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Updated
June 9, 2008
A weblog about the politics and affairs of the old and glorious City of Albany, New York, USA. Articles written and disseminated from Albany's beautiful and historic South End by Daniel Van Riper. If you wish to make a response, have anything to add or would like to make an empty threat, please contact me.
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June 9 , 2008
Throwing Money Into The Albany “Landfill”
Reality finally arrives while Jerry Jennings continues to dream of bigger dumps and more revenue
The Albany City government is having a big collective panic right now. Not just The Mayor, mind you. The entire common council, the comptroller, the second rate lawyers in the corporation council, all of them. They’ve finally figured out that they’re in big trouble, and not a one of them has the slightest clue what to do next.
Their problem is that it’s beginning to look like the New York State Department 0f Environmental Conservation (DEC) is not going to approve Mayor Jerry Jennings’ desire to expand the Rapp Road “Landfill.” From the opening paragraph of a lovely document sent to the City by the DEC, dated May 23:
Overall, the [City of Albany’s application to expand the landfill] was found to be lacking adequate support and detail for its many discussions, conclusions and recommendations. It lacks specific milestones, deliverables, and timetables for most proposed actions. It delays decisions about a long term disposal solution and other waste management practices until after 2011. As such, it is of limited scope...
That was the nice part. (Here’s a pdf download of the document, if you have time look it over.) I can just hear the City officials saying to each other, “Geez, this never happened before. The State always used to look the other way and give us permission to take Pine Bush land and cover it with imported garbage. How come they don’t like us any more?”
The way the City politicians tell it, the entire problem is Save the Pine Bush (SPB.) This angry, stubborn and irate band of taxpayers say the City government should not be in the business of importing garbage into the City. And they say garbage should not be dumped onto the sand of the Pine Bush, over an aquifer, next to people’s homes and businesses.
SPB also says that if the City wants to sell bonds, they should use the money to meet the tremendous demand for housing in downtown Albany. You know, renovate abandoned houses and fill them with taxpayers, that sort of thing. Create a populous, livable City so we can properly preserve our green spaces.
What’s wrong with these Pine Bush people? Don’t they trust their elected officials? Don’t they know that the City needs to import garbage to balance the budget? Didn’t the City officials solemnly promise this time to “never ask for another expansion of the dump,” cross their little hearts and hope to succumb?
Of course, this is the fourth time they’ve asked for an expansion of the dump since 1989. And this is the fourth time they’ve said that they’ll “never ask for another expansion of the dump” ever again.
As Seen From The Last Dump ExpansionMost of the garbage in the dump does not come from City of Albany households, which account for only nine percent of the garbage in the dump. The other 91 percent comes partly from the State and from other municipalities. But most of it comes from corporate haulers, some of whom send their waste hundreds of miles to take advantage of our cheap rates. And some of that private waste is the nastiest and stinkiest toxic sludge you will ever encounter.
Supposedly, but not really, the City needs the revenue from the dump to balance the City budget. But no can prove that this is so because the finances are a virtual secret. In truth, there is a massive glut of landfill space in this country and this region, and the only way to attract haulers is to charge half price and keep expanding the dump indefinitely.
“We need to talk,” Michael O’Brien, 12th ward common council member said to me one evening recently. “We should open a dialogue with concerned citizens and try to find alternatives, but do so in a timely manner so that it doesn’t impact the City in a negative fashion.”
“Mike,” I said, “we’ve been trying to open a dialogue with the City since 1989. We started the current round of discussion in 2005. The only thing you guys pay attention to is lawsuits.” By “we” I meant Save the Pine Bush, which I married into.
Now, understand that the honorable member from the 12th ward was not talking to me about the stalled “landfill” expansion because I’m one hell of a guy. It’s because I regularly go home and talk to The Wife, who is personally leading the fight against the dump expansion. And it looks like she and Save the Pine Bush have got all the cards, while the City has a hand full of bupkis.
The pull of The Wife channeling through me was so great that evening that after a while 9th ward Common Council member Jim Sano sidled up to us and joined the conversation. He quickly agreed with his colleague, we all need to talk. We need to find solutions to the disposal problem. We can’t be too hasty about this or there’ll be no place to dump the garbage and then everybody will suffer.
And then Sano started rattling off years. “We’re looking at implementation by 2011... in place by 2017... and then we can start by 2022...” Uh hum. I recall hearing this conversation back in 1989, “Find a new site by 1992, up and running by 1994, close the present site in 1999, and by 2002...”
