Counting Down To A Major Change In Albany

In less than two weeks, the citizens of Albany will be on a road to somewhere they’ve never been. For you out of town readers, that means Primary Day for the election of it’s local city officials. This year the winner of the Democratic primary for the office of Mayor comes down to two minority candidates, one being a woman, and the other an African American. Yes, there will be a Republican challenger, along with some Independent’s for the November election, but in Albany, heavily weighed down by Democrat’s, they don’t matter. Kathy Sheehan is now running campaign ads on the radio. Corey Ellis has his phone bank volunteers working flat out. I haven’t seen any TV ad’s, yet; They are expensive, and the stations broadcast well beyond the range of the election. The only thing the voters have on which to judge the candidates are the propaganda mailers that show up in their mailboxes, and the plethora of debates that are held by various self promoting groups who seem to have to invite all the candidates which ends up with an hour or less of chatter with a table full of people trying to get their point across in two minute answers. Last night however, a group of self promoters held a debate with just the two front running Democrat’s. You might get sick and tired of the same old questions time after time, but the truth of the matter is that those same questions asked at every debate focus on the real problems that the city is facing now, and will have to confront in the years ahead. In my mind, Mr. Ellis definitely came out on top of this one. For the first time, a waste to energy solution to the problem of Albany’s aging landfill was addressed by Corey. Sheehan now might just see the light in that. The landfill along with trying to get some money out of the tax exempt Albany institutions are a couple of things the Ellis campaign has come out in favor of. Sheehan on the other hand hasn’t taken a stand on anything. It’s always ”market driven approach” or ”more study needs to be done.” It seems that Ms. Sheehan can’t even run her own department very well. She trumpets moving forward with a new IT person to address the city’s archaic computer system, but people forget — mainly because it was barely reported — that her department almost hired an undesirable individual to run the IT Department last November before the truth came out in a story published by the Washington Post which circumvented the hiring of that bozo. Then the confusing tax bill system that had a lot of Albany residents up in arms not know where or when to send their taxes. Albany has problems in it’s inner city with the blight. Corey has lived in and represented individuals who live in those areas. While it’s a difficult problem, with no clear solution (a landbank is not the answer), at least he’s showing some initiative. Oh, one thing though. With Sheehan, you get a one-two punch with her sidekick Darius running for her job. He says he’s got the experience, but the only experience I know of is his losing effort at the City Auditors job last time around. When Gary Domalewicz beats you this time around are you gonna retire your khaki’s?……….What the heck was the President doing in New York anyway? He goes into the Southern Tier of the state, an area that could really use some economic help with the addition of hydrofracking, and he doesn’t even bring it up, and that coward Gov. Cuomo, after greeting Obama, goes into hiding. Nice job ducking the issue. By the way. Where is that health study you were relying on to make your decision anyway? It can’t possibly take that long to put together. No guts, no glory Andy.……….In the “We don’t Scare Easily” department. 9,000 runners have been added to the 2014 Boston Marathon.………..The Today Show had Brooke Shields on as a guest host this week. That woman is scary. Her brain is so scrambled, they blacked out the faces of her co-stars of roles she was in — god how many could there have been for the ‘actress’ — and had her try to identify them. She couldn’t even pick out the co-star of Two and a Half Men’s Alan Harper (Jon Cryer.) It makes you almost wish Savannah was with the show for the whole three hours. Nah.