HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL

Well 2014 is starting out with a bang.  Snow and cold for a 36 hour period.

Inauguration of all elected officials were held today (Wed.) and all went well.  Congratulations to all, especially to new Mayor Yepsen who didn’t wait 2 weeks to install Code Blue.  She took the bull by the horns and put a plan in place, although I wish the 10 degree mark could be higher by at least another 10.  However, this should have been done years ago as other communities around the State took the proactive step.  Unfortunately, Saratoga Springs is a reactive City and it takes a death or a proactive politician to make things happen.

I was pleased to be wrong and see that Shauna Sutton has left the building.  I was not pleased however, to see that John Herrick gave her a plum job in the County Clerks office.  I would think that she would have to take a civil service exam to have the job but was told that they could delay the timing of the exam for a long time.  So, here we go again, full time County employee and full time cemetery Director, don’t you just love patronage jobs? 

I was surfing channels tonight and happened to catch the comment period of the televised Council meeting of 12/17, you know the one where Dave Bronner spoke about the proposed fire station (he repeated the same 4 sentences for at least 10 minutes and was never cut off by the Mayor).  Then when the Commissioner of Public Safety corrected some of his misconceptions, Bronner started yelling from his seat.

Cliff Ammon spoke as Cliff does about the 300 Save Saratoga that met to hear some information about the Casino and how we need to keep gambling out of Saratoga, could someone give Mr. Ammon a little history about what made Saratoga famous in addition to it’s water?  I read in the paper where Moreau would like to have the Casino at Mt. McGregor.  The site fits snug by Saratoga, Glens Falls and Lake George.  Moreau having a long shot at getting the Casino would certainly send customers to Lake George in the summer (yes, Lake George has a very long history as does Saratoga) which would be detrimental to us.  Also, they would not have to be restrained by our downtown businesses or City Center and would compete for both business and conventions/concerts, as a matter of fact if any other community around us gets the Casino, we would lose.  Horse racing attendance is down, SPAC cannot survive unless it has concerts that destroy the park and over burden our emergency rooms, where is the Ballet and the Orchestra, for which was the main reason SPAC was built?

The information night at the City Center gave me a few chuckles.  The head of the local Holiday Inn said that building the 135 room hotel on the Racino property, hotels downtown would suffer greatly; does she care about the 3 new hotels that are being built now as having an impact?  I also wonder if she feels that she is taking advantage of tourists when a room you can get from September thru June for $126.00 per night goes up to $356.00 (same room) for July & August with a minimum 2 night stay, this is standard for the hotel industry in the City.

This will be an interesting 3 months for this topic.