CyphersSpace

Yeah, I blogged again

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 14:11:00 +0000

This exercise in whatever it is--journalism? speaking truth to power? whining?--lapsed for a year because writing takes energy, especially writing for no money, and at the end of the day, complaints about the administration of my one great city go nowhere because of a City Council that nods approvingly at everything the current mayor does. Because civility.
As a result, we're in a place where the billion-dollar bank gets a half-million-dollar payday, the downtown revitalization plan spends $10 million for a net gain of exactly one apartment building, the city refuses to fix a bridge and thus encourages schoolchildren to walk across a frozen river, the poor get threats that their no-judgments gym will be taken away from them, taxes still go up, and lawyers get paid.
It's the Plattsburgh circle of life right now, and it feels like an infinite loop. But the stripping of the city's best assets, including its recreation assets, for no perceptible reason other than the mayor's insatiable need to pad his resume, deserves to be noted for future people in charge, if nothing else.
So I'm noting it.
I ran across something that helps explain both why I blogged about this stuff in the first place, and why I haven't for a long time. Here's the kicker:

If your local media has no place for people who voice contempt for your city’s police chief, say, or your state’s attorney general, or the publisher of your city’s largest newspaper, all of those people will feel more comfortable in abusing their power. They will grind you down, and in the process, they’ll tell you to be civil about it.

Stop Rexit!

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 19:05:00 +0000

Having done a bit of reading on the Internet, I’m aware of something called Brexit, a poorly thought-out idea springing from the minds of a few well-off, and often strange, individuals. They convinced enough Brits that there was an emergency at hand (there wasn’t), and that Brexit would save them from it (it won’t).

Now comes Mayor Colin Read, a well-off individual, foisting a poorly thought-out idea on the City of Plattsburgh: Essentially killing the city’s main recreation assets.

Let’s call it Rexit.

The idea behind Rexit, whose details are taking form behind closed doors as I write this, is that Plattsburgh faces a dire fiscal emergency that can only be solved by divesting the city of a) its indoor recreation facility at the Crete Center b) its public marina c) its public gymnasium. Or maybe all three.

I won’t go into all of the city’s numbers here, because I don’t believe them. There’s a reason for this. I don’t believe anything that comes from city government since Read took over in 2017.

Let’s take the marina as an example. Under the previous administration, the city had a long-term plan to expand the marina and run a surplus that would subsidize other programs. Mayor Read, as part of an effort to scrap the expansion, quietly changed the city’s “mortgage” on the marina docks from a 15-year to a 10-year term, which increased the city’s annual payment from $77,000 to $101,000—making the city’s recreation fiscal picture look way worse than it actually is.

Another example: Councillor Rachelle Armstrong, in answering a query about the potential closing of the gym, said hard choices had to be made:

More broadly, since Plattsburgh has been ranked the 2nd most fiscally stressed city in the entire state, and since the Rec Complex has consistently run a deficit with the gym's deficit being the greatest, I consider an investigation into its operations and finances to be my responsibility as the committee chair with oversight in this area.

Wow, remember when Plattsburgh was ranked the “2^nd most fiscally stressed city in the entire state”?

Me neither.

Because it wasn’t. And isn’t.

It’s, like, 19^th.

Not great, but that's not even in the stressed-city playoffs, let alone vying for the title. When I pointed this out, Armstrong to her credit apologized for the mistake, but such an egregious error casts doubt on the entirety of the city’s “investigation” of recreation.

The rec debate brings up a question: Why would the mayor and his allies on the council want the city’s finances to look more dire than they are?

I can’t speculate on his allies, but the mayor, like all of us, wants to be the hero of his own narrative. He just seems more hell-bent than the rest of us. He’s constantly bad-mouthed the city’s finances, saying that the city must increase its fund balance or we will all die of higher taxes. (Meanwhile, he’s busy raising taxes—and the city’s residential assessments have skyrocketed, pushing tax bills still higher, but that gets in the way of a good story.)

It’s almost like he’s trying to write a triumphant, concluding chapter in a book about how he saved a city from financial ruin—and can point to the fund balance as proof. Someone driving that narrative has incentive to make things look terrible in the early chapters, and an excuse to shut down or sell off irreplaceable city assets, to get to that heroic climax.

Is there an alternative?

Why, yes.

Slow down. Do a real study about things like shared services, rather than the rushed 90-day “process,” with little public input, that’s been imposed on the city this fall.

Include in the discussion two just-elected council members, Paul DeDominicas and Ira Barbell, who have plenty of experience with government budgets.

Give people a real chance to weigh in on decisions that on their present course seem certain to deprive the city of prime revenue-generating opportunities, and more important, take away some of the city’s most valued community resources.

In short, think of the future of this city.

And don’t bend to the mayor’s self-serving desire to pen his own phony happy ending.

The stealth representative

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 19:50:00 +0000

Rep. Elise Stefanik came to the U.S. House on a wave of publicity in 2014 as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. (She'll lose that designation to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in November.)

Yet her greatest gift as a politician appears to be an almost Potteresque ability to remain invisible.

via GIPHY

Stefanik steadfastly avoids taking a stand on anything that might create controversy. Her entire public persona consists of scripted constituent-service visits--visiting a butcher shop here, talking to farmers there, bragging about dealing with veterans benefits issues--while saying nothing about the train wreck in D.C. She votes with Donald Trump 90 percent of the time, but doesn't talk about it, silently luxuriating in support from the NRA and big donations from one of the most ruthless financiers in the history of other people's money, the reptilian Paul E. Singer, and his company, Elliott Management.

She is, in short, the perfect former Harvard intern: perky, ambitious, and someone who knows her place. She's on all the right committees, and she smiles nicely while quietly voting to take away health care for people with pre-existing conditions and nodding right along with whatever her House Intelligence Committee mentor, Devin Nunes, thinks should be done about the Russia investigation--which evidently is whatever Donald Trump thinks should be done about the Russia investigation.

