This morning’s mail brought a new and lavishly illustrated booklet from Croton’s Recreation Department. Titled “Spring/Summer 2010 Recreation Programs,” this outwardly handsome product of the graphic arts is, to put it mildly, an absolute and unmitigated disaster. At a time when austerity should be the order of the day, why so much time and money are spent on an elaborate publication with such a short useful life is beyond comprehension.
In printing terms, this booklet consists of a single signature of ten folded and gathered sheets, self-covered (i.e., covered with the same paper as the text) and saddle-wired twice with staples from the outside to the inside of the fold. In my copy as received, pages 7, 10, 27 and 30 are missing. Pages 3, 6, 31 and 34 are each duplicated and substituted for the missing pages--but the duplicated pages are backed with the wrong folio numbers (i.e., page numbers), indicating that an error had been made in the original positioning of the pages on the offset plate negatives.
As someone familiar with printing, I can say that none of these errors is the result of the pages being accidentally bound in the wrong order. No specialized knowledge about printed materials is needed to recognize this misnumbering as printing errors. Anyone who has ever read a book knows that two sides of a printed page must bear successive page numbers. One has to wonder who paid for the PP&B (paper, presswork and binding) of the pages printed in error--Croton or the printer?
Believe it or not, the following is the incredible sequence of pages in the 40-page booklet as received by me: Front cover, inside front cover, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 3, 8, 9, 6, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 31, 28, 29, 34, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 (inside back cover), and back cover. As popular wisdom holds, "You can't make this stuff up." Anyone else who has a copy of this booklet in this sorry state has a rara avis, a rare bird. Hang onto it--it's a genuine collector's item--and a testament to another local government goof.
As TV pitchmen say, ""Wait a minute, folks! That's not all!" If any Village department should know the status of Croton's parks, it is the Recreation and Parks Department. In addition to the above-cited printing errors, both versions of page 6 contains a serious misstatement. After listing the parks administered by the Recreation and Parks Department, including Croton Landing Park, the booklet adds the following cautionary note: “The use of the Village parks shall be limited to residents of the Village of Croton-on-Hudson who may be accompanied by a limited number of guests.”
No such exclusion of nonresidents can be made by the Village at Croton Landing Park. Because public monies were accepted by Croton or its development, nonresidents may use the park without restriction. This egregious error must be corrected as soon as possible, certainly before another edition of the booklet is printed. I suggest that Croton acknowledge this error about Croton Landing with a correction in the very next Village Newsletter. Greater care should also be exercised by the Village in the future to ensure that misinformation is not promulgated in its published materials.
One might even be so bold as to say that this booklet fiasco is another reason why Croton should consider dissolving itself as a village and be folded back into the Town of Cortlandt to avoid the excessively inefficient and expensive redundancy that now pertains in village government everywhere.
All things considered, for those old enough to remember the phrases, this booklet can hardly be called "a Ziegfeld production." In fact, it's not even "a Minsky production." And so I am compelled to ask again, “Who’s minding the store?”
