Mr. Johnson......take down that sign!!!

Does it ever pay to give compliments?.  Yesterday I congratulated Mike Toohey and the retiring members of the City Center Board for giving us a larger more effective Convention venue.  Then I saw the sign they erected!!!!

It is an digital neon eyesore; nothing more than a gaudy advertising board constantly flashing its prosaic messages to stroke whatever convention happens to be in town. Could the 9/11 sculpture have been worse?

The City Center* guards the entry to North Broadway, arguably the most notable historic area of a city that prides itself on its Victorian past.  Now thanks to the City Planner who crafted T-Zones, putting them outside of the normal constraints of the Zoning Board of Appeals; thanks to a Design Review Commission carefully appointed by Mayor Johnson to fudge judgments on questionable taste, we have no restraints on that area.  Let’s document that entryway.  We have the above mentioned garish sign, a gas station and a tattoo parlor.  Aren’t we becoming a class act. 

Mayors have the power to appoint members of the three Land Use Boards; the Planning Board; the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Design Review Commission.  When Mayor Klotz came into office although SEQRA (State Environmental Quality Review Act) was nearly 20 years old, it was honored in the breach.  Under Mayor Klotz the Boards started to promote and in the case of the ZBA require training in how to adhere to the State mandated standards that control the Boards.  They became dignified, thoughtful Boards that complied with State law as well as local ordinance.  Their questioning of applicants was demanding, their deliberations detailed but if they took a little more time, their rulings were usually balanced and just.

Under the old zoning code outside neon signs were not allowed in our city.  They were considered antithetical to the context of Saratoga Springs.  Under past Boards, there would have been a motion sent to the City Council to include digital under the prohibition.

Enter Mr. Johnson and his Mayoral mendacity about civility.  .  Through attrition and pressure, he managed to replace almost every one of the 21 Land Use Board members.  Notable is the fact that under Johnson only one party is smart enough to be appointed to the boards.  Preferred are contractors, developers, land owners and people related to the real estate business.  SEQRA handled by the City Council became a joke.  Anything goes.  Voila, the City Center signage.

Now the Mayor is paying an outside firm of attorneys to rewrite our City zoning code without public participation.  “To make it more consistent and understandable” is the word from City Hall.  However, when it is done, we, the public will get a few weeks to read and absorb it.  If we’re lucky we’ll get a few public hearings where our participation will be limited to two minutes.  It will then be passed through by what is left of the current City Council that approved it.  Who knows what is being written behind those closed doors.

What is it with people named Scott?  Is Saratoga Springs Scott, as the Governor of Wisconsin, doing everything in his power to stop citizens from participating in their government?  Is he against city workers?  His main thrust appears to be avoiding benefits to workers.  He is more than willing to spend 4+million dollars on a parking deck while laying off public safety and civil service workers as being too expensive.  Can he really believe that one parking structure will bring an additional $10+ million in sales taxes to pay for the bond on the structure?  Did he tell the truth about his ability to negotiate union contracts?  He has spent a boat load of money on outside attorneys to negotiate them to completion.  I may be incorrect, but to my knowledge only one contract has been signed in the nearly four years since he started paying the outside attorneys. 

Back to the sign in front of the City Center.  We have a government that pays little attention to the needs of its citizenry.  They do parking decks instead of public safety coverage; they pander to business owners; contracts with vendors are sacrosanct while our labor contracts go unsigned; the look of our City is falling prey to the most banal demands of the business segment of the community.  There has to be a more balanced way.

*For full disclosure: my husband is on the City Center Board. We do not agree about the sign. 

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This week we learn that the Supreme Court will hear three interesting cases:

Ø      The Texas redistricting case (that could undermine the Voting Rights Act)

Ø      The Arizona Anti-Immigration Act

Ø      The Federal Healthcare Act. 

We will finally learn if those Bush appointed Judges told the truth when they said they were not activist judges.  And here we thought that the Voting Rights Act was established law, Immigration was an established Federal function and the Federal government had the established right to required us the carry automobile insurance (or health insurance).

Wishing you and yours a healthy, happy holiday season whether you celebrate Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanza or any other faith.  To my atheist and agnostic friends, simply enjoy.

'Tis the season to be jolly......