And she loves her some Brett Kavanaugh. Or at least did in July.

As of Friday, after the allegations of sexual abuse against Kavanaugh from Christine Blasey Ford were public, a Stefanik staffer in her D.C. office said the Congresswoman was "watching the process very closely."

Watching, and saying nothing. And doing less. Not even after the New Yorker report came out about a second Kavanaugh accuser, nor after Michael Avenatti said he's representing a third Kavanaugh accuser, nor after Montgomery County, MD, law-enforcement officials reported hearing from what may be a fourth Kavanaugh accuser.

Stefanik has a unique platform. She's a a member of the Congressional Women's Caucus cosponsoring an extension of the Violence Against Women Act. She went to a snooty private high school and an elite Ivy League college. Brett Kavanaugh and the women accusing him are Elise Stefanik's people, or at least her forebears.

She could be a strong, independent voice here, speaking out on the need to investigate these women's claims, and the need for a discussion about Kavanaugh's character, which also includes gambling debts and perjury allegations.

But, as usual, she has decided not to use that voice. Instead, she issues press releases and tweets about her non-controversial legislative efforts--really, who is FOR invasive species?--rendering her insignificant, out-of-the-way, under-the-radar, unimportant.

Invisible.

Deep thoughts III

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Tue, 08 May 2018 12:36:00 +0000

The proposed Code of Conduct originated in North America but is un-American.

Canada man hates free speech

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Thu, 03 May 2018 16:00:00 +0000

Mayor Colin Read hates the First Amendment. He can't stand political debate. He only wants to hear the sound of his own voice. It's really the only explanation for his latest master stroke--a 16-page Code of Conduct for city councilors and employees, which applies to everyone in city government except the mayor, funnily enough, and which flouts state law and the federal Bill of Rights.

There's lots of stuff in it, but we'll start here:

7.17 Significant information provided to any member of Council, which is likely to be used in Council or in political debate, should also be provided to all other Council Members, and to the Mayor.

Sounds like a common-sense step for open government, right? Take it away, Councilor Peter Ensel, in today's Press-Republican:

"I am also upset that the managers who are directly impacted by the code of conduct have not yet been given a copy of the proposed document. I will not agree to a vote tomorrow (Thursday) without their review and a thorough discussion."
Read said he was planning to send a copy of the proposed code of conduct to managers late Wednesday afternoon.

Evidently, the voices of the people who would have to implement and live under the mayor's diktats do not count. So he's already violating the alleged spirit of his proposed code, before it's even passed.

Not surprisingly, Read seems to want to ram this through the Common Council immediately. This has been his pattern. Come up with a scheme in private, then spring it on the press to distract from some recent failure, and force a shellshocked legislature to pass it quickly.

Read cut and pasted his code of conduct from the website of the City of Vancouver. Which is where Read is originally from. Which is Canada. Which is not this country.

But let's try to be fair. Certainly, there must be good reasons for this, right? The floor is yours, Elizabeth Izzo, in a smart story in the Sun Community News:

Read lamented the negative press coverage in the city’s newspapers, noting that while “dramas” were attracting taxpayer attention, there were positive things that city workers were doing everyday, from the Plattsburgh City Police Department’s work combating the opioid crisis to the Department of Public Works’ attention to city streets.

But the city's newspapers don't write those stories because drama "sells newspapers," he said.

So this is motivated by hurt feelings brought on by the mean old press? I know it snows a lot in Canada, but I didn't think the place bred such snowflakes. (Also, too, point of information: The Sun is free, so it's not technically "sold.")

I could go on, about the section that prevents council members from speaking to city managers, basically at all, without the expressed consent of the mayor, and the language that limits political speech by politicians ("You can't fight in here. This is the War Room."), and....

Well, you're up, free-speech expert:

Robert Freeman, executive director of the New York State Committee on Open Government, believes that the policy appears to be an assertion of authority by the mayor, drawing close attention to how the policy defines “confidential information.” "That is so vague and subjective that I believe it would be inconsistent with law," Freeman told The Sun.

The document is so ridiculous that it ought to be read aloud, laughed at, spat upon, and set fire to in Trinity Park. But the councilors' reactions in the press so far inspire little hope. They seem to be hiding behind the City Charter as a way to not even discuss the awfulness of Read's scheme.

Yet this has nothing to do with the Charter. It's about the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The language in the Charter is designed to prevent councilors from going to managers for skeevy favors, either for themselves or for their constituents. "Hey, City Road Guy, can you pave my driveway?" That sort of thing.

What Read is trying to do is shut off the flow of information from managers to councilors and their constituents by directing it all through himself.

It is suppression of free speech, and of free flow of governmental information. Which may be great for Canada. But did I mention that Canada is not this country? If Read gets away with this, he could soon have us punting on third down and injecting an extraneous "u" into words like color and flavor.

Still, the mayor is right about one thing. The current atmosphere in Plattsburgh is negative. So I, too, decided to search far and wide for a "solution," as the Press-Republican headline called Read's plan, to all this negativity.

And after 3.8 seconds of Googling, I, like the mayor, found answers in Canada. Take us home, Toronto's Globe and Mail:

Mike Gooley, metro market manager at Robert Half International in Toronto, describes typical micromanagers as so controlling that they see every aspect of their employees' work. They also tend to follow up to the point of questioning the person's ability to do the job, he said. When the damage has been done, it lowers morale, stifles creativity, and holds back worthy employees from promotions. Employees may share the experience on social networking sites, he adds, effectively tarnishing the company's reputation.

Or worse, they might quit. According to a recent survey of 150 Canadian executives, commissioned by Robert Half, 31 per cent of respondents said good employees would quit their job because they were unhappy with their managers. Micromanagers fall into that category, Mr. Gooley said.

