IT’S THAT TIME TO REMMBER

Well Super Hero fans, it’s time to look back on 2012 and see if predictions come true in 2013.  The events are not in any particular order.

It’s hard to say anything bad about Sonny Bonaccio.  He gives back to the City in generous ways like starting the fireworks pledge of money and getting other friends with bucks to fork over some last minute tax deductions, but that’s a good thing.  However, nothing comes without getting something in return.

The City along with private money finally moved on building what I call the Bonaccio Woodlawn Ave. Parking Garage.  Why the Bonaccio name attached?  Well, for starters, when the new apartment building was going up on the land of the former Price Chopper you could not find any parking spaces anywhere downtown or for that matter for 3 blocks around in any direction.  The parking spaces were taken up by the construction workers.  I asked myself a question, Captain, with his money, why couldn’t Sonny have the workers park in a lot in the area and be shuttled to the site?  I felt that would have freed up many parking spaces for shoppers/businesses.  Much of this construction was going on while the parking garage, mentioned above, was being constructed eliminating about 184 parking spaces.

The project announced next was an 11 screen theater on the corner of the old Price Chopper area, next to the apartment complex.  Where do you think the construction workers parked?  Well, on Division Street and the Bonaccio Woodlawn Ave. Parking Garage, thus taking away spots for diners, shoppers and out of town guests.  I also feel and wonder if you do, was the Mayor working hand in hand with Sonny to get the garage up so he would have parking for his movie theater?  Only the Mayor knows and he won’t say unless you catch him on a good night at Sperry’s.

The next project that finally came to fruition is the development of the ‘Lillian’s parking lot’.  Now, here is something that baffles me (and that’s hard to do), with all this construction going on, Sonny has taken up around 75 parking spots between the Streets of Division, Franklin and Broadway, that’s right, he has roped them off so there is no parking, and guess where the construction workers are parking?  Right the SBWPG.  The Christmas season in full swing, the cry that we need out of towner’s eating and shopping on Broadway and you can’t get a parking spot, bravo for the planning.

I try to connect the dots and you have to follow the money.  Why shouldn’t Sonny pay to the DBA a sum of money for each parking spot he took for the number of days he will keep them shut off.

Let’s grade the 5 “heads of the City”

• Mayor “Rosie Cheeks” Johnson - D
• Commissioner of Finance Michele Madigan – C+

• Commissioner of Accounts John Franck – B+

• Commissioner of Public Safety Chris Matessien – B-

• Commissioner of Public Works Anthony “Skip” Scirocco – D

Now before you start to get hot under your collar, I don’t care what Party a person belongs to as long as they do his or her job.

• Mayor Johnson – D – The Mayor has said again that he will be appointing a Charter Commission to look at how to make the current Charter work better.  If only Johnson would have done this 4 years ago, it would have been credible.  Over the past 3 years he has said no less than 20 times that he would appoint a Charter Commission, then in the same breath he would say that he wanted everyone’s voice heard and after spending at least $100,000.00 of taxpayer money fighting citizens to put a legal proposal on the ballot, 5 days before the election he announced he would indeed appoint his Commission of at least 15 members.  I PREDICT that he will name the Commission during the State of the City address.  I have already been told by 2 members of the Committee that they have been charged with giving the Mayor power to control the budget process and to be the sole person to appoint outside employees i.e., lawyers, HR person, Engineers etc.

• It seems the Mayor is not only disregarding a Council mandate that he hire a                   Human Resource person that would be a full time City employee (vote 4-1, guess who the 1 was), as the City Charter calls for.  When citizens call him “Little King” I hope they know how little he really is (his goatee is even with the hem of a lady wearing a knee length dress, as a matter of fact, HBO wanted him to play Triyon the dwarf on the series “The Game of Throne’s”.  Well that may be stretching it a little but you get the idea.

• The Mayor would rather pay an ‘outside’ HR person $75,000.00 a year for a 20 hour work week.  Yes that’s $150,000,00 smakolas (a smakola =$1.00).  The Council especially Commissioner Madigan said there was enough money in the budget to have the City hire it’s own HR person for 40 hours a week for about $100,000.00 a year which would include benefits, wow, we know the Mayor loves using outside friends to work for the City, but his face isn’t too shiny on this subject.

The saving grace is that we will have to vote on the changes and we should vote no for a few reasons.  The current Charter was updated in 2001 which increased the Mayor’s authority, the positive changes in the Charter were eliminated during the first year of Mayor Johnson’s reign, as stated above the Johnson spent a large sum of money fighting a ballot proposal to be voted on by the people and his budget for his Commission will be at least $50,000.00.

I am sure that in the next year we will be finding out some interesting facts regarding the Mayor and his Deputy Shauna Sutton.

Next time, more on the Mayor and Shauna’s Building Inspector bungling.

Happy New Year and we will be discussing the Mayor, Shauna and Commissioner Mathiesen next time.