There certainly was a lot of news in Cazenovia during the year 2014 — some of it positive and some of it negative, some of it depressing and some of it inspiring; at times the news of the day was as infuriating or outlandish as it was uplifting and amusing. Whatever the adjective used to characterize what has happened these last 12 months, taken all together, it has all been the story of Cazenovia.

Thinking back over the past year, and looking through the past 52 issues of the Cazenovia Republican, some of the “top stories” of the year were pretty obvious: Cazenovia placing second in the “Coolest Small Town in America” contest, the tornado that ravaged Smithfield, the murder of Amy Bradstreet, the bullets found in the Cazenovia High School hallway that caused a lockdown and community panic and the ongoing issues with Owera Vineyards and its plan to build a new events building.

Since everyone in our readership area receives the newspaper for free, it is difficult to discern from hard copy numbers which stories were popular and which were not — but the number of hits we receive on our website and our Facebook page lets us know right away. The stories that received the most online views were not only the stories mentioned above, but also included: the portable meth lab found by the library, the visit of The Today Show to Cazenovia to report on the snowstorms that affected the Northeast U.S., the issue of religious release time in the Cazenovia school district and the Cazenovia College bomb threat.

The two most-read stories of the year on our Facebook page was 1) the two Cazenovians — Ellen Costello and Pierce Brothers — who were raising money by biking across the U.S. and building houses with Habitat for Humanity along the way; 2) the local kids who saved a man who fell out of his boat in DeRuyter Lake. Both of those stories received more than 15,000 views each on Facebook.

The most shocking story of the year clearly was the murder of Amy Bradstreet, allegedly committed by her fiancée Stephen Schumejda. The tornado — tornado! — that ripped through Smithfield and killed four people is certainly a close second.

The prize for the most ludicrous story of the year probably can be given to the Syracuse Chargers Track Club for its decision to bar 12-year-old twin boys, Jack and Nolan Willis of Manlius, who have muscular dystrophy and are wheelchair-bound, from participating in the annual Cazenovia July 4 Foot Races 10-mile race (even though the club eventually reversed its decision). People still roll their eyes and shake their heads when that story gets brought up.

Instead of surveying, month-by-month, all the top stories of the year as we did for 2013, this year we have chosen what we feel were the 10 most important stories of the year to revisit. It was a difficult choice to pick only 10 top stories. Some that nearly made the cut include the May awarding of “Firefighter of the Year” to the Cazenovia Volunteer Fire Department and CAVAC for their rescue of Charlie Thompson last October, the huge barn fire on East Road in June, the November death of former school district superintendent Robert Dubik and the December visit of The Today Show to Cazenovia.

So many stories occurred this past year to uplift and depress us; so many to enjoy revisiting, and some that we wish to never read again.

Looking back over the events of a year reminds us of our humanity, and brings into focus why it is important that we are — and that we remain — a thoughtful, caring and neighborly community.

The following is a review of the 10 most important stories of the past year in Cazenovia, in chronological order from their publication dates:

Owera Vineyards continuing struggle with its neighbors and with the town over its proposed creation of a new events building

The struggles between Owera Vineyards on East Lake Road, its neighbors and the town of Cazenovia as a municipality was also one of the top stories of 2013 — and the story has continued throughout 2014.

In December 2013, the State Liquor Authority denied Owera’s request for a liquor license and caterer’s permit. At the beginning of this year, Owera’s owner and attorney went to Albany to appeal the SLA’s decision, but were denied.

During 2014, Owera has been working to build a new permanent “Promotion and Marketing Facility” to replace the three-season events tent currently on its property. If approved by the town planning board, the new building would be larger and more functional than the current events tent — and would be built using state-of-the-art soundproofing materials in order to eliminate the noise issues and complaints the winery has been fighting against for more than a year.

Part of those noise issues were also part of the story in 2014, with Owera canceling a June event after town Codes Enforcement Officer Roger Cook said to hold the event would violate its original construction charter for hours of operation. Owera appealed Cook’s decision to the town zoning board of appeals, but lost.

As for the new events building, Owera submitted a proposal to the planning board in 2013, which received immense community opposition, and then withdrew the proposal in late January. Owera then submitted a revised building proposal in August for a 6,300-square-foot Promotion and Marketing Facility to be open seven days a week, 352 days a year. That proposal has been the subject of three planning board meetings, as well as intense community and neighbor scrutiny and opposition. The planning board closed the public hearing on the facility on Dec. 4, and has two months from that date to make a decision to approve or deny Owera’s proposal.

