Quoted from Alva White

. Snap crews? I have no idea what that is, so I really can't offer an opinion there.
.

my apologies meant to say the General Services/Neighborhood Revitalization crews....name changed

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

Any business can work with Metroplex   -- if it plans to renovate its existing building or purchase and upgrade an existing building or build a new building for its business.

There are MORE businesses Downtown today than there were 10 years ago.  10 years - there were many vacant buildings.  Vacant buildings do NOT generate sales tax revenue. For this and for other reasons, your sales tax argument is very weak.

Expanding the tax base and reducing spending are the only 2 ways to lower taxes.  Refusing to do anything to attract redevelopment/development dollars and new businesses will NOT reduce taxes -- it has NEVER worked that way and NEVER will.   If you let the community decline and deteriorate -- which is the plan that you and him/her whose name shall not be spoken advocate -- you will only INCREASE taxes and make matters worse.  

  

Expand the tax base   ???????????????????????????      DV, would you care to provide the evidence that all this wild spending of taxpayer money on downtown has expanded the tax base???????     The FACT that with Metroplex and the city/county DEM leadership,  that the tax base has MASSIVELY FALLEN.




Vacant buildings do not generate sales tax revenue ??????????     And the occupied buildings are generating sales tax revenue????????.   Would you are to address the FACT that sales tax revenue in Schenectady Co is FALLING while in all other counties it is increasing.   Can you address that???????


Any business can work with Metroplex     ????    Really???????    DV would you care to address the FACT that it seems it's only for the millionaires and billionaires.  Would you care to address the FACT that Metroplex has NOT provided anything for the LONG TIME TAXPAYING businesses downtown, which combined with the FACT that these long time businesses also have to help pay for the taxes for their neighboring properties owned by millionaires and billionaires causes the DRASTIC INCREASE IN TAXES on the small businesses.  


Rudnick's owners cite age, taxes for closing Schenectady store

Age, slowing sales, and high taxes are some of the reasons the owners of Rudnick’s Uniforms & Clothing are closing the business after 72 years in downtown Schenectady, NY.
“I’m 66,” co-owner Linda Tolokonsky told me. “My husband is 69. You need somebody young, and I’m not going to fight this city anymore.”
Rudnick’s, at 308 State St., sells coats, shoes, boots, gloves, jeans and supplies uniforms to nurses, police officers, firefighters and public works crews.
Tolokonsky’s father, Sid Epstein, opened the business in 1941 on behalf of the owner, whose original Rudnick's store was in downtown Albany. Years later, Epstein bought the business outright.
Those were the days when downtown was the place to shop.
“He used to work 7 to 7 to accommodate the three shifts at GE,” Tolokonsky said.
She and her husband, Norman, took over about 25 years ago. Together, they survived the exodus of most other retailers downtown after the General Electric Co. workforce fell from 40,000-plus around World War II to about 4,000 today.
Although downtown has improved over the past decade, with hundreds of millions of dollars in public and private investments, Tolokonsky said too much has been spent opening bars and restaurants, and not enough to support retailers.
“Metroplex hasn’t given me anything, and I’m not subservient to them,” she said of the taxpayer-financed Schenectady Metroplex Development Authority.

Quoted from sanfordy2

my apologies meant to say the General Services/Neighborhood Revitalization crews....name changed

Okay, I'm still lost. What does that department actually do? How much of the budget does that entail?. Sorry for the questions, I just never heard of it.

Quoted from Alva White

Okay, I'm still lost. What does that department actually do? How much of the budget does that entail?. Sorry for the questions, I just never heard of it.

2 parts of the same department/ one part is sanitation...the other half maintains the city property acquired thru foreclosure etc and also cleans up taxpayer owned property messes

Quoted from Alva White

Yeah, I still think you're decades away from that though.