If these elected public servants thought I might be willing to go home and tell The Wife to stop holding up their dump expansion, they were sadly mistaken. Later that evening I reported this conversation to The Wife, who was in her apron busily cleaning up the kitchen counter like a good spousette. In response to my story she started to laugh, snarl, spit, shout, scream a little, wave around a spatula and stamp her little feet. I’m surprised she didn’t throw dishes at the wall.
Now, it’s worth mentioning that this high powered conversation that I had with these elected officials took place in the back of the main hall at the Polish Community Center out on Washington Avenue Extension. Earlier I’d been outside in the parking lot around sunset gazing up in the sky and admiring the towering mountain across the Thruway that they call a “landfill,” currently the highest point in the Pine Bush.
The Polish Community Center Parking LotThis mountain of mostly imported garbage is Albany Mayor Jerry Jenning’s most lasting legacy, his monument, the symbol of his reign. The impressive peak of Mt. Jennings comes from the dump expansion in the late 1990s, which included filling in the trough between two lesser mountains of garbage. But somehow the trough and the extra land sacrificed to the dump filled up a lot faster than The Mayor and his minions said it would.
Inside the Polish Hall, in the shadow of the garbage, the two elected officials and I were talking trash because we were killing time during the recent Albany County Democratic Party meeting. This happened during a long roll call vote demanded by the leading candidate for our 21st congressional district, Phil Steck. In an impressive display of political willpower, we watched Mr. Steck take control of the Party meeting and wring out of it an official endorsement of his candidacy.
Earlier that evening, Jerry Jennings had attempted a show of political strength over Mr. Steck, but only succeeded in displaying his growing weakness. The Mayor gave his orders, and most of the committee members from the City of Albany obediently got up from their metal folding chairs and walked out of the hall. This left that evening’s Party decisions to the suburbanites. And to the City dissidents like me.
I stayed seated with my own 1st ward common council member, Dominick Calsolaro. We watched as Jennings signaled to his loyalists to walk out. “I think,” Dominick mused, “that us misfits are soon going to take over the Democratic Party.” Yup, that’s us. Misfits.
What was Jenning’s point in ordering a walkout? He certainly demonstrated that there are still a bunch of Democratic Party committee members who still take orders from him and refuse to ask questions, but so what? Judging by the fair number of us from the City who stayed in the Hall, the obedient ones are dwindling.
Common Council members O’Brien and Sano were supposed to have walked out on The Mayor’s orders, but they didn’t. The truth is, I have no idea why they stayed. Perhaps they were gathering information on the misfits. So maybe that’s why they ended up talking to me.
Mostly, the two of them were attempting to explain to me why the Common Council had voted the week before to approve bonds for the “landfill” expansion. According to them, City Comptroller Tom Nitido told them to do it. “He told us the City’s bond might go down if we bond two years from now when the expansion comes through,” Sano explained.
Did you catch that... two years? Even that appears to be wishful thinking on their part. And a few days later, the comptroller was telling the daily papers that he said no such thing.
Here’s the story that I heard about the “landfill” bonding vote. The Mayor skulked around in the hallway outside the common council chambers at City Hall wringing his hands because he was one vote short for his bonds. But then, 11th ward member and loyal Jennings minion Glen Casey showed up characteristically late, and Jennings ordered the vote to be taken immediately.
Casey always skips the public comment period, out of contempt for the public I assume. He once was caught by a TV station secretly reading magazines during an important debate, and he has the highest absentee rate on the Council. The Wife and I once tried to find his house in his ward, but no building exists at the number listed on the City website. Nor did his listed email or phone number work at that time.
I wonder if Casey got bawled out later on, leaving The Mayor outside the chamber doors like that. But he might as well have left the Mayor wringing his hands in frustration. While I was sitting in the Polish Hall waiting for the roll call vote to start, I asked Dominick a question that had been bothering me.
“If the dump expansion hasn’t been approved can the City legally float bonds? Are they allowed to sell them before approval comes through? Aren’t they breaking some law?” Dominick frowned and owned up that was a very good question that he was going to look into. Hah.
Dominick, as we all know, in general considers bonding to be a bad fiscal idea. He’s been known to rant and rave at his colleagues in the common councilon the subject. And he doesn’t think that Albany should be on the receiving end of the garbage business.
Later, in back of the hall near the bar, I brought up the same question with O’Brien and Sano. Is bonding without approval legal? They said, “Oh it’s okay, we won’t sell the bonds until the approval for the ‘landfill’ comes through.” Anyway, they said, the lawyers at the City corporation council said it was legal.
Wrong. Throughout his reign as Mayor, Jerry Jennings has dreamed of building a mega-dump down in Coeymans, some 363 and a half acres on existing farmland, wetlands and Hudson River estuary. This massive crap pile would have been the perfect stopping point for garbage barges floating upriver from New York City, a real cash cow for someone.
