The Fonda Blog

Fonda may study dissolution, mayor says

Village of Fonda, founded in 1850

FONDA, NY – The village may form a committee to look into consolidating more services with the town of Mohawk and possibly dissolving the village.  Mayor William Peeler said at a village meeting Monday he is open to the possibility of replacing village services with town services.

At the village meeting, resident John Maher asked about whether the village government would look into dissolving itself.  Peeler said a committee may look into the benefits of dissolving the village.  “If you can get the [Mohawk] Town Board to cooperate with that, I’ll be the first one to sign,” said Peeler. “Slowly but surely, what we’re trying to do is consolidate everything to the point where the village is no longer in existence.”  After the meeting, Peeler said, “Ultimately, I’m all for whatever consolidation we can make. If it makes sense and it’s a duplication of services, why not?”

Ultimately, Peeler said, the dissolution of the village would be up to the residents.  He said it could be difficult to push for dissolution of the village. He cited possible opposition from officials in county or town government.  Trustee Thomas Healey said dissolution could be hampered by the fact the village shares its water with Fultonville, Mohawk and Glen.  Trustee Walter Boyd said he would approve of exploring the possibility of dissolving the village if it could result in significant savings.

Fonda Courthouse, built in 1835

“Every one of us here are village residents, and there’s no way to pay for duplication of services,” said Boyd.  Mohawk Supervisor Greg Rajkowski said that, to his knowledge, the village never had discussed dissolution before, but consolidation of services has been brought up.  “They’ve [village officials] approached us with three different consolidation efforts,” Rajkowski said, saying that generally town officials have approved of consolidation, except for a request to plow village roads.

Rajkowski said if a merger between the village and town were to occur, certain issues would need to be worked out, such as what to do with the village water services.  “We, as the town, do not have a separate sewer and water district,” he said.  Rajkowski said if the village were to attempt dissolution, the village and the town would have to work together on it.

According to the New York State Department of State, communities considering consolidation may be eligible for a Local Government Efficiency grant to help with studying the feasibility of consolidation or to help with the consolidation itself.  The state also has documents available to help towns and villages in mergers.

Arthur Cleveland covers Montgomery County news. He can be reached at montco@leaderherald.com

Fonda officials should consider services

In recent months, the village of Fonda Board of Trustees led by Mayor William Peeler has been in negotiations with the town of Mohawk Board of Fire Commissioners looking for ways to cut operating costs in Fonda.  At an initial savings of about $15,000 a year, a deal to get rid of the village fire department and have the town provide fire coverage looks great on paper.

However, the village fire department has become a local staple, taking the lead on numerous local activities. The Fonda Volunteer Fire Department helps to organize and participate in several local events, such as the annual Fonda-Fultonville Memorial Day parade, the Fonda Halloween Children’s Parade and Open House, and the annual Montgomery County Youth Day. The department also provides safe off-street parking across from the Fonda Speedway for the weekly races, as well as the Fonda Fair.

Without the firemen providing the parking services, there will not be safe off-street parking other than the limited space within the fairgrounds. This will be especially important during fair time when thousands of cars can utilize the parking service. The Fonda department also has one of the only fire department chaplains within the county, who is able to provide an array of services to the community.

Soon, the doors will close, the equipment will be sold and the community will be at a great loss with no local support to turn to.  It saddens me to think the current administration only thinks in dollars and cents, and cannot look at the services provided that you can’t put a monetary value on.

John Maher, Fonda Volunteer Fire Department

Closing on March 14

Fonda Fire Department closing

Published: 2/12

A sign hanging on a fence in Fonda that reads: “FONDA FIRE DEPARTMENT NEEDS YOU”, but after Monday’s Village Board of Trustee meeting, it really serves no purpose. The Board voted 3 to 1 to completely dissolve the 139 year old volunteer fire department.

“That’s very disappointing they decided not to keep it,” said resident Maria Abraham who feels local home owners are being squeezed. “This is just another sign of that squeeze.”