I'll tell you what. We'll chip in on a bottle of really good Brandy. We'll get a third party to hold it for us. If the city goes bankrupt before I die, you get the booze. If I die and we're still not in bankruptcy, you have to sit and watch your buddy Box A Rox drink it. He'll then accompany you to register to vote, where you have to register Democrat. Assuming you pass the age requirement, you'll then march down to the local recruiting office and enlist in the Navy. Do we have a wager?    

How about we each put up $50 now, the whoever wins the bet gets the hundred bucks?  We pay somebody a salary of $200 a year to hold the money, with a 3% increase each year.  By then, the hundred bucks we bet will be worth the same as $50 today. Nobody really wins any money since inflation devalued the money.  But the guy holding the money will make out well.  It's the same as the Metroplex concept.  

Quoted from sanfordy2

2 parts of the same department/ one part is sanitation...the other half maintains the city property acquired thru foreclosure etc and also cleans up taxpayer owned property messes

Ok thanks. I really wasn't sure what they did. So, still playing devil's advocate, how much is being saved if we just eliminate that from the budget? I guess at that point you'll be paying for your own garbage pick up also. How much do you save by paying a private hauler? And what about the foreclosed properties? I guess we just let them decay and eventually fall down own their own. Then we'll just have to find some money somewhere to pay someone to clean it up.

Like I said not cut and dried.

Quoted from CICERO

How about we each put up $50 now, the whoever wins the bet gets the hundred bucks?  We pay somebody a salary of $200 a year to hold the money, with a 3% increase each year.  By then, the hundred bucks we bet will be worth the same as $50 today. Nobody really wins any money since inflation devalued the money.  But the guy holding the money will make out well.  It's the same as the Metroplex concept.  

The Brandy will have more value in the end.

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

It is beyond disingenuous (frankly, an all-out self-serving, deliberate LIE) to say that this property or ANY property that has received incentives from Metroplex is 100% tax exempt and to suggest that it will always be that way. Some properties have received TEMPORARY and/or reduced property tax levies -- however - these come with Payments In Lieu Of Taxes levied and over a period of years the property is gradually (a portion at a time) brought back to paying the FULL property tax.
.

Yes DV SOME get TERMPORARY exemptions.  I believe MVP has a temporary exemption.   That Paul Mitchell school is such, though, as a Forbes BILLIONAIRE, it is beyond belief, it is INCONCEIVBLE that taxpayers in the city, MOST of whom have total HOUSEHOLD incomes of less than $40,000 should have to pay ONE PENNY for a property owned by a billionaire.  

Here is the tax info page for Paul Mitchell, YES, it is temporary, though 15 years, and WHY should the poor pay taxes for even one year for a billionaire?   But you will note that it has an end date





But here is Bombers tax info.   DV, would care to tell us what is the "End Year" for their 100% tax exemption???????  





Not sure you understand property id, tax map id's, exemptions, assessment, etc, but here is info on properties owned by the MULTI-billionaire Galesi.   Remember, it is the financially struggling homeowners most of whom have incomes of less than $40,000 that are paying the taxes on the properties owned by this billionaire.   Again, it is INCONCEVABLE that DEM leaders would EVER making low income people pay the taxes for a MULTI-billionaire, but in Schenectady, they do.

Here is proof for you that Galesi and Maxon Alco Holdings are one and the same.  





Now, here is a image showing a number of parcels that Galesi now owns for the ALCO property




Now, to copy and paste YOUR words:  " It is beyond disingenuous (frankly, an all-out self-serving, deliberate LIE) to say that this property or ANY property that has received incentives from Metroplex is 100% tax exempt and to suggest that it will always be that way"

What "self serving deliberate LIE are you talking about??????       DV, I trust you will tell us what the END YEAR is for this Galesi tax exemption?





Here is yet another parcel in that group.   I trust you can match the parcel number?     I trust you can tell us what is the END YEAR for this parcel, part of the ALCO project?






Here is another such property in that group of parcels, I trust you can see the Maxon Alco Holdings????




And DV I trust that for this above parcel, you an tell us what the END YEAR is for this Galesi parcel???????







