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Civitas No. 34 -- January 15, 2003
The Broadside of Politics and Civic Design

Our Motto: "You have to hack your way through a lot of lunchmeat in this world."

"Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain." - Friedrich von Schiller

Commissioner Steven "Wile E. Coyote" Towne Blows Himself Up Again

by Jim Kunstler

     In a goofy, reckless gambit that blew up in his face at Tuesday night's city council meeting, Accounts Commissioner Steven Towne tried to sabotage a major DPWwater project by circumventing state environmental rules while grandstanding as an advocate for open government.
      Faced with the choice of further stalling the water project - on the table since last February - or trying to blow it up, Towne opted for Plan B. He introduced a motion, legislatively out-of-order, that would have left the city in a morass of litigation and jeopardized local control over its future water supply.
      Towne was then verbally assailed by the city council's own lawyers, Douglas Ward and Dean S. Sommer, who told Towne that his action would 1.) make worthless a half-million dollar environmental impact study that the city had already paid for, and 2.) would violate the city charter. City attorney Jeffrey Wait joined them at the microphone.
      "You're outside the statutes and the regulations," Ward said.
      "There's either a process or no process," Sommer said.
      "When you depart from the process, you get very funny decisions from the courts," Ward added
      "The state establishes a procedure and they expect you to follow it," Wait said.
      "You have three attorneys telling you you're killing this process," Commissioner McTygue said to Towne, who replied only by grinning back, Cheshire Cat style. "Don't smile at me like that," McTygue said. "I'll keep you here until two in the morning."
      Towne and fellow Republican councilmen Mike Lenz and Tom Curley resisted four calls from the attorneys to take the tumultuous debate into closed executive session. Finally, they relented and an hour later Towne emerged sheepishly back in open session to reverse himself. In the end, the full council voted to accept the environmental study, allowing the city to go forward with public hearings on its future water supply.
     The council chamber was packed with protesters from the east side of Saratoga Lake - that is non city residents - who had been marshaled by County Republican chairman Jasper Nolan to provide noise and color. Many of them left halfway through the meeting, muttering and scratching their heads, unable to follow the legal complexities at issue.
     Civitas has learned that in the executive session that followed, Ward and Sommer told the Republican trio that they were dangerously exceeding the scope of their authority in moving to release the draft study without first formally accepting it - a violation of the State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) act. DPW Commissioner Tom McTygue told Towne, Lenz, and Curley that he would sue them and obtain a restraining order against them if they so acted.
     One inside observer told Civitas, "It no longer had anything to do with the frikkin water. It was just wrong and morally reprehensible, and that's what the lawyers were saying."
     Towne, who introduced the motion to scuttle the process, had previously that night challenged Mayor Ken Klotz on several agenda items, asking whether Klotz had cleared them with the city attorney. Klotz said he had indeed done so. But it later came out that Towne had not consulted the city attorney about his own surprise motion.
     Instead, Town relied on bad advice he had solicited from lawyers in the New York Secretary of State's office - an obscure department that supervises a hodge-podge of activities from the barge canals to the NY State Cemetery Board. - where he has friends.
      Behind Tuesday night's shenanigans is a struggle over who will control the future water supply of Saratoga Springs - the city itself, or the county. The city took the initiative when DPW Commissioner McTygue hired the engineering firm of Barton and Loguidice in 2001 to study the city's future water supplies. The results confirmed a 1988 state study saying that the Loughberry Lake reservoir would be inadequate in the years to come, and recommending Saratoga Lake as the best long-term solution to the problem. Water from the lake could be piped a short distance to the city's existing treatment plant. - estimated cost, $17 million.
      While McTygue's DPW developed its plan, the Republican-controlled county government dawdled. Then, in 2002, it came up with a $53 million scheme to take water out of the Hudson River west of South Glens Falls, and pipe it 14 miles to Saratoga Springs. There was a big hitch, though: the neighboring towns between here and there could opt to not help pay for it until the infrastructure was in the ground - sticking Saratoga Springs with the cost of capital construction, and then laying the northern half of the county open to Clifton Park style suburban development once the pipes were in the ground.
      Under the DPW plan, the city would control its own water destiny, including rates charged and where development would be encouraged to happen.
Under the county plan, the city would subsidize the future profits of real estate developers in other towns, while duplicating an already-existing water system.
      A city hall insider put it this way: "As stupid as Towne appears to be, he has had an agenda: to delay the city's process because the county got caught with its pants down and had to play catch-up."
      This is not the first time that Commissioner Towne attempted a brilliant coup only to have it blow up in his face. Upon taking office in 2001, he scuttled existing city insurance contracts under the guise of saving taxpayers money, in order to steer the business to Republican-crony insurers, only to end up with rates $230,000 higher than the policies he'd scuttled.
      Also in his first year in office, Towne attempted to dismantle the Skidmore College election district because it seemed to have a disproportionate number of non-Republican voters. The move was eventually disallowed by the Board of Elections.
      Commissioner Towne has now clearly established his pattern of behavior. He's more than lived up to the nickname Civitas bestowed on him last year: Wile E. Coyote, after the Warner Brothers cartoon character whose wicked schemes never failed to blow up in his face. Rumor has it that Towne wants to be Mayor. What a catastrophe that would be for Saratoga Springs.

Other Odds and Ends

      Local developer Robert Israel was appointed by Mayor Klotz to a seven-year term on the planning board, replacing 20-year veteran Wally Allerdice, whose unbroken silence through years of contentious debate in that forum was an object of wonder to us casual observers.
We consider Israel an excellent addition. He's contributed tremendously to the redevelopment of downtown. (His Railroad Place condominiums sparked a boom in apartment construction that is still going strong.) He has educated himself in the technicalities of urban design. And he cares deeply about the history and the future of Saratoga Springs.
     The Planning Board has approved a six-story condominium building for the vacant lot at Henry Street between Phila and Spring Streets (across from the Dine restaurant). The developer is Scott Triffalo; architect George Olsen. Storefronts will occupy the ground floor along Henry Street.
Developer David Brause has gotten approvals to go forward with a large building to complete the block fronting Broadway adjacent to the recent Three Congress Park Center building.
      Drawings submitted to the planning department, for a proposed Marriot Courtyard hotel on the current site of Spa Steel show what looks like a 1962 vivisection lab. There's no entrance on the street. Blank walls and concrete planters everywhere. Design Review will blow chunks when they see it.