Avoiding the squeeze on tax payers is what Mayor Bill Peeler says the Board is trying to do. The mayor explained it’s become costly for the Village to maintain the department with its aging equipment. “For the future betterment as well as the current betterment of our situation in fire protection it was better to dissolve the fire department and move on with a contract with our fire district”

The “district fire department” is the Mohawk Fire District. It’s fire house sits just on the edge of the Village. The mayor says Fonda’s 785 residents should see little difference in first responder arrival time — it’s just that the first responders won’t be the same. Fonda Fire Chief Donald Wagoner wishes he and the other volunteers had been consulted before the Trustees decided to go through with a new contract. “We’ve protected the Village this long. We’ve done the best we can and we’re all kind of disgruntled and upset,” said Wagoner, a fire volunteer of 29 years.

As of March 14, the Village of Fonda Fire Department will close it’s doors and the Mohawk Fire District will take effect.

Fonda-Fultonville officials look for help to get more aid

February 12, 2013 by Arthur Cleveland, The Leader Herald

Fonda-Fultonville Central School District traces its roots to the late 1700s, when students in both communities were educated in small, privately owned buildings. Around 1800, two formal school districts were formed, and for the next 150 years, Fonda and Fultonville operated those districts separately. In 1954, the two districts merged.

Fonda – Officials from the Fonda-Fultonville Central School District are scheduled to meet today with state Sen. Cecilia Tkaczyk to get her help in securing more state aid for the school. “We just need more money from the state,” said interim Superintendent Ray Colucciello. “There’s just no other way around it.”

Similar lobbying with Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara met with some success. Santabarbara wrote a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo regarding the importance of state aid and mentioned the district’s recent budget difficulties. At the end of January, the Fonda-Fultonville school board laid off a business education teacher and the school psychologist as part of a plan to deal with a $500,000 mid-year budget shortfall.

Under Cuomo’s executive budget released in January, Fonda-Fultonville’s aid stands to increase roughly $611,000. However, district Treasurer Carey Shultz said even if legislators adopt Cuomo’s proposal without change, it may not help enough. Shultz said he plans to ask Tkaczyk to get the district an additional $400,000 to try and stabilize the budget for the 2013-14 school year.

Colucciello and Shultz said that is possible if the state abolishes the competitive grant funding portion of Cuomo’s proposal and instead rolls the funds into overall aid. Cuomo, who requested $800 million for state aid usage, wants $250 million to go toward rewarding districts for academic performance and management efficiency.

Since 2010, state aid to the district has been reduced by almost $6 million due to Gap Elimination Adjustment. Costs for pensions and health insurance benefits also increased more than $2 million. “Having those kind of funds ripped out of the budget makes it impossible to stabilize it,” Shultz said, noting the school’s staff has been reduced by 16.5 percent in that three-year time frame, and 25 percent in the last five years.

“The state is supposed to be an equal partner in education, 50-50,” Colucciello said. “The state now pays for about 39 percent, and the rest is on the backs of the local taxpayers.” Colucciello said he is “cautiously optimistic.” “In my experience, the governor proposes and the Legislature disposes,” he said. The 2013-14 budget is still in the works, with members of the board waiting on the final numbers before completing it.

written by admin \\ tags: Events, Government, Village of Fonda

Starting from Scratch

September 13, 2012 By Kelly Dyer

Today, at the venerable age of 90, Professor Emeritus Dr. Bob Fonda cheerfully admits that he has seen many milestones over the years at Minnesota State Mankato. One of those would most certainly be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Dental Hygiene Program, which Fonda started almost single-handedly in 1969.

Dr. Robert Fonda will be at the Department of Dental Hygiene’s 40th Anniversary Reunion on Saturday, September 29 in the Centennial Student Union Ballroom.

Although the program has turned out countless well-qualified dental hygiene graduates over the past four decades, it got off to what Fonda characterizes as something of a “rough start.”  That may be a bit of an understatement.

The genesis of the program came about like this:

After spending four years in the Navy, Fonda practiced dentistry for 23 years in the small town of Rockwell City, Iowa. Unfortunately, spending that many years hunching over patients as he worked contributed to significant back problems, and in 1969, Fonda began to think about finding a new job in the dental field.

At about that same time, Minnesota State Mankato was investigating the possibility of starting a professional two-year dental hygiene program. Fonda met with college administrators and was offered a job. He accepted and agreed to come to campus to start putting the program together late in 1969.

What Fonda discovered once he arrived on campus was nothing. No books had been ordered. He didn’t have a classroom, a secretary or even a telephone. The college lacked a physical clinic in which students could receive practical instruction, and in fact, there wasn’t even a curriculum outline for the classes that were scheduled to begin the following spring.