Originally I was going to question why a lame duck City Council is pushing through large expenditures on outside attorneys, a non revenue producing, uncovered parking deck and additional superficial personnel at the same time they are cutting firemen, policemen and other vital city hall employees.  But the majority has spoken.  It said that Mayor Johnson may push spending through his sycophants four on any project that strikes his fancy or the fancies of his backers.  So I address another issue.

To frack or not to frack, that is the question.  It’s roundly debated.  There is the usual divide between the corporations and the conservationists (a word has the same root as conservative).   Only one fact in the issue is immutable.   “Personkind” (mankind to oldies) cannot live without water.  The current proposals for fracking all include pumping chemicals into the ground which will most definitely leach into ground water systems.  Nature insures it just as with the PCBs.  No thinking or caring person wants to have children in any shale region drinking any part of that toxic mixture.

BUT listen up.  The Saratoga Springs Democratic City Committee is lucky enough to have a taciturn third Vice President who is a working energy engineer.  Over a glass of bubbly at the Democratic committee holiday party, I asked him about the question of fracking. 

My first question was how important is shale gas.  He said, if we can harvest it, in not too many years the U.S. may be exporting fuel the way we were the world’s exporters of oil before there was a Saudi Arabia or a Libya.  That’s impressive as a way towards the re-energizing of our economy as well as reducing our dependence on the oil from some problematic areas.

 

My second, but more important question, was what about befouling our water systems?  Apparently, as usual, the Corporations ably assisted by their politicians are looking for the cheapest, quickest way of attacking a problem.  “No one has given the problem to the engineers” said our friend.   There may ways to extract the gas using other disciplines of engineering.  It might be possible to extract gas by using controlled sonic booms or other methods yet to be considered that have no lasting impact on the natural habitat. 

The question that really needs to be addressed is can we safely extract the gas; can we frack safely.  And that is not even being asked no less discussed publically - at least not by the politicians; not by the corporations; not by the public.  If the answer is yes, let's go ahead.  If the answer is no, it should not be an option, Governor.

As usual we are mired in an issue totally polarized and muddled by opposing political sides, heavily funded by corporations and obfuscated by mendacity.  There has to be a better way.

Congratulations to Mike Toohey and those retiring from the City Center Board.  Grateful thanks to him and the exceptional current Board who have provided us with an enlarged City Center .  It will enhance our City's economy by accommodating more and larger conventions.  The Mayor as he did with the 9/11 sculpture committee has reached out to new people to enlarge participation in the governing process of our City....among them Joe Dalton and Tom Roohan.  Ho hum.

Wishing you and yours a healthy, happy holiday season whether you celebrate Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanza or any other faith.  To my atheist and agnostic friends, simply enjoy.

A newspaper, a newspaper, our city needs a newspaper!!!

When we scrutinize low voter turnout and ponder why, one reason comes to mind – no newspaper.  No impartial newspaper to inform; no impartial newspaper to educate; no impartial newspaper to rally people to participate in their City, their government, their future.  To the uninformed, everything looks rosy in Saratoga Springs.

Four newspapers are capable of covering Saratoga Springs.  The Times Union, an Albany paper does its best weighing in on important issues in a City miles away.  The Post Star is primarily a Glens Falls newspaper that doesn’t make much of Saratoga Springs.  The Saratogian is supposed to be our local newspaper.  Although, any paper that can’t always get the correct date for the Victorian Walk hardly deserve a title that includes news.

The Publishers who come and go are only interested in revenue.  Except that there were a long line of publishers who automatically wanted to endorse only Republican candidate, we can discount them.  That leaves us with Ms. Lombardo.  Ms. Lombard has been long among us.  Her most notable accomplishment was her op ed the day after the Bush/Gore election when everyone was hanging onto every news outlet waiting to hear the details and possibly the outcome of the election.  In her op ed Ms.  Lombardo told us she didn’t want to go to election night parties.  She then spent an entire editorial talking about her broken refrigerator and what she went through to replace it.  She showed her truly astonishing priorities and her perhaps imperfect grasp of the important issues that impact our lives.

