On September 14, 2023, Travelers Insurance notified the city that as of January 1, 2024, they would no longer be insuring Saratoga Springs.
Readers of this blog may have observed its increasingly shrill tone. I have been writing repeatedly that the indifference to law and reality by the Saratoga Springs City Council would eventually bring the proverbial chickens home.
That day has come, although Mayor Kim and Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran and Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi have apparently tried to suppress the news until after the upcoming election.
The reason for the city losing its insurance coverage?
The City of Saratoga Springs’ approach to risk and safety management creates an unacceptable increase in the hazards contemplated for the City. Therefore, we are nonrenewing your policy effective 1/1/2024.
Sincerely,
Brady Giroux
Account Executive
Letter of September 14, 2023 from Travelers
I knew there would be some sort of letter coming from Travelers, but I had expected it would be to notify the city of an increase in premiums. I FOILED the city for such a letter. That FOIL would have eventually produced nothing, as is now evident, because rather than raise rates, Travelers has simply decided to end the city’s insurance all together.
The letter, received by the city a month ago, was released today by Commissioner of Public Safety James Montagnno, who somehow learned about the document and requested and received a copy on October 12, 2023.
The Financial Cost Of This Debacle Will Be Huge
In a prepared statement to the media, Public Safety Commissioner James Montagnino observed:
The result of Mayor Kim’s decision to leave the City without a Director of Risk and Safety for the first time in decades will be that the City will need to obtain its insurance through the municipal equivalent of an assigned risk pool. This will cost the City close to a million dollars in additional premiums each year.
Commissioner Montagnino, October 13, 2023
Mayor Kim Is Never Responsible
In today’s online Daily Gazette story Kim, in typical fashion, tries to place the blame for any lack of transparency in sharing the letter with his fellow Council members on his Deputy Angela Rella:
Kim said he was informed by the insurance broker the city uses “a week or two ago, or so” [JK: try a month ago] and wasn’t sure if his Deputy Mayor Angela Rella shared it with the commissioners [JK: she didn’t share it with Montagnino].
“We are already anticipating a 78% [increase],” Kim said. “The exact number I can’t recall, but I think it was 78%.”
Daily Gazette
In the article, Montagnino states that the city had a civil service list with qualified candidates to fill the critical Risk and Safety position, but Kim allowed the position to go unfilled for months following the departure of long time and well respected Risk and Safety Management Director Marilyn Rivers. (Rivers is currently suing the city over the toxic employment environment she was forced to endure). This blogger has written extensively about both the disastrous handling by Kim of Risk and Safety and his vindictive abuse of Ms. Rivers.
Instead of filling the position, Kim finally added the responsibilities of a Risk and Safety Manager to the duties of newly appointed City Attorney Michael Phillips. Not surprisingly Travelers did not consider this approach to managing the city’s risk and safety adequate.
Kim: It’s Everybody Else’s Fault
In spite of the Travelers’ letter clearly stating why they are dropping city coverage, Kim, without any evidence, gave the press a different reason:
Kim, in turn, blames the prior administration’s actions for lawsuits the city is facing as well as the Attorney General’s investigation into whether the city violated the Civil Rights of Black Lives Matter protestors during prior summer protests.
Daily Gazette October 13, 2023
I will not subject the readers of this blog to Kim’s usual rehashing that the city’s problems are all rooted in the actions of the previous administration. In the article, he goes on about all the money the city is having to pay for attorneys to represent past elected officials in the New York State Attorney General’s investigation and in the cost of defending the city in the lawsuit brought by Black Lives Matter leader Lexis Figuereo.
But the letter from Travelers Insurance could not be clearer as to why Travelers is declining to insure the city. It says nothing about lawsuits or investigations. Risk and Safety are critical to minimizing the city’s liability, and Kim simply cannot or will not admit this basic truth.
Why Would Any Insurance Company Want To Take On The Liability Of Insuring the City under the Current Council?
Consider the following episodes and ask yourself, if you were the executive of an insurance company, would you do business with a city that had the current elected officials in charge.
Early in his term as Mayor, Kim wrote an intemperate letter to the city’s insurance broker over Travelers’ decision to settle a lawsuit brought by a former employee against the city. If that were not enough, he refused to authorize payment for the insurance deductible for months. I can imagine executives at Travelers asking, “What is going on with Saratoga Springs?”
Kim released to the news media text messages from officials in the previous administration meant to support the complaints by Black Lives Matter following BLM leader Lexis Figuereo’s filing of a lawsuit against the city for their alleged damages to him. Again, executives at Travelers would be asking, “Why, when we are being sued, is this guy sending stuff he thinks is damaging to the area media?”
The Council, led by Mayor Kim, passed a resolution condemning, in the broadest terms, the city for being racist, again when the city is both under investigation and being sued. This country has a long and horrific history of racism and Saratoga like most cities can point to such incidents as well as times when women, immigrants, and others have been the targets of discrimination. But Kim’s vague, intemperate, and sloppily worded resolution, while being useless as a thoughtful history lesson, is ripe to be be exploited by Figuereo’s lawyer in their lawsuit. Again, I can imagine in the board rooms of Travelers Insurance, they would be asking, “What is going on in Saratoga Springs?”
Minita Sanghvi’s Idea Of Transparency
It is worth noting that missing in Finance Commissioner Sanghvi’s presentation of the proposed 2024 budget last week, during which she also sounded the theme of blaming the previous administration, this time for the city’s budget woes, was the fact that the city would need to find a million dollars due to our loss of an insurance carrier. Missing also was who was responsible for this disaster.
We Will Pay Dearly
I have taken to calling the current Council “the Wrecking Crew.” This latest debacle will probably cost our city $1,000,000.00 in premiums and increased deductibles. Readers should understand that this is just the most recent public revelation of the impact of the incompetence and vindictiveness in City Hall. There will be more.
[JK: this is a piece by Freddy DeBoer, who maintains an email list for subscribers. It addresses the thorny issue of dealing with mentally ill people who are a danger to others and/or to themselves. Legislative actions and legal decisions seeking reform of the mental health system have made the vulnerable more vulnerable, he argues.
