If you think that creating a super regional business park represents a groundbreaking achievement in collaboration between counties and of course, the riches that will flow from rubbing the genie lamp of  ”shared services”, I have a four letter word for you:

MOSA

From today’s editorial (here):

How is this great news? Should we not follow AIDA’s example and eliminate expenses for writing grants; after all, grant writing is an expense and gosh golly, we can’t afford any marginal expense.  Where is the fiscal responsibility and fiscal oversight with folly such as spending tens of thousands of dollars on grant writing?

We need to cut, cut, cut.

Moreover, we need to reject this money not only for what it cost us but by accepting this state grant, are we not embracing socialism? We do not need the state or federal government meddling in our local affairs. We’ll pay for this ourselves with our own taxes. We need to cut, cut,  cut.

Terrible, dreadful news.

I’m not sure what is going on as I’ve been out-of-town for a few days but things seem profoundly different upon my return.

First, a lengthy, nicely done piece in the Recorder on the GASD’s magnet school program and magnet school academic performance that points to the failure of the program to deliver the expected academic outcomes. My, oh, my. Who-da-thunk that!

Second, the Recorder editors weigh in with a strong critique of the reactions to the WPHO and point to the disconnect between our slogan and reality. Am I really sharing the same side of an issue with the Recorder editors? Weird…

Third, Charlie Kraebel weighs in with a blistering piece on the WPHO as well and dares to shed some sunlight on local radio’s role in the ‘debate’. I may have differences with Charlie, but here, I agree with him as well. What is going on?

That said, I’m not sure the transformation is quite complete as remnants of non-Bizarro Amsterdam still remain: one of the arguments against selling to the WPHO is now that these properties should have been demolished with no chance for someone to consider restoring the properties. If you have any questions on the folly and fallacy of the demolition strategy, look no further than that as your proof. They would rather spend money on demolition, forgo the proceeds of the sale as negligible as they are, spend money to landfill it and also forgo the potential property tax of a restored property than maybe see something brought back. But then, we would not be demolishing and landfilling buildings and hence sharing services and that would be quite sad, perhaps even sacrilegious.

Speaking of negligible, I see the $2500 in expense for the rose garden to be a great source of concern while forgoing the possibility of many multiples of that from the WPHO to be perfectly fine.  Weird.

Maybe I’ve got it wrong: maybe it’s been Bizarro World here for many decades and glimmers of a regular and lucid world broke through in the past few days.

It’s all so bizarre.

“People are scared,” she said. “It’s like they’re coming in and taking over.”

“Why are these people moving here?” asked Hatzenbuhler. “It’s just more than people can handle.”

I find this utterly contemptible and disturbing demagoguery.  Appalling.

I should not be surprised the least at this, but you always think maybe folks will turn around or embrace some change here. Clearly not.

I never liked “Small City, Big Heart” — I think I see why.”Small City, Black Heart”?

Let’s see if any of our esteemed community leaders will denounce this rhetoric.  I suspect not.

PS I thought the proper phase was “those people” not “these people”. I am sooo confused!

Marketing

The cognitive dissonance grows louder by the day.

You see, we scratch our heads as to why people will not move here and why people move away in droves. Oh dear, what can we do to keep people here? What will we do to stop the decline? This place is such a dump.

Then, when people do move here or think about moving here, we scratch our heads as to why do they wan to move here. Oh dear, what can they possibly have in mind? What is wrong with them that they want to live in such a dump? Who are those people? What will we do to stop growth?

Utterly, totally , unbelievably exasperating.

I’ve been loathe to post lately as I just seem to cover the same old ground, maybe with a twist and turn here-and-there, but largely,  challenging the competing philosophies — the earth is  flat, the sun orbits the earth and a good blood letting cures all ills– grows tedious at best. And all to no apparent avail.

Let me quickly comment on a few items to illustrate this point:

-Us and Them: The Them plaguing our city keeps growing: first, it’s “those people” or “the Spanish”; then it’s the out-of-town landlords, who not only must be registered, but who apparently, as landlords, are one step shy of felons; then it’s the Buddhists, yes even the Buddhists, apparently merit a suspicious eye.  Why we would have a shining city in the valley if not for Them. It certainly it is not Us: Not me, Couldn’t be me, Naw not me.

-Burning Desires: With every fire, we can now witness the sideshow on infrastructure and hydrants with the usual wails at the sad state of our infrastructure from the very same chorus who wails at any public spending and tax increase. For the umpteenth time, tell me how you will fund infrastructure with no increase in public spending and tax increase? Oh right, the landfill: that way we bond the landfill which will generate so much money that we can then bond for the infrastructure which will generate even  more money… Panzi on the Mohawk…

- The Horror: With the city taking a parking lot off the auction block to make green space on the East End, I hope we’re not setting a precedent to consider alternate uses for parking lots. After all, the engine of our economy centers around the creation of parking lots and the paving of green space.

-Marketability Fail: I found this line (here) from the story on our two industrial parks to be quite interesting: Local officials believe that lack of success may be attributable to some significant differences between the two parks, the biggest of which is the amount of available land for development. Ken Rose, head of the county’s Department of Economic Development and Planning and administrative director of the Montgomery County Industrial Development Agency, developer of both parks, said the Glen park was specifically developed for smaller projects, while Florida was meant for larger facilities.

Let’s noodle the statement above a bit: the lack of success may be due to the amount of land for development. How do you reconcile the statement above with the following: 1) How do you market smaller sites such as those in the city for industrial development when a similar park in Glen has failed to garner tenants? 2) How does the county, per the current agreement with AIDA  under ‘shared services’, steer development to the city versus the Glen site? Is there not some inherent competition between the sites? 3) How do we drive growth of service and professional businesses who do not require land for development? Clearly, no entity or strategy has existed or exists for this market. I’m utterly flummoxed.

-Anonymity Rocks: Funny how Michael Lazarou embraces anonymity and parody when it suits him (here).  I seem to recall a few of his columns railing against anonymous bloggers– that would be me– and posters as scourges on our local media and community along with contempt for parody by the lowly denizens of the digital space. But of course, anonymity in his skilled hands as a columnist and satirist are as stone to a sculptor and what is a lowly craft to us, in his hands, becomes nothing short of a noble art.

So this what I mean in my preamble above: my blogging feels like a journey to find the end point on a circle.

From the Recorder (here):

“This is what sold me to come here,” he said.

Though Chalmers is now slated for demolition, Harpaz said he began paying attention to the area when he heard about developer Uri Kaufman’s option agreement to convert the building into upscale apartments.

“I thought that this would be an opportunity to do something … that would be good for the area,” said Harpaz, who lives in Rockland County and has experience in the realty business in Manhattan and other areas.

Compare and contrast to who will be ‘sold’ on moving here based upon a C & D project. And please don’t cite the tax-free haven that Amsterdam will become as that is yet another of a decades long supply-side argument that has brought us to where we are now — crushingly high tax rates, investment disincentives and negative growth.

Like the ancient alchemists, lusting for gold to result from things decidedly not gold, we believe the path to riches for the community lies not in mining gold or value-adding to gold or even considering that gold is not the only precious metal.

What forms the raw materials for our gold to be plentifully mined  from our alchemy: water, sewage, construction debris and a wrecking ball.

We can monetize our water; no other public or private source has abundant drinking water.  We’ll make a fortune!

We can monetize our sewage; we will turn our poopie into pellets of gold to be sold. Cha-ching!

We can monetize our construction debris; no other community would pass up such a chance.  We’ll be the first-to-market!

We can monetize our wrecking ball: the sooner we demolish even more of the city, the better.  Ka-boom!

Meanwhile the things that are not commodities and are prized, we simply pass by and discard. What value does a piece of architecture and heritage brings us unless it is at the receiving end of a wrecking ball? Don’t you know that we’ll turn that into gold once it hits the landfill? Then we can demolish even more houses.  Luscious, sweet alchemy.

Believe.

Flurry of memes this month. Let’s take a look:

Chalmers Project is exactly the same project as 300 Guy Park Ave -- aka, how can you support apartments at Chalmers and not apartments at the museum? I’d deconstruct the argument but it would be like trying to convince someone who believes that a rock is exactly the same as a pineapple: it’s a long road with little chance of success; sometimes the Kool-Aid is much too strong to rationally debate.

Impose Tough Regulations on Homeowners, Relax Any and All Regulations on Businesses -- in other words, we need to ruthlessly crack down on codes if a property owner is involved; if a code that applies to a business, how dare you question a business? This meme embodies the principle of lemon socialism: channel profits to individuals and corporations and pass the costs to the public, in this case, homeowners via lowered property values.

We Need Code Enforcement — aka The Mayor has Gutted Codes, aka the Corporation Counsel has Gutted Codes, aka Corporation Counsel Guts Codes to Help His Slumlord Clients. Interesting logic here to accuse attorneys of advocating and endorsing activities of which their clients are accused. By this reasoning, an attorney representing a drunken driver or an arsonist, would literally advocate for repeal of DWI laws and arson laws. Of course, the Council’s lack of funding and downsizing the department bears no relevance to the matter.

All Hail Parking Lots — What blasphemy to advocate for green space! Like Homer Simpson to a freshly baked box of donuts, this meme will erupt upon demolition of Chalmers as they gaze upon the razed earth of the Chalmers site to behold a fresh site perfectly suited for … a parking lot.  I daresay it may be one of the largest parking lots in the city, a truly awe inspiring sight that will shame our existing stock of empty lots.

All Hail Shared Services — see, shared services must work, look at the 911 system (here). Shhh,  just don’t mention ‘MOSA’ as that screws up the meme.

Dirty Liberal Hippies — this meme is triggered and propagated upon the mention of any combination of the following words and phrases as a counterargument: history, historical, architecture, green space, parks, quality of life, education, ethnic, repurposing, greening, marketing,restoration, preservation, culture, residential. Cursed hippies…

Reality versus Fantasy --Amsterdam is a dismal pit of a city, we should take whatever comes our way because we are not worthy of anything better. We should reflexively take anything with a dollar sign that comes our way as it will add to the tax base. regardless of economic externalities present and future to said dollar.  To believe Amsterdam can be reshaped and rebuilt is simply fantasy so the faster we accept the reality of our ultimate decline, the better-- that’s reality.

We Live in a City and Cities are Noisy, Dirty and Hustle-Bustle; Load Up Your Truck and Move to Beverly or Green Acres is the Place to be if you don’t like it — I’d almost buy this argument if its advocates truly advocated urbanism or city-living as espoused. As best as I can tell, they believe anything but. Apparently city living means it’s cool to have a dump; it’s cool to demolish the very fabric of the city; it’s cool to advocate any development regardless of its impact on the neighborhoods; it’s cool for unfettered commercial development anywhere in the city. Ironically this very same chorus embraces decline as an inevitability for our city meanwhile advocating policies that hasten the decline in a self-fulfilling prophecy. How you create a city through policies intentionally anti-growth beats me. I’m sure any viable city allows development to go unchallenged and unfettered. A simply amazing yet profoundly seductive meme apparently.