GOOD NEWS!: Hundreds celebrate winter at Lawson Lake festival

By Melanie Lekocevic

Capital Region Independent Media

GREENVILLE — Town Supervisor Paul Macko is predicting the town will have a difficult budget cycle this year.

“It’s my belief, and the rest of the board members and the public can echo in, that this is probably going to be the most difficult budget cycle that we have ever encountered in 40 years in the town of Greenville this fall,” Macko said at the May 16 meeting of the Greenville Town Council.

The challenge will be coming up with a budget that meets the needs of the town while contending with high prices and record inflation rates that have been impacting the nation.

“I think with inflation running at close to 8.5%, fuel oil and diesel and gasoline [up], fuel oil for houses is up 80%, gasoline is up 46% for the year, and those numbers don’t factor into your inflation,” Macko said. “I think it’s going to be a very, very difficult budget cycle this year.”

The higher costs across the board — including gasoline prices that are nearing the $5 mark in Greene County — will also impact other components of the budget.

One area of the budget that remains up in the air is the new contract the town is negotiating with the Greenville Rescue Squad.

The squad’s contract with the town expires in December and talks stalled after the organization presented the town board with a proposed five-year contract that would take effect in January 2023.

Macko said at the May 16 meeting that the contract issues have nothing to do with the services the squad provides, but rather the contract terms that were proposed.

“We are very pleased with the services that the Greenville Rescue Squad provides — they do a fabulous job,” Macko said. “We are very pleased with the services that are provided. I really, truly wish that we could try to come to terms with a contract.”

After contract negotiations came to a standstill early this year, Macko said at the board meeting that he will reach out to the group’s board chairman, Ted Nugent Jr.

“We will try to come up with some kind of an agreement that works,” Macko said. “My concern with the taxpayers is the first year of the proposed contract that we got shortly before Christmas was pretty near a 34% increase in the tax rate for the rescue squad for one year. And then it drops back more in line with 1.7%, 1.8% for the remaining four years of a five-year contract.”

There are also other contracts that are in negotiations this year, including the town’s agreements with the Teamsters union and the Freehold Volunteer Fire Company, Macko said.

“It’s going to be a busy time,” he said.

Contract negotiations are also taking place against a backdrop of record inflation rates and rising prices.

Greenville Rescue Squad board member Clif Powell III said those high prices, coupled with the need to raise salaries to retain emergency medical technicians in a competitive job market, are seriously impacting the organization.

“What the town is paying doesn’t even cover the salaries,” Powell said.

Neighboring ambulance services have raised their own salaries recently to hold onto employees and attract new ones, and the Greenville squad needs to keep up, Powell said.

“We have to look at raising salaries again in order to keep people,” Powell said. “Getting and keeping personnel is the hardest part.”

Macko agreed maintaining adequate numbers of employees is a challenge in the current economy, but said the proposed contract is not doable.

“We are going to have to try to work it out,” the town supervisor said. “A 34% increase in one year in this economy — I don’t know what the solution is and it’s not unique to Greenville. It’s everywhere. Everybody is going through the same thing.”

The Greenville Rescue Squad’s current three-year contract will expire Dec. 31.

By Melanie Lekocevic

Capital Region Independent Media

DURHAM — Greenville Pioneer columnist Pat Larsen has published her first book, a compilation of her monthly columns over the years.

The book, “Reflections: Anything But An Ordinary Life,” is a 242-page tome that is available through Amazon in either hard copy or as an eBook.

“The journey started with the Greenville Pioneer,” Larsen said. “Each of the columns that I wrote has now contributed to the anthology, or the collection, of stories that make up this book.”

In the book’s introduction, Larsen shares that writing is a lifelong dream that she has been able to fulfill.

“Once upon a time, long ago, there was a little girl who had a big dream,” Larsen wrote. “When asked, as was done back in the day, what she wanted to be when she grew up, she boldly replied, ‘I want to be a writer someday!’ That little girl, now a grown-up of sorts, was me.”

In addition to her writing, Larsen is a licensed fitness instructor specializing in exercise for baby boomers and seniors, and she is the creative director for her program Aging With Grace — also the name of her Pioneer column — which provides programming of interest to the populations she serves.

The book features her columns, divided into four categories — “Reflections, Then and Now,” “Seasons of Our Lives,” “Mind and Body Fitness” and “Musings and Observations.”

Over the years, Larsen’s column has reflected on issues as diverse as achieving better sleep, men cooking in the kitchen, pet medicine, nutrition, juggling many roles, and the ghosts of East Durham, among many others.

“It’s very exciting and very satisfying to see all of it in one place,” Larsen said. “I came up with something that I’m quite proud of.”

The book is aimed largely at an older crowd.

“It is definitely geared toward baby boomers and seniors because they are the ones that have come in my purview as I have worked in this community,” she added.

Over the years, Larsen’s offerings have evolved.

“I did meet people by opening a venue for exercise that was unfamiliar to them, but after that I started stepping into the role of educator, which is the work that I have done throughout my life,” Larsen said. “I started educating the community about women’s issues that they had no knowledge of before — urology issues, occupational therapy, how to speak with their doctors, what medications mean — things that I was qualified to talk with them about. If it was something that I was unfamiliar with, I started bringing in professionals from the community to come and talk to the group as well.

“That’s where the interest and the relationship with the community really exploded because even if they didn’t exercise in my class, they wanted to know more and learn more, and I made it reasonably affordable.”

Much of the information that was gleaned from those programs over the years also made its way into Larsen’s column, and now, her book.

“Reflections: Anything But an Ordinary Life” can be purchased on Amazon as a Kindle eBook for $5.99 or in hard copy for $17.99.