SCHENECTADY Store moves to sue city over closure BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter Reach Gazette reporter Kathleen Moore at 395-3120 or moore@dailygazette.com.
The city may have to pay for 41 days of lost business incurred after a city employee allegedly told Funn Electronics to close. Store clerk Rose Samru spent several hours in the city’s law department Friday working on a notice of claim in which she demands compensation. She said she’s unsure how much she lost. “My customers are scattered. I’m still losing customers because they thought I was closed for good,” she said. She is the sole employee of the Albany Street business, which is owned by her son. Samru closed her doors after an encounter with the city’s code enforcement liaison, who allegedly told her not to reopen until she paid for a secondhand dealer’s permit. Samru does not purchase or sell secondhand goods, so she refused to buy the permit. Instead, she attempted to appeal the decision to the city’s code enforcement office, but because she does not own the building or the business, Building Inspector Keith Lamp refused to talk to her, according to Corporation Counsel L. John Van Norden. Her son, who owns the business and the building, may have moved out of the city and has directed Samru to handle business affairs. When the issue finally came to Van Norden’s attention, he determined within hours that the business should not have been closed. Now Van Norden is trying to sort out what went wrong. The crux of the issue is that the city employee never filed paperwork regarding the alleged closure order. It’s possible the employee told Samru she should “probably” close. The order could also have been termed as a “friendly suggestion,” Van Norden said. Also, Samru is Guyanese; there may have been a language barrier. But she clearly believed she had been told to close, and she obediently remained closed for six weeks while she tried to appeal to the code enforcement department. .................>>>>...............>>>>...........http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01002&AppName=1
This is what happens when you keep re-electing anti-business DEMS. Pretty soon you have no businesses. But don't fret-the homeowners can pick up the lost taxes. Nobody will complain too much.
In the immortal words of their fearless leader; "Schenectady DEMS understand the importance of high taxes". No truer words have been spoken. Of course, the Mayor cheered when KEM Cleaners left the City saying he needed more parking lots on Erie Blvd. For what-his pocket park?
Perhaps Metroplex could purchase the building at market value and sell it to a developer for $1 to renovate it for use by Proctor's, as a museum or by a not-for-profit thus taking it off the property tax roles.
Hey, there is a reason for having her close... To help the taxpayers.
After all, if she's closed, there can't be anyone coming into the store during business hours holding her up or stealing things, requiring a police presence, right???
This is soooooo schenectady. They harass homeowners AND business! AND they try to take ownership of properties by eminent domain. These people are nuts!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Incompetence reigns at Schenectady’s code enforcement unit
Whatever happened to Schenectady Corporation Counsel L. John Van Norden’s effort to straighten out the city’s code enforcement department so that stupid mistakes, like the one involving the improper shuttering of an Albany Street electronics store for 41 days this winter, would be avoided? Late last October Van Norden conducted a training workshop for code enforcement personnel after acknowledging they were clueless about proper procedure for enforcing building codes. Even longtime Building Inspector Keith Lamp admitted at the time that he’d been doing things wrong his “entire career.” Yet just a few months later, someone in the department said something to Rose Samru, the owner of Funn Electronics, that she construed as an order to cease operations. Reportedly, the person told Samru her store needed a special permit to sell secondhand goods even though it only sells new ones; a store next door apparently sells used. Samru obeyed the instructions, which were delivered only verbally, then tried for the next month to contest the order to Lamp. But Lamp wouldn’t speak with her because, she says, she doesn’t actually own the building or the business (her son does). It was only after a reporter asked Van Norden about it that anyone looked into the situation. ................>>>>.......................>>>>..................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01103&AppName=1
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This is what happens when you keep re-electing anti-business DEMS. Pretty soon you have no businesses. But don't fret-the homeowners can pick up the lost taxes. Nobody will complain too much.