Here's the deal. The mayor is running his government like a business. A failing one. He is the source of the negativity. He is the problem. He keeps proving, day after day, that he is not up to the demands of his job.

Where is his solution for that?

Dignity, like democracy, dies in darkness

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Wed, 02 May 2018 20:53:00 +0000

Bad things happen when those in power force their employees, as a matter of policy, into confidentiality agreements. My bailiwick is sports, and this article about a team that insists on racist branding, and, evidently, sexist creepiness, came across the transom:

This account of the Redskins’ calendar shoot at the Occidental Grand Papagayo is based on interviews with five cheerleaders who were involved, and many details were corroborated with others who heard descriptions of the trip at the time. The cheerleaders spoke on condition of anonymity because they were required to sign confidentiality agreements when they joined the team.

Probably just trying to protect proprietary information, right?

For the photo shoot, at the adults-only Occidental Grand Papagayo resort on Culebra Bay, some of the cheerleaders said they were required to be topless, though the photographs used for the calendar would not show nudity. Others wore nothing but body paint. Given the resort’s secluded setting, such revealing poses would not have been a concern for the women — except that the Redskins had invited spectators.

Non-disclosure agreements, like attorney-client privilege claims, have become weaponized by weirdos.

Classified: Do Not Read

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Tue, 01 May 2018 13:20:00 +0000

Perhaps the strangest aspect of the City of Plattsburgh administration is its penchant for treating a small municipality's affairs as if they were grave matters of national security.

The weirdest manifestation of this: labeling large swathes of public business as "confidential," and calling anything that gets into public view a "leak."

Bemoaning "leaks of confidential documents" makes people feel like they're playing on a big stage, I guess, but it's a disservice to the English language.

For instance, City Councilor Mike Kelly's recent email tirade against demoralized city workers and the Downtown Revitalization Initiative was described as a "leak" in the local press, and Kelly said he made his comments to the other council members "in confidence."

But an email chain on a city government server is tantamount to a public meeting. The public revelation of a city email is not a "leak" at all. It's a "forward." Or a "cut and paste." Usually, those revelations are "boring." But in this case, it was "news."

Nothing an elected or appointed official puts on public email in the course of public business has any guarantee of confidentiality. (That is how I treated my emails when I served on the city Charter Commission, by the way, so this is not just a whiny journalist talking--though partly it is. Anyone can FOIL those Charter emails. It's your right as an American, at least until Putin completes the takeover.)

The same thing happened when Read and Kelly were caught on the city streaming video feed prattling on about how sanitation workers aren't productive and how the City of Plattsburgh might be better off dissolving and how the Town of Plattsburgh is a bunch of Dick Tracy villains who stole $11 million from the city. (Or was it $1.4 million? Or was it negative $280 bajillion, after the city pays its legal fees? It's all so complicated, and only a great intellect can comprehend such maths.)

The video only existed because Read forgot to turn off the recorder thingy. But he wanted in the worst way to get at the dastardly "leakers" who circulated a publicly streamed video of a conversation about public policy between public officials in a public space. Did I mention that he forgot to turn off the recorder thingy? The point here: It's not a leak.

In fact, there really aren't many aspects of a small city's governance that are "confidential," or that could be "leaked"--especially not communications between Plattsburgh's wee legislative and executive branches.

We're not dealing with international espionage. Or ongoing law-enforcement investigations. Or family court or police personnel records, which are confidential under New York State law. (For a good primer on what stuff is and isn't public in New York, by the way, check out this Poughkeepsie Journal article.).

But the mayor wants to talk about them as if they are. And he really, really craves secrecy. So much so, in fact, that he apparently often labels emails to city councilors "Privileged Attorney-Client Correspondence – not subject to FOIL or forwarding." The sole arbiter of this "privilege" seems to be the mayor himself. He is The State, and will decide What Cannot Be Seen.

I made a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for those "privileged" emails to see what issues are so vital to Plattsburgh's interests that that they must remain hidden from public view. If I get any, I'll publish them.

Just don't call them "leaks." They're taxpayer property.

Cooperation: What a concept

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 14:10:00 +0000

Read this piece on the beleaguered Crete Center from Steve Peters, who used to work for the City of Plattsburgh but was fired because reasons.

It contains good some actual facts, like these:

But, determining success by just dollars and cents is not the whole picture. As of 2017, in any given week during the winter, 1500-plus kids and adults would use the indoor field in at least four different sports. Almost all marketable hours were used, and dozens of teams were turned away.

Youth sports clubs have been created and have been hugely successful partly because of the ability to hone skills at the Crete. There have been dozens of high school soccer state final four and championship appearances by local teams. These championships were due to many factors, but certainly one of them is because of access to the indoor youth programs.

And some good ideas, like this:

The lesson for the Crete Center is simple: Don’t judge the value of its programs based on the inadequacies of the facility. With a proper financial structure and physical configuration, we can eliminate the financial burden, enhance our regional fitness and create economic development initiatives all at the same time — but it has to be a regional approach.

In 2017, 60 percent of Crete and Plattsburgh City Beach users were not city residents. These facilities have a positive impact on the quality of life of the entire region. A revitalization of the Crete and the beach can have a substantial impact on our community — it’s a property that has the potential to define everything we are.

Nice to hear from people who don't see things the same way as Mayor Despair and the coterie, who appear intent on quickly selling off the city's public spaces, not necessarily to the highest bidder.

Breaking: Plattsburgh gov't selects official city anthem!

