Who says City Hall ain't for sale?

Here we go again with the “thinking outside the box” ideas to solve the fiscal crunch in the Spa City. Brought to you from the same City Council that virtually gave away a prime Broadway location and that once considered leasing a public safety facility from the most powerful developer in town, there is this most recent brainstorm: sell City Hall.

Finance Commissioner Matt McCabe unearthed this gem Tuesday night, while the same parade of cops marched into the meeting to reiterate the need for a new police facility, as if anyone in the city proper hadn’t heard this song and dance. McCabe was the first person on the council to point out the blisteringly obvious: removing the cops would leave a good quotient of the massive building vacant.

So if City Hall is moved with the police station, the historic hall could be sold for millions, which could then be used to finance the station. This presents a few interesting prospect. For instance, let’s say it’s sold to Sonny Bonacio; then he could literally own City Hall.

As whimsical as this concept may sound, it seems to be the only logical way for the city to fund the bevy of capital improvements proposed in Mayor Valerie Keehn’s 3-year $63 million budget. Meanwhile, the city has all but given the go-ahead on $6.1 million recreation facility, which is about a necessary as the new fleet of empty CDTA buses clogging up the city streets.

The problem with Keehn’s capital improvements budget is that there wasn’t an ounce of practical thinking put into it. The gospel word was ‘we need a new building no matter what’ rather than ‘we have no money to work with and need to make improvements.’ There’s no doubt the proposed police facility is way more ostentatious than the city needs and that other options were clearly not visited with any vigor.

Not to mention, just two of the new buildings proposed in the budget would cost the city roughly $1 million more per year to the city budget in operating costs alone. In other words, reach for the soap taxpayers.

McCabe’s proposal is probably about as rooted in reality as the one foisted by Public Works fixture Tom McTygue, when he suggested seizing The Saratogian property on Lake Avenue. But the finance commissioner’s proposal is a hell of a lot more realistic than expecting the already burdened working class to suck up a tax hike of nearly $100 so that Chief Ed Moore can parade around in his new digs.

On a side note, Mayor Keehn wryly dodged a potentially lethal political bullet during Tuesday’s meeting by casting aside a vote on the capital project budget. Facing a crowd of more than 100 potential voters, she claimed the council “wasn’t ready” to accept the budget in its present incarnation. What she really meant was that she doesn’t want to vote on the budget with less than two weeks to go before the hotly contested Democratic primary.

Keehn didn’t expect a massive turnout clearly fanned by a contingent of residents worried that they may no longer be able to afford to live in the city. Were the issue to go before a vote, it’s pretty clear the only ally she’d have would be Public Safety lapdog Ron Kim. Such a vote would undoubtedly be used as campaign fodder for challenger Gordon Boyd, who has publically suggested renovating City Hall instead of building new city buildings. And don’t think Republican Scott Johnson won’t pick up the tax issue promulgated by the capital budget once October rolls around.