Author: John Kaufmann

[JK: I received the following release today from the Finance Department.

Mike Sharp will be leaving his position as Deputy Finance Commissioner to take a position as Senior Investment Analyst at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy.  Mike Sharp was an extraordinary public servant. Mike’s keen intellect, his attention to the smallest detail, his work ethic, and his good sense made him a tremendous asset to the city. He was underpaid as are all the deputies which itself is a problem.

Those of you who followed the “city manager” charter proposal may recall that that Charter Commission declined to interview the deputy commissioners asserting that they did little substantive work and were basically holding political patronage jobs. Anyone who had the good fortune of dealing with Mike was thoroughly disabused of this idea.

The city is fortunate to have Lynn Bachner step into the vacancy. Lynn had served previously under Finance Commissioners Matt McCabe and Michele Madigan where she earned wide respect throughout all the city’s departments who she had to deal with regularly in light of the role of the Finance Department. Everything I said about Mike accurately describes Lynn who –full disclosure–I consider a friend.]

 

M. Lynn Bachner to Return as Deputy Finance Commissioner

Effective Monday, September 23, 2019, M. Lynn Bachner will be named Acting Deputy Commissioner of Finance for the City of Saratoga Springs, returning to the position she previously served for 8 years. She will be succeeding the current deputy, Mike Sharp, who has recently accepted an offer to become a Senior Investment Analyst at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. Mr. Sharp’s last day will be Wednesday, October 2.

 “Mike has been a valuable asset to the City for the past two years, and I wish him success in his new position,” said Finance Commissioner Michele Madigan. “The City’s current excellent fiscal standing, including our strong bond rating and well-funded reserves, is largely built on budgets that Lynn and I worked on when she last served as my Deputy. Having most recently worked as Executive Assistant to the Mayor, Lynn is well-versed on all of the City’s projects and priorities, especially those that I have partnered with the Mayor on, such as the East Side Fire & EMS Station and our goal of finding a permanent home to Code Blue. The City has several clear priorities to address in the coming year, and I look forward to working with Lynn again as we finalize the 2020 budget and work on solutions that benefit residents across the City.”

Ms. Bachner has served as Executive Assistant to the Mayor since April 2018. She has previously served as Deputy Commissioner of Finance under two administrations. Ms. Bachner holds a BA from Hamilton College, and MA from Johns Hopkins University, and a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin.

“Mike Sharp has done a remarkable job as Deputy Commissioner of Finance, and will be an outstanding asset to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  I am glad I can be of service to the City at this time, and look forward to a successful budget season”, stated Bachner.

Mr. Sharp has expressed that he is exceptionally proud of the work he has done for the City.

“I will be forever grateful to Commissioner Madigan for giving me the opportunity to work on a variety of projects that I am passionate about,” said Mr. Sharp. “I’d like to thank all the City employees I’ve worked with, especially those in the Finance and IT departments, for their help along the way. Throughout my tenure, I’ve spoken with Lynn regularly about the budget, and I have complete confidence that she and Commissioner Madigan will bring forward an excellent 2020 budget.” 

Below is a release from the Saratoga Springs City website regarding the resolution of an investigation initiated in 2014 into the city’s policy on fees for connections to city water and the city’s management of these fees.  The investigation was prompted by  then Mayor Joanne Yepsen and William McTygue.  The New York State Comptroller’s office sent investigators who extensively interviewed city employees and elected officials.  They also secured an extensive inventory of city records.  Now five years later they have returned the records to the city and informed the City Attorney that the matter is closed.

 ________________________________________-

City of Saratoga Springs

Department of Public Works

Anthony “Skip” Scirocco, Commissioner of Public Works

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

September 17, 2019 

Comptroller Closes Five-Year Water Connection Fee Investigation

Matter “Concluded, Without Report”

Saratoga Springs – City Officials announced today that a five-year investigation by the New York State Comptroller’s office into water connection fees has finally been closed. A representative from the Comptroller returned all files related to the investigation to the Saratoga Springs City Attorney’s office and reported the matter to be “concluded, without report.”

 The initial investigation was requested by former Mayor Joanne Yepsen, following reports of mishandled water connection fee waivers. In December of 2014, during the investigation, the City Council voted 5-0 to approve connection waivers that were in question for a project on Weibel Avenue. In addition, the council voted 4-1 under the advice of legal counsel, to abolish the water connection fees altogether. Yepsen was the only vote to keep the connection fees in place.

