Hayseeds

Hayseeds No. 244

Albany Weblog and Demolition City.

Dan this week has a fantastic article about how the city often demolishes buildings at the night time to avoid the media spotlight, and maximize the overtime that city employees get.

It certainly is an interesting article. I don't know what the solution is to abandoned buildings and restoring the livelihoods to our cities. I suspect covering everything with tacky vinyl siding and brick-look-alikes is not a solution.

It's also not a good thing that the city is doing things to outright avoid public scrutiny or oversight, by only declaring an emergency at the last possible meeting. Certainly, there are buildings that should come down in Albany, but only after sufficient public discussion—that's not currently happening.

The activists who are always fighting for historic buildings don't make things easier, but if the process was more thought out and fully debated out, decisions would be able to made rather then a last minute, leaving little more then rubble and empty lots.

WAMC Fund Drive Week.

Featuring Eliot Spitzer of all people as he Tuesday's VoxPop on WAMC. Good for Spitzer and Alan.

Now when are they going to bring back the Me and Eliot Show?

Albany County Chooses Premier Automark.

A follow up to Friday's fodder on voting machines, it looks like our county will be using the optical scan voting machines that read in a ballot that looks similar to absentee ballots.

Unlike the touch-screen DREs, a vote is recorded on an optical scan machine when the ballot—filled out either by hand, like a standardized test, or using a ballot-marking device—is scanned into the machine and the vote is counted—like a lottery ticket.
The paper ballot remains as a hard copy of the electronically recorded vote.
While only one such ballot-marking machine will be at each of Albany County's 188 polling places this fall for voters with disabilities, the decision almost assures that the county Board of Elections will pursue optical scan technology when it must choose voting machines for the rest of voters later this year.

This is great for the activists and those concerned about the quality of voters. It's less good news for Liberty, a local business that was hoping to get into the business of selling expensive computer based voting systems to the county.

Iraq Resolution Fails in County Legislature.

It looks like Doug Bullock's Iraq resolution failed 22-15 after some significant debate on the issue:

Aylward	Yes	Houghtaling	No
Benedict	No	Infante	No
Beston	No	Joyce	Yes
Bullock	Yes	Lockart	No
Carman	No	Maffia-Tobler	No
Chapman	Yes	Mayo	Yes
Clay	Yes	McCoy	No
Clenahan	Yes	McKnight	Yes
Clouse	No	Mendick	No
Commisso	Yes	Morse	No
Cotrofeld	Yes	Nichols	Yes
Dawson	No	Scavo	No
Domalewicz	No	Steck	Yes
Ethier	No	Timmins	No
Gordon	No	Tunny	No
Higgins	Yes	Ward	Yes
Hoblock	No	Willingham	No
Horstmyer	Yes	Zeilman	No

Legislator Tom Reilly of New Scotland and Legislator Rahm of Albany where absent.

Apparently there was a speech right before the resolution vote that encouraged many legislators to vote against as it was viewed by some to be anti-solider and anti-Verteran. I don't have the words to the resolution, so I don't know how to evaluate that claim.

Still, I wonder why Bullock insisted on pushing forward on this resolution, when he knew that it didn't have the support of the legislature. These are the kind of things that are suppost to be worked out in conference, and a consensus is made before the bill is actually voted on. It doesn't make much sense to push forward a resolution that you know is going to fail—it only makes your cause look not worthwhile.

I'm disappointed that Doug didn't get a consensus before he pushed through the resolution. This is what Democratic conference is for—and he should have worked out people's concerns with the resolution, before it was pushed forward. There certainly could have been amended language that would have passed, and addressed people's concerns.

I'm also disappointed with Frank Commissio on this resolution. He should have never allowed the resolution to get the floor of the legislature, until he knew his people had the votes. If Bullock ignored Commissio's wishes, then that is his fault. Doug hopefully will take his resolution back to the Democratic conference and see what can be done to make it more acceptable to their members. Once a consensus is reached, then look back to pushing it forward again.

I'm somewhat surprised to see Legislator Gordon, Houghtaling, and Timmons no vote, however their districts are more conservative, and without seeing the actual resolution text, it's hard to know why they voted why they did.

Hopefully, Bullock will go back to conference and work on a revised resolution. I see no reason why it should be impossible or even difficult to get an Iraq resolution passed in the Albany County Legislature, except that a Doug decided to do it alone.

City Hides Landfill Expansion Questioning.

Bill Bruce, the Commissioner of Albany City Department of General Services, known for his style of suit and slicked back hair for resembling a used car salesman, apparently has been hiding from the city council and the public that the DEC had serious concerns about the proposed landfill expansion as shown in memos dated:

The memos bring up some significant issues that activists at Save the Pine Bush have been raising for quite some time.

