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on allotsego.com: THE TRUMP-KENNEDY CENTER CONTROVERSY VISIT www.ALLOTSEGO.com, OTSEGO COUNTY’S NEWSPAPER/ONLINE Volume 218, No. 2
Cooperstown, New York, Thursday, January 8, 2026
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School Leaders, Students Say Bell-to-Bell Cellphone Ban Has Been a Massive Success By ERIC SANTOMAURO-STENZEL
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OTSEGO COUNTY Local school leaders are saying the New York State school cellphone ban has been a huge success, increasing student engagement and decreasing behavioral issues. “Teachers are excited about it. Students are more engaged,” Oneonta High School Principal Kevin Stevens said in an interview. Students “like that they’re talking more with their friends and have less time being spent on their own personal devices.”
Some of those students, Oneonta High School seniors Anna Schultz and Hudson Pasternak, told AllOtsego they were surprised by how well the policy has played out. “My immediate reaction was that it wouldn’t be able to work, that there’s no way to put the cell phones away,” Schultz said. Pasternak said he was even annoyed. Now, “I think students are so much less distracted,” Pasternak said. Both recalled that in previous years, students would often be on their phones during class playing games or Continued on page 3
Former Sgt. Michael Stalter Announces Run for County Sheriff By ERIC SANTOMAURO-STENZEL
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OTSEGO COUNTY recently retired 25-year veteran of the Otsego County Sheriff’s Office is challenging his old boss. Republican Michael J. Stalter, a firsttime candidate, announced this week he is running for Otsego County sheriff. In an interview with AllOtsego, Stalter said he is running to cut costs and change certain office policies, including what he sees as “fluffing” of incident numbers. He also told AllOtsego he wants to see fewer inmates at the county jail boarded out to other jails and less overtime assignments for corrections officers. He later said he would rescind the office’s recently-signed 287(g) Warrant Service Officer Agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “I have spent almost half my life now as a police officer and just serving people,” Stalter said, adding it was his “dream” to become a sheriff’s deputy. Stalter said he loved working in the county he grew up in. He also previously served in the Cooperstown and Fort Plain police departments, and as a corrections officer. Stalter said his only job before law enforcement was in his father’s Middlefield-based construction business. INSIDE ► venezuela and ny-19, page 2 ► Oneonta’s bipartisan supes, page 2 ► here comes the boom, page 3 ► buttermann takes the oath, page 3 ► Otsego’s shining stars, page 4 ► birds, birds, birds! page 5 ► LAUREN GLYNN CARES, page 6 ► CALENDAR, page 10 Follow Breaking News On
Photo provided
MICHAEL J. STALTER
The current Otsego County sheriff is fellow Republican Richard J. Devlin Jr., who was first elected in 2006. He confirmed to AllOtsego he plans to run for re-election for another four-year term. “I decided to retire because I just didn’t want to
be part of it,” Stalter said of his June 2025 retirement. “The environment in the office had become negative.” He claimed he was not alone among colleagues in that feeling. “I truly felt that the person that I went to work for was a different person now, and that his priorities were not aligned with mine,” Stalter said. Stalter said there “wasn’t much common sense when it came to some of the spending.” He said the county’s practice of significant overtime work for corrections officers and boarding-out inmates, in other words sending them to other nearby jails at cost to the county, was an unnecessary expenditure of a “tremendous amount of money.” “I understand that the [jail] building itself, it’s not a new building. But then again, the building wasn’t built in the 60s,” Stalter said. The Otsego County Jail was built in 1991, and is the last in the state built with “linear design,” an old prison style with hallways with cells on either side. Sheriff Devlin has been advocating for a new jail for years. “If engineers want to come in and build a better, more modern facility using more modern techniques of housing inmates, of taking care of the jail popuContinued on page 7
Birthing Center Welcomes the First Baby of 2026
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COOPERSTOWN assett Healthcare Network’s Birthing Center at Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown welcomed its first baby of 2026 on January 1, 2026 at 5:11 p.m. Charlotte Marie was born to Jaimie and Matthew. The family lives in Cobleskill. Both mom and baby are healthy and happy. At birth, Charlotte weighed 7 pounds 10 ounces and was 20 inches long. She is the couple’s first child and she happens to share a birthday with her family’s two dogs, Patches and Poppy. Jaimie works for Bassett Healthcare Network as a perioperative business manager. Her office is only a short walk from the hospital room where she welcomed her daughter into the world. “We want to say thank you to everyone who cared for us from the birthing center and from anesthesia. Everyone was wonderful,” Photo provided said Matthew. More than 900 babies were born at Bassett Medical Center’s Matthew and Jaimie are the proud parents of Charlotte Marie, the first baby Birthing Center in 2025. to be born this year at Bassett’s Birthing Center.
THE FREEMAN’S JOURNAL & HOMETOWN ONEONTA, OTSEGO COUNTY’S AWARD-WINNING WEEKLIES 2010 WINNERS OF The Otsego County Chamber/KEY BANK SMALL BUSINESS AWARD