DeBoer is critical of the advocates of the disabled whose ideology blinds them to the reality of mental illness.]
My hometown lies along the Connecticut River, but you’d never know it by walking around. That’s because, in the 1960s, the American mania for building highways resulted in the construction of Route 9, which ran directly along the western bank of the river. Though there are two underpasses that one can use to reach the banks of the river (and the imaginatively named Riverside Park), both cut through grimier former industrial areas, and while I wouldn’t call them dangerous places, they are far from pleasant. Standing on most stretches of Middletown’s lovely and broad Main Street, you’d never know the park was there, much less how to get there, despite Main Street lying perhaps a couple hundred yards from the river at most. Once upon a time, the river was the economic heart of the town, and of the nearby region; at one point, Middletown looked like a rising powerhouse of commerce, as goods were shipped to and from Long Island Sound and New York via its waterways. But the creation of the country’s highway system did more than just divide Middletown from its waterfront; it robbed the town of the river’s commercial potential. The construction of America’s vast interstate highway system had already greatly reduced the salience of shipping via river. Thus our country’s automobile obsession hurt my hometown in two ways, first by rendering obsolete a key industry, then by physically separating it from the river and, in doing so, robbing it of natural beauty, public recreation space, and areas where shops and restaurants might have stood.
Not that the loss of the river as a jobs creator was the only economic problem. Though deindustrialization is typically presented as a Midwestern phenomenon, a problem of the Rust Belt, New England was in fact deeply damaged by the collapse of solid dependable jobs in manufacturing and industry, jobs that were often unionized and which gave a generation of men without college degrees the ability to own homes and raise families. By the time I was conscious enough to notice the outside world, in the mid-1980s, Connecticut was dotted with old mills, brick buildings that once housed productive labor but had since been gutted and turned into apartments, or else sat moldering, unused. I said that Main Street is lovely, and in many ways it is, particularly since the turn of the millennium and the coming of a wave of new economic fortune in the area. But Main Street has also been, in my lifetime, a site of economic collapse, full of boarded up businesses and empty buildings. The further north one went up the street, away from the town green, the more boarded-up doors you were likely to find, as the north end of Middletown is the “rough” part of town, or as rough as a mostly-quiet town of 45,000 residents in Connecticut is likely to be. Today, as I suggested, Main Street is a destination again, in part because the impossible happened – students from Wesleyan University, just up the hill on Washington Street, began to go downtown, bringing their wallets with them. But in the 80s and 90s, they stayed far away. And that had everything to do with Connecticut Valley Hospital, and with Jessica Short.
Wesleyan sits at the top of a hill overlooking the Connecticut River Valley. Its oldest and most picturesque buildings, known as College Row, are a series of brownstones that include the main administrative buildings and president’s office, the ’92 Theater building (that’s 1892) where my father often taught classes, the chapel in which I was baptized, and a building that now houses the Psychology department. From that hill you can look out and see another set of buildings, including some brownstones made with materials quarried from the same place – Portland, Connecticut, right across the bridge. That other collection of buildings also looks bucolic and collegiate from the outside, though looks can be deceiving. This other facility sits on the same side of the river as Wesleyan, but because of a bend in its path the buildings can appear to be on the other side. The divide between those facilities is more than geographic. For while the brownstones to the west are dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and training a new generation of the ruling class, those to the east house those who, until very recently, would have been called insane. Today, we’re more likely to say that the patients at CVH suffer from mental illness. Either way, they live in a different world from the busy meritocrats who pursue degrees and their dreams.
Connecticut Valley Hospital is the state government’s major mental health facility; though there are private hospitals, like the labyrinthian Yale New Haven psychiatric ward, and a few much smaller state-run hospitals, CVH is the final destination for a large portion of anyone who receives state-directed care in Connecticut. (The state, after all, just isn’t very big.) There are addiction treatment centers and a few other sundry institutions that are state funded, but when it comes to housing the deeply disturbed under the government’s auspices, CVH is the place. Two other state psychiatric hospitals were closed and consolidated into CVH in the 1990s. The rich, as they always have, receive care in upscale facilities far beyond the reach of the average psychotic. The rest of us go to CVH, which is unremarkable, as far as these facilities go. It just so happens that the hospital lies in Middletown.
This reality, of state-governed care in Connecticut for the mentally ill being concentrated in one place, has created some issues for the people of Middletown. The experience of living next to a facility like CVH provides something of a lesson in the need for a robust social state and the ripple effects of not having one. Patients at CVH are often there on involuntary holds, compelled by the law to stay, particularly those housed in the Whiting Forensic ward – “forensic ward” being the psychiatric world’s euphemism for where they lock up patients who have committed or are likely to commit violent crimes. But involuntary holds, as opposed to treatment mandated by legal verdict, are temporary affairs. And when people are released from involuntary holds, the services available to them are often meager. You’d like to think that there would be a network of halfway houses and social workers who could shepherd the recently-committed mentally ill back into the world safely, but in most parts of this country, those resources are depressingly thin. Connecticut is little different; there’s some programs, out there, but not nearly enough. And so when people are released from CVH, whether formerly sectioned under an involuntary hold or because there’s no one to pay for their continued treatment or their stay simply ends, sometimes, they’re walked to the door and released, left to their own devices. The natural next step is to amble, down the hill, towards Main Street.
Which means that throughout my life Middletown has had a population of mentally ill homeless people that’s totally out of proportion with its overall size. Main Street is one of the major arteries in town, it’s home to several churches and charitable organizations that might help someone out with food or a bed, and unlike most of the city, it’s walkable. It becomes therefore a natural place for a mentally ill homeless people to roost. And roost they did; throughout my adolescence, I was aware of several regular characters among their number, most notoriously “the King,” a Black schizophrenic man who (legend holds) earned his title by spending a period with a paper Burger King crown permanently affixed to his head. He would, eventually, be killed in a horrific car accident after wandering into the flow of traffic on a nearby bridge. Before his death he had a habit of shouting racial slurs at Asian American people, but like most of them he was generally harmless – generally. Homeless people with serious mental illnesses are, indeed, more likely to commit violent crimes, just as they are more likely to be the victims of violent crimes. And even beyond their capacity for violence, such people can appear frightening to many. I’m not justifying repression of the mentally ill or the homeless. I am saying that it’s just statistically sensible to be a little more scared of them than of any random person. But this has become, somehow, controversial.