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Fri, 20 Apr 2018 23:32:00 +0000

An elected official's thoughts on city workers and the DRI

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 19:27:00 +0000

In an email discussion among City of Plattsburgh Common Council members about the low morale of city employees, who have been quitting at an alarming rate, Ward 2 Councilor Mike Kelly, on his city email account, wrote the following response, which also included his thoughts on the Downtown Revitalization Initiative, or DRI, a $10 million state grant that the city applied for and won in 2016:

I rejoice at low city employee morale, as we will continue to weed out the folks who are "Retired in Place" or otherwise disengaged. I don't really care much about the DRI, either. Throwing $10 million at a city will not help it survive and thrive. Promoting growth that occurs organically and naturally is a better way to go, IMHO. I don't hold much hope that the DRI will do anything except create more divisiveness between interested parties as the money grab commences. I do hope very, very strongly that we don't build a freaking parking garage. That is one more piece of useless infrastructure that the city will not he able to maintain into the future. You can share that with the mayor if you wish. Don't build a freaking parking garage!

I wanted to verify that this was, in fact, Kelly's writing, so I emailed him, and he sent the following response:

This was in response to a question raised by one of my colleagues regarding whether we should be concerned about employee morale in times of turmoil and scheduling meetings with the mayor to discuss our concerns. The question was also asked about whether or not we should be concerned about the DRI.

The answers sent to you are my honest, heartfelt answers to the above two questions. The day we have a governing body that is more concerned about taxpayer morale (about 8,00 people) than a handful of managers, then we will start to make some real progress in our fair city. Our management packages, and we have more than one, are bloated way out of sustainable control, and the only way to fix that is to either wait for the old-timers to retire or change it. Right now, unfortunately, we don't have the will on the council to do what needs to be done. I do think that will change in time, however.

Luke, I'm assuming that you're still gainfully employed in the private sector, so I would ask you to compare your benefits with those of our city managers. The packages they have would curl your hair. That would be the real story here. I would be happy to sit with you and show you their benefits package if you would like.

Regarding the DRI, I am and will remain very skeptical. Downtown Plattsburgh's progress to date has been pretty good absent any further injection of the people's treasury. I just don't see the need. However, the governing body I represent has spoken out strongly in favor of the DRI, so I must go along. I do feel very strongly that another piece of infrastructure like a parking garage is the last thing we need. We are struggling currently to maintain the infrastructure we already possess.

My comments were made in confidence to my colleagues, and I would prefer they stay that way. However, it is a public email account, so I guess you can write anything you want. If you wish to know any more details about what I'm thinking, I'd be happy to supply them.

(He's assuming a lot about my gainful employment--cough, freelance writer, cough--but let's move on...)

These comments should be published, which I told Kelly in a reply email, because they concern city business and are being communicated over city email. Transparency for taxpayers, and all that.

Here's an idea: How about holding these discussions and debates in an open, public forum?

People might disagree about stuff. Some subjects may even be divisive. That's a risk you take when you live in a democracy.

Deep thoughts II

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 13:27:00 +0000

It must be weird to wake up every day as an elected official, in a dump that's not your primary residence, knowing that many of the people working for you don't respect or like you, and would gladly testify against you in a corruption investigation.

Deep thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 13:51:00 +0000

One problem with running government "like a business" is that half of all businesses fail within the first five years. It is a coin flip.
Also too, government and businesses do different things.

A big win! And a huge loss

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 13:42:00 +0000

Kudos (no, really) to the Plattsburgh Common Council for voting to accept funding to continue the Saranac River Trail. These sorts of projects help create a place worth living in, and caring about.

The unanimous vote happened in no small part thanks to the persuasive arguments of Councilor Becky Kasper, who quelled yet another budget panic attack that could have doomed the trail and cost the city millions of dollars of infrastructure funding.

And then Kasper resigned from the Council, declaring quite eloquently that she no longer wanted any part of the current administration's "tyranny of despair."

I don't blame Kasper, at all, but this is terrible for the city. This happened on the same day that Community Development Director Paul DeDominicas, who's been in charge of handling nearly every major project on the city's plate right now, abruptly decided to resign. That's two more sane, experienced, open-minded city servants gone. Just like that.

To quote the bard Michael Ray Richardson, "The ship be sinking, and the sky's the limit."

Down the wrong path

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 17:51:00 +0000

UPDATED (Feb. 9)!
Tonight the Saranac River Trail is on the chopping block. It shouldn’t be, but this is life under Mayor Read, where if it’s not one stupid thing, it’s another. And another. And another ...

Yet this may be the dumbest mistake of all.

The Saranac River Trail (full disclosure: I was once chair of the Saranac River Trail Advisory Committee) is what we call a nice thing. And it’s a nice thing with a payoff. People like to use non-motorized trails. They exercise on them. They commute on them. They get a little dose of nature on them. They play on them. And for those lucky enough to live near trails, they make money from them, because their property values increase.

Yes, nice things cost money. Fortunately, much of the money for the Saranac River Trail’s planned expansion comes from state or federal government grants.

Here’s a rundown of past and present trail funding, by phase:

Phase 1 (completed)

Cost: $1.2 million

This is the part of the trail Plattsburghers already enjoy, which opened up the river from the southern part of Pine Street to Steltzer Road and on through the SUNY campus. The whole 1.3-mile stretch was covered by the state Dept. of Transportation multimodal fund, and was done in conjunction with previously planned city and state spending on road improvements to Steltzer, Pine and George Angell Drive.

Phase 2 (planned)

Cost: $2.1 million

Cost to City: 20% of cost, but could go down to 5%

This section will connect create a safe route up Pine Street to Stafford Middle School, connect Pine Street to Saranac Street and a new riverfront park, connect the new park to downtown via Durkee Street and then head north to Bridge Street. It would be funded by the state DOT on an 80-20 match, but the city is eligible for additional state funding that could drive city costs down to 5%, or $105,000. To get the grant money, the city must have two bridges across the Saranac River, at Durkee Street and at Pine Street (more on this in a bit).