 “The conclusion of the Comptroller’s investigation without a report confirms that the council made a sound decision in 2014 to eliminate connection fees because it was a bad policy, plain and simple,” said DPW Commissioner Anthony, “Skip” Scirocco. “The only issue with water connection fees was their existence in the first place, and when they were challenged in court multiple times the City lost.”

Water connection fees were first approved by the City Council on November 24, 1992 by a resolution proposed by then Commissioner of Public Works, Thomas McTygue, in an effort to help fund the former Commissioner’s endeavor to use Saratoga Lake as the City’s water source. At that time a 1988 state report suggested that Loughberry Lake only had an approximately 10 year life span remaining as the City’s main water source.  Utilizing Saratoga Lake would have cost taxpayers between $15 million and $30 million, based upon published reports.

Time has proven the 1988 report to be inaccurate. The addition of a new water source, the Bog Meadow wells to supplement Loughberry Lake that were installed by current DPW Commissioner Scirocco, have satisfied water source capacity requirements. 

Water connection fees were challenged in court and the City lost a number of legal actions.  In 1996, the water connection fees were challenged in an action commenced in Saratoga County Supreme Court and, by Order dated May 8, 1998, were found by Supreme Court Justice, Stephen A. Ferradino, to be illegal and unconstitutional.  The Appellate Division, Third Department, affirmed that decision on appeal.

The City was also sued in an action commenced in 1997 which, likewise, resulted in an Order, this time from Saratoga County Supreme Court Justice, William H. Keniry, dated September 22, 1999, finding, again, that the water connection fees were illegal and unconstitutional.

Commissioner of Finance Michele Madigan said, “In 2014 the Finance Department acted in our Charter-given authority as internal auditor and reviewed how water connection fees were being applied following an inquiry by former Public Works Director William McTygue. When Mr. McTygue did not like the results of Finance’s thorough internal audit he approached former Mayor Yepsen, who then called on the New York State Attorney General and Comptroller to investigate the City. It’s unfortunate it took five years for the State to reaffirm what the Finance Department, and a majority of the City Council, rightly believed at the time. I’m glad that we can now put this issue to rest.”

Presently, the Department of Public Works continues to ensure an adequate water supply for residents of the City of Saratoga Springs.  In 2014, four new wells were developed at the Bog Meadow reservoir, resulting in an increase in the “safe yield” of the City’s water supply to more than 9 million gallons per day.

Stephen Williams reports in the Gazette that the City Council will be voting tonight (Tuesday, September 17) on the City Center’s plans to build a parking garage and a lease between the city and the City Center Authority that will allow the construction to move forward.

The lease will allow the City Center to build the facility on part of a city-owned parcel between Maple Avenue and High Rock Avenue.  The lease will be for a dollar per year with the city guaranteed  60 spaces for city use and a share from revenues coming from any parking charges. The current plan calls for later phases of development on the rest of the parcel to include green space, a small park, and room for potential commercial development.

The idea for a parking garage on this site has been discussed since the City Center was first built nearly 30 years ago and has been the subject of much controversy. Williams rightly gives Mayor Meg Kelly credit for bringing supporters and opponents together to finally move this project forward.

There will be a final public hearing on the project at 6:30 PM before the Council meeting which will be held at the city Rec Center. No objections were raised at the last public hearing on this two weeks ago where many supporters spoke–a sharp contrast to all the contentious hearings on the City Center project many of us sat through in the past.

Here’s a link to the Gazette story:

https://dailygazette.com/article/2019/09/16/saratoga-council-voting-on-parking-garage-lease

So the political season has apparently officially begun with one of our political lawn signs disappearing from in front of our house at mid-afternoon today in what was apparently a series of daring daytime snatchings citywide.

Steve Mittler,  candidate for Supervisor, left a message for sign stealers in one of his signs he replaced on Lake Avenue.

This is the view of the temporary two way bike lanes down Henry Street from Lake Avenue (you can see Scallions on the left) set up to test this as an urban segment of the Saratoga Greenbelt trail. [See the previous post for more details of this experiment.]