February 4, 2008 memorandum:

Section 1.0 Introduction, Section 1.1 History - The second and third paragraphs of this section are confusing. It is not entirely clear why a discussion has been included which attempts tot ake away the history of the Albany Interim Landfill (AIL). The discussion has dropped the individual names for subsequent expansions then calling the collective area AIL. The orginal 1991 Part 360 Permit had intended for the "AIL" to only have 5 cells tha twould cease accepting wate by December 31, 1995. If this discussion is titled "History", then it should describe an accurate history of the landfill with each expanded operation distinctly described and identified by their respective names.
Section 1.0 Introduction, 1.3 Description - Second paragraph, need to be careful when discussing use of the Rapp Road Landfill, this facility not only serve the ANSWERS Planning Unit capactiy, discussions should not give this impression, the current operation is a merchant facility...
A review of the Albany Landfill secondary lectache collection and removal system 30-day average leakage rates from the period 11/23/06 through 10/02/07 reveals only 13 days when those values for cell 10 were equal to or below the 20 gallons per acre per day required by 360-2.7(b)(9)(iv)...
Section 4.0 Unavoidable Adverse Impacts
The proposed landfill expansion is north and norteast/east of the existing active landfill. This expansion project will locate the new active landfill closer to the Fox Run mobile home park and businesses which are situated off Whitestone Rd and Licoln Ave.
Section 4.8 (Air Quality & Ordor Control) states "The odor results show that odor concentrations decrease as distance increases from the active landfilling area." This statement appears to support that there will be noticably be more odor issues to the mobile home park and businesses located north and northeast of the proposed expansion.

From the November 19, 2007 memo:

1. Department property maps show there is an easement held by the DEC across City lands within the area of the elandfill expansion. This easement was established during the last expansion in order to provide a connection bewteen the Ice Age parcel and Albany Pine Bush Preserve lands to the west. The current DEIS does not discusst he presence of the easement except to show an area labeled: "pedestrain easement". Needed is a discussion of this easement and plans to clearly label NYS as the easement holder as well as assessment of the impact on public users of the easement.
2. The mitigation plan suggests that mitigation work will occur on undecided DEC lands to the east of the landfill, specifically the Ice Age parcel. Further a porition of the porposed mitigation work includes 2.4 acres of Forested Wetland Restoration. This parcel has already been the site of wetland creation work that was done in consideration to federal wetlands located on the State Campus parcel involved in this land swap. Therefore any proposal to modify or alter the wetland mitigation area established would have to also be coordinated with the US Army Corps of Engineers.
3. Figure 2-6 lays out the proposed phasing plans for Habitat Restoration work. The area currently occupied by the trailer is proposed for restoration in Year 2-3 (see p. 2-28). However, 11 remaining residences are found at the site. It is understood that most of these tenant area able to remain until ~2015, while one resident has a life estate. This situation needs to be factored into the restoration timetable and addressed in the DEIS.
Additionally, on p 2-26, the DEIS states the phasing (and pretty much the whole timetable) will be dictated by the availablity of sand. Based on the consultant's presentation at City Hall, sand represents a significant cost factor for the restoration. It is not clear what the City will do to acquire the sands it needs, in the quanities it needs, in order to the complete the habitat restoration as proposed within the time frame specified.
4. The proposed eastern expansion will insert a very high and steep feature into the current and future preserve that is completely unnatural in appearance. In the Wetland Avoidance Scenario (Fig 5-1) the avoidance measures employeed greatly soften the impact. A similiar approach is needed in the preferred eastern expansion alternative discussion and a design which would lessen or naturalize teh appearance of this feature.
8. P 3-46 contains the statement that "all habitats in the expansion area are overgrown and degraded environments". This statement is very misleading as while do not represent the best and most pristine examples of these habitats, they are fully and ecologically fucntion. The forest red maple swamp is a fully function wetland habitat, despite its location in the shadow of the landfill, and despite being continually negatively impacted with windblown trash. The existing wooded north slope of the landfill currently provides a naturally wooded buffer that has habitat value and cannot be quickly replaced if destroyed.
12. P 3-73 Visual impacts - the DEIS needs to present discussion and mapping of specific viewpoint impacts from ajor vantage points in the Preserve. In particular, the views from Blueberry Hill and the Overlook Dune east of the Discovery Center needed to be included in this analysis.
15. The DEIS states on p. 5-27 that without the proposed expansion "a fixed revenue stream would not be guaranteed to the City of Albany". As part of the evaluation of alternatives in the DEIS, the City needs to discuss alternative revenue sources that could replace the landfill revenue and/or reduce the footprint of the expansion area and/or assure that Albany would find a future need to consider any additional expansion proposals to be fully mooted.

There are many other things listed in the DEIS comments submitted by the DEC that are worth review. You should take a look at all these documents more carefully.

It seems that the Spitzer DEC has raised some substantive issues that deserve real concern. It's quite possible that they will this time deny the permit, ultimately, or place some limits on it.

Bill Bruce put it this way in the Times Union today:

Bruce said the city has no clear alternative to dump revenue. "Both the mayor and deputy mayor have said without a replacement landfill, the city would be under a state financial control board by 2010," he said.

The next mayoral election is November 3, 2009. That should ensure that Mayor Jennings is long gone from the city by that point, when at the current tipping rates, the landfill is expected to run out of space and not be able to bring in any more revenue. I see Jennings' logic about this all: It's all Governor Spitzer and his lefty's faults.

I'm sure Spitzer will just grin back at him.

Governor Spitzer and Clinton.

It seems like the Guv is stuck between two candidates that he both really like, much like with many of us Democrats:

While Mrs. Clinton's campaign has struggled to regain momentum in the face of Mr. Obama's recent electoral winning streak, Mr. Spitzer said you "have to take pride in the process that can take somebody who was unknown just a couple of years ago and transform him into a national candidate and almost an international phenomenon so quickly."
He added that Mr. Obama has been a "spectacular" and "very powerful" voice for Democrats and said a Democratic ticket of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama would be "awfully appealing."

This is interesting but not surprising. The governor wants to be on the right side of whoever get the nomination.

See the New York Sun.