Phase 3 (planned)

Cost: $1.3 million

Cost to City: 20%, but could go down to 5%

This phase would take the trail east to Green Street, and on to the waterfront marina, making a nearly seamless pedestrian and cycling route from Lake Champlain all the way to George Angell Drive on the SUNY campus.

Tonight’s vote could jeopardize all of the above. When the original Phase 2 grant came in, the city thought it could refurbish the old Saranac Street bridge, which had served as a de facto pedestrian bridge for years. But the bridge was beyond repair, and had to be taken down. The trail suddenly needed a new bridge. Without that bridge, the city would rescind the right to all $2.1 million of the Phase 2 grant money, because the Phase 2 project calls for two bridges. There’s no negotiating this.

Thankfully, in 2016 the city and the Friends of the Saranac River Trail hunted down and procured a $500,000 grant from the state’s parks and historic preservation department to fund a new bridge. Problem solved.

Enter the Read administration. Suddenly, some city councilors have cold feet about the cost of the whole project, and last week tabled a vote to accept the $500,000 bridge grant and move ahead. If they don’t accept the money, all of Phase 2 falls apart—and with it, likely Phase 3. Because if you’re a state agency, do you really want to waste your time and money on municipalities that give back your funding?

The ripple effects would be devastating. Phase 2 was designed to be built in tandem with street upgrades for Pine Street near the Police Station and Stafford Middle School, and was to be a linchpin in the downtown redevelopment initiative. Years of planning and thousands of volunteer hours have gone into making the Saranac River Trail a reality. Prior city administrations made smart deals that will provide maximum bang for the taxpayer’s buck—a $5 million infrastructure upgrade for about a $700,000 investment.

And yet the city is seriously considering turning down money that will vastly improve the community.

I’d love to end this with a snarky punch line. I can’t. This is too depressing.

-->

Big Bill

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 19:59:00 +0000

Some new information on Mayor Colin Read's hiring of Bill Owens has been circulating, so it seemed a good time to, as we say in the blog business, throw it out there.

But first, some background: As you may recall, the current mayor made a big deal of hiring the former congressman to wage war on the Town of Plattsburgh for having the temerity to consistently use fractions in an ancient PILOT agreement.

"From 1992 on the city was expected to get up to $850,000 a year," said Plattsburgh Mayor Colin Read. But in 2009, Falcon Seaboard sold the plant to Saranac Power. That's when the PILOT payments to the city, town, county, and school district started to drop off. The value of the land went down, and so did the value of Saranac Power.

"The facility was originally assessed at $200 million. It went down to about $32 million -- that's a significant decrease. The energy market has changed significantly," said Plattsburgh Town Supervisior Michael Cashman.

So the Town of Plattsburgh quickly struck a new agreement with Saranac Power to pay for so-called special districts that respond to the plant in an emergency. "The city has continuously received two thirds of the PILOT money that was negotiated. This other agreement was separate for the special districts," Cashman said.

Interestingly, Owens' firm had a hand in the original agreement, according to this fascinating letter to the editor. Well-played, if you're a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose fan.

Neither the mayor nor the attorney, for some reason, would say what the fees would be. But now we know. And Bill's bill on the back end is.... $350 an hour! And it's a discount. Such a deal.

Keep in mind that Owens and Read serve on the same board of directors, but that is entirely coincidental and perfectly legal and totally ethical and has no bearing on any of these completely good-faith dealings, so shutupShutUpSHUTUP!!!

But wait, there's more!

Behold, citizens, your tax dollars at work.

Conflict III: The Mayor Strikes Back (sorta)

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 18:35:00 +0000

Just as ye olde blog published the second post in what is now a full-fledged series on Mayor Colin Read's potential conflicts of interest, I spied an email from the City of Plattsburgh clerk updating my initial Freedom of Information Law request regarding the mayor's business dealings.

It contained a letter in which the mayor fesses up to various business interests, while pointedly stating he is under no obligation to disclose them under New York State law. We'll let lawyers, or voters, decide whether that's the case. What's important for the city is that Read has now disclosed in a public record some of his other jobs.

At first glance, he's taking the high road, but his answer about avoiding conflicts of interest in city business is, shall we say, lawyerly.

Here's the text of his letter, sent to City Clerk Sylvia Parrotte on Jan. 12, the same day the clerk sent me an email saying there were no documents on file regarding potential conflicts of interest:

So, the mayor sits on the board of the hospital, one of the biggest employers in the city; the local public TV station, which covers him; and the aforementioned (in this blog) communications and banking firms that have contracts with the city.

But because he doesn't own 5% of any of these companies, one of which, Arrow, has $2 billion in assets, it's all good. And he's under no obligation to recuse himself from any decisions involving these organizations, says he. The logic seems to be that because the city and state have no emoluments clause, there are no potential emoluments.

Good to know.

Another conflict zone

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 17:14:00 +0000

Thanks to reader input (who knew this one-horse blog even had readers?), we can now report another instance of Plattsburgh Mayor Colin Read having undeclared business interests that could conflict with his mayoral duties.

Today's winner: Champlain Telephone Co., the parent company of PrimeLink--the city's internet provider. Every month, PrimeLink earns a decent chunk of change (more than $5,000 a month) through its contract with Plattsburgh taxpayers, a contract the company won in an open bid before Read took office in 2017:

Mayor Read, as of December 2016, following his election, was listed as a director of the company. The readily available information on Read's role with Champlain/PrimeLink is less extensive than for Arrow Financial Corp., the parent company of city contractor Glens Falls National Bank. That's because Arrow is publicly held and discloses more.

But deep investigative reporting (which involved Googling "Champlain Telephone Company and Colin Read") led to this from Champlain's 2016 filings with the State of New York:

No compensation amounts were reported on the company's 2016 filing, but Read appears to have been paid $5,000 as a director in 2011 (line 7 on the second screen shot):

Just as with his role at Arrow Financial, which coincidentally has another director, Bill Owens, to whom--at Read's behest--the city is now paying money, Read has not documented this potential conflict of interest for the Common Council or the citizens. Article 18 of the state's General Municipal Law says public officials are required to disclose personal financial interests in government contracts.