Here is another such property in that group of parcels, I trust you can see the Maxon Alco Holdings????




And DV I trust that for this above parcel, you an tell us what the END YEAR is for this Galesi parcel???????




That above is a random sampling from that group of parcels




Now, here is the image of the property (you DO see the "Maxon Alco Holdings???????") that is the old DSS building.   This happens to be the property that the BILLIONAIRE owns but the city/county/plex DEMS are going to have demolished via forcing the homeowners to pay for the demo (and if the homeowners don't pay their full tax bill, ie., if any homeowners do not include the cost of the demo when paying their tax bill, the city forcibly takes their home away from them---that, DV, is called "tax foreclosure.")  

DV would you care to tell us what the END YEAR for the 100% tax exemption  is for this Galesi property?






This is but a small sampling

Quoted from Alva White

. How much do you save by paying a private hauler? .

The city won't answer that question.  


Back around 1998 maybe 1999, the former Mayor Jurzynski proposed a trash "fee."   At the time the council was I believe 100% democrat, and Stratton was on the council.    The council voted unanimously against a trash fee.  

Brian Stratton, then a councilman voted NO on a trash "fee."   Then he was elected mayor a few years later and guess what?   Stratton, who totally opposed the trash FEE when he was a councilman, then in his very first budget Stratton proposed a trash FEE basically saying it would be the saving grace for the city financially.    However the fee was not and never intended to totally cover the cost of the trash pick-up cost of the sanitation department's budget.  The "fee" was meant to supplement the "TAX."   In other words, the city budget for the sanitation department included getting revenue from the "property tax" which is calculated based on the assessed value of one's property.   Then the "fee" was intended to supplement it.   The fee has been increased for times and now, under 10 years of city DEM leadership, the fee has been increased very close to a 100% fee increase.   The fee is NOT tax deductible as it is NOT part of the "property tax."   IRS allows taxes to be deducted ONLY when it's calculated based on the assessment value

Figure the minimum (one family house) fee is $218 PLUS the secret amount that is part of the "property tax," it would be logical to say that the cost of trash pick up in the city is pretty much the same as the private haulers (depending on company).   However it's true that in the city one can put out perhaps three trash cans of trash from their one family house and it will be picked up.   Where private haulers do the residential pick up, yes, you pretty much have one can.   But then again, you can have a much bigger can than the city will pick up (for one can).   In the city, say you buy three cans (and they aren't cheap anymore) and this coming winter comes and it's a windy day and you lose two cans.   Guess what, YOU spend your OWN money to buy more cans.   The privates, it's been a long time but I think we may have paid a deposit at one time, long ago, that might have been considered for the cans; I'm not 100% certain.   But, ANYTIME the weather or a thief takes your can, you will NEVER pay for a replacement can.  When trash collectors bang the cans against the truck or whatever, IF they damage them, the city is NOT responsible for them; rather YOU have to spend YOUR money to replace the cans.

Also, what many do not take into account when comparing the "cost" of private haulers to the cost in the city (and that means Schenectady because I don't know how other cities with municipal trash pick up do it) is that the privates pick up 52 weeks per year.  Your trash is picked up faithfully on the same day each and every week throughout the year.  The ONLY exception is the FEW holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and maybe one more.   But supposed your pick up is on Wednesday and Christmas falls on Wednesday.   With the privates your pick up THAT week would occur on Thursday, the Thursday people on Friday, and the Friday people will have their pick up on Saturday.   The Monday people of the following week are not affected at all.   So this absolutely guarantees 52 weeks of pick up every year.   In the city of Schenectady, the HUGE number of holidays cause the trash pick up to be delayed each time there is a holiday and probably two, even three times in a year you go a WHOLE WEEK with NO PICK-UP, but you still pay for the year and we all know a year is comprised of 52 weeks.  And yes, they do have nice calendars to refer to that show the pick-up days by neighborhood, it works if everyone faithfully remembers to check their calendar, but let's be realistic.   People are busy, they are working, sometimes two jobs to pay the high taxes in the city, many then have to pay child care, they have their houses to worry about and the maintenance costs when they can't afford them, the kids may be in school and have after school and/or sports activities and parents have to keep remembering that, oh, don't forget the car inspection is due, oh, don't forget having to remember four separate tax payment dates in the city, and then one bill is for the city/county, and the other one you pay to the school district, don't forget what to pick up on the way home from work, etc. etc., so it's easy to forget to look ta the calendar for the trash (unless you tape it onto the can to get wet and unreadable in the rain).  

The city code mandates separating recyclables and putting trash in see through bags, but naturally the city is so busy focused on downtown, they don't provide services to the neighborhoods where the taxpayers live; the city does not enforce it's own laws regarding storage of trash, preparation of trash, and separating of recyclables.   The city makes money on recyclables, but the people are not recycling and the city is spending so much of the tax money on the tax exemptions for downtown that it doesn't spend it on code enforcement for separating trash.  And in fact the city spent taxpayer money on a recycling video that was playing,  endlessly looping,  on that taxpayer funded TV station at Proctors, and it didn't make a bit of difference in the rate of recycling.

Again, I can't speak for other cities beyond Schenectady, but here in Rotterdam using the more cost efficient private haulers, they pick up far more types of recyclables than the city does.   And everything is so clean and neat, we don't see piles of filled trash bags sitting at the curb, so no bags ripped open by animals, or even humans.  


The city picks up trash only from one, two, and three family houses, everything else needs a private hauler.  The city should just eliminate trash pick up and make everyone go with private haulers.


Oh, by the way, the high paid head of the city's sanitation dept, yeah, he doesn't live in the city.   He doesn't pay the high taxes, he doesn't have to live with erratic trash pick up dates nor piles of trash sitting at curbs of neighborhors' houses.

Quoted from mikechristine1

The city won't answer that question.  


Back around 1998 maybe 1999, the former Mayor Jurzynski proposed a trash "fee."   At the time the council was I believe 100% democrat, and Stratton was on the council.    The council voted unanimously against a trash fee.  

Brian Stratton, then a councilman voted NO on a trash "fee."   Then he was elected mayor a few years later and guess what?   Stratton, who totally opposed the trash FEE when he was a councilman, then in his very first budget Stratton proposed a trash FEE basically saying it would be the saving grace for the city financially.    However the fee was not and never intended to totally cover the cost of the trash pick-up cost of the sanitation department's budget.  The "fee" was meant to supplement the "TAX."   In other words, the city budget for the sanitation department included getting revenue from the "property tax" which is calculated based on the assessed value of one's property.   Then the "fee" was intended to supplement it.   The fee has been increased for times and now, under 10 years of city DEM leadership, the fee has been increased very close to a 100% fee increase.   The fee is NOT tax deductible as it is NOT part of the "property tax."   IRS allows taxes to be deducted ONLY when it's calculated based on the assessment value

Figure the minimum (one family house) fee is $218 PLUS the secret amount that is part of the "property tax," it would be logical to say that the cost of trash pick up in the city is pretty much the same as the private haulers (depending on company).   However it's true that in the city one can put out perhaps three trash cans of trash from their one family house and it will be picked up.   Where private haulers do the residential pick up, yes, you pretty much have one can.   But then again, you can have a much bigger can than the city will pick up (for one can).   In the city, say you buy three cans (and they aren't cheap anymore) and this coming winter comes and it's a windy day and you lose two cans.   Guess what, YOU spend your OWN money to buy more cans.   The privates, it's been a long time but I think we may have paid a deposit at one time, long ago, that might have been considered for the cans; I'm not 100% certain.   But, ANYTIME the weather or a thief takes your can, you will NEVER pay for a replacement can.  When trash collectors bang the cans against the truck or whatever, IF they damage them, the city is NOT responsible for them; rather YOU have to spend YOUR money to replace the cans.

Also, what many do not take into account when comparing the "cost" of private haulers to the cost in the city (and that means Schenectady because I don't know how other cities with municipal trash pick up do it) is that the privates pick up 52 weeks per year.  Your trash is picked up faithfully on the same day each and every week throughout the year.  The ONLY exception is the FEW holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and maybe one more.   But supposed your pick up is on Wednesday and Christmas falls on Wednesday.   With the privates your pick up THAT week would occur on Thursday, the Thursday people on Friday, and the Friday people will have their pick up on Saturday.   The Monday people of the following week are not affected at all.   So this absolutely guarantees 52 weeks of pick up every year.   In the city of Schenectady, the HUGE number of holidays cause the trash pick up to be delayed each time there is a holiday and probably two, even three times in a year you go a WHOLE WEEK with NO PICK-UP, but you still pay for the year and we all know a year is comprised of 52 weeks.  And yes, they do have nice calendars to refer to that show the pick-up days by neighborhood, it works if everyone faithfully remembers to check their calendar, but let's be realistic.   People are busy, they are working, sometimes two jobs to pay the high taxes in the city, many then have to pay child care, they have their houses to worry about and the maintenance costs when they can't afford them, the kids may be in school and have after school and/or sports activities and parents have to keep remembering that, oh, don't forget the car inspection is due, oh, don't forget having to remember four separate tax payment dates in the city, and then one bill is for the city/county, and the other one you pay to the school district, don't forget what to pick up on the way home from work, etc. etc., so it's easy to forget to look ta the calendar for the trash (unless you tape it onto the can to get wet and unreadable in the rain).  

The city code mandates separating recyclables and putting trash in see through bags, but naturally the city is so busy focused on downtown, they don't provide services to the neighborhoods where the taxpayers live; the city does not enforce it's own laws regarding storage of trash, preparation of trash, and separating of recyclables.   The city makes money on recyclables, but the people are not recycling and the city is spending so much of the tax money on the tax exemptions for downtown that it doesn't spend it on code enforcement for separating trash.  And in fact the city spent taxpayer money on a recycling video that was playing,  endlessly looping,  on that taxpayer funded TV station at Proctors, and it didn't make a bit of difference in the rate of recycling.

Again, I can't speak for other cities beyond Schenectady, but here in Rotterdam using the more cost efficient private haulers, they pick up far more types of recyclables than the city does.   And everything is so clean and neat, we don't see piles of filled trash bags sitting at the curb, so no bags ripped open by animals, or even humans.  


The city picks up trash only from one, two, and three family houses, everything else needs a private hauler.  The city should just eliminate trash pick up and make everyone go with private haulers.


Oh, by the way, the high paid head of the city's sanitation dept, yeah, he doesn't live in the city.   He doesn't pay the high taxes, he doesn't have to live with erratic trash pick up dates nor piles of trash sitting at curbs of neighborhors' houses.

Ok, we can cut the sanitation dept. and it's leader. But essentially nobody's really saving anything. Well, maybe a few pennies.

So how many police and firemen do you suggest we eliminate? And just how do we get around that pesky little thing called a contract with their unions? And let's say for argument's sake we do get around that, and we're able to eliminate say 5-10 police and/or firemen. Living in Rotterdam I guess it doesn't bother you that crime will probably increase proportionately to the manpower reduction.

As for the residency requirement for city workers, I essentially agree that in a perfect world that's how it should be. That being said I hardly think that even if ALL city workers were living in the city and paying taxes here it would make that much of a difference. Just a drop in the bucket.

Everybody has all these great ideas on how to ease the tax burden. Problem is they're too simplistic.  

Quoted from Alva White

Ok, we can cut the sanitation dept. and it's leader. But essentially nobody's really saving anything. Well, maybe a few pennies.

So how many police and firemen do you suggest we eliminate? And just how do we get around that pesky little thing called a contract with their unions? And let's say for argument's sake we do get around that, and we're able to eliminate say 5-10 police and/or firemen. Living in Rotterdam I guess it doesn't bother you that crime will probably increase proportionately to the manpower reduction.

As for the residency requirement for city workers, I essentially agree that in a perfect world that's how it should be. That being said I hardly think that even if ALL city workers were living in the city and paying taxes here it would make that much of a difference. Just a drop in the bucket.

Everybody has all these great ideas on how to ease the tax burden. Problem is they're too simplistic.  

I wouldn't suggest eliminating fire and police.  

But trash could be privatized.   The city would be so very much cleaner, and the taxpayers would not be burdened with the lavish pay, benefits, and pensions of the public sector workers.  The privates are so much more efficient.  

Something else, and I don't know if it's been stopped yet, but the DEMS had a policy of allowing the trash workers to go home when their routes were done.   What was happening was that they were rushing through their daily route so that they could get the lavish 8 hours pay for working only 6 hours but more importantly it was costing the taxpayers a bundle because the divers of the trucks were involved in so many accidents, I think the mayor problem there was the insurance premiums went up substantially.

Also, with the private haulers, they don't have workers doing the lifting, it's done by the truck.   The city workers do the lifting themselves which makes the taxpayers more likely to have taxes increased to pay for all the workers comp cases form injuries.  I admit, I don't know what figures there are on workers comp for trash collectors, the city doesn't report such things.  But it's obvious that manual labor lifting cans result in physical injury.   As could to some extent walking on slippery streets in the winter, climbing snowbanks to reach the can (because the city of course would not enforce their own rules about how can's should be at the curb during snow), perhaps getting sick from getting wet in the cold or rain.   It's certainly not an easy job but workers are more prone to costly occurrences.  

Quoted from CICERO

If tax breaks and grants for businesses generate revenue when given to select businesses, then surely it would generate MORE sales tax revenue if offered to ALL businesses.  BUT...It isn't offered to all businesses, the businesses are selected by a central planner.

If Sales Tax revenue is up, it doesn't mean there is necessarily a coorolation with Metroplex.  Sales tax is a percentage of the cost of the good or service.  If Metroplex did noting, sales tax revenue would increase with the rate of inflation.

If taxes were reduced county/city wide to reduce the tax burden for everybody, equal to the amount Metroplex subsidizes tax relief, the results would be the same.  Only difference is, it would be a level playing field for all, and more competition.

AND they would generate higher wages..... hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha....

why doesn't the government just give everyone a paycheck, forgo taxes and everyone will work where they want, when
they want and all for the same amount of $ ?

each person as an individual is a corporation.....

Rotterdam does not need a police department.

The state police and sheriff's dept already service this area.

Clifton Park has no police force.

They are larger and have more businesses there too.

The Sheriff's dept and the state police provide their law enforcement needs.

They have more businesses and greater property values "because" they have lower taxes, caused by not spending millions on police.

Quoted from Libertarian4life

Rotterdam does not need a police department.

The state police and sheriff's dept already service this area.

Clifton Park has no police force.

They are larger and have more businesses there too.

The Sheriff's dept and the state police provide their law enforcement needs.

They have more businesses and greater property values "because" they have lower taxes, caused by not spending millions on police.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but from reading the various Rotterdam-centric FB and other outlets, there's what seems to be a growing sentiment that we may need more police. Or at the very least our large force should  start doing their jobs and making their presence known with more visible patrols . Some folks are even beginning to take to the streets doing their own patrols, and reawakening Neighborhood Watches.

Quoted from Libertarian4life

Rotterdam does not need a police department.

The state police and sheriff's dept already service this area.

Clifton Park has no police force.

They are larger and have more businesses there too.

The Sheriff's dept and the state police provide their law enforcement needs.

They have more businesses and greater property values "because" they have lower taxes, caused by not spending millions on police.

but again their police coverage is 'owned' by the folks in certain tax brackets, with the same issues as those in
different tax brackets. But those in the higher tax bracket have more money to cover their warts.