Asked now if he realized what he was getting himself into all those years ago, Fonda chuckles. “No, not really,” he says. “I thought I knew but as in many cases, after you get there and sign the contracts and so on, you discover that there are other things that you are going to have to do…that weren’t maybe exactly the way you want to have them, but you just take the ball and run.”

The history of the Dental Hygiene Program — and Dr. Fonda’s role in it — is documented in a new book from the department.

Fonda rolled up his sleeves and got to work. The first order of business was to design a program and curriculum that would meet the accreditation standards of the American Dental Association. He spent countless hours doing that. He also began to interview and hire professional staff who could then teach to those standards.

That done, Fonda turned his attention to another pressing problem: The University had purchased a significant amount of used dental equipment from the Veteran’s Administration in anticipation of the new program. As Fonda inspected that equipment, however, he discovered that much of it was hopelessly outdated, damaged or simply not acceptable for use in modern dentistry. That started another scramble to find better equipment.

In addition, the physical clinic needed to be constructed, and Fonda spent a great deal of time supervising the construction, all while also sorting out the other details that the new classes would entail.  “I had some sleepless nights, let’s put it that way,” he says. “Sometimes I went home at night and just laid there and looked at the ceiling and thought, “Oh my goodness…”

Classes began in 1970 on the lower campus, with Fonda and the other instructors traveling from classroom to classroom carrying their tools and textbooks with them. In spite of all of the confusion of those early days, Fonda says he loved teaching.  “I liked passing on the information that needed to be passed on to students about dentistry and the various aspects of dentistry, and what kind of background would be required so that you would even be able to perform the duties,” he says. “I loved the student contact. I just thoroughly enjoyed that.”

As the program attracted more students, Fonda was also instrumental in finding new ways for the students to interact with the public at large, including working at the Faribault State Hospital, nursing homes, the White Earth Indian Reservation and other areas.

Today, Fonda remains delighted with the progress of the program he fathered. Even though he retired in 1986, he remains fiercely proud of its success.

“It was a pleasure for me,” he says. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”

written by admin \\ tags: Achievements, Education, Great Plains

City’s junk becomes a cautionary artistic vision

By Victoria Dalkey, Bee Art Correspondent, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012

Gioia Fonda’s drawings begin as photos of street debris.

You would expect an exhibition at a college gallery to be educational. Gioia Fonda‘s show at the James Kaneko Gallery on the American River College campus is that in spades. Fonda documents every step of the labor-intensive process by which she creates her masterful drawings of piles of junk. This body of work, one of which won the best of show award at last year’s State Fair art show, is a poignant comment on a sad aspect of the economic downturn our city has been experiencing.

She begins with color photos of trash piled up on the street in front of houses in her neighborhood. “Most of the piles,” she writes, “seem to occur when an address has experienced an eviction, a foreclosure or sometimes a death: always some kind of transition.” Like canaries in coal mines, they are harbingers of worse things to come. For Fonda, they represent “not only a reflection of the lending crisis but also a comment on our rampant consumerism and the utter disposability of what we produce and what we buy.”

Gioia Fonda stands in front of her winning state fair art piece, “Pile, With Soccer Ball.” The acrylic on canvas art piece placed first in the 2011 California State Fair and is currently displayed in the Kondos Gallery. Tony Wallin wallintony@yahoo.com

That is scarcely a new idea, but Fonda treats it with a mixture of sadness and a formal integrity that lends the piles a kind of monumental grace. The giant pile with a soccer ball, a potted plant, an old bike and a wheelbarrow that was shown in the State Fair exhibition is on view here and is even more imposing in the smaller Kaneko gallery.

Surrounding it are other drawings, among them “Watering Can,” a triangular pile of trash in which a watering can plays a small but significant role. A trio of drawings on the wall across from it features tangles of netting, worn tires, plastic jugs, and a stuffed toy. These are not only commentaries on our throwaway culture but strong abstractions reminiscent at times of Bauhaus Constructivism.

As interesting as the finished drawings are, a series of works that demonstrate how Fonda arrives at her destinations. She begins with the color photos, then isolates the shapes of the objects in the piles, draws them on paper and cuts them out. These cuttings she piles up and arranges into collages from which she then makes Xerox prints. It’s a lengthy, exacting and time-consuming process, but it pays off with drawings that are both moving and formally elegant.

