Holiday grab bag

Folks at the Saratoga County offices meandered down to the conference room this week for some cookies, coffee and the annual nondenominational politically correct holiday grab-bag celebration. With the plastic garland hung and the falling from the sky, there’s celebration to be had down at the Ballston Spa offices, especially now that the County Supervisors are again boasting their property taxes as the lowest in the land.

So dig into those spritz cookies and Russian tea cakes, grab a cup of the semi-burnt coffee from its roaster and gather round for the handouts. There’ve been a lot of them this week that have undoubtedly make the coming holiday a merry one for several individuals.

Taking the first plunge into the grab bag was Saratoga Eagle Sales and Services, which plucked out a sweet $1.3 million tax break. Even though Saratoga Eagle doesn’t technically work for the county or even in it yet, the Saratoga County Industrial Development Agency felt it fit to invite them out for the grab bag event, which they rightly saw as the tipping point to steal…er…lure the beer distributor from Queensbury in neighboring Warren County.

So why wheel three exits down the Northway to a city where land and taxes are at a premium? Well, it starts with a five-year tax exemption on their new $12 million warehouse worth an estimated $180,000 per year. Then it continues with an assessment on the warehouse and 27 acres of land that will be frozen at $7.8 million for five years. And to put a happy little candied cherry on top, IDA officials even threw in a one-time exemption from sales and mortgage tax worth about $385,000.

Of course, it’s a bit scrooge-like of Saratoga County to cut millions worth of tax breaks to “bring jobs” a whopping 20 miles across the border and out of a town that could really use the. Needless to say, county officials aren’t expecting any holiday cheer from their neighbors to the north.

Next up for the grab bag was Sheriff James Bowen, who reached deep and came up with the funding he needed to put another pair of half-baked deputies out on Saratoga County’s thoroughfares. In an 11th hour budget amendment, the recalcitrant regulator was provided $64,000 to hire one patrolman and another $49,476 for a dispatcher. This was after they already afforded the sheriff an additional deputy.

Were there an asshole…er…Grinch attending the nondenominational politically-correct holiday grab-bag celebration, it was Bowen. When the county supervisors balked at his original request for eight new employees, the sheriff simply threatened to end his office’s DARE program with local schools.

Now, say what you will about the effectiveness of the DARE program. But for those in elected office, it’s a political hot potato. There’s nothing ignorant parents like seeing more than a man in uniform zipping around middle schools in a spiffed-up drug bust-seized Camero, preaching to the children about the dangers of marijuana, the gateway substance. And anyone that would willingly allow Bowen to pull the plug on DARE could expect such a move to haunt them during the next election cycle.

The big winner this year was Waterford Supervisor and Water Authority Chairman John Lawler, who finally got what every Republican in the county had been trying to get for years: a decision-making Democrat in Saratoga Springs to express interest in the $67 million Hudson River pipeline. The city’s apparent interest may give the county what it needs to convince the state Department of Environmental Conservation into transferring the pipeline’s permits to the cash-strapped water authority, which recently borrowed $6 million from the county to keep itself fiscally solvent.

County engineers apparently drew up plans to include hook-in joints along the county water line, allowing the city to tap in at a later date. The decision to include these joints was apparently made during a meeting “facilitated” by City Attorney Michael Englert, who was Mayor Valarie Keehn’s first appointment after she won office in 2005.

Lawler’s revelation was a bit shocking to everyone across the board, including most city officials. Only a week prior, the city was granted the legal clearance it needed to push forward with their project to tap Saratoga Lake. But at least one city official –a certain lame-duck mayor named Keehn –was not surprised by the decision.

For months, Keehn was rumored to be working with lake residents in their fight against the city’s project. Though she publically denied such allegations –most notably during a verbal fracas that broke out between her and Gordon Boyd at the Democratic primaries in September –she’s done nothing to prove otherwise.

In fact, her unwavering support for Skip Scirocco, the Public Works commissioner-elect, and her undying hatred for soon-to-be banished fixture Tom McTygue might be proof enough of her tacit support of the county plan. And if there’s a Democrat in Saratoga County to have on board with the plan, it’s the one with a string-pulling husband working as an attorney for the DEC.

Rounding out the grab bag line was Barbara Lombardo, the Saratogian’s entrenched managing editor. The pickings were pretty slim by the time she stepped up to the bag and hoisted out a pair of embarrassing corrections for Thursday’s paper. As she’s certainly grown custom to doing lately, Lombardo needed to rewrite an article clarifying one that basically got all of the important facts wrong.

In this case, it was the article indicating the city’s interest in the county’s water plan. First, The Saratogian reported that Lawler had documentation of the interest. This was wrong, Lombardo stated. Then, the paper claimed the city’s engineers were under the direction of Keehn’s office. This was also dead wrong, Lombardo continued.

And to throw a bit of lemon juice in an already gaping wound, the managing editor misspelled Lawler’s name throughout the corrective article –though this error is somewhat forgivable when taken in context with the others. Yes Barb, without your reading glasses those O’s do sometimes look like E’s.