel David Boudreau, who runs the Junior ROTC program on campus, said he would be willing to stay on after June 30th to run the school because he believes the school has too much to offer to walk away from it. Although he has only eight months at NYMA, the retired Army officer paints a compelling picture of how NYMA offers an unparalleled military education that is otherwise not available in the northeast.
The NYMA board of trustees who were present at the meeting did little talking in public. But David Fields, an alumnus who represents the NYMA 2.0 group that is proposing a revamping of the school and curriculum as a way of attracting investors, spoke favorably of working with the town on a sale of the property.
“Our partnership is important to the community and to us,” Fields told the Cornwall town council. “We do have limited time and …a partnership with the town would help expedite a lot of the process.”
Any purchase of NYMA by taking out a bond would have to be approved by voters in Cornwall. One resident, Lorraine Bennett, asked town officials what could happen if the school fails after the town buys it. Supervisor Quigley expressed confidence in the ability of the school to recover from its current financial difficulties but said that if town owns the property and NYMA is not leasing it, the town would be responsible for its maintenance,
Former town supervisor Dick Randazzo also spoke and urged the town to include a request that NYMA consider annexing its property to the village of Cornwall-on-Hudson, a step that Quigley said the council favors as well.
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