Accompanying Fonda’s works at the campus gallery is a series of mostly small bronze and ceramic sculptures by Garr Ugalde. Their imagery is both innocent and menacing. Combining childhood toys with instruments of war, they comment on “how quickly the world engages its children in war.” “Beehive Rocker” places a child on a crude rocking horse surrounded by alphabet blocks. A beehive placed over the child’s head adds a surreal note of danger. “Pecker” combines grenades and bird skulls. “Night Mother” gives us a pregnant woman with a birdhouse on her head.

Children’s toys and the use of bird imagery, Ugalde writes, “speak to the ideal of freedom, innocence, and the safety of home.” Though superficially, he notes, they seem to be innocuous, lurking among them are instruments of destruction, many derived from war toys. Ugalde’s small works made of bronze are intricate and imbued with a dark humor that turns disturbing as you note the details in them. A larger piece made of ceramic is blunter. Titled “I Used To Carry a Big Stick, Two,” it gives us a pit bull with a grenade in its mouth sitting on a block covered with an American flag. Small texts cite places in which confrontations have occurred, among them Wounded Knee, Guantánamo and Havana. Ugalde’s work is a nice complement to Fonda’s and the two visions result in a show that is both moving and thought-provoking. Curator Ramsey Harris has done a great job of installing the show.

GIOIA FONDA: THE PILE SERIES
GARR UGALDE: WAR STORIES
What: Gioia Fonda lends a monumental grace to piles of refuse that she sees as “a comment on our rampant consumerism and the utter disposability of what we produce and what we buy.” A complementary exhibit of small bronze and ceramic sculptures comes from Garr Ugalde. His imagery is both innocent and menacing, a comment on “how quickly the world engages its children in war.”
Where: James Kaneko Gallery, Room 503, American River College, 4700 College Oak Drive, Sacramento
When: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Fridays, or by appointment, through Feb. 8
Cost: Free
Contact: (916) 484-8399

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Also see: Art instructor, Gioia Fonda wins State Fair competition

written by admin \\ tags: Art, Events, West Coast

POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. — Elbie Fonda set high goals for the 2011 football season.  The Caruthersville senior wanted to run for 3,000 yards and lead his team to a state championship. For a shot at one, however, he had to sacrifice the other.  “We believed he could do it, but as things progressed, we wanted to take care of his body because we were hoping for 15 games,” Caruthersville coach Nathan Morgan said. “He understood that and did exactly what was needed without question.”

Caruthersville's Elbie Fonda was presented with the Carr Trophy during Wednesday's Poplar Bluff Letter Club's Gridiron Banquet. (Brian Rosener ~ Daily American Republic)

Fonda put together an outstanding season, one good enough to earn him the Carr Trophy as the most outstanding player in the SEMO Conference.  Fonda was presented the award Wednesday night during the 66th annual Poplar Bluff Letter Club Gridiron Banquet.  Fonda is the fourth Caruthersville player to win the award, given annually since 1979, and the first Tigers player since Kendrickus Reed in 2006.

Jimmy Jackson, Caruthersville’s first Carr winner in 2003, was an assistant coach for the Tigers this year and held the school record Fonda was shooting for — 2,564 yards rushing.  “He’s like an inspiration to me,” Fonda said about Jackson. “Make me want to win it. I wanted to be better than him.”

The 5-foot-9, 180-pound running back ran for 1,889 yards and 25 touchdowns during the regular season to lead the conference. He averaged 12.6 yards per carry. He finished with 2,602 yards combined rushing and receiving and scored 33 times to go with 31 tackles on defense.

Fonda shared the ball with Darrell Monroe, who also was named to the all-conference backfield. Monroe, a sophomore, ran for 1,019 yards during the regular season.  “I had no problem with it,” Fonda said. “I wanted to win.”  The Tigers only dropped a 56-55 thriller to Dexter for the conference title and fell to Maplewood-Richmond Heights 36-29 in the Class 2 state quarterfinals to finish 11-2.

