“Mr. Clark reported on progress on plans for the two new schools and the renovation of Petrova School and warned the board for the second time that it is going to be difficult to hold expenses to the $3,975,000 approved bond issue.

“Mr. Clark said that bids around the state are coming in at more than $20 per square foot figured for the schools here. The increased costs are due partially to the huge building program in Albany and the Expo in Montreal which will be draining the area’s labor market for years to come.

“The board and Mr. Clark discussed faculty recommendations for the new high school which would necessitate bringing the square footage over the planned 75,000.

“Following a long discussion about the number of classrooms and faculty, Trustee David Young said, ‘We are fitting our plans to a budget rather than a curriculum.’ Board Dr. Leonard Bristol replied, ‘We’ve had the curriculum for ten years and these plans fit it.’ Board member Mrs. Richard Bellaire said, ‘after ten years the program should be gone over. In the two years this board has been in existence we have not reviewed our philosophy of education. We have not had time.'”

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Village board issues

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A long discussion took place during a public hearing whether the village should allow bus service randomly throughout the village.

“Thomas Reiss, president of the Tri-Lakes Transit Company spoke at the hearing saying that, ‘the bus company should be allowed to pick up and discharge passengers anywhere along its already established route within the village.’ Lawyer Thomas B. Cantwell, representing the taxi companies in the village, asked that no such permission be granted on the grounds that the additional service would neither serve the public convenience nor be necessary.

“Mayor Howard Riley ended the discussion and the hearing when he told the group that no decision would be made by the board at that time. The Mayor added: ‘Village Trustee William Gallagher was unable to attend the hearing and he wanted a full board to make that decision.’ Goodwin Olsen spoke to the board about building a dog pound and about a strict law leashing of dogs in the village. Mayor Riley said the legal issues about the dog issues would have to be discussed with the town board in a joint meeting with the Harrietstown Town Board ‘which he had requested a long time ago but had no reply to the request had been received.’ Deputy Mayor Myron Skeels added that he received complaints about dogs running free in the village and even at the village beach.

The Mayor said that Jim Lamy had suggested that the village create a water ski course on Lake Flower. Trustee Charles Keough warned that the village must first look into the liability for accidents on such a course and that he would do that and report back to the board at the next meeting.

“The board meeting ended after a long discussion of a proposal made to the board by Mrs. Joan Mace that the village owned Armory on River Street be converted to a Youth Center.”

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Art show reviewed

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The Enterprise carried a page one story by Jacqueline Altman about the opening of the Paint and Palette Festival. “With the opening of the Paint and Palette Festival Sunday at the Town Hall, we once again have a forum for the Fine Arts in Saranac Lake.

“The exhibit has proven to be bigger and better than last year’s successful presentation. Sponsored by the Saranac Lake General Hospital Auxiliary for the benefit of the building fund for the hospital the show is rapidly becoming a gathering place for artists in the area. Those artists otherwise have no opportunity to exhibit their work due to the distance between centers of population in our North Country.

“Several artists from the North Country are well represented in the works of Robert Whitney of the Northwood School; Robert Plumb of the Norwood-Norfolk Central School and the Lake Placid Art School; Carol Carbino of Lake Clear and Glens Falls and Jacqueline Altman of Saranac Lake.”

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Lights at the airport

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“A week from next Monday, on August 15, bids will be open in the Town Clerk’s office at the Harrietstown Town Hall on the construction of airport lights at the Adirondack Airport District. [The airport was then managed by a District Board, not the Harrietstown Town Board].

“Specifications have been advertised by St. Armand Supervisor Thomas Norman, chairman of the Airport District and Harrietstown Supervisor William Mansion, the District’s Chief Fiscal Officer.

“The construction of airport lights has constituted a major effort over a period of years. Once completed, it will make possible night flights to and from the tri-lakes area, both for Mohawk Airlines and for private planes.”

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Mass shooting in Texas

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I remember this terrible headline in that day’s Enterprise, which I may, as Enterprise editor, have written:

“16 DEAD IN AUSTIN CARNAGE”

“Austin, Tex. (AP) — First he slaughtered the two who were closest to him, chronicling the deeds with macabre exactness: ’12:20 a.m. – Mother already dead.’ ‘3 o’clock – Wife and Mother both dead.’ Then he climbed with his guns to the highest place around, where the world — with all its pressures he said he couldn’t understand — was visible as far as the eye could see, and where he was determined, as he wrote, ‘to fight it out alone.’ Alone he fired his weapons with deadly precision for an hour and a half at the terrified humans dashing for cover on the broad campus below, and when it was finished he had killed a dozen more people and wounded 31 others. And he lay dead in his own blood in the bullet-pocked sniper’s perch.

“That is the way police and witnesses reconstructed the broad outline of Monday’s massacre at the University of Texas.

“The days carnage left a total of 16 dead including the sniper and the unborn child of a woman he wounded who was in her eighth month of pregnancy.

“The shooter, Charles Joseph Whitman, 25, an architectural engineering student at the university and a former Marine, picked off his victims from the observation section atop the school’s library tower.

“The terror ended when two policemen and a university employee crept to a platform above the sniper’s position and gunned him down at close range.

“Whitman, dropped some of his victims at distances as much as two blocks away. Others fell on the broad campus mall surrounding the tower and lay unattended in the 98-degree heat as Whitman kept rescuers at bay with his riddling fire. Police crouching behind trees and buildings answered with blistering rifle and shotgun volleys which left the tower pitted and marked. The gun battle lasted from 11:48 a.m. until 1:20 p.m.

“Whitman gained access to the tower posing as a repairman.”