Anyway – you can understand the dilemma for my hometown. Whether being released directly from CVH, or from transitional housing nearby, people with serious mental illnesses would find themselves congregating in Middletown’s downtown. This has led people from neighboring towns to use the nickname “Mentaltown” for our city, which is ugly, but apt. This reputation, as a place for crazy people, was not the primary reason for Main Street’s decline in the last decades of the 20th century – that was surely the previously-mentioned deindustrialization that had killed many local jobs and the severing of the city from the river. People had less money and there were fewer reasons to go downtown. But being Mentaltown didn’t help. And, on July 28th, 1989, that reputation was sealed for years to come, in the most shocking of ways.
That day saw the annual Sidewalk Sale in Middletown, an event designed to get local people to travel down to Main Street and keep the businesses there afloat. Vendors would set up tables on the sidewalk in front of their storefronts and enjoy the chance to drum up a little more business. Various entertainments were held, like free balloons for children or the opportunity for kids to climb into a fire truck. Nine-year-old Middletown resident Jessica Short was enjoying the day with her mother. She would become the victim of a very bad mistake made worse by very bad timing.
In the years that followed, various investigations and a lawsuit would attempt to understand how, exactly, David Peterson had come to be released from Whiting Forensic Hospital in the CVH complex. Whiting is a medium-to-maximum security facility, after all; more importantly, Peterson had, at 37 years old, twice stabbed people while in the throes of schizophrenic psychosis. And yet somehow he was allowed to simply walk away from the hospital and board a bus downtown. Over the years that followed, there would be considerable confusion and debate about whether he was released due to a clerical error or whether he was knowingly set free for a day, in the manner that patients are sometimes allowed at psychiatric hospitals. (The New York Times piece the next day would say, cryptically, that he was released “on a pass,” but a follow-up article the next March said only that he had been “released.”) It appears some sort of formal choice to allow him to leave the grounds was made, but whether this decision was made based on miscommunication or bad information, or who made it, were never clear. Eventually, the civil case Jessica Short’s family brought against the hospital and the state would be settled, for $1.5 million, and whatever reason for continuing to pursue the question evaporated.
While exactly why Peterson was released will forever remain a mystery, nothing else about that day’s events is controversial. One way or another, he was released. He rode the bus down to Main Street. He bought a knife. And then, when he saw Jessica Short emerge from Woolworth’s general store, a Middletown institution that would close not that long after, he stabbed her more than thirty times, in front of her mother and dozens of witnesses. He was quickly wrestled to the ground by onlookers and subdued by the police; he would eventually make his way back to the very psychiatric hospital that had released him, where he remains to this day. (After he was found not guilty of Jessica Short’s murder by reason of insanity, a panel committed Peterson to Whiting for 70 years.) Locals, naturally, were horrified. Jessica Short’s family was left to mourn. And for almost two decades, downtown Middletown was finished. People had been afraid to go there because they thought the mentally ill population made it a dangerous place to go. After the sidewalk sale, how could you have told them that they were wrong?
In my adult lifetime, and especially in the past decade, I’ve watched as the discourse around mental health has changed. A cadre of disability activists, overwhelmingly made up of those with college educations and cultural capital, have been remarkably effective at changing what it means to be disabled. This change is epitomized by coming to see disabilities as identities, not negative attributes that individuals must navigate but totalizing and existential definitions of the self. And a corollary to the attitude of disability-as-identity is that disability therefore cannot be bad, that anyone that suggests that disabilities are negative is engaged in bigotry. This means that those with disabilities that result in outcomes that are indisputably bad – like, say, when someone’s schizophrenia leads them to habitually stab other people – must be marginalized, excluded, avoided, ignored. Because psychotic patients who kill people can’t be brightsided, can’t be swept up into some optimistic narrative of disabled people as proud and empowered agents who control their own destiny, they must therefore be sidelined in the discourse, locked away in a kind of discursive asylum, hidden from consideration, kept where they can’t be seen.
Conveniently for activists, people like Peterson are too sick to participate in the debate about disability anyway, as are (for example) people whose cerebral palsy have rendered them nonverbal, those whose disabilities also can’t be spun off as a “superpower.” Anyone who is not disabled, even the families of those with severe disabilities, is told they may not participate in the conversation. So a group of educated professionals whose disabilities don’t hinder their participation in elite society, many self-diagnosed, dominate the debate. They insist that disability is only different, not damaging, demand special accommodations despite that contention, and when confronted with contrary information angrily dismiss it. So Jordan Neely, a profoundly disabled person who died a tragic death, is misrepresented as just a sweet and harmless Michael Jackson impersonator, the public concern for him based on a cheerful caricature rather than a full and adult accounting of all of his problems; so Kanye West, diagnosed with a psychotic disorder years ago, is written out of the community of the disabled, with many activists angrily insisting that his instability could never be the product of mental illness, as to allow for the possibility that it was would be to suggest that mental illness is something bad. And we can’t have that.
Were this all abstract, perhaps it would not matter much. But it’s not abstract. For one example, the question of involuntary commitment, of society being empowered to detain and treat people with severe mental illness without their consent, is deeply influenced by activist rhetoric. And despite what so many people think, it has gotten vastly harder over time to ensure treatment of treatment-resistant patients, in most contexts. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963, which made deinstitutionalization a federal policy, shrunk the number of facilities in which such patients could be housed and pushed many of them onto the streets – ostensibly to receive treatment at community mental healthcare centers, which were mostly never built. In 1965, the birth of Medicaid created fiscal incentives for states to push patients out of state-funded facilities and into private treatment, essentially moving those patients off of their own books and onto those of the federal government without any concern for actual treatment. The O’Connor v Donaldson Supreme Court decision in 1975 established the standard that a patient can only be involuntarily treated if they are at imminent risk of physically harming themselves or those around them, which perversely removed sickness itself from the equation. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 further empowered patients to reject involuntary treatment. The Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act provided a new range of restrictions on how doctors and facilities could handle patients held against their will and how long they could hold them. Again and again, our society has made involuntary treatment harder. That’s reality.