Caruthersville's Elbie Fonda looks for running room against Dexter on Friday night in Dexter - Oct. 8, 2011 (David Jenkins ~ Sikeston Standard Democrat)

Fonda also won the scoring award in the Central and was one of five Carr finalists announced at the banquet. The other finalists were Sikeston’s James Watson, who rushed for 1,485 yards, Dexter quarterback Cody Stevens, who threw for 1,375 yards and ran for 1,184 yards, Farmington quarterback Chase Busenbark, who threw for 1,698 yards, and Chaffee’s Tyson Estes, who ran for 1,431 yards and earned the scoring award for the South.  “All great athletes,” Morgan said. “It was a good class, so Elbie has something to be proud of to win it this year.”

The Carr Trophy is named in honor of the late E.E. “Bus” Carr, an early member of the Letter Club who devoted 50 years of service to area athletics serving as an announcer for radio station KWOC in Poplar Bluff. A committee composed of area high school football officials makes the selection.

Also presented with awards were Farmington linebacker Roper Garrett with the inaugural Derland Moore Award for the most outstanding defensive player in the conference. Moore, a 14-year NFL player for the New Orleans Saints who was named a second-team SEMO Conference player as a senior at Poplar Bluff, presented the award to Garrett, who had 82 tackles and 45 assists, six sacks and three forced fumbles for the state semifinalist Knights.

Jackson assistant coach Bob Sink was presented with the Sam Giambelluca Lifetime Achievement Award for his service to high school athletics over a 41-year career. He announced his retirement during the Jackson football banquet last month.  The linemen awards went to Farmington’s Ethan Hennes, Zach Lacey of Dexter and Zach Estes of Scott City.  Farmington’s Connor Davault won the scoring award for the North, and Knights coach Todd Vaughn was named coach of the year, along with Dexter’s Aaron Pixley and Hayti’s Justin Peden.

© Copyright 2011 Southeast Missourian. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Other links: YouTube, MaxPreps

written by admin \\ tags: Achievements, Great Plains, Sports

Fonda – Better Days (Album Review)

Thanks to their dead-on instincts for engaging melodies and their heavy My Bloody Valentine influences, Better Days is a focused set of lush, dreamy pop.

In the eight years between Catching up to the Future and Fonda’s new EP, Better Days, the band’s principal songwriting duo, Emily Cook and David Klotz, have devoted their energies to some truly questionable projects: Cook contributed to the screenplay of the execrable Gnomeo & Juliet, while Klotz is the music editor for the ongoing pop-culture nightmare that is Glee. Egregious and eyebrow-raising though those credits may be, Cook and Klotz’s work here is characterized by relatively good taste. Thanks to their dead-on instincts for engaging melodies and their heavy My Bloody Valentine influences, Better Days is a focused set of lush, dreamy pop.

The massive power chords and thundering percussion line of the title track open the EP on something of a Coldplay note, but a heavily distorted lead guitar line quickly kicks in and the song’s melody takes a minor-key turn, recasting the song as an effective and on-point homage to early-’90s shoegaze. Cook and Klotz sing lead in unison on “A Love That Won’t Let You Go,” and they use off-kilter, slightly discordant harmonies to bring a real sense of tension to the track. While that approach to arrangements might not be novel (Fonda is hardly the first act to draw heavily from the Jesus and Mary Chain), it’s something they make effective use of over the course of Better Days, allowing their deliberate aesthetic choices to play as big a role as their lyrics and performances in creating the EP’s tone.

In the eight years between Catching up to the Future and Fonda's new EP, Better Days, the band's principal songwriting duo, Emily Cook and David Klotz, have devoted their energies to some truly questionable projects: Cook contributed to the screenplay of the execrable Gnomeo & Juliet, while Klotz is the music editor for the ongoing pop-culture nightmare that is Glee.

To that end, Fonda absolutely makes the most of Better Days’s scant running time. Even with the new track, “Some Things Aren’t Worth Knowing,” added to the set for this new rerelease, the EP doesn’t even scratch a full 20 minutes. None of the songs ever threaten to overstay their welcome (“In the Coach Station Light” is an unabashedly lovely two minutes), and there’s something to be said for the degree of precision Fonda brings to their songwriting, especially on the riotous, punk-inflected standout “My Heart Is Dancing.” That said, even in a market that’s increasingly singles-driven, the sheer brevity of Better Days casts the EP as more of a teaser for a bigger project than as a standalone release.

Other links: Youtube, Fondamusic, Bandcamp

written by admin \\ tags: Entertainment, News, West Coast