December 2003

Craig Mongeau - December 2003

This may sound ridiculous, but it can sometimes be great when somebody – or in this case, many people – tell you that you made a mistake. It shows that at least people are paying attention to what you’re doing, which in the publishing business, is everything.

In my November editorial I misstated one thing: Apparently there’s a reason why I do this for a living and not work as a mathematician – I mentioned that that there were “hundreds” who attended the Expo – well, in actuality, throughout the day, attendance definitely reached into the thousands, which is remarkable considering the tropical storm force winds and rain. For this, again, thank you very much for braving the elements to come out to the show.

Now to wrap up this year’s show, please check out page 72 for a list of all door prize winners and a few more photos of the goings on during the 2003 Expo.

On to this month’s Profile … Roger M. Chirico, highway superintendent of the Town of Philipstown, which is just north of West Point, has an ongoing dilemma. Just like all of you, he’s responsible for his town’s roads and must maintain them within his budget. However, most of his roads are dirt and are expensive to maintain. Ideally, he’d like to pave as many of them as possible, but his constituents don’t want that because they think the dirt roads help keep their community quiet, and many of the residents fight to stop him from paving. However, people don’t want their taxes raised (and, of course, would love to have their taxes reduced), but they’re not willing to go with the cheaper alternative of road maintenance.

For the rest of this story, I’ll defer to Roger to tell you in his own words how he’s been able to overcome this problem in his town.

Happy Holidays!