The city will set up temporary bike lanes on Henry Street to see what impact two way bike lanes will have. According to today’s (9/13/19) Gazette Newspapers:

The pilot project will allow the city to test a low-cost idea for the urban segment of the Saratoga Greenbelt Trail, a larger plan for a bicycle and multiuse loop through the countryside around the city and into its downtown core. Henry Street will be made one-way southbound between Lake Avenue and Spring Street, parking will be limited to the west side of the road, and temporary two-way bike lanes will be marked on the east side, to see if Henry could feasibly become part of an-street bike route.

Steve Williams has written an excellent piece describing the project in more detail and placed it in the context of the wider project.

Have read with interest your post on the proposed increase in City Council member compensation.

As I understand, the annual salary would climb from $14,500 to $30,000, a jump of 107%.

A few observations.  First, while the mayor suggests that ‘…Council seats are supposed to be part time’, that has never been memorialized in the current or previous city charters, including the original 1915 Charter.  Certainly though, most, but not all, past council members have held full time jobs or were self employed outside of their council duties and were thus de facto part timers.

Only the independently wealthy or retired could afford to serve without meaningful outside employment income.

The city’s longest tenured commissioner of public safety, for example, was a well known surgeon who managed to run the department with somewhat of an iron fist and, in the process was indicted a number of times before finally resigning for good.  Many others have served credibly on a part time basis while holding down a full time job, profession or business.

What is little known, though, is that for many years the council members were reported to the State Comptroller, for pension credit purposes, as “full time.”  I believe that meant a minimum of 30 hours weekly. Such reporting would allow a member to be vested in the state retirement system in a much shorter period of time.  There may have been a Council resolution adopted sometime in the late 80’s or early 90’s establishing that threshold, at least for retirement benefits.

In the “Rational” appended to the current Charter approved by the voters in November  2001, the Charter Revision Commission noted on page 11:  “As the complexity of government operations increases in Saratoga Springs., the ‘part time’ council may soon become a thing of the past.  There are compelling reasons for moving to a system of full-time elected officials, but we (the Charter Revision Commission) do not think it is in our purview to mandate that.”

It is not correct that, as your entry states, the current rate of $14,500 has been in place since 2001.   The $14,500 salary dates to the 1994 budget year following adoption of a 1993 local law.

The 2000-2001 Charter Revision Commission considered including a salary increase in the then proposed Charter, but ultimately decided to leave it at $14,500.

Wrote the Commission: “For the time being, we chose to keep the compensation at its current level for council members and leave it to them (and ultimately the voters) to decide when the time is ripe to increase he salary.”

In hindsight, we may have been influenced by a concern that a salary increase would compromise the proposal’s adoption at referendum.

So, Council members have not seen a salary increase since 1994, almost 26 years.  Inflationary pressure would make $14,500 in 1994 the equivalent of $25,103 today, an overall increase of 73%.

You may find it interesting that the first City Council members, meeting on June 22, 1915, were salaried at $500 annually.  Deputy salaries varied with the deputy commissioner of finance awarded $1,400 annually, public works $1,500 public safety $1,200.  In that first government there was no deputy accounts commissioner title and, of course, no deputy mayor.

The Council member salary of $500 would be worth about $12,700 in 2019 dollars.

My paternal  grandfather is listed as the first city stenographer at $720 annually.  My wife Linda’s maternal grandfather, Tom Gorman, was deputy commissioner of public safety at the grand total of $1,200.

Hope you find this interesting.

Lew

 

 

THE LIBERTARIANswwe PARTY OF SARATOGA COUNTY NOMINATES CANDIDATES TO APPEAR ON NOVEMBER BALLOT

For Release: September 7, 2019 12:01AM

 Saratoga Springs, NY – The Libertarian Party of Saratoga County has nominated the following candidates for elected office:

 Robin Dalton – Commissioner of Public Safety – City of Saratoga Springs

Stephen Mittler – Supervisor – City of Saratoga Springs

Phil Barrett – Supervisor – Town of Clifton Park

Ray O’Conor – Town Board – Town of Wilton

Kirk Woodcock – Highway Supervisor – Town of Wilton

David Towne – Town Justice – Town of Wilton

Matthew Coseo – Town Justice – Town of Wilton

 These candidates will appear on the ballot under the Libertarian Party line this November.

