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Rogers Environmental Center to Close

Wed, Nov 17, 2010

Rogers Environmental Center to Close

A popular nature center that provides a variety of educational opportunities for school children, families and seniors is the latest victim of budget cuts in Albany.

Rogers Environmental Center in Sherburne, which is visited by many people locally, will close as of Dec. 31. Employees at the center received letters of notification today. The center's website lists six employees, all members of the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).

The employees at Rogers are among 140 in the DEC to be notified that they will be laid off at the end of the year as part of Gov. David Paterson's effort to close a $315 million budget gap. A total of 900 state jobs are to be eliminated at the end of this year.

Protests over cuts of DEC employees led to the firing of the agency's well-respected Commissioner Alexander "Pete" Grannis, a former Manhattan assemblyman. A memo by Grannis detailing how the labor cuts would hurt the DEC was leaked to the press, and that led to his dismissal. 

Rogers held a variety of programs focusing on wildlife, environmental protection, outdoor safety and for teaching teachers how to incude the environment in the classroom.

And, at one time, personnel at Rogers, maintained the horse trails in the Brookfield Forest.

Rogers is part of the DEC's Region Seven, and was formerly a game farm.

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Comments(3):

  1. What a shame.

    Thursday, November 18, 2010 Mark

    This is very sad news. The Center has been a part of my life for nearly forty years.

  2. rogers center closing

    Friday, November 19, 2010 chuck

    This is an absolute joke. We certainly need to cut spending and taxes in this state, but this is not the place. We presently offer 31 services under Medicaid (soon to be 33, as we are the ONLY state in the nation that ADDED Medicaid services this year)and with 1/2 the population Texas or Florida (I forget which) spend twice as much on Medicaid as those two states combined. This means we probably spend four times as much per person as in those two states. This is insane. We also force the local counties to pay a higher percentage than most other states, and counties primarily raise money through property taxes and sales taxes. Therefore a logical place to start with the funding cuts would be to do something rational with Medicaid. This would relieve both the local and state taxpayers of a ridiculous burden, but will probably never happen, as the base that votes for our present office holders would then be getting less services.

  3. another dumb decision

    Tuesday, November 23, 2010 cheryl

    Please don't do this! When are we going to learn! We need this land and the center! Such a haven....mentally we need to have such a haven....surelly there are a number of other "cuts" that could be made...who is this better for? Not the public....When it is all gone, all the beauty... picture it please.... What will the world look like...the farms, when they are all gone, where will we get our produce from? Our children won't know how to provide for themselves! WHO will they depend on? THINK! -c-