With a 7-0 victory against visiting South Glens Falls, the Queensbury varsity boys tennis team improved to 6-0 overall (5-0 in Foothills Council action) and increased its Foothills Council dual match winning streak to 32.
Queensbury, 7… South Glens Falls, 0.
Singles Results:
1. Skyler Allen (Q) def. Cooper Brennan, 6-1, 6-0
2. Will Lamy (Q) def. Ethan Vasak, 6-1, 6-1
3. Ryan Greenstein (Q) def. Connor Basile, 6-0, 6-2
4. Ian Rathbun (Q) def. Filson Kelleher, 6-0, 6-0
5. Jack Murray (Q) def. Sebastian Semanate, 6-0, 6-0
Doubles Results:
1. Max Anderson/Gavin Hochsprung (Q) def. Isaac Potter/Stephen Smythe, 6-1, 6-1
2. Max Coccia/Sean Donahue (Q) def. Carson Ogden/Angelito Manegdeg III, 6-0, 6-0
The Warren County Board of Supervisors has hired experienced tourism executive Heather Bagshaw to serve as Warren County’s Director of Tourism! She begins work on April 24th, 2023.
Ms. Bagshaw comes to Warren County after working in Greene County, New York, where she served as the county’s Director of Tourism. She spent nearly 10 years overseeing Greene County’s tourism promotion efforts, and her years in the hospitality industry followed tenures with marketing agencies and nonprofits in the Capital District and New York City… Ms. Bagshaw has also worked as vice president of marketing at Destination Niagara USA.
The county Director of Tourism is responsible for planning, developing and implementing programs to promote Warren County. The Director of Tourism promotes facilities and businesses as premier destinations for leisure travel, group tours, and special events… To achieve this, Ms. Bagshaw will be able to utilize marketing and advertising campaigns through Warren County Tourism Department. As part of her role, Ms. Bagshaw will oversee a department of four full-time staff members and two-part-time staff members.
“It is an honor to be chosen as the next Tourism Director by the hiring committee and the Warren County Board of Supervisors. I am excited to be working in an area that is recognized for its year-round outdoor adventure, events, attractions, and more! I will continue to build brand awareness for the Lake George Area in New York’s Adirondacks, and continue to grow it as a top tourism vacation destination,” Ms. Bagshaw said.
Gene Merlino – Chairman of the Warren County Board of Supervisors Tourism Committee – believes that Ms. Bagshaw will have a positive impact on area tourism: “Heather has extensive experience in the tourism industry, working with different types of destination marketing offices, and we were impressed with her ideas to further develop our efforts to market Warren County and the local tourism industry,” he said.
Ms. Bagshaw will be replacing former Director of Tourism Alfred Snow… Snow stepped down in November of 2022, after holding the position for two months.
Ms. Bagshaw is an avid golfer and outdoors enthusiast. She and her golden retriever, Roxie, are looking forward to experiencing all that Warren County has to offer.
Senior Kendra Ballard scored four goals, including the game-winner with 27 seconds remaining in the contest, and classmate Meredith Montgomery tallied four more to give the Queensbury varsity girls lacrosse team a 9-8 victory at Bethlehem. Bayley Duffy finished with nine saves as the Spartans won their 20th straight true road game and improved to 7-0 on the season.
Entrepreneur Christopher J. Thomas – a retired U.S. Marine Corps. Sergeant Major – is the founder and owner of Elite 9 Veteran Talent Acquisition Services, an employment placement and business management consulting firm that focuses on connecting Veterans to hiring professionals. As a company, they highlight resume writing/editing, talent management, requisitioning, and interviewing techniques. Elite 9 works with front line leaders, mid-level supervisors, and senior executives across all industries.
Christopher started Elite 9 because he saw the needs of Veterans returning home and re-entering the workforce… He would talk to service members about their plans after the military, and he found that the transition for service members into the workforce was challenging: “I really do have a passion for entrepreneurship and a passion for helping veterans and military spouses. I knew I could help people,” Christopher said.
As Christopher was building and shaping his busines,s he relied on the help of mentors, and through them, Christopher gained perspective and insight that helped him create his business. He believes that applicants that come out of the military have what he calls soft skills, that are intangible but valuable to an employer: “Hard skills are skills that can be taught on the job. Soft skills are what an individual brings to the table, personality traits. Do you have the passion to see a project through to the end? Do you know how to work with people to get the job done? These are traits that are hard to teach, but valuable to an employer and a company,” Christopher said.