“Our committee did great work in a short period of time, interviewing every single candidate that requested our endorsement, said Libertarian Party Chairman Rob Arrigo.  “In the end we felt that these candidates best represented the Libertarian values of smaller government and more personal freedom.  We look forward to helping them win in November.”

 

###

About the Saratoga County Libertarian Party

The Saratoga County Libertarian Party was granted official interim county organization status by the New York State Libertarian Party on Sunday, June 30th.  The county committee filed its bylaws with the board of elections on July 3rd, making their status official according to New York State Election Law. The Libertarian Party of New York became an officially recognized political party in NYS when gubernatorial candidate Larry Sharpe earned more than 90,000 votes state–wide during the 2018 election.  

 

 

 

The parking signs are up on Murphy Lane.

Readers will recall that the latest chapter in this controversial property’s history involved ads indicating there were two parking spaces on this property when only one had been approved.

The city has put up signs at the entries to Murphy Lane at each cross street it passes through. In addition, the neighbor across the alley from the virtual barn who has had to suffer the brunt of the many inconveniences caused by this “conversion”,  has put up his own parking notification sign. His sign sets out the city’s zoning requirements for a parking space.

In the meantime, the Zillow posting for the property no longer claims the property has two parking spaces but instead indicates there is one offsite parking space presumably anywhere the new owner can find a spot on a neighborhood street. I guess that is progress.

The August 13 edition of the Saratogian contained an article on the decision by the Saratoga Springs Ethics Board to dismiss complaints brought by Bill McTygue and Ann Bullock.  McTygue and Bullock, rather than address the substance of why the Ethics Board rejected their allegations, doubled down by making even wilder accusations.  It is particularly disturbing that they used the Saratogian to try to smear the character of some very good people.

Take for example the following quote from Mr. McTygue:

“Unfortunately, this decision by the City’s Ethics Board is dictated by the politics of City Hall generally, and the lack of credibility of the City Attorney specifically.”

This is reminiscent of Senator Joe McCarthy’s infamous allegation about Communist infiltration of the State Department:

“I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party…”

So, Mr. McTygue and Ms. Bullock, one might ask, who were these people in city hall who you accuse of conspiring to subvert the deliberations of the Ethics Board? How exactly did they suborn the Ethics Board?  Did they offer some kind of incentives to the members of the Ethics Board to violate their responsibilities?  I will deal with their ugly aspersion against the City Attorney below, but how exactly was he involved in this dark conspiracy?   Like the alleged two hundred and five names in Joseph McCarthy’s hand, we will never know.

Mr. McTygue and Ms. Bullock also assert in the article:

“Therefore, based on further information we have uncovered in the development of this complaint, and because the City Attorney had already predetermined the outcome of our complaint, by his June 18 letter, we have forwarded this issue to the New York State Attorney General for further investigation and action.”

It is rather impressive how many slurs McTygue/Bullock have crammed into this paragraph.  It requires parsing.

We are told that they “uncovered” even more malefactions, the details of which they apparently plan to share with the New York State Attorney General but not with the public.  We must go on faith that they have the goods.

They accuse the City Attorney of predetermining the Ethics Board decision.  As he is not a member of the Ethics Board nor does he function as their counsel, they do not offer any explanation as to how he exerted control over the Ethics Board.

Their “proof” is that the City Attorney wrote them a letter on June 18 (well before the Ethics Board issued its opinion) in which he laid out in some detail the fallacies in both their use of the Ethics Code and New York State Municipal Law.

The problem is that McTygue and Bullock, rather than submit their complaint on the proper forms used by the Ethics Board, made their complaint as a letter addressed to both Vince DeLeonardis, the City Attorney, and Justin Hogan, the chair of the Ethics Board.

As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.  Mr. DeLeonardis showed them the respect of responding to their letter.  Mr. McTygue and Ms. Bullock conveniently leave out that they had written to Mr. DeLeonardis which logically produced a response.  The cynicism of using Mr. DeLeonardis’ own letter to question his “credibility” is unfortunately representative of their modus operandi.

Then there is this assertion:

“Additionally, we have obtained further evidence of the City’s mishandling of this matter since our original complaint was filed, including the agreement between the City and Energy Now Consultants, which the City Attorney (acting as Records Access Officer) said did not exist in his response to our FOIL request of June 8, 2019.”