Meanwhile, Owera recently received a $200,000 state grant to be used to build the new facility — if it is approved.

All eyes are now on the planning board for its decision, but it seems likely that no matter which way the board decides, this story will continue well into 2015.

Village zoning changes: Village Edge South, Western Gateway, Creekside Development District

This was a year for major zoning changes in the village of Cazenovia — and along with it came much public disagreement and opposition.

Early in the year, after nearly two years of work, proposed changes to the village zoning regulations and the establishment of design guidelines governing future development in the Village Edge South area were unanimously approved into local law by the village board of trustees.

The result was that the 84-acre area off Route 20 currently for sale will be developed in a mixed-use capacity for business and residential, all in a manner consistent with the style and feel of the village yet flexible enough to allow developers to build as they principally envision.

This also opened the way for the creation of a new chain hotel in the VES area (See related story).

The two major zone change stories that rapt the community’s attention were the proposed zone change to 4 Chenango St. to allow the restaurant Circa to move into an existing office building there, and the creation of a new Western Gateway Zoning District on Ledyard Avenue.

The Circa story caused some hard feelings in the village for a while. Circa owner Alicyn Hart and 4 Chenango building owner Eric Burrell wanted to move the restaurant into Burrell’s building, but Chenango Street neighbors adamantly opposed the idea. After months of meetings and public input, the opposition was so great that Burrell withdrew his zone change request, and Hart’s restaurant disappeared from the village.

Similarly on Ledyard Avenue, street neighbors banded together to fight against a proposed new zoning district on their street. The proposed law would create a new zoning district and change the zoning of certain land parcels on both sides of Ledyard Avenue from Route 13/Lakeland Park to the western village boundary by the Trush property. The idea of the proposal was to emphasize new and more potential uses for the large old homes on Ledyard Avenue as a way to prevent deterioration of those properties, to maximize land use by allowing more commercial development and to help beautify the village entranceway area overall.

The law would authorize zoning on Ledyard Avenue for single-family homes only, and special use permits would be issued by the planning board for certain low-impact non-residential uses, such as offices, bed and breakfasts and museums.

Neighbors fought the proposal, saying it would destroy their quality of life, their property values and the village aesthetic of their neighborhood. The village board held numerous public hearings, received vast amounts of public input and revised the proposed rezoning law four times before unanimously approving it in September.

Only a few weeks after the law’s approval, however, at least two Ledyard Avenue residents hired a local attorney to sue the village in state supreme court to overturn the legislation. That lawsuit has not yet been filed.

Mayor Kurt Wheeler said since the village has received no notice of a lawsuit yet, there was not much to say.

“This is their right, but our process was rigorous and sound and the law was thoughtfully written and passed to serve the public interest,” Wheeler said. “I am confident that any court will concur with that assessment.”

Currently, the village is working on its latest major zone change initiative at the Riverside Drive/Chittenango Creek area behind the library.

The Creekside Planned Development zone planning project will rezone the area for potential development and redevelopment of commercial or residential buildings, senior housing, a public park and potential nature trail. The village hired a professional planner in August to analyze and report on the proposed idea and give his recommendations for the project. His report was presented to the village board in November, the board held a public hearing on the report in December and the process is continuing.

Cazenovia places second in “Coolest Small Towns in America” contest

Cazenovians found themselves suddenly on the national map this past January when it was discovered their community had been nominated and was a top 15 finalist for the Budget Travel 2014 Coolest Small Towns in America contest. Cazenovia is not only the only town in New York state to make it as a finalist, it is also the only town in all of New England with the next closest finalist in Maryland.

Budget Travel’s Coolest Small Towns annual contest looks for American towns with a population under 10,000 and, according to the Budget Travel website, a certain something that no place else has — a world-class food scene, jaw-dropping locale, great music, innovative art and the kind of community spirit that motivates supporters to take to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram to propel their cool town to the top of the list.

For one month, people from across the U.S. went to the Budget Travel website to vote for their choice of the coolest small town. Cazenovia rocketed from the bottom of the list to second place in short order, where it and Berlin, Md., quickly ran away from the competition. For weeks the two villages were locked in a voting battle, and the two mayors even made a friendly wager over who would win with one week of voting left to go.

In the end, Berlin, bolstered by a huge public get-out-the-vote campaign, won by seven percentage points; but Cazenovia did retain second place by a large margin.

Since then, Cazenovia has found itself noticed or mentioned in various other national magazines or newspapers, including a visit from The Today Show in December, where the anchor lauded Cazenovia and said she felt like she was “stepping into a postcard.”