Elite 9 works with Veterans and their spouses to make sure that their resume reflects the skill that they possess for the job that they are pursuing. Most companies use an Application Tracking System (ATS) that screens resumes before they are viewed by Human Resources… This means if your resume doesn’t have key words from the job description, you likely will not get a response, even if you are qualified for the job! Elite 9 teaches these skills so that resumes that are submitted are less likely to be overlooked.
Due to his experience in the Military, Christopher is aware of a program which benefits both the employers and the departing service members – The Department of Defense’s SkillBridge Program. This program is available to active service members who are within 180 days of their release date, and helps the service member plan for life after the military. The SkillBridge Program connects the service member with an industry partner, and the service member continues to receive their military compensation while working and learning skills with an industry partner, even though the new employer does not pay the service member during the course of the program… This helps to create a lasting relationship between the service member and the employer where each benefits.
Christopher J. Thomas
Elite 9 has partnered with Paula Traina of Traina Insurance & Financial Services Inc. to build that program… Now, Paula can hire from a pool of 200,000 service members who are exiting military service and re-entering the civilian workforce. During the 180-day period, Paula reduces labor costs and builds a relationship with the new employees.
For more information about Elite 9 Veteran’s Talent Acquisition Services LLC and the work that Christopher is doing, please visit elite9vtas.net
Today, Glens Falls High School – located at 10 Quade Street in Glens Falls – will be hosting UNITE’s Arrive Alive Tour® from 8:45 AM to 2:45 PM. This is the nation’s number-one ranked “drunk and distracted” driving awareness event, as well as the first-and-only Marijuana Driving Simulator in the country.
The Arrive Alive Tour uses a high-tech, state-of-the-art simulator that allows participants to drive while distracted, drunk, or drugged in a fully functioning vehicle without moving or being intoxicated. The simulator allows participants to experience the real-life dangers without the real-life consequences.
April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month. In 2018, about 400,000 people were injured and 2,841 people were killed as a result of distraction-affected crashes… The fatal crash rate for teens is three times greater than for drivers age 20 and over, and driver distraction is responsible for more than 58% of teen crashes.
The Arrive Alive team’s mission is to educate teen drivers on the dangers and consequences of impaired and distracted driving, and to create life-long safe driving habits to eliminate fatalities on our roads. UNITE’s Arrive Alive Tour is sponsored by BOCES of New York to bring this life-changing event to the students with the mission of changing these dangerous driving behaviors and saving lives.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please call Nick Pitts at (888) 436-3394, extension 6386.
Earlier this month, The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) announced that the City of Glens Falls had won a competitive “Thriving Communities” grant. “Thriving Communities” is one part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s programs focused on ensuring that all communities have an equal opportunity to benefit from federal infrastructure funding. USDOT’s technical assistance is part of the Thriving Communities Network, an interagency initiative among the Departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, Commerce, and Agriculture, as well as the General Services Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The city was one of 64 communities across the U.S. that now has access to historic funding opportunities.
“The historic investments we are making in America’s infrastructure must reach the communities that need them the most,” stated U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a media release. “With the new Thriving Communities program, we are helping under-resourced communities better access federal funding for transportation projects that will create jobs, improve safety, and strengthen their economies.”
“Glens Falls is the planning and development stages of several transportation projects,” states Jeff Flagg, the Director of Economic Development, “but the city has no technical planning staff and relies heavily on the use of consultants. “Our goal in applying for the grant was to assist the city in the technical planning of transportation projects.”
“The Thriving Communities program will support four separate transportation projects that are currently under consideration in Glens Falls,” continued Flagg. “They include ideas for a multimodal transportation hub, the implementation of the Greater Glens Falls Transit Authority’s (GGFT) merger with the Capital District Transit Authority (CDTA), the electrification of our bus fleet, and the implementation of ADA accessibility improvements for pedestrian facilities. The funding received via the Thriving Communities Program will help us to coordinate efforts together with our community partners such as the Lake Champlain & Lake George Regional Planning Board, the Adirondack/Glens Falls Transportation Council, and the Warren County Economic Development Corporation to advance these projects.”
“Our selection fell under the ‘Complete Neighborhoods’ aspect of the Thriving Communities program,” continued Flagg. “That means the City of Glens Falls is working to better advance complete streets policies and coordinate transportation with land use, housing, and economic development.”
“Communities that have long faced historic under-investment and disadvantage are finally going to get the technical assistance they need to explore innovative concepts and build better transportation solutions through the Thriving Communities Program,” said Build America Bureau Executive Director Morteza Farajian.
One of the big stories this week/month was the settlement on the eve of trial of the defamation case between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News. The case settled during the first day of trial and at or near the conclusion of jury selection, for nearly $800,000,000.
