Saratoga Civitas by Kim Kunstler

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

Quote of the Month: “Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.” —J.K. Galbraith

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Those of you who have been living inside a champagne glass all summer might be interested to know that there is a primary election on Tuesday, September 13. This unfortunate bit of mischief, engineered by Democratic city chair, Shawn Thompson, may blow the best chance in twenty years to sweep a Republican majority of real estate grifters and stooges from control of the city council. That's why Civitas urges primary voters to get behind Hank Kuczynski, who is the endorsed mayoral candidate of the Democratic committee, minus Thompson.
      Let's begin by sifting through the turpitudes and idiocies of the current Republican council majority, starting with Mayor Mike Lenz.
Lenz sold out the city on the water issue. Why? Because the Republican party machine bosses told him to. Why? Because the county water plan, running a pipeline network from the Hudson River, would allow suburban hyper-development to happen in rural towns outside the city where it is currently constrained. Note: Tom Roohan, Republican city chair, runs the foremost real estate agency in the city, and owns many pieces of rural property outside the city.
      At the bidding of Roohan, Lenz surrendered the city's control over its own destiny. In effect, the city will be asked to subsidize suburban development in the surrounding towns, and city residents would have to pay whatever the county decides to charge for water.
      To make matters worse, Lenz got a council majority to toss out a half-million dollars worth of engineering consulting work done on behalf of the Public Works Department's own water plan - which was a sensible plan to draw water from nearby Saratoga Lake, part of which lies within city boundaries. To defeat the city's own plan, Lenz enlisted a claque of lakeside property owners from outside the city, and inflamed them with misinformation about the DPW project.
      All this was done for the sake of a mythical computer "chip plant" which, if it existed, the Republican machine would like to stick in Malta - along with thousands of new suburban McHouses.
      Next on the Republican council majority is Steve Towne, Commissioner of Accounts, whose latest misdeed among many was a peremptory reassessment of city property, with an eight percent across-the-board boost of assessed value for existing buildings and weasely exemptions for favored clients with new (previously unassessed) houses.
      The net result is that jacked-up property valuations will now force city residents to pay much higher school taxes than the people who live in Greenfield and Wilton - which towns supply more than half the students to the combined school district. In effect, the city will subsidize education for children outside the city.
      Towne says the state compelled him to run a new assessment, but never produced any documents showing that to be the case. He never brought a proposal to reassess before the full city council. He never notified the public by so much as a statement in the newspaper that a revaluation would take place. And he sent the consultant out to do "drive-by" revaluations.
      It happens that assessed value is a benchmark for real estate sales, and it happens that Steve Towne's day job is comptroller for the Roohan Real Estate company, and it happens that higher benchmark valuations lead to higher commissions for real estate sales. Connect the dots. Steve Towne also happens to be Republican party chair Tom Roohan's cousin. Connect some more dots.
Meanwhile, John Riggi, whose new $20 million-plus house on North Broadway was assessed at a paltry $4.86 million, will be hosting a $500-a-head campaign fund-raising bash for the city Republicans later this month.

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      The third stooge of the council majority, Public Safety Commissioner Tom Curley, stood by doing nothing for more than a year while his police department disintegrated in a scandal involving Deputy Commissioner Erin Dreyer, daughter of Curley's campaign manager. Among other things, it was alleged in grand jury testimony that Dreyer had carried on a romance with one of her police employees while trying to compromise the authority of the Police Chief Edward Moore. Since she refused to resign, Dreyer was eventually fired by a council maneuver that eliminated funding for her position. Moore has since filed a civil suit against Curley and Dreyer.
      Apart from his role in the that melodrama, Curley has toed the party line on other vital issues including votes against the DPW water plan. Even so, Curley's performance has been so embarrassing that his own party has dropped him like a dog that peed on the carpet too many times, and a judge ruled last week to remove his independent line from the ballot.
      Overall, the record of this council majority - three seats out of five - is a dismal cavalcade of failure, misfeasance, and inattention. The public knows it. Even many mainstream Republican voters are disgusted over the sell-out on the water plan and the Erin Dreyer fiasco, as well as their zooming school tax bills.

      Which brings us to the Democratic opposition to this gang, and the curious case of mayoral candidate Valerie Keehn. Keehn, a special ed teacher with no prior political experience, materialized as a candidate last spring out of a Democratic party faction that had earlier supported Vermont Governor Howard Dean's presidential bid in 2004. (We liked Doctor Dean, and still do, but Civitas was never an organ of the so-called "Deaniac" machine.) Anyway, Keehn announced for mayor in May.
      This led to a raucous meeting May 21 of the city Democratic committee, called to officially endorse a candidate. Former deputy mayor Hank Kuczynski had already announced. In the background, party chair Shawn Thompson ran a phone campaign to persuade committee members to vote for Keehn, and supported her vocally in the committee meeting. It turned out that committee members voted to endorse Kuczynski.
      Keehn had stated before the vote that she would support the committee's selection -apparently because she assumed that she would win. When she lost, she changed her mind and decided to run against Kuczynski in the Sept. 13 primary.
      That would not be the first time that Keehn flip-flopped. In May she was quoted in the Saratogian as supporting the county water project that would lead to a suburban building boondoggle. In May she was in favor of the Democratic initiative on affordable housing; last week she came out against it in order to curry votes with West Siders who are inflamed about workforce housing.
      We had an extensive interview with Keehn two weeks before the primary and came away from it thinking she was a nice person who didn't have a single firm idea about any of the issues facing the voters. Perhaps she will acquire some in the months ahead, if she prevails in the primary and goes on to oppose Lenz.
      Kuczynski impresses us as someone who understands the intricacies of the tax and assessment issue, the water issue, the sales tax issue, affordable housing, and some other problems that aren't on the public's radar screen yet, such as the fate of the racetrack when NYRA's franchise expires in 2007.
     We urge Democrats to vote for Kuczynski in the primary Tuesday as the best chance to clean out a corrupt and inept Republican city council.