There are thousands of families that have experienced the profound helplessness of trying to force a loved one into care when they desperately need it. Like the family of Bailey Hamor, who fought for years to get him into inpatient treatment, were repeatedly denied, and then had to deal with the horrific fallout after he stuck a knife into another man’s head, ending the life of his victim and, for all intents and purposes, his own. You’re opposed to involuntary treatment of the deeply disturbed, OK. But you must count the costs.
Now, activists want to ban the practice of involuntary treatment altogether. Disability rights activists are joined by “anti-carceral” activists, the defund the police set, in insisting that no one should ever be forced into treatment, regardless of how dangerous they might be to themselves or those around them. Of course horrible crimes like the murder of Jessica Short are rare, but there are perfectly common outcomes that are profoundly tragic too – domestic violence, assault of others, self-injury, accidental overdose, suicide. Those few of us who oppose the disability activist agenda say that those patients who are liberated from involuntary treatment by means of the law and then promptly die because of their conditions “die with their rights on.” The term was coined by a psychiatrist in the 1970s, I believe, in reference to a patient with severe anorexia who battled for the right to be released from involuntary treatment, won a victory that was cheered by many activists, and then promptly starved to death. The same terms can be applied to the many, many people who have been sprung from involuntary commitment only to go on to kill themselves; they died with their rights on.
That seems to me to be an obviously senseless outcome, but at least it’s something they’ve done to themselves. What are we to tell people who are physically threatened by those released from involuntary treatment, as the people at the sidewalk sale were threatened by Peterson, accidental though his release may have been? The activists have no answer; they simply quote dubious statistics about how the mentally ill are harmless, ignoring the fact that the National Institute of Mental Health’s numbers show that people with psychotic disorders are significantly more likely to commit violent crimes. (Which is of course perfectly sensible and predictable given what we know about insanity, paranoia, and violence.) Where do those who call for an end to all forced hospitalization think those who are a constant danger to themselves and others will go? What do they think people like Peterson will do when freed? I debate this stuff all the time, and I have no idea what their answers are. They have no pragmatic view of what dangerous mentally ill patients look like because their ideology prevents them from accepting the reality that such people exist in the first place. The more you press them for details about what should be done with those whose disorders render them violent, the more they escape into rhetoric. And given that their intellectual world is filled with people with ADHD and self-diagnosed autism, who declare themselves to be the face of disability, they’re almost never come face to face with these questions anyway.
It is right that David Peterson has spent his life in hospitals and not prisons. The legal accommodations that we give to the severely mentally ill (threatened, perversely, by the activist class that claims to speak for everyone who’s sick) are one of the only things this society can offer people like Peterson. It’s terrible that Whiting Forensic has been the site of a lot of abuse and mismanagement, and I’m glad that the state is finally ready to tear the place down and start over with something more modern and humane. I hope the new facility will be a place where people like Peterson can heal. The battle to preserve the ability to treat those whose disorders hijack their minds, destroy their impulse control, and render them unable to sort fantasy from reality – that battle is done for the good of the Jessica Shorts of the world, yes. But it’s also done to prevent other patients from facing the fate of Bailey Hamor or David Peterson. They will spend most of the rest of their lives confined to treatment facilities, which is the only responsible decision society can make. If we empower our society to be more proactive about treating profoundly sick people, maybe we can save not just future victims but also preserve the change that potentially violent patients can live free and normal lives.
I hope David Peterson isn’t suffering, at Whiting, and I hope the reforms to that place or the one that comes after leave him in more humane conditions. But I’m also glad he’s locked up in there. And I’m willing to bet that, though they would never admit it, deep down the activists are glad that he’s in there too.
At the September 19, 2023, Saratoga Springs City Council meeting, Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran introduced a resolution that canceled a public hearing that Public Safety Commissioner James Montagnino had scheduled. As documented below, this petty move against Montagnino was unprecedented. City Attorney Tony Izzo was called on to comment on the procedure, and he observed that in the thirty-five years he has worked for the city, no Commissioner had ever been denied the opportunity to seek public input regarding a proposal through a public hearing.
While Moran was the point person in this latest incident, he was supported in this move by Mayor Kim and Commissioners Sanghvi and Golub. They have become the city’s “wrecking crew.”
Moran’s move on Montagnino was accompanied by toxic remarks, which have sadly become the norm at the Council table. The Mayor, who chairs the meetings, not only failed to admonish Moran for his lack of civility in addressing a fellow Council member, but he is a frequent perpetrator of the same ugly behavior himself.
The Issue
Moran’s resolution was to cancel a public hearing that Montagnino had scheduled to discuss his proposal to change the rules for the public comment period. Montagnino’s resolution would have required that persons living or employed or owning real property in Saratoga Springs be allowed to speak before other individuals.
Montagnino’s resolution was in response to increasing frustration from many that Black Lives Matter activists, most of whom live outside of the city, had come to regularly monopolize the public comment period, often leaving little if any time for residents to speak about other issues.
This situation has become even more acute since Kim limited the public comment period to thirty minutes and increased the amount of time allotted to each speaker to 4 minutes from two minutes, thus reducing the possible number of people who could speak from 15 to 7 if everyone sticks to their allotted time. In addition, Kim announced he would not hold people to the four-minute limit and routinely arbitrarily enforces the time limit. He seems to have adopted two standards. Those he agrees with, he simply notes that the four-minute limit is up and then gently reminds them of the limit as the speaker continues. For those expressing opinions he does not like, he is far more forceful. In that case, he loudly and aggressively interrupts them, telling them to “wrap up.”
Kim also added an option to speak to the Council via Zoom at the end of the Council meetings, which routinely go on till past 11PM. Those wishing to comment must sign up for Zoom between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. on the day of the meeting.
The result of the Mayor’s arbitrary and random management of public comment is that people who take the time to attend a Council meeting in order to address pending resolutions are often frustrated when they discover the allocated time has run out and they will not be allowed to speak.
Procedural Problems
New items are only to be added to the agenda during a Council meeting if there is some sort of urgency. The person requesting the agenda addition is supposed to offer an explanation as to why it cannot wait for the next meeting. It then requires a majority vote for it to be added.
