Ahhh, Room To Stretch Out!

Syracuse’s population has fallen to a record low according to a new report by the U.S. Census. There are 139,000 folks in my town now. That’s a decline from 147,000 in 2000 and 225,000 in the 1950’s.

Two things jump out at me, one good and one bad.

GOOD: If Syracuse falls below 125,000 people NY State will consider us a small city and all future school board budgets will have to be approved by a public vote. This would be great. The school board would never pass another budget and the district would be in open revolt against its own residents. Why would this be great? You don’t think that the school district would prioritize hiring city residents and getting current employees to move back in to the city, just to keep us above the magic 125,000 figure? They have over 4,000 employees. If they think its tough dealing with the Common Council, try marketing ever-increasing school budgets to residents already hard pressed by fuel and heating costs, property taxes and water rates.

BAD: Will the Feds consider us too small to merit our very own entitlement grant under the Community Development Block Grant? That’s currently a guaranteed $7-$9 million a year (and with Barack taking over maybe a bump from the lean Bush years.) City’s too small for their own grant compete for funding out of NY State’s CDBG allotment. It’s an application process and some years you may get a grant, some years you may not. And it will be nothing close to millions of dollars. Goodbye to all the housing non-profits and the community centers.

Update: My typically snarky response to our population loss, with its legitimate cup half-full/cup half-empty policy implications is totally blown out of the water by Sean Kirst’s excellent column in today’s Post Standard. For the non-snarky, humanistic and tug-at-your-heartstrings perfect take on our situation, walk in your bare feet across your porch, pick up the copy of the Post that you paperboy tossed there this morning and read Sean’s column.

Clay Buchholz & Mike Timlin In Syracuse

Clay Buchholz In Syracuse

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

Clay Buchholz pitched Pawtucket to a victory over the Syracuse Chiefs last night.
I went to see the young Red Sox phenom and got
a chance to also see Mike Timlin, the iron man of the Red Sox’s
bullpen in both of their championship seasons.

Buchholz was not dominant last night in his five innings, although he
gave up only a couple of hits and no runs