Bullets found in high school hallway

On Friday, April 4, two .22 caliber bullets were found on the floor of a Cazenovia High School hallway and then mysteriously disappeared — an event that caused a three-hour school lockdown and a community-wide panic.

Once the situation was known, the school called the police and initiated a lockdown. Utica and Syracuse city police departments and K9 dogs arrived on the scene to investigate, as did Madison County Sheriff’s Office deputies.

While waiting for the K9 units to arrive, district administrators spoke with a few students whom they were told might have information, and one student ultimately said he found the bullets on the floor, “knew they should not have been there,” picked them up and flushed them down a toilet. Three K9 units did a locker and room-by-room search of the building anyway and found no evidence of ammunition or weapons.

The police investigation lasted about three weeks, during which time no reason was ever discovered as to how or why the bullets got into the school, and both police and district administrators said they felt the incident was most likely an accident — that a student who was a hunter brought the wrong backpack to school and bullets fell out of it.

Both the police and the district administration said the district’s emergency response system worked very well during the incident, although they did find some minor issues with the system, which were immediately addressed.

Hotel coming to Caz

In July the news was official: Cazenovia will have a four-story, 82-room hotel and conference center located in the Village Edge South area on Route 20 across from the Town and Country plaza. The hotel, to be built by Cazenovia Hospitality, LLC, is planned to be part of the Hampton Inn and Suites national chain, and will accommodate up to 300 people, and have an indoor pool, fitness center, breakfast area and business center.

The hotel is the fruition of five years of planning by Dan Kuper, owner of The Lincklaen House and president of Cazenovia Hospitality LLC. He has said that his proposal was created to help improve the lack of sufficiently-sized hotel and conference facilities in Madison County, and he does not feel it will compete with the inns and bed and breakfasts in town but it will keep the people from staying in Carrier Circle and near the casino that have business in the area.

Cazenovia Hospitality LLC also recently received $1.28 million in state grants to help with construction costs.

Groundbreaking for the hotel is expected to occur in April 2015 and be finished about one year later, Kuper said.

July 4 Foot Race denying entry to wheelchair-bound Willis brothers

The news broke early Wednesday morning, July 2, that the Syracuse Chargers Track Club had denied the request of 12-year-old twin boys, Jack and Nolan Willis of Manlius, who have muscular dystrophy and are wheelchair-bound, from participating in the annual Cazenovia July 4 Foot Races 10-mile race.

Although the brothers have participated in such races before — being pushed in racing buggy/baby jogger-type conveyances by a group of six or seven experienced runners — the board of the track club decided that the request created too many safety hazards for participating runners as well as for the “passengers and pushers of those conveyances,” and therefore denied the request.

The brothers and their family and friends were disappointed; their supporters were angered; and many racers declared intentions to boycott the race in protest.

Within hours of the story being posted online in Syracuse, it became national news — getting picked up and published by the Associated Press, with the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, Newsday and Runner’s World, among other news outlets, posting the news on their websites.

After nearly 36 hours of public outrage and national media attention, the Chargers board reversed its decision and announced that the Willis brothers would be allowed to participate after all.

The boys and their running group — Team 2 Smiles, a group of six to seven experienced runners who take turns pushing the boys’ racing buggies in the race — started at 8:30 a.m. from the 10-mile start line, 15 minutes before the general race of the 10-mile race. The Chargers also created a team category for the boys and their teams of pushers, and the Cazenovia village police and local volunteers provided additional resources to keep everyone involved safe.

While the controversy was quelled rather quickly, the incident gave a black eye not only to the Chargers team but also to the community of Cazenovia after angered people mistakenly thought the village and/or town governments had denied the boys their request to race rather than the track team.

Smithfield tornado

On Tuesday evening, July 8, a tornado touched down and traveled along Goff Road and Northrup Road in Smithfield, Madison County, completely destroying four residential structures, damaging three residential structures, completely destroying one barn and killing four people. Three of the four people killed by the tornado were members of the same family.

After the tornado had passed, emergency crews found two homes on Goff completely destroyed and one home on Northrup Road had been completely lifted off its foundations, carried across the street about 150 yards, where it landed on a second house that was empty at the time, Madison County Sheriff Allen Riley said at the time.

The National Weather Service later confirmed that storm winds were 125 miles per hour, and the storm was categorized as an EF2-strength storm (out of a scale of EF1 to EF5).

The storm was so devastating that Governor Andrew Cuomo flew up from Albany, took a helicopter tour of the affected area and held a press conference at the Smithfield Fire Hall.