There is good reason for this. In the interest of transparency, the public is supposed to be informed regarding all action items through an agenda that is required by the city charter to be available for public review no later than noon the day before the Council meets. This is meant to ensure that interested citizens can respond prior to Council action.
This policy is routinely violated by Council members who often add items at the last minute at the Council table without explaining why they couldn’t wait for the next meeting (or why they couldn’t have managed to put it on that meeting’s agenda….). Mayor Kim, who, as the chair, is supposed to enforce the rule, of course never does.
In an especially egregious violation of this important rule, Dillon Moran waited until the very end of the September 19, 2023, meeting, when the room was pretty much empty, to add to his agenda his resolution to cancel the public hearing that Montagnino had just set. This was particularly unusual as his agenda had been completed much earlier in the evening. The Public Safety agenda comes last. Following the Public Safety agenda and just before the vote to adjourn, Moran proposed his resolution.
Dillon Presents His Resolution
Moran seems to not understand Montagnno’s resolution as he characterizes it as a violation of the Constitutional guarantee of free speech. While I think there are a number of problems with Montagnino’s proposal, it only establishes the order of speakers, it does not preclude anyone from speaking.
[Note that Kim did not ask Moran to explain why this matter was not listed on his agenda and why immediate action was necessary as required by the city charter (Section2.2)]
City Attorney Tony Izzo Addresses Moran’s Resolution.
Commissioner Montagnino asked Tony Izzo, City Attorney, to offer his opinion on the Moran resolution. It was clear that Izzo was a bit non-plussed. “Unusual procedural question, um…” he began.
I have transcribed Izzo’s remarks. If you read them carefully, you will see that Izzo observes that there is a precedent for rescheduling a hearing. Conspicuously absent is anything from Izzo supporting the canceling of a hearing. His remarks observe that “…there is some precedent as well for the Council to remove something from a particular Council agenda for rescheduling (my emphasis) for some future time. So, if that’s the motion for this evening, there is some precedent for it…” In other words, there is a precedent for rescheduling hearings but not for canceling them.
Kim then completely ignores what Izzo has said, asserting that he is sure Izzo agrees that the Council can cancel the public hearing. No one from the Council corrects the Mayor and, with the exception of Montagnino, the four Council members approve the Moran resolution.
Transcription Of Izzo’s Remarks
Unusual procedural question, um, it has been the procedure of this council as long as I’ve been here to not put to a vote whether or not a commissioner will schedule an item for a public hearing. The council has discussed that topic several times, it’s always resulted in there being no vote to add something to the agenda… rather schedule a public hearing or not. Any commissioner that wants to put something on for a public hearing its put on and then if the council wants to not second it at the hearing date it’s simply not seconded, um, there is also the council’s ability to decide what items go on a particular item agenda can to on a particular agenda, so it is possible, I think, and there is some precedent as well for the council to remove something from a particular council agenda for rescheduling for some future time. So, if that’s the motion for this evening there is some precedent for it, um, I suppose Commissioner Moran’s motion does have some precedent if the council want to remove it from the next upcoming agenda for rescheduling there is some precedent for that.
Tony
Dillon Moran Gratuitously Raises The Temperature
In this video clip, Moran launches into a self-righteous rant, calling Montagnino’s resolution “garbage.”
In classic Kim playing lawyer, the Mayor ignores what Tony has told him and instead offers that “it is pretty straightforward” that the Council can vote to cancel the public hearing. Commissioners Jason Golub and Minita Sanghvi also ignored what the City Attorney had to say and voted with Kim and Moran.
Summary
As observing readers will note, I have not discussed the substance of the Montagnino resolution. There are a variety of problems with it, but the issue is really not the content of the resolution but its improper cancelation.
For Democrats who claim to support transparency and accessibility to deny the public’s ability to comment on a fellow Council member’s proposal, however flawed, is unprecedented, as City Attorney Izzo observed. The Council would have the final word on whether Montagino’s proposal ever went into effect. I suspect if there had been a public hearing, many speakers would have voiced concern over this proposal. So, what was the harm of giving this a public airing? This united front to block public comment is also curious, given how many public hearings these Council members have scheduled without giving the public access to any concrete document to react to. How disturbing that neither Kim, Moran, Golub, nor Sanghvi stood up for the public’s right to weigh in on a public policy proposal, however flawed. Yet another example of cancel culture.
[JK: Section 4.43 of the Saratoga Springs city charter states that the Commissioner of Finance “shall prepare a proposed Comprehensive Budget and shall submit it to the Council at the first regularly scheduled meeting at the Council in October each year.” Instead of presenting the Council and the public with the actual budget, Finance Commissioner Sanghvi did a PowerPoint presentation heavily laced with political comments. The actual budget was not circulated to the Council until the next day, Wednesday, at 4:13PM. Why she ignored the charter requirement and why she did not have the budget ready to submit is unknown.
Here is former Public Safety Commissioner Lew Benton’s take on her budget.]
City budgets are pretty easy to review. After reading John’s post I called up the proposed 2024 budget.
It is quite interesting.
First, many revenue lines seem inflated and unless the budget presentation included an explanation and justification I hope some hard questions will be asked.
For example, Planning Board revenues are budgeted to increase from projected 2023 fees of $165,000 to $250,000; Mortgage Tax revenues, at $1.5 million, suggest more wishful thinking; Insurance Recoveries go from -0- in 2023 to $125,000 in next year’s proposed budget. Again, perhaps there are valid reasons to so significantly increase these revenues. If so we need to understand them.
These are but a few suspect over budgeted revenues.
On the expenditure side it is noted that the City Attorney’s office has OVERSPENT its outside legal counsel line by a projected $73,300 this year. New positions (a Grant administrator and a Communications Director) have added nearly $115,000 plus fringe benefits. Whether the city really needs a ‘grant administrator’ in addition to the those staff whose job descriptions already include grant writing and administration is a least worth asking. The reality is that there is a huge investment in planning staff and and an office of parks and open space administer whose duty statements clearly requires grant administration.
