Last Friday a New York State Supreme Court Judge ruled in favor of the demolition of St. Patrick’s church in Watervliet. Ah, finally said the developer the Nigro Companies. Not so fast, my friend. You would think that the only thing next for the Concerned Citizens of St. Patrick’s left to stop the demolition of the church was to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. But this case won’t go to Washington; it will end up back in the city in the Zoning Board to try and have the demolition permits revoked. Didn’t the city approve the demo permits in the first place? Nobody wants to see a church torn down, but the developer has a viable plan to use the property, instead of having a church with no means to keep it from decaying. Bring the bulldozers on.……….What do you think about Annie George. She being the one who supposedly kept a servant locked in a closet for six years in her 30,000-sf mansion in Rexford. She was found guilty of harboring an illegal alien, the lesser of charges. Although the jail time and fine is not as great as the higher charge, my favorite part of the sentence is that the government can seize the multimillion dollar mansion. Just think, the Fed’s could rent it out for weddings, or turn it into a high end Bed and Breakfast.……….Could someone please tell me why the city is changing perfectly good upper-cased letter street signs with street signs with a combination of upper and lower cased letters? If you tell me that the new ones are easier to see, you’d have to provide me with some reasoning behind that.……….Last week Dan Dwyer, the mayor of Rensselaer, made an announcement about bringing a $600 million dollar project to the city’s waterfront area. Mind you, Rensselaer is a city that normally flies under the radar when it comes to Capital District cities. You may hear of a robbery at a Cumberland Farms once and a while, but usually it’s pretty quiet. Could this be the waste to energy plant dismissed by Albany a while back just moving to the other side of the river? “Loads of jobs” is what the mayor said. I suppose it would if it comes to fruition. Why can’t he just come out and say what’s going on? I hope this doesn’t just blow up on you, Mr. Mayor. Is this an election year for you?……….Speaking of Mayor’s. Hey, Jerry. Did you know that Kathy Sheehan’s next fundraiser is the 24th of this month. Seems that the new ”Progressive Democrat” venue is Mingle on Delaware Avenue. Kathy is doing her due diligence on Twitter lately, keeping us all abreast of the comings and goings of her campaign. It’s about time Jerry. Six months until primary time. Time to get the shovels out to put the money into your campaign.……….It looks like Madison Avenue will get it’s makeover. In my blog of last week I talked about why “Complete Streets” won’t work in Albany. The makeover of Madison Ave is not “Complete Streets.” It is an attempt to make the roadway more friendly to the pedestrian and bicyclist. The options given to the city do not, in my mind, make it any safer to ride a bicycle than before. They still have to share a lane with parked cars, same as before, the only difference being a painted parking lane stripe and ”sharrows.” But, the bottom line is, with the road transformed into one lane each way with a center turning lane, it should make for a smoother trip for drivers. I don’t know if synchronized traffic lights are necessary. It would seem to me that you might want to slow the traffic down a bit. Follow me on Twitter.
And that is “The Daily Take”