The response they received from the city did not come from the City Attorney, it came from the City’s FOIL officer who is Trish Bush.   Accuracy is simply unimportant to these people, especially when they want to discredit Mr. DeLeonardis.  More to the point they grossly misrepresent what happened by leaving out some key information.

It is true that the original FOIL response did not include the “agreement” document.  Subsequent to the original response, John Franck realized that he had a copy of a document that could be considered an “agreement.”  He advised Ms. Bush and Mr. DeLeonardis of this and they promptly sent Mr. McTygue and Ms. Bullock the document.

While it is technically true that McTygue and Bullock were advised that the document did not exist, they conveniently leave out that the document was subsequently found and sent to them.  To read their characterization of what happened you would think that the city had improperly refused to provide the document and that somehow they managed to secure it on their own.

So first let’s look at their FOIL request.  They requested:

“Contract/Agreement between city and energy broker referred to in minutes, City Council meeting May 21, 2019 (minutes); Letter of Authority with energy procurement broker referred to in said minutes; Letter of Exclusivity for energy procurement broker referred to in said Minutes; All Pricing options for electricity and gas presented to the city by energy procurement broker; Agreement concerning energy brokerage commission division between City and energy procurement broker”

Now Gordon Boyd had, until he sold his company, provided these broker services to the city through an agreement with the Chamber of Commerce.  So he would have been familiar with the kind of documents that would have been required and the list of items in their FOIL reflected this.  I expect that Mr. Boyd, a fellow White Walker, had advised them about the agreement.

What I find interesting is their further mishandling of the FOIL.  In their identification as to what they are seeking they advise that descriptions of those items can be found in the minutes of the May 21, 2019 Council meeting.  For example their FOIL request asks for the “Contract/Agreement between city and energy broker referred to in minutes [emphasis added], City Council meeting May 21, 2019 (minutes);”

The problem is that there are no such references in the minutes of the May 21, 2019 meeting.  The closest thing to a reference to EnergyNow in the minutes reads:

“The broker found the best price with Constellation Energy.”  That’s it.  There are no references to any of the documents they are seeking in the minutes.

This is emblematic of the sloppiness of how Mr. McTygue and Ms. Bullock dealt with the whole FOIL request

So here is a challenge to my readers:   This is a link to the minutes.  Anyone who can find any of the references Mr. McTygue or Ms. Bullock used in their FOIL in the minutes of the May 21 Council meeting will win a bottle of twelve year old McCallum Single Malt Scotch.

Assuming there are no references in the minutes, I would be interested in anyone’s theory as to how they made such an error.  Is it possible they never bothered to actually read the minutes of the meeting?

My understanding is that Trish Bush, who is the FOIL officer for the city could not find anything in the minutes so she polled the Mayor and the Commissioners to see if they had any of the documents being sought. Commissioner of Accounts John Franck provided her with the energy utilization data but nothing else. information-release-authorization-agreement.pdf

In July John Franck realized that in fact he had signed a document making EnergyNow the city’s agent.  He contacted Mr. DeLeonardis and Ms. Bush and sent them the document (https://saratogaspringspolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/information-release-authorization-agreement.pdf).

On August 14 Ms. Bush sent McTygue and Bullock an amended update to the FOIL with the document.

Mr. McTygue’s remarks to the Saratogian quoted above made it sound as though only his and Ms. Bullock’s sleuthing revealed the additional document whereas it was voluntarily forwarded to him and from the beginning Ms. Bush showed due diligence trying to fulfill their FOIL request.

As someone who has been through the FOIL process I would offer to the readers of this blog that under Scott Johnson’s administration getting a FOIL response was almost impossible.  Mr. DeLeonardis and Ms. Bush could easily have exploited the sloppiness of the Bullock/McTygue FOIL request in order to be unresponsive claiming they could find no references in the minutes of the May 21 meeting to the documents sought.  Instead they obviously went beyond the call of duty to locate the sought after materials.

I cannot end this blog without rising in defense of Vincent DeLeonardis and Trish Bush.  These are two outstanding people whose integrity is beyond reproach.  We are all fortunate to have them serving this city.

It is distressing that in their campaign to change the city’s form of government (both Mr. McTygue and Ms. Bullock are in the leadership of the city manager effort) these people think nothing of trampling on the names of people in our city government in order to try to portray the current administration as corrupt and incompetent and thus urgently in need of a change in government.