These two agencies have always worked in harmony, and quite successfully, to identify, compete for and administer grants-in-aide. Does the city now need a third agency, the mayor’s department, to have a full time grant ‘coordinator’ when there are several titles charged with that responsibility. And is a ‘communications director’ really justified in this form of government?
All of this against the backdrop of highest sales tax revenue in the city’s history and 10% MORE this year than was budgeted. And finally, blaming a ‘previous ‘administration on the current problem is unacceptable. The 2023 budget was crafted by the incumbent finance commissioner, not her predecessor and she must own it. The proposed 2024 budget appears at first glance to includes unrealistic revenues and major expenditures that may be understated. Back to the drawing boards, please. Lew Benton
According to the city charter, the Saratoga Springs Finance Commissioner is required to submit the city’s budget for the following year at the first meeting of the Council in October.
On Tuesday, October 3, 2023, Commissioner Sanghvi did a PowerPoint presentation of the 2024 budget. Unfortunately, neither the powerpoint presentation nor the proposed budget were available on any links to the agenda so the public was not able to be familiar ahead of time with what she was presenting. The endemic poor quality of the meeting broadcast for those watching at home (regular screen freezes and sound blips for all participants, including Council members) also made the public’s ability to follow Commissioner Sanghvi’s presentation challenging. The proposed budget and her presentation are now available on the city’s website–if you can find them.
Here are some highlights:
-there will be a tax increase for the second year in a row
-the budget includes an unprecedented and stunning drawdown of $3,000,000.00 from the city’s fund balance.
-In spite of approving numerous staff increases for her office as well as the Mayor and the Accounts Commissioner in the past year, Sanghvi has now proclaimed there will be no new hires in 2024 (including a position to address the unprecedented backup in FOIL requests)
Sanghvi blamed the tax increase primarily on inflation and the failures of the previous administration.
[JK: I received this email from Ed Lindner regarding Bikeatoga festivities this month. Sounds like fun!]
Bikeatoga is thrilled to be partnering with the Saratoga Regional YMCA on the first annual Saratoga FoliageRide this October 7th and 8th! Check out the video!!
Want to help? You can share our FB post! Want to volunteer? You can sign up here.
Want to ride! Please sign up!. And invite those out of town friends you like to cycle with (if you don’t want them staying in your house, check out our partner hotels!).
It’s going to be a great cycling weekend! This is a ride, not a race and foliage should be at or near peak.
Start your morning with a hearty and healthy buffet breakfast catered by 9 Miles East. Here’s the menu! Ride at your own pace on one of three routes each day – 30, 50, and 75 miles – with full SAG support.
Saturday’s rides will celebrate the 246thanniversary of the Battle of Saratoga. Ride the back roads through the fields where American forces first defeated the British army. And don’t be surprised if you hear muskets and cannon fire. Re-enactors portraying Continental soldiers and British Redcoats will be in the Saratoga National Historical Park that day!
Sunday’s rides will follow beautiful routes through fields, farmlands and gorgeous Fall foliage.
After the ride, relax, shop and dine in downtownSaratoga Springs. All participants will get a commemorative t-shirt and a day pass to the Saratoga YMCA facility – unwind with a swim, sauna, HydroMassage (addt’l fee) or afternoon yoga class after the ride!
Saratoga Springs Mayor Ron Kim routinely acts impulsively, often not checking the facts before speaking. This post gives examples of two recent incidents of Ron Kim’s continuing intemperate behavior.
Mayor Kim’s Abusive Telephone Call
Following Mayor Kim’s notorious, well-publicized, epithet-laden rant at Public Safety Commissioner James Montagnino in May in city hall, the Mayor followed up with a phone call to Montagnino and continued his abusive language. Montagnino recorded the conversation. Mike Brandi, city Republican chair, successfully FOILed for it. Here is the recording of the conversation.
Warning to readers: this audio contains foul language.
Kim told the media that Montagnino violated city regulations by recording their conversation.
Neither Kim nor the media cited what regulation may have been violated. I searched the city’s website and could find no such regulation.
Recently, a citizen named Sam Brewer wrote to Mayor Kim asserting that it had been illegal for the city to have released the applications from people seeking the job that were posted on this blog.
Kim responded to Brewer by falsely declaring that the city never released this information in response to a FOIL request and that he had initiated an investigation as to “how and why these were released to a party outside of city hall.”
The problem is that it is a simple, easily verifiable fact that he is wrong when he claims the city did not release the documents to me through a FOIL request.
The following is the cover letter releasing the documents to me per FOIL.
One would think that the appropriate thing to have done in response to Mr. Brewer’s letter would have been for Kim to first determine if the city had indeed provided the documents under FOIL. The office that handles FOIL requests reports to Kim. He could easily have called the office to check before he replied to Brewer. He also could have checked my post because the post contained a link to the entire FOIL correspondence.
Regrettably, his assertion is part of an established pattern. Mayor Kim routinely acts impulsively rather than taking the time to check the public record. This reckless behavior is deeply worrisome. One has to wonder what ill advised actions with serious consequences he has carried out without the benefit of the facts.
The City did not release these resumes pursuant to a FOIL request and is currently reviewing how and why they were released to a party outside City Hall.
Ron Kim, Mayor
City Hall, 474 Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
On Sep 10, 2023, at 9:47 AM, Sam Brewer <*****@outlook.com> wrote:
CAUTION: This email originated outside of the City network. Please contact IT Support if you need assistance determining if it’s a threat before opening attachments or clicking any links.
Council,
I hope you have enjoyed the summer. I monitor the local news and I noticed a post on the blog of John Kaufman whereby he specifically criticized an applicant and posted the resumes of applicants to a civil service position within the City.
I was shocked to see that the city released individual resumes with its response to a FOIL request.
Specifically, personnel files are normally excluded from FOIL requests as the public does not have the right to know certain information. A resume becomes part of an HR file once someone is hired; I think this would be covered under any FOIL exclusions. It is certainly covered by the Privacy Act of 1974, which should be applied via an interpretation of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution even if not explicit in NYS Municipal or other law.
In any case, no one has the right to interfere with a hiring process for a specific position or person in this way and I hope the city takes action to revise its policy associated with data release in relation to FOIL. While he may publicly criticize the Mayor, having the public evaluate resumes is a gross intrusion on personal privacy and the actual hiring process.
In addition, publishing information about Ms. Munger and her past career experiences may put her at risk. She may not be required or allowed to list details of certain career experiences, and people like Mr. Kaufman may actually target individuals like her because she is on a list maintained by a group that likes to keep people like her out of government and out of work.
[JK: Full disclosure: my wife, Jane Weihe, is Tim Coll’s campaign manager]
The Fiasco
In a grim reminder of the general degradation of politics and of civility, a group from Albany, Project Salam, held an event on September 20 at Caffe Lena as part of Peace Week in which they ignored the principles of basic fairness to try to trash Tim Coll’s campaign for Saratoga Springs Public Safety Commissioner. Their focus was on his involvement in the prosecution of two men in Albany some twenty years ago in relation to a terrorism case. At a press conference the previous week announcing the endorsement by Ron Kim and three current City Council members for her campaign for Public Safety Commissioner, Kristen Dart promoted this same narrative.
Peace Week
Saratoga Springs Peace Week is a laudable project meant to encourage a world free of violence and mayhem. The group has been steadfastly organizing its events for a number of years now. They sponsor different events in a variety of venues around the city.
This year, a group of activists cynically hijacked the project.
Their event was advertised as a showing of an hour and a half long film titled “Witness,” along with a panel.
“Witness” is a documentary that alleges that two innocent men were entrapped by the FBI and sentenced to fifteen years each related to a plot to buy a stinger missile to be used in an attack in New York City. The panel was comprised of five people, all of whom supported the narrative of the film.
The law enforcement team that carried out the investigation was led by Tim Coll. Mr. Coll is now retired from the FBI and is currently running for Commissioner of Public Safety. The film presents Mr. Coll and his fellow agents, the US Attorney’s office, and federal District and Appellate judges as villains who cruelly targeted two ordinary citizens simply living their lives in Albany twenty years ago. According to the film, the FBI manipulated Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain, using an informant, into committing criminal acts.
In the September 19, 2023, edition of the Times Union, one of the attorneys who participated in the men’s legal defense, told the paper,
“For people in Saratoga, we thought it would be good for them to know more about (Coll),” Aref attorney Kathy Manley said. “He was the main player for the FBI in this case. He was the handler of Shahed Hussain. He testified three times at trial. He was the main witness for the prosecution. … Tim Coll was very instrumental in this case.”
In spite of Mr. Coll being the focus of this program, he was never notified about the proposed event.
Coll Asks For Fairness
Mr. Coll called Ms. Manley and asked that he be allowed to present his side of the story. Ms. Manley at first refused and then subsequently told Coll that he would be allowed “three to five minutes.”
The terms of Mr. Coll’s appearance changed repeatedly. The right to “three to five minutes” became no longer a right as he was told that he would have to line up in the public comment period after the film and the five people on the panel had spoken. He could speak only if there were time.
A Regrettable Display of Abuse
The program took place at Caffé Lena.
Sarah Craig has been the manager of Caffé Lena for many years. Sarah has done a wonderful job carrying on Lena’s legacy, and the city is much indebted to Ms. Craig for her dedicated service to this important venue.
In a clear attempt to address the problems of fairness in the event, Craig made some introductory remarks. She told the audience that anyone who would like to respond to the film would be provided with time to do so.
I assume that Ms. Craig established this principle with the Salam Project sometime prior to the event. Such promises were clearly disregarded by the panel.
It did not portend well when, during his introductory remarks about the film, Masood Haque, the filmmaker, told the audience that the purpose of the evening’s event was not “for someone to come here and repair his reputation,” a not too subtle reference to Tim Coll.
It was all the more disheartening when someone from the panel then announced that there would be no comments allowed from the audience, only questions.
It Got Uglier
Following the film and a half hour of comments from the panel, the floor was opened up to the audience. Coll was the first member of the audience to be at the public microphone. He was almost immediately interrupted by Mr. Haque, the filmmaker, who instructed him to dispense with his remarks and “ask the question.” Coll tried to continue, but Mr. Haque in particular, and others on both the panel and in the audience aggressively interrupted him. Someone on the panel scolded him, telling Coll that other people wanted to speak. At some point a voice (I think it may have been Ms. Manley) told him he would be allowed two more minutes. Through the noise and chaos, Coll noted that the judge had instructed the jury that the FBI had a valid reason to target Yassin Aref. He asked Ms. Manley, “Didn’t the defense agree to the judge’s statement?” She responded that “we had no choice.” Coll attempted to answer back but was shouted down. He told me that he was going to point out to her that the defense did not have to agree to this, but if they did not, then the court would have brought in witnesses from Iraq with documents showing the interaction between Aref and terrorists in Iraq. Coll noted to me that the defense agreed to the stipulation because it would have been worse if the jurors had heard the soldiers testify about the damaging documents.
Coll was never able to say all this because, at that point, members of the panel and audience began shouting at him. They yelled that he was hijacking the event, etc. Coll was unable to continue and sat down. In a shameless demonstration regarding the bias and animus of the panel, subsequent speakers (all of whom were supportive of the perspective of the film and the panelists)were allowed to address the panel and make comments or ask questions without interruption or time limits.
According to Kathy Manley, Coll spoke for a total of three minutes and 8 seconds while being frequently interrupted.
Here’ s a recording of his attempt to speak.
Craig Offers an Apology
To her credit, following the meeting, Sarah Craig, the manager of Caffé Lena, sought out Tim and apologized for what happened.
In Defense of the Sponsors
Both Caffé Lena and the leadership of Saratoga Peace Week are really victims of this disgraceful business. Their good hearts and naiveté assumed that people interested in pursuing peace would behave with civility and fairness. Unfortunately, they were wrong.
For Better or Worse
Readers may not know that I see myself as a person of the left. The left, like the right and like other social movements, is not homogenous. I am not the arbiter of who can claim to be of the left. I can only express my own personal views.
I believe that our methods shape our outcomes. A better future requires us to act with fairness, compassion, and integrity. If our arguments are strong, we should have no fear in debating those who disagree with us. In fact, none of us are infallible, and healthy engagement keeps us from adopting self-serving blinders.
I fully support the goals of Peace Week, but I hope this debacle will result in a reassessment to avoid another incident like this in the future. There should be standards of fairness established and required by all. People interested in organizing events should be required to submit applications describing what the event will address and affirming a commitment to fairness and civility.
At a press conference at which four members of the current City Council endorsed Kristen Dart in the race for Saratoga Springs Public Safety Commissioner, Ms. Dart attacked one of her opponents, Tim Coll. In her most unfortunate accusation, she quoted a judge regarding the prosecution of four men convicted of terrorism. The judge slammed the investigators and prosecutors for entrapping the men.
Regrettably, Ms. Dart failed to mention that Mr. Coll had no role in that case. He did head a different investigation of two men in Albany who were convicted of terrorism, and that conviction was unanimously reaffirmed in an appeal to the Federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
I received the following press release from Mary Beth Delarm. I previously covered her appearance before the Saratoga Springs City Council when she thoughtfully expressed her disappointment with the way Council meetings were being conducted.
Ms. Delarm was a Red Cross volunteer on 9/11 at the Twin Towers following the collapse of the buildings.
As she explains below, she served on the committee organizing this year’s 9/11 memorial event in the city assisting in planning the program which is set for tomorrow (this is being written on September 10, 2023). Apparently, Mayor Kim did not forget her remarks to the Council, however. The Mayor participated in a live meeting via zoom of the 9/11 committee and stripped her of her role on the committee and from participating in the program where she was scheduled to speak.
“Cruel politics overshadows 9/11responders
After misleading Red Cross volunteer Mary Beth Delarm who donated countless weeks tending to other responders following the World Trade Center 9/11 attacks at Ground Zero, Saratoga Mayor Kim kicks her from the 911 commemorative ceremony, dissing her 911 response role as mediocre.
Kim’s latest power move came after requesting Delarm donate two weeks to helping Saratoga plan the remembrance program, gather speakers and to speak about her own 911 experience. Delarm said “ The mayor blindsided me at a final 9/1 recorded 911 committee zoom meeting saying “no one wants to hear another responder’s story as Red Cross volunteers weren’t really official /important responders”. Delarm said “He didn’t just stun me. His words shocked everyone, particularly the core of every volunteer responder on earth.” “You couldn’t hear a pin drop, except for my sobbing hearing such hurtful remarks.” She tried to reply, but Kim firmly said “his decision is final!”
Evidently Kim was retaliating, Delarm said. The mayor pointed to an August 15 City Council meeting public comment where she requested “ during the city’s 9/11ceremony, the city should focus on responders and respect for those who are lost, not politicians”. Mary Beth also requested “the city get back to business and focus on respect for fellow citizens concerns, rather than free-for-all disruptions that have been occupying government efficiency for almost a year.“ (reflecting similar concerns June 20).
Delarm and other community responders reeling from the mayor’s comments, encouraged her to respond to Kim at the last City Council meeting September 7. But during open public comment, as Delarm walked to the mic, Kim prevented her from speaking, yet allowed another uncontrollable outburst from BLM activists.
Delarm’s response she planned on submitting to Mayor Kim follows:
“Mayor Kim, please tell the Public and myself,
1) What has my past public comments on decorum in City events and meetings to do with me as a World Trade Center responder sharing my personal Ground Zero experience on a day to honor responders and remember those who have died?
2) “Why did you invite me to help organize and speak at a 911 event you don’t believe respects and honors ALL in our all inclusive city?
“That I’m ‘just another responder’s story and some responders are not as important as others’ is heartless and immoral. Your disrespectful behavior is precisely what our City Hall leaders should not be displaying.”
“You’re implying ‘Red Cross as UN-important responders with the same old story’ is just wrong. Red Cross continues disaster response in unsafe areas across half the nation right now as the main organized charitable volunteer group without pay. All responders reach into our hearts because we want to help others. Our common bond is kindness qualified with heartfelt support to others from around the world. No matter belief, gender or faith, we insure respect for all!”
“No responder is mediocre. We all bring a willingness to serve. Red Cross and thousands of other responders sacrificed time away from family on 911. No matter our title or capacity: WE all shared different emotional experiences which got us through to the next dawn. We all breathed the same toxic air, suffered massive health repercussions and we all have the 911 cough if even blessed to still be alive. Whether they wore a helmet or not, one could not sustain work without Red Cross volunteers day and night caring for everyone as they left cindered piles covered in debris.”
“On 911, the most important thing is to commemorate each and every responder who proudly served in NYC, and keep your petty politics out of it. And especially not forget the courageous who rushed to help in an unsafe environment where people jumped from skyscrapers, because that was their best out.”
“It is attitudes like yours that fail to recognize and appreciate all responders and veterans, forgotten except one day a year, that causes many to commit suicide. 9/11 Responders and those who helped unofficially as volunteers are still dying every day as a result of their fearlessness. Forgetting us and those aging out of the 911 era cheats people and their families who may not be here next year to memorialize the experience. It turns an emotional event many are proud to have served to betrayal and disrespect. The exact things which caused 911.”
“You may try to rob or censor my freedom of speech (as you indicated in your follow-up email), but you will not steal my memories. DESPITE your dishonor and hurt to all who risked their lives, my mission to represent the many people and their families who struggled alongside me in the ashes of 911 will never wane.
“I encourage you & your Commissioners to put aside your negative politics and biases and demonstrate a new generation of kindness, respect & humility to everyone, as all responders did during 911.”
Mary Beth Delarm
Sept 7, 2023 (City Council Planned speech)
Since 911 Mary Beth continues to represent the Red Cross in volunteer response to disasters locally and nationally with mass relief efforts feeding, sheltering, mobil ERV emergency needs, disaster assessment, pet sheltering and services to Armed Forces. She is currently on call down for hurricane Lee as it barrels up the coast if the response need arises.
Mary Beth also volunteers in many other capacities donating her time and resources to charities such as veterans organizations, pet shelters, Saratoga friends bookshop and as a health patient advocate for seniors and vulnerable. While wearing any hat serving another, Mary Beth says the most important thing is respect.
Saratoga Springs Politics 
