Month: December 2018

6 minutes. For some of us, this is the time it takes to shower or to hit the snooze button on our morning alarm. For some it is the wait in line for coffee or the time it takes to scramble an egg. For some, it will be the time it takes to read this article. Most importantly, it is the minimum wait time for emergency response in the event of a school shooting. These precious minutes are something we at Saratoga Parents for Safer Schools have agonized over since late September.

Saratoga Parents for Safer Schools wholeheartedly believes the solution to school violence is multifaceted. We support a comprehensive approach to school safety, which includes mental health counseling and services, family support on a multitude of levels and additional soft measures that increase safety in an educational learning environment. SPSS, in conjunction with other professional organizations such as National Association of School Resource Officers, are in support of train, armed personnel on our school campuses. It is the 6 crucial minutes referenced above that prompts this support. It is essential that we have the proper protection in place to mitigate response time in the event of an emergency. This can only happen when we place armed protection on our campuses.

At this time we are asking the Saratoga Springs City School District to place at least one SRO in each district elementary school and 2 within the High School and Maple Avenue Middle School. To not have armed protection within each building is a gross inequality that should not exist within our school system. Additionally, Officers such as LT. Briscoe need to be allowed to work security and carry concealed while working. We are fortunate to have the expertise of NASRO and would urge the District to take full advantage of the SSO training for retired police officers. These SSOs are an invaluable line of defense and work alongside SROs in making schools safe nationwide. Further, we would like to see Saratoga adopt an 8 point plan similar to that put in place after The Parkland Tragedy. More information on the plan can be found at americansforclass.org Like the 6 minutes mentioned above, time is of the essence. Every day that our children are at school unprotected is a day in which the Saratoga Springs City School district is operating with careless negligence. We all want to believe that this couldn’t possibly happen in our community, but the sad reality is that we have no guarantees that it will not. What we can have however, is preparedness, shorter emergency response times and the assurance that if a tragedy were to befall is, the protection we seek would be readily available on our campuses. As taxpayers and parents we demand this. More importantly, our children deserve it.

Here are the results broken down by district of the November, 2018,  election ( 2018-General-Election-Results-by-TownDistrict ). The document includes all the municipalities in the county.  It is organized first by the elected office and then by the municipality.  They are in alphabetical order so the first item is the results for the town of Ballston for the Governor’s race.  If you scroll down to page 11 you will see the results for the Governor’s race for Saratoga Springs.   Page 23 has the results for Saratoga Springs for Comptroller, etc.   The results for  Question 1 for the Saratoga Springs charter update are on page 140 and for Question 2 on page 142.

I have also provided a pdf file of the city of Saratoga Springs showing the districts ( C_Saratoga_Springs_Elect_2012 ).  If you use the telescope option (+) you can drill down to better view the boundaries for each district.

At the November 20^th City Council meeting Mayor Meg Kelly announced that a number of vacancies will be occurring on the city’s boards in the coming months. She encouraged those interested in serving on any of these boards to use the application form available on the city website. This is a welcome move towards transparency in alerting the public to the many volunteer opportunities to serve the city as members of its boards. Past administrations have merely announced new appointments without  ever giving members of the pubic the opportunity to consider putting themselves forwards as possible candidates to serve on these boards.

 I know that many of the people who follow this blog are aware of my criticisms of the makeup of the land use boards.  On December 31 Keith Kaplan will finish his term on the Zoning Board of Appeals and Cliff Van Wagner’s term on the Planning Board will end.

Hopefully, Mayor Kelly will have a pool of candidates to consider for these two important positions beyond the usual members of the development community.

Here is a link to the city website with a list of boards that will have vacancies in the next 3 to 6 months and the application form.