I live in Montgomery County. Quite a few individual homes on my road contract with Waste Mgmt. They provide us with garbage & recycling cans. Once a week we drag them to the end of our driveways and they haul away the trash. That works much better for some of us than the option available through our town, where we would have to put stinky, sloppy garbage in our family cars and drive it to a collection bin during a two or three hour window on a specific day of the week that isn't always convenient for our household schedules.

Professional sports teams make millions, give the players outrageous contracts, but need tax dollar to build or renovate stadiums that they are only committed to staying in for seven years. Meanwhile funding for cancer screenings for the uninsured (generally the "working poor") is cut. Absolutely disgusting.

Plenty of birds here on the border between Montgomery & Fulton counties. We go through about 10 lbs. of seed a week and would use more if I was willing to fill feeder more often. All winter we had cardinals, two different kinds of woodpeckers, chickadees, dark eyed juncos, finches and mourning doves. I think maybe some nuthatches too. Within the past month the starlings, red winged blackbirds and grackles have shown up. The only thing we've had less of than usual is blue jays. Have only seen a couple of them this year.

Thank you FF fourth graders and Assemblyman SantaBarbara for paying forward this act of kindness to our service personnel!

I'm sorry for the loss of Dr. Fraser's position, which is indeed a terrible, terrible blow to the students. I'm also disheartened by the loss of the business education teacher. What none of the news stories have mentioned is that she was the only business teacher left on staff at Fonda and now they have none. This particular business teacher was honored in 2011 by the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, which provided a $7,500 grant to the district for her "innovative efforts to help young people understand the function and benefits of America's private enterprise system." The award was for her Ventures in Entrepreneurship (ViE) small business management class, in which the students operated an actual bakery that sold cookies on the school campus, writing a business plan, interviewing for jobs, ordering supplies, solving day to day business problems, and earning a paycheck at the end of the school year. Valuable, real-life applicable experience! Sadly, it appears the majority of the district's business curriculum, including the ViE program, is being swept out the door with her position.

People working in local and state government jobs are taxpayers and consumers that help support the economy. Given the scarcity of other available jobs, laying them off only serves to increase the unemployment roll and drain other resources - especially if their unemployed status results in a need for government assistance to support them or their families. Additionally, if they can't find replacement work around here, they may relocate, further shrinking the tax base. Fewer taxpayers does not equate to a lower tax bill for the rest of us! Reducing government expenditure is necessary, but decimating low-level government workers may not be the best way to go about it.

A half million dollars is needed just to "study" the idea?! Wish someone would provide a breakdown on the details of how that study money will be spent. Also, where exactly would the connector road run? I know the truck traffic through Fonda is heavy, but it is sad to destroy beautiful, productive and already diminishing farmland for another polluting roadway. How about having some of the truck traffic get off at the Amsterdam exit, come down Route 5 and then go up Route 67 instead getting off at the Fultonville exit and going through Fonda.

Geography lesson for the Gazette: These are NOT two Fulton County schools. It is one Fulton County School (O-E) and one Montgomery County school. (St. J's).

How smart is it to store a map from 1799 in the basement of a building located in a Village that has suffered extensive flooding in recent years? If History & Archives is in a better position to preserve such a valuable document then turn it over to them!

This problem is primarily attributable to the huge welfare population in NYS. Many families that receive social services bounce from apartment to apartment and school district to school district. Their children never experience consistency. This leads to excessive absenteeism/truancy and the kids eventually drop out. With no education, goals or ambition, they proceed to open their own welfare cases, at which point the cycle starts all over with the next generation.

There was an article recently in one of the local papers that pointed out that these parents don't bother to show up when summoned by the district attorney to account for their offspring's truancy. If being charged with violating the law doesn't frighten them, what does anyone expect teachers and administrators to do to fix the problem?