A quick recap: following the 2020 Presidential election multiple theories were floated relating to the validity of the election. Many of these were broadcast on Fox News, among those theories relating to the validity of Dominion’s voting machines and software.
Dominion sued Fox for defamation, alleging that the company (through its executives, anchors, etc.) knowingly made false statements about its products and as a result caused substantial damages. The company sought some $1.6 billion in damages. Fox denied these allegations, asserting that the information it broadcast was relevant to the public interest, and was likewise protected by the First Amendment. The judge in the case issued a series of pre-trial rulings, among those that the statements were, in fact, false, and the case was scheduled to begin a jury trial on Monday, April 17.
Monday came and went with an announcement that the trial had been adjourned for one day to allow the parties to explore a possible settlement. When the parties could not reach one, jury selection began. During what became a three-hour lunch break, Fox and Dominion finally reached a settlement, and the case was over.
Today we’re going to talk about why cases settle, and why they settle when they do.
The average person might look at the Fox-Dominion case and ask why it got this far if it was just going to settle. That would be a fair question. The practical answer would be that the parties needed to engage in pre-trial discovery (the process by which parties to lawsuits ask for and exchange information), which is true. Dominion did not have access to the many emails and text messages between Fox Anchors and executives (some of which were very harmful) and it’s likely that Fox did not have early access to any information which supported Dominion’s claim of damages. So, it’s not entirely surprising that discovery was necessary.
Okay, but why then didn’t the case settle after discovery, but well before the parties prepared for trial?
Legal disputes settle at many different points. Sometimes they settle before papers are even filed, where each side has determined that an early resolution is in their own best interest and these interests align. Sometimes they settle after discovery, when the parties each have a complete picture of the case and are able to agree (without actually agreeing) as to what an appropriate outcome should be.
Other times, however, cases simply cannot be settled until there is a real, in-your-face threat of a trial and (in this case) by extension a jury verdict. It may be that one side is being unreasonable with its demands or offers, or the other failing to recognize its own strengths/weaknesses. What often happens, however, is that when the Court presses “Go” and a prospective jury is brought into the Courtroom, things get real very quickly. All of a sudden parties really start to think about what testimony might actually come in, and (particularly in high profile cases) how it will be perceived. They start to really consider the uncertainty of the whole thing; or how their fate is now in the hands of these 12 (or in New York, 6) jurors whom they’ve never met.
And that’s why it was not at all surprising to see the settlement come when it did. What took so long? Likely a combination of the factors above: Dominion appeared to be dug in on its demands, including a public acknowledgement by Fox that it knew the statements were false (or, ultimately, a public acknowledgment of the Judge’s ruling that the statements were false); Fox was likely dug in on some technical legal issues on which it thought it could win (whether at trial or on appeal). But ultimately, when the rubber hit the road, and when they were each facing a jury of “peers”, everyone recognized what was at stake. Fox in particular, being a large publicly traded company, had more absolute risk and therefore more incentive in the end to settle, particularly given the damaging written communications and the prospect of its most famous anchors and CEO testifying in open court.
There’s a saying mediators often use that a successful mediation is one where both sides walk away mutually unhappy with the resolution. In this case I’m not sure that Dominion walked away unhappy, and to that degree it seems like a win. Fox certainly took a hit to its reputation and its wallet; however, by settling the case the company was able to contain the fallout, at least for now.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Scott M. Peterson is the founding partner of D’Orazio Peterson, having left a partnership at a large regional law firm to limit his practice and focus on exclusively representing individuals in a small number of employment and serious injury/medical malpractice matters.
Meredith Montgomery fired in a team-high six goals to go along with two assists, and Kaitlyn Barton found the net five times to match her career-best as the Queensbury varsity girls lacrosse team defeated host Greenwich 20 to 4! Kendra Ballard and Kendal Kelsey added three goals apiece for QHS, which has won 19 consecutive true road assignments and 105 straight Foothills Council contests – both program records!
The Queensbury varsity boys tennis team remained undefeated in 2023, and secured the program’s 650th victory with a 5-2 dual-match decision against visiting Glens Falls today!
Dating back to the 2019 campaign, the Spartans have captured 31 consecutive Foothills Council matches, which is the third-best streak in school history.
Singles Results:
1. Skyler Allen (Q) def. Julien Oswald 6-4, 6-3
2. Will Lamy (Q) def. Vincent Westfall 6-0, 6-1
3. Owen Young (Q) def. Ronan Westfall 6-1, 6-1
4. Tim Motsiff (GF) def. Ryan Greenstein 4-6, 6-2 (10-6)