Read has multiple academic degrees, so maybe he knows clever loopholes in the letter of the law. But this is not a good look. Makes you wonder what else he's failing to disclose.

Our mayor is not conflict averse

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 02:19:00 +0000

UPDATES! As of 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 17, 2018, here and here...

The City of Plattsburgh government rang in the new year in the same way it rang out 2017--full of conflict. Councilor Mike Kelly lived up to his nickname, Hot Mike, when he melted down during the Jan. 4 meeting, accusing fellow council members who might disagree with Mayor Colin Read of insurrection bordering on treason.

Their heinous act? Some councilors didn't want to elect Read's choice as mayor pro tem. They didn't want to last year, either. It made Kelly sad.

Calling the democratic process, in which people get to vote on things, "a stunt," Kelly grew teary over the fact that not everyone in the city wants to accede to every Read whim. "The goal was then, and now, to disrupt city business," Kelly said.

That, or to put a governmental check on a mayor who likes to move fast and break things. And leave them broken.

Anyhow, Kelly literally wagged his finger at his opponents, which Councilor Becky Kasper took issue with. "Oh, I'll point fingers, Becky, as long as you keep being a divisive force on this council," Kelly answered. "You can count on that." The acrimony didn't quite rise to Korean Parliament level, but for a quiet little out-of-the-way 'burgh, it was kinda ugly.

But that was just round one. A few days later, Read announced he was hiring, at taxpayer expense, former Congressman and current high-powered attorney Bill "Billable Hours" Owens, to shore up the mayor's legal flank in his war on the Town of Plattsburgh.

Phew. At least an older, cooler political head like Owens will step up and resolve this nonsense, right?

Owens says this process could take years and there is no guarantee it won't result in a lawsuit.

Right.

Thing is, amid all this ridiculous fighting, there appear to be some actual conflicts--of interest. Read sits on the board of directors of Arrow Financial Corporation, a company that owns a bunch of North Country businesses, including Glens Falls National Bank. The mayor is paid quite handsomely for this, according to Bloomberg.

And Glens Falls has a contract with the city that predates Read, but continues to this day, in which the bank is paid to hold city receipts in a lockbox. Once a month, the payment, usually around $1,500 to $2,000 a month, shows up on the city website, like so:

Of note? Bill Owens also serves on the Arrow Financial Board of Directors. Owens, like Colin Read, is now making money off the city and Arrow simultaneously, while Arrow has ongoing business with the city. Certainly, in small towns, people wear multiple hats. But New York State law explicitly states that government officials such as Read must disclose when those hats come into contact with each other and could influence the public's business.

With certain limited exceptions, if you or your spouse has, will have, or later acquires an interest in a contract with your municipality, you must disclose the nature and extent of that interest in writing. You must make the disclosure as soon as you become aware of the actual or prospective interest. The disclosure must be made publicly, to your immediate supervisor and to the governing body of the municipality, which must include the disclosure in the official record of its proceedings.

I did a FOIL request a couple of weeks ago to see if the city had any documentation of Read revealing these or other potential conflicts of interest. The city clerk responded that no such documentation exists.

Let's review:
-Read, scourge of those who sit on the back of garbage trucks, is paid $50,000 to sit on the board of a company that does banking business with the city.
-Read just hired an attorney to fight what looks like a quixotic legal battle, and that attorney is also paid to sit on the board of the same banking company.
-The mayor has not revealed how much the city is paying this attorney, who claims his lawyering on the quixotic case could go on for years.
-In fact, the mayor has not revealed any of this, even though, likely by law, and definitely by any ethical standard of public transparency, he should reveal it all, and probably step down from the Arrow Board, if he actually wants to build trust with his constituents and the council. Because the situation, to borrow the mayor's own hot-mic phrase, "stinks to high heaven."

No doubt the mayor is conflicted about it.

"Garbage guys" and efficiency

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 13:40:00 +0000

"That guy sitting on the back of a garbage truck--is he getting more productive? Probably not..." Colin Read, Mayor Plattsburgh, Dec. 15, 2017

In that infamous hot mic video (the money quote is around 9:35 on the link), the mayor and Councilor Mike Kelly muse all intellectual-like on whether public workers, with their cost of living increases and unions and junk, are really as "efficient" as their private-sector brethren, and whether labor without optimal financial efficiency is "sustainable."

Propublica.com produced some data points on that one last week.

In New York City overall, private sanitation trucks killed seven people in 2017. By contrast, city municipal sanitation trucks haven’t caused a fatality since 2014.

Pedestrians aren’t the only casualties, and Action isn’t the only company involved in fatalities. Waste and recycling work is the fifth most fatal job in America — far more deadly than serving as a police officer or a firefighter.

So, yes, the private sector in this case is far more efficient, if your metric is killing cyclists, pedestrians and workers. Defining sustainability depends on what you actually want to sustain: your money, or someone else's life.

About those Plattsburgh workers

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Sat, 30 Dec 2017 19:49:00 +0000

The city's staffers at the Municipal Lighting Department offices were nothing short of heroic this past week. Forced to deal with the GOP tax bill confusion, the office was swamped with requests to pre-pay 2018 tax bills before 2017 expired, as well as the usual utility-bill drop-offs.

The city workers responded with professionalism and good humor, and I was able to get in, clarify my billing, pay and go on my merry way, all within 15 minutes.

Contrary to what some may think, the staffers were, in a word, productive.
I hope they're all enjoying a great New Year's weekend. They earned it.

