MARK BAKER FIRST YOU DO - THEN YOU DON’T

First Mark Baker the head of the City Center wanted the City to be Lead Agency for the Racino expansion project. The expansion project is a force of evil for Baker and the City Center Board and now he does not want the City to be Lead Agency but wants the City Center to have that designation.  I guess Baker wants to decide who does what in Saratoga.   The big piece of information Baker has not let out of the bag is ‘how many conventions and conferences Saratoga turns away every year that the City will now be able to host with the proposed Event Center.  The City is becoming home to more and more hotels and the City Center is probably near its maximum rental capacity as Baker points out in his annual reports to the Council that convention days are increasing to the limit.

Baker is one of the highest paid City employees and the next bit of news may earn him the top spot on the list.  Have you noticed that the parking garage the City Center is proposing is slated to start construction in September?  I think that since the time between now and Labor Day is so crazy in Saratoga and many of the citizens who live here are either on vacation or have rented their houses or just can’t get downtown, it is a stretch to have all the preliminary work plus the open public comment periods during this time.  However, the information spinning out of City Hall and the Convention Center is that if Baker gets the parking garage rushed through and gets started in September he gets a nice fat bonus and a raise in salary, could that be why Mayor Yepsen wants a few more Director’s on the Board?  Maybe the current Board caves in to easily.

The new racing poles downtown look good, I wish they would get rid of the ballet butts though and get the horses out but we can’t have everything.  I was walking downtown the other day with some friends and we were crossing Broadway from the Downtowner side when we noticed the grass on the corner under the sign was high up and touching the bottom of the sign.  Hey  its tourist season, tidy up Broadway.  There also have been many complaints to DPW about the state of the Woodlawn Ave. Parking garage.  The place stinks and the residents do just about everything in there except take a bath.  Skip, it should be cleaned once a week.  Get Petunia over there to clean it when her crew is done watering the flowers.

Last time we told you about Marilyn Rivers letting the Marion Ave. garage park it’s vehicles on City property and what her reasoning is in allowing this to go on.  Well after an email to her the practice is still going on, so if an accident happens over there shouldn’t Ms. Rivers be personally liable?  Also, we spoke of the eyesore that serves as a storage facility for DPW on the same lot and it is still in bad shape.  Skip, can’t you have someone with a weed whacker like Tim get out there and trim around the building and lop down the scrub trees hugging the building?

ROCK & ROLL PART II

If you go to the Marion Ave. car wash, the City owns the property on the right hand side when entering the driveway although you would never know it; there is no signage that it is private property let alone City property.  The station has so many cars and U-Haul trucks parked on this piece City property that I would say that anyone who wants to car pool, park your cars there and drive to work in 1 car.  Obviously the City has no problem with non City vehicles parking there.  What department you ask uses these buildings?  Well none other than, you guessed it, DPW.  The buildings look like they should be torn down.  Scrub trees are growing all around the buildings and the weeds are waist high.  If this belonged to a property owner they would be fined, have the eyesore taken care of and charge the work of clearing the outside junk to the owners taxes.  There are many questions citizens are asking about why the City is looking so shabby but a few are just common sense.  The shrubs were ripped out around Spit and Spat and something like a lawn was planted there.  You can tell by the roll of yellow tape that circles the area, with track season opening in less than 3 weeks wouldn’t it have been a smart move to lay sod down in that area which would have made that whole side of the park and the Italian Gardens look much nicer?  The once ‘gem’ of Saratoga (Congress Park) is loosing a little luster, bushes are overgrown, the hill on the right passing the Casino needs weed whacking, the moss needs to be scraped off the base of the fountain, if you need instruction Skip on how to slow the growth after you clean the base, let me know its easy and only takes 10 minutes. Who is running DPW?  How is the work distributed, and does anyone check to make sure the work is getting done on time?  The flower beds in the islands as you enter the City on Rt. 9 have no color but they do have ornamental grass planted in the place of flowers (no color), is Skip and his 2 Deputies color blind?

A response in the last post alluded to the fact that DPW is down on manpower and that is true, but not by many and if Skip would stop giving  supervisor upgrades out like candy we may have more workers.  We should not forget that it was Skip who also took about $90,000.00 out of the employee line to purchase new trucks.   This is bad management; not being able to plan on vehicle rotation is a case where it hurts the employee numbers as that would have been at least 2 full time positions.  The Waterfront Park was mentioned in Anon.’s response and at tonight’s Council meeting Mayor Yepsen was speaking about Waterfront Park and that finally plans will be submitted to the Council for development as the City was in jeopardy of losing grant monies as nothing was done for 6 years at the site.  I took a ride out to the Park and was surprised to see a local paving business had his equipment parked there and people told me it has been parked there for days at least.  Why?  Will it be ok for any taxpayer now to be able to park on City property over 2 or 3 nights?  It looks like Skip is setting precedent or extending favors for the Marion Ave. site and the Waterfront Park lot.