Candidate Forum

  The second candidate forum took place Tuesday Oct 4 in the former School 12 in the South End. All 22 candidates were in attendance. The event drew a good crowd.
   Each of us was given a minute to make remarks about ourselves and why we were running, then there were six questions we answered in a rotating order. The moderator was my former editor, Lisa Lewis, who is still the editor of the Record.
   I felt the evening went very well. For the most part everyone behaved with civility, although there were some boos early on, which fortunately were not repeated.
   The questions ranged from city hall to sustainability and quality of life issues.
   I maintained the position I have held all along that moving city hall to the Dauchy Building is not a good idea. I continue to feel city hall should be relocated to a building which is not now nor ever was on the tax roles. This would keep both the Dauchy and Verizon properties on the tax roles which is in the long term the best solution for the tax payers.  A recent suggestion by councilman Mark McGrath to look at School 1 in Troy is very appealing to me.
   With respect to sustainability, I attended a composting workshop hosted by RPI and left very impressed. Getting food waste out of the garbage stream makes sense. The challenge is going to be the initial start-up costs. It will take years to get the money back and begin to feel a real savings. The same is true of solar panels on government buildings. Another great idea, I just hope the initial costs can be found via grant or partnerships. All these ideas have merit,  and I am open to them.
    Quality of life issues are the toughest. Code enforcement is working hard and according to one of them I spoke with at length the current mayor put some teeth into waht they do. Despite this, there are still problems. One of them occurrs when a bank forecloses. They need to hire a local management company to maintain the property. One homeowner in South Troy is livng next to a home which has been vacant for six years and is slowly deteriorating right next to the home she has lived in for 62 years.
   This situation is terrible and we have to find a way to address this. The new ordinace requiring banks to report who is responsilbe for the property is a step in the right direction. Every home in the nieghborhood suffers when a home is left vacant for too long.
   The other thing often left unsaid is the responsibility of parents. Many domestic police calls are for matters which have more to do with parenting than anything else. The city can't raise children. Parenting is the single most important job in our society and it is a shame everyone does not understand this.
   I look forward to attending other evenings like this one, but everyone should feel they can send me an email question or idea anytime.