Umm, no

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 02:02:00 +0000

This is the one where Mayor Doctor Professor Read doesn't look too smart. (OK, another one.) He staked quite a bit of regional political capital on getting $10 million out of the Town of Plattsburgh. That's $10 million that apparently doesn't exist, as Joe LoTemplio reports:

The original PILOT that was eventually agreed upon called for the city's share to be $850,000 per year for 15 years, Curtin said.
"They were lucky to get that," he said. "The property was never in the city, and they (city officials) were holding it hostage by threatening annexation. It was a money grab, that's all."
Curtin said the 15-year-deal was probably too long at the time, as most PILOTs are for only five or 10 years.
He noted that the plant has barely operated since the lucrative deal to sell electricity to NYSEG ended in 2009, and it isn't producing anywhere near the revenue it once did.
"There shouldn't even be a PILOT for that property anymore. It should be on the tax rolls, and the city would get nothing because it is not in the city, and it never was."

But by all means, Mr. Mayor, spend a bunch of what, by your own pants-crapping account, is a dwindling tax base on legal fees to fight for this money, which actually wasn't ripped off because it wasn't ever the city's to begin with.

Sustainable!

The mayor looks at life from both sides now

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 16:33:00 +0000

Give Plattsburgh Mayor Colin Read credit for this much: He can't be shamed.

At the first Common Council meeting since last week's viral (for Plattsburgh) hot mic moment, Read apologized to city workers, sort of. "Some of the workers who listened to that thought that somehow I didn't respect their value and contribution to the city, and nothing can be farther from the truth," he said.

This from the man caught on his own city video feed condescendingly mulling the merits of "the guy who sits on the back of a garbage truck all day," and concluding that guy was "probably not" getting more productive.

Somehow, people concluded that showed a lack of respect. In Read's world, those people are wrong.

And in a sense they are. Because Read is hard to pin down. Like an electron obeying the laws of quantum physics, he appears able to occupy two or more different places at once. He has a habit of saying one thing, then saying something completely contradictory, and proceeding as if there's nothing strange about that. He can respect city workers while saying utterly disrespectful things about them.

His multiple, simultaneous views on dissolving the city serve as another example. During his conversation with "Hot Mike" Kelly, Read embraced dissolution. In his City Sun column this week, he initially staked out the position that this was a brave stand.

Somebody took exception that I’m willing to utter the word *merger. I don’t find that word threatening. Indeed, perhaps a dozen people have since told me that they were glad somebody was willing to mention the unmentionable.

(*Read never uttered the word "merger" in the hot-mic video. Also, for those new to his oeuvre, Read's columns are filled with unknowable pronouns. "Somebody" is a frequent source, often a critic. So are "people." They are never named, but we are to assume they are trustworthy experts hewn from sturdy moral timber. Also, unspecified "things" often appear in his columns, many of which we should "do" to be "sustainable." Moving along...)

A brave stand, indeed! Read has grabbed with both hands the third rail of local politics--consolidating the city and the town!

Let's do this, then! What's his next sentence say?

Let’s be clear, though. The city is not going away...

Oh. Buzzkill. The piece concludes:

Dissolution is unnecessary. Dialogue is. We all want a city for our next generation of workers and residents, and must plan accordingly today for a city forever.

What happened to the merger, and the brave stand at the ramparts? I'm confused.

But sowing confusion is the mayor's genius. Take the hot mic itself. He seems not to acknowledge that the city's video stream, the city he ostensibly runs, caught his conversation with Kelly. He initially said "someone" (perhaps a close and evil relative of "somebody") put it on YouTube, trying to make it about nefarious enemies rather than his own failure to push the power button.

Read even doubled down, as NCPR's Zach Hirsch put it, on his hot-mic take in a conversation with reporters after the council meeting last night.

And, speaking with reporters after the meeting, he reiterated concerns about the fact that a private conversation was made public. He said the situation has even caused a “chilling effect.”
“Now my councilors are saying to themselves, ‘jeez is it safe to talk here? Should we go over here, should we go over there, is there a microphone in this room?’ We’ve completely chilled the ability of my councilors to have conversations and that really troubles me,” Read said.
(Read's private conversation with Kelly occurred in the Common Council's weekly meeting room, where there are microphones and cameras in plain view. All meetings are streamed live on YouTube. The video that's circulating was originally recorded on the city's own feed.)

Kudos to Hirsch for that necessary parenthetical paragraph. It's an antidote to the gaslighting that's been a fixture in city government for the past year.

The local press corps will need to do more of this in covering the Read administration, and its upcoming decisions on sales of city property, the now-contentious relations with the Town, and the state of the city's finances--which the mayor is making out to be an apocalypse.

Reality check, please.

Hot mic, dim bulbs

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 20:34:00 +0000

Plattsburgh politics are weird. It's an overwhelmingly white city near the Canadian border, surrounded by woods and farms where one often sees big Trump signs and the occasional confederate flag.

Yet Clinton County, in which Plattsburgh is by far the biggest municipality, went for Hillary Clinton in 2016--the only county north of New York's I-90 corridor to do so.

Meanwhile, the city's Common Council is majority Democrat, with candidates who run spouting liberal catch-phrases such as "progressive" and "cooperation" and "community."

Colin Read was one of the candidates who mouthed those buzzwords during his 2016 mayoral campaign. In his swallowed professorial voice, he spoke of the importance of vision and planning in reinvigorating the city.

He even dropped the term "millennials" when he threw his hat in the ring last year, hoping to make Plattsburgh a place that could draw those young mysterious kewl kidz.

It was positive, feel-good rhetoric, and it helped Read narrowly upset the incumbent, Jim Calnon, last November.

So, one year into your administration, how's that millennial appeal working out for you, Mayor Read?