Take the most talked about issue of the past few years, Charter Change.  The Saratogian could have educated us with an overview of the various alternatives to the Commission form of government.  It could have outlined the extraordinary and tax spending measures Mayor Johnson was taking to prevent citizens from voting the proposed charter up or down.  It could have weighed the benefits/deficiencies of the Commission form of government.  It did none of these things.  This Saratogian, this paper that for decades ran its brilliant cartoon of the five headed monster whenever there was a problem between Commissioners; whenever the issue of charter was raised, was strangely silent.  No real information on the issue; no cartoon.  I don’t know what it tells you.  It tells me that Ms. Lombard and the paper are controlled by the revenue and opinions of its advertisers, Roohan Realty, Stewarts, Adirondack Trust, Gordon Boyd Energy Company - Mayor Johnson supporters all.  As a newsperson, Ms. Lombardo is certainly past her sell by date.

And that leaves us with the Daily Gazette.  At one time when Kathy Parker was reporting on our City it was one of the better newspapers in the area.  No more.  Last spring when I submitted a letter to the editor (see below),  I received the usual phone call asking if I had written the letter.  I said yes.  The young lady asked if I were still a member of the S. S. Democratic City Committee.  I answered yes, why did she want to know.  She said, she’d have to put that below my name.  I told her that I was writing as a private citizen, not as a representative of the committee so if she had to note that I was a member of the committee, she shouldn’t publish the letter.  But, I told her to tell her editors that it was a disturbing policy.  She asked if I would like to speak to her editor.  I said yes please.

One Arthur Clayman, editor, got on the phone.  I explained that I didn’t represent the committee so he couldn’t publish the letter with the committee name below mine.  He said that was his policy.  I told him I’d read plenty of letter written by Brian Hollowood who was a member of the Republican City Committee and it never so stated.  He repeated his policy and we agreed that he wouldn’t publish my letter.

Ten minutes later Mr. Clayman called back.  He said if I took out Congresssman Chirs Gibson’s name he would publish my letter under my name alone.  He had given me ten minutes to think.  I asked if he had the names of all committee persons of the Democratic, Republican, Independence, Working Families and Green Parties?  The answer was no.  “Then how do you know I am a member of the Dem. City Committee?”  His answer – “someone recognized your name”.   “So you are singling me out to mark as partisan because someone recognized my name?”  “It’s my policy” he repeated.  When I told him he’d lost for his newspaper all credibility as an impartial news outlet, he hung up on me.

I don’t know what this tells you.  It tells me that although voter registration between Democrats and Republicans is almost even, our city, our county is still in the vice of single party control, in our case Republican.  Although we do elect Democrats now and then, if a Democrat is to stay in office for any length of time he/she has to play ball with Republican “city fathers” – I believe its called picking one’s battles.  Anyone who stands for the rights of citizens to free information; for multiparty participation in city governance/boards; for free interchange of ideas is personally vilified and so turned out of office.

Again.... we have no impartial newspaper to inform; no impartial newspaper to educate; no impartial newspaper to rally people to participate in their City, their government, their future.

Letter to the Editor:

Mendacity

Remember the congressional election of 2010.  Our TVs were flooded with ads featuring our neighbors.  They said don’t vote for Murphy.  He will kill Medicare and hurt seniors.  They deceived voters.

Congressman, Dr. Chris Gibson and his compatriots are doing exactly what they falsely accused another of planning.  Their plans include cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Planned Parenthood specifically and healthcare in general - safety nets most needed in times of economic trouble.

Conservative rhetoric rails against “entitlements”.  If we and our children can’t have a social safety net (entitlements), why should corporations with rich balance sheets have subsidies (entitlements).

Dr. Gibson seems to be a social ideologue caring only about low taxes.  He has the knowledge and experience to know where and how to streamline the military budget.  Instead, he plays with our social safety nets ignoring all other government spending and revenue issues. 

Politicians like him paid by corporate donors sermonize about low corporate taxes, low taxes on income over a million dollars and large corporate subsidies to stimulate the economy and create jobs.  We have been trying that for the past ten years.  It hasn’t worked!   The jobs are gone; the deficit blown; the middle classes being asked to sacrifice while the few prosper.

I certainly understand the pressing need to lower our national debt for our children’s sake. But before putting citizens, seniors, women and children now or in the future at risk, we should be looking at oil subsidies, large corporate farming subsidies, our entire tax code and a panoply of programs/loopholes that help multibillion dollar corporations not ordinary citizens.

Congressman Gibson is either a zealot or has a callous disregard for regular citizens. During the “shut down” debate Gibson and his ilk promised to dismantle everything that has made America a strong nation. There is a better way.

304 Words

Nancy Goldberg

Saratoga Springs