East Lake Road murder

One of the most shocking incidents to occur in Cazenovia in many years was the murder of Cazenovia native Amy Bradstreet in her home on East Lake Road on Sept. 1.

According to police, Bradstreet, age 44, and her fiancée and father of her two children, Stephen Schumejda, age 31, had some sort of argument, at the end of which Bradstreet ended up being stabbed “numerous” times. Schumejda fled the scene, taking the children with him, and drove to his mother’s house in Margaretville, N.Y., in Delaware County, southeast of Oneonta, where he was later arrested by state police.

Schumejda was charged with murder in the second degree, assault in the first degree and criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree committed during a domestic incident. He was arraigned in Cazenovia Town Court and remanded to the Madison County Jail with no bail, where he remains today. His trial has not yet started.

Boys save man’s life in DeRuyter Lake

When 8-year-old Harry Hausser and his 11-year-old cousin rescued a 63-year-old man who had fallen out of his boat into DeRuyter Lake in August, they were not trying to be heroes, they just saw a man who needed help and they helped him. Their story, however, became one of the most popular, and uplifting stories of the year in Cazenovia — and also earned the boys the Youth Good Samaritan Award at the 16th Annual Real Heroes Breakfast Event of Central New York on Dec. 3

The heroic act occurred on Aug. 14 when Hausser, of New Woodstock, and his cousin, Matthew Williams, of Sykesville, Md., were out on DeRuyter Lake in a small jon-boat with an electric motor to do some fishing and swimming just off the south end of the lake by the DeRuyter Lake General Store. They noticed a man a little farther out in the water in a small aluminum fishing boat who was there one minute, and gone the next.

“We noticed the boat had someone in it, and then it was empty,” Matthew said at the time.

“Then we saw two hands by the engine,” Harry said.

The boys motored over and found Kevin McAvoy, of Cortland, clinging to the hull of his boat. He had been out fishing when he leaned back to cast his rod the seat slipped, he fell over and flipped over the side into the water and could not climb back into the boat. His life vest was not tied and he was wearing a heavy sweater. He said he was about 100 yards out in about 8 to 10 feet of water.

The boys knew they could not pull McAvoy into their boat, so they quickly motored back to shore, where they got help from adult family members who jumped into the family’s pontoon boat and motored out to help.

“I was lucky those kids were out in the jon-boat,” McAvoy said at the time. “People on shore couldn’t see my head and were not sure where I was.”

McAvoy and his wife that night wrote the boys a card thanking them, writing, “You are our heroes.”

At the time of the incident, Shelley Hausser, Harry’s mother, said she was very proud of the boys, who “acted in the way we always hoped they would in a situation like this — responsible and calm.”

The boys were two of only a handful of people honored in December by the American Red Cross, which annually honors Central New Yorkers who have performed heroic acts to help others in need.

Portable meth lab found in village

During the first week of December, Cazenovia police found a backpack containing a portable meth lab behind a garage on Mill Street in the village.

The backpack contained all the common items used in the manufacture of methamphetamine in what is called the “shake and bake” method, where the drug is created in a plastic bottle — in this case, a 1-liter plastic soda bottle.

“It looked like a failed attempt at cooking meth; the bottle had collapsed in on itself because there was not enough oxygen [for the process],” said Cazenovia Police Chief Michael Hayes. “It was a lucky failure because usually failures in cooking meth mean death, dismemberment or serious injury from explosion.”

The “shake and bake” method of cooking meth — also called the “one pot” method — is a cheap, quick and popular way to make meth in under an hour in a portable way. The ingredients — items such as household chemicals, lithium from batteries, water and the drug pseudoephedrine — are mixed in a 1- or 2-liter soda bottle or a Gatorade bottle, and shaken up to mix the contents. It creates a relatively small amount of the drug, but enough for personal use or to make some quick money, according to experts.

The shake and bake method is extremely dangerous because the chemicals being mixed together in one step — as opposed to the many steps of the longer method — are extremely volatile, Hayes said. As the contents of the bottle are mixed together by being shaken up, the pressure of the fumes fills the bottle. The bottle must be constantly vented, or else it will explode.

Village police called the county SWAT team, who verified the bag’s contents and then called the New York State Police Contaminated Crime Scene Emergency Response Team (CCSERT) to collect and dispose of the materials.

“I’ve never seen this particular thing in Cazenovia,” Hayes said. “But people should not panic. It is what it is, and hopefully there won’t be any repeats.”

Jason Emerson is editor of the Cazenovia republican. He can be reached at [email protected].