Young Mr. Bond is on to something. Read's tenure thus far has been nothing but gloom, doom, slashed programs and broken promises. He changed the City Charter with little discussion so that he could cut the City Recreation Department and the Engineering Department, all as a sop, he said, to credit ratings agencies and to prevent a tax increase. Then he raised taxes as the city's credit rating was downgraded. He improbably promised that the Rec Department's death wouldn't result in a cut in services, and then, less improbably, this happened.

The coup de grace for the mayor's and the city's terrible 2017 came after last week's Common Council meeting, when Read and Councilman Mike Kelly forgot to turn off the City Hall meeting room's streaming video feed, and decided to go full 13-year-old mean girl.

For more than 20 minutes, the two public officials whine and moan and grouse on a publicly funded, universally available video stream. They complain about city workers ("the guy who's sitting on the back of the garbage truck" is "getting less productive over time") and mull giving employees "bribes" to claw back some of their benefits. They bitch about officials in the neighboring Town of Plattsburgh ("they tricked us" out of "millions of dollars"; "it stinks to high heaven"). Most alarmingly, with a "whaddayagonnado" callousness (starting at about 13:40 on the video), they conclude the City of Plattsburgh itself would be better off if it were "dissolved."

Dissolved. As in shut down, and folded into some other entity, presumably the Town of Plattsburgh--the place with all those crooked officials.

The mayor of the city advocates for his city to cease to be, and for handing his constituents over to people he clearly can't stand. That's bizarre. Even for Plattsburgh.

It gets weirder. There is a conspiracy theory that Read did the old "hot mic" trick on purpose, like canny Jed Bartlet in that "West Wing" episode, as part of a media campaign to gin up his fight over the Town's alleged chicanery. The convoluted controversy, which involves shared revenues and a decade-old PILOT program, is too byzantine to render a judgment on who did what to whom without a deep dive into documents, which Read has yet to provide. But it was the first thing local media reported on after the hot mic became public, and Read was able to cast Town officials as villains for a few days. So score one for the mayor, I guess.

Undermining the conspiracy theory is that Read, the guy who forgot to turn off the camera, ran to his fainting couch over the fact that his camera was turned on. He protested that he and Kelly (whose nickname shall forever after be "Hot Mike")--two city officials in a City Hall meeting room discussing city business--were having "a private conversation." The city scrambled to take down the conversation Thursday night, and the mayor cast blame on whoever put the video back on YouTube, saying it "breaks some sort of ethic" and is "obviously trying to harm the city."

Which is weird, coming from a person seemingly bent on harming the city by, you know, killing it.

Actually, maybe none of this is weird at all. Maybe it's just incompetent.

Drones, in Adirondack Life

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Mon, 08 May 2017 14:49:00 +0000

I used all my willpower to resist a pun in the headline and now present you with a story that has all of New York buzzing. (With a hat tip to the outstanding editing team at Adirondack Life magazine, a publication which, by the way, you should subscribe to.)

The smaller the balls, the bigger the ... debts

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Cyphers) — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 20:11:00 +0000

Russ Choma at Mother Jones has done remarkable reporting on Donald Trump's finances all year, and Monday he produced another excellent piece, this time on Trump's extensive debts and his biggest lenders.

Choma points to some $700 million in Trump IOUs. While plenty of these debts stem from expected sources such as hotels, office buildings and condo towers, a hefty slice is related to that favorite pastime of populists across the Rust Belt. Golf.

MoJo shows Trump is dealing with some massive greens fees.

From Deutsche Bank:

$125 million for two mortgages on his Trump National Doral golf course in Miami. Both were taken out in 2012.

From Investors Savings Bank:

In 2010, Trump combined an earlier mortgage on his Westchester County, New York, golf course into a much larger $23 million mortgage that also leveraged his ownership of condo units in the Trump Park Avenue building in New York City.

From Amboy Bank:

In 2010, Trump took out a mortgage on his Trump National Golf Club-Colts Neck in Monmouth County, New Jersey, for $16 million from Amboy Bank, a tiny New Jersey bank.

From Chevy Chase Trust Holdings:

In 2009, Trump purchased a golf course in Loudon County, Virginia, for $13 million. To make the deal happen, he borrowed $10 million from the land development company that previously owned the property.

From Royal Bank of Pennsylvania:

In 1995, Trump purchased a lavish estate in Westchester County, New York, and in 2000 he refinanced that purchase with an $8 million mortgage from the Royal Bank of Pennsylvania. Trump originally planned to turn the large estate into a golf course, but opposition from local residents blocked the project. The property has been used as a family retreat and a playground for Trump's two oldest sons.

Though Choma didn't break this out, it appears as if at least $150 million of this $700 million in Trump debts are tied to golf, which, as Reuters pointed out last summer, may have become something of a money pit for the PEOTUS.

If Trump is losing money on golf, there's a perfectly good reason; golf is dying, as Karl Taro Greenfield told us last year in Men's Journal.

By any measure, participation in the game is way off, from a high of 30.6 million golfers in 2003 to 24.7 million in 2014, according to the National Golf Foundation (NGF). The long-term trends are also troubling, with the number of golfers ages 18 to 34 showing a 30 percent decline over the last 20 years. Nearly every metric — TV ratings, rounds played, golf-equipment sales, golf courses constructed — shows a drop-off.

And the bleeding continues. More recent figures reveal another 600,000 golfers picked up and left the game in 2015, driving the total number of golfers down to 24.1 million.

Doesn't seem like a good industry in which to be heavily leveraged just now. Yet that is exactly the sand trap our next president finds himself in. One could speculate on the temptation for Trump to use the power of the Oval Office to curry favor with certain banks and certain governments for some, er, assistance when his golf bills come due. Please do.

This is where Nov. 8 has gotten us. The very fate of our nation may depend on a man with a history of sexual peccadilloes and an oddball obsession with military men (though he never served himself) orchestrating a miraculous turnaround of the doddering, hobbling golf market.

No, not Trump.

This guy.