NCPR News Staff: Jonathan Brown,
Reporter and All Before Five Host

Registered nurses at Canton Potsdam Hospital held what they called an informational picket outside the Potsdam facility yesterday. Jonathan Brown reports.

New York State is short this year (Gov. Paterson is delaying tax refunds to ease the cash flow crunch) and will be even shorter next year. Current estimates put the looming deficit at $9 billion. The governor has proposed deep spending cuts, from education to prison, parks, and marketing. Tourism officials in the Adirondacks say proposed cuts in that last line could cost the region millions of dollars and thousands of jobs. Jonathan Brown reports. More...

Watertown Airport is getting $4 million to extend its runway. Almost all the money—95%—is coming from the federal government. The remaining 5%—approximately $200,000 will come from the coffers of Jefferson County and New York State.

Jonathan Brown talked with county administrator Bob Hagemann, who oversees spending at the airport.

What would you do if your local grocery store disappeared for two months? How far would you have to go just to get food? Would you have to pay more? These are some of the questions people are wrestling with in five North Country towns.

The former P&C supermarkets in Canton, Potsdam, Massena, Gouverneur and West Carthage were bought by Price Chopper. The company is closing them for two months for renovations. Jonathan Brown has more.

Jefferson Community College is one step closer to becoming a residential campus.

It’s a long process — school trustees voted this week to move from studying the feasibility of building dormitories, and the impact they'd have on the Watertown college, to planning for their construction.

Betsy Penrose is Vice President of Students at JCC. She says the school is looking to bring 250 to 300 students on to campus.

The troubles building around Gov. Paterson's administration come at a bad time. New York faces a deficit over over $8 billion next year — and the budget is due in less than a month.

As the governor regroups today, lawmakers will be watching to see if he can lead budget negotiations, as he has promised he will. Some in Albany have called for Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch to play more of a role in forming the new budget. Ravitch is perhaps best known for his leadership during New York City's budget crisis in the 1970s.

Susan Arbetter is a long-time political reporter in New York State. She’s also host of the Capitol Press Room, on Syracuse public radio station WCNY. Arbetter says the crisis at the top is one of the real hold-ups as lawmakers grapple with writing the new budget — but it's not clear if anyone could do a better job than Paterson.. She spoke with Jonathan Brown on All Before Five yesterday.

The Glens Falls Armory goes back on the auction block next month. The 115-year-old stone building—complete with turret—has been up for auction twice since the National Guard moved to new quarters last summer.

The state’s Office of General Services owns the Armory and has lowered the minimum bid for the building. No one entered a bid at 500,000 dollars in October or 350,000 during the second auction. Now, department spokesperson Heather Groll tells Jonathan Brown that bidding will start at 200,000 dollars.

Hundreds gathered at the capitol in Albany yesterday to protest deep spending cuts to state parks. The agency overseeing these properties—the state department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation—says it will close 41 of 178 parks. The plan also calls for reducing services at 23 others. Meanwhile, 14 of 35 state historic sites would also be shut down.

These moves are part of the plan to close a more than 8-billion-dollar shortfall in the state budget. The Paterson administration proposed cutting 20 million dollars from the parks department. Yesterday, two state lawmakers proposed restoring more than 11-million dollars to the agency's budget as a means to prevent closures.

Earlier this week, parks officials said they canceled about 350 campsite reservations at 12 of the state parks that could be closed this year. Six of these parks are in the Thousand Islands. Just two miles from the village of Alexandria Bay, Keewaydin is one of the parks on the chopping block. Jonathan Brown reports on how it got there and what closure means to people in the area. More...

Search and rescue teams in the southern Adirondacks had a busy 12-hour stretch from Sunday afternoon to Monday morning.

Six skiers—including two young children—went out-of-bounds and got trapped by deep snow and wilderness terrain. With help from Gore Mountain ski patrollers, Forest Rangers trudged up the mountain for a midnight rescue. Jonathan Brown reports. More...

The proposal to shut down the state prisons in Ogdensburg, Lyon Mountain and Moriah has renewed debate over New York’s approach to housing and rehabilitating criminals.

State officials increasingly view prisons in this region as inefficient and isolated. But many people in northern New York see the prisons and their high-paying jobs as vital to local economies.

At a rally in Ogdensburg over the weekend, guards and others had another message: the prison helps keep their families together. Jonathan Brown reports.