Dear Readers! I recently called Town Supervisor Dan Sturm to inquire about progress on the Pine Grove culvert replacement. Sturm confirms – weather permitting – that work on this essential axis of Smallwoodian life should be completed in May.

The ‘breaking and cutting’ of what is essentially the pulsing aorta of Smallwood life occurred back on September 3, 2021, when the remnants of Hurricane Ida decked us down.

According to Sturm, 88 percent of the approximately $550,000 repair job will be borne by FEMA. Great. Now all of us need to start thinking about armoring critical county infrastructure against the imminent and recurring attacks of climate change.

The next Ida is statistically about four or five years out and could pack a punch that dwarfs Ida.

I asked Sturm about painting lines along the edges of Pine Grove Road, this central axis of our communal back-and-forth. Many Smallwoodians are approaching or have broached retirement age at which point nighttime driving becomes problematical on Pine Grove because of the new – and hideously overbright – LED headlights of oncoming cars.

These headlights overwhelm any driver driving in the opposing direction. If you are interested in this topic, please write to me and we will set up a contact group to personally meet with Robert Bonaci, Bethel Supervisor of Highways.

Smallwoodians should be able to drive day and night whenever they want without being driven off the road into a ditch by a BMV or Audi sporting LED lighting on an ill-defined road surface. (Federal oversight of LED lighting is very overdue; but let’s start Smallwoodian.)

Sturm confirms: since the December 6, 2021 Bethel Planning Board meeting, the BESIDE consortium (planning to develop an 881-acre site adjacent to Smallwood) has done nothing to advance its development proposal; instead it has asked our neighboring Delaware County to develop a comparable development there.

SWCA dues

Smallwoodians stick together. All of us know that Life is Difficult and the good life is expensive. There is no way around it. For each Smallwood Civic Association (SWCA) member and secondary member, at hand is the matter of the raising of annual dues for membership in our Civic Association. To me, this proposal is imminently agreeable.

We all love our homes in Smallwood. We know that the plumber comes to clean our kitchen pipes. The roofer re-surfaces our roof. The chimney sweep cleans our cast iron stove and chimney. So that everything is safe. At all points we Smallwoodians—all of us—need help. We cannot keep our houses and common Home in good keep, alone.

Dear Smallwoodian, you are now the plumber, the roofer, the chimney sweep. We need to pay ourselves forward to continue the success of our common Home. You paid the plumber, the roofer, the chimney sweep. We need to pay ourselves forward and vote for the proposed increase to $350/year for the success of our esteemed and nearly century-old association.

The present SWCA Board is doing amazing blazing things, day in and day out. All of us want to be part of more amazing blazing things. All of us deserve the very best.

Dear Smallwoodians: Be well and Did You Know: we live in the Shimmering Dark Green Emerald Center of the Universe. Let’s do what is right and pay it forward. Amen.