Jennings would have realized his dream of toxic horror in Coeymans if not for a fellow named Jim Travers. Now, I want you to know that Jim is a real nice guy, a former Albany South End resident who would literally give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. But when it comes to injustice of this sort, Jim is stubborn as a angry mule and doesn’t know how to give up.
Jim and a group of local citizens (who call themselves SCRAP) has been fighting the proposed Coeymans dump for some 15 years. So far the City taxpayers have spent probably more than ten million dollars to make this dump happen. But it really looks like it’s not gonna happen. So all that money is gone. You wonder why the City of Albany is running a deficit?
I mention this detail because at one point the City passed a bonding measure to build the big Coeymans dump, which has yet to receive approval from the State. Jim and his group sued over the legality of the bonding. And they won the case. Resoundingly.
You might think that the City of Albany corporation counsel’s office would have some dim memory of this legal spanking. They are, after all, allegedly lawyers by profession. And they routinely handle the lawsuits swirling around the Coeymans dump. But no, they told the common council that bonding an unapproved dump is without legal consequences.
Check this out. Here’s what happened a few days after my conversations at the Polish Hall, where I mentioned to three - count ‘em three - common council members that I wondered if bonding for the unapproved dump expansion was legal. There suddenly and mysteriously appeared a new measure on the agenda for the next common council meeting:
51.61.08 AN ORDINANCE REPEALING ORDINANCE 31.42.08 ENTITLED “AN ORDINANCE AUTHORIZING CERTAIN PROJECTS BY THE CITY OF ALBANY, NEW YORK AT A MAXIMUM ESTIMATED COST OF $6,991,000.00 AND AUTHORIZING THE ISSUANCE OF $6,991,000.00 SERIAL BONDS OF SAID CITY TO PAY THE COST THEREOF (LANDFILL EXPANSION)” AND ORDINANCE 32.42.08 ENTITLED “AN ORDINANCE AUTHORIZING CERTAIN PROJECTS BY THE CITY OF ALBANY, NEW YORK AT A MAXIMUM ESTIMATED COST OF $1,700,000.00 AND AUTHORIZING THE ISSUANCE OF $1,700,000.00 SERIAL BONDS OF SAID CITY TO PAY THE COST THEREOF. (PINE BUSH RESTORATION)”
Apparently, it suddenly occurred collectively to the leaders of our City that the annoying guy with the blog is loudly questioning the legality of the “landfill” bonding. And they remembered that Mr. Loudmouth is married to the terrifying female who is responsible for holding up the latest dump expansion, the very same implacable harpy succubus who has been suing the holy crap out of the City over Pine Bush issues for the last 30 years.
The simple fact is that the expansion of the “landfill” probably is not going to receive approval from the State of New York. If approval comes through, it won’t be any time soon. So what was Jennings up to pushing through this premature and apparently illegal bonding?
The Mayor has a habit of playing financial sleight of hand, you know, raising money for one thing but spending it on another. His main trick is to launder the money by dropping it into the City’s general fund. Once everybody forgets where it came from, The Mayor can spend it on whatever he wants.
Pretty slick, eh? No accountability, no records of the transaction. I’m telling you, if Jerry Jennings decides to start importing cocaine instead of garbage, he’s got the machinery in place to hide the profits.
So okay, what happens next? Well, as I mentioned briefly before, the City was supposed to have a waste disposal plan with an environmentally friendly dump in place by 1994. Perhaps, instead of continuing to screw around, perhaps it’s time our city officials start thinking of a workable plan. Or is that too much to expect from this current City administration?
There are a lot better ways to handle that nine percent volume of the “landfill” that comes from City of Albany households. That’s the dialogue the elected officials all of a sudden are interested in joining, now that the DEC is not being cooperative. How do we construct a viable, affordable and environmentally acceptable waste disposal system? What’s the plan, now that the old one is going defunct?
Much earlier that evening at the Polish Hall, I announced my intention to go get something nonalcoholic to drink at the bar in the back of the hall. (I never drink booze at these political events, my mouth runs enough as it is.) My 1st ward common council member, sitting next to me, asked me to get him a BOTTLE OF WATER.
After a long circuitous trip through the crowds, during which I got a ginger ale for myself and talked to a dozen or so people, I finally brought Dominick his two dollar BOTTLE of water, and refused his money.
“When you’re done drinking the water,” I said to him, “you can take the plastic BOTTLE out in the parking lot and fling it across the highway onto the pile.” He looked puzzled, and then grinned with embarrassment.
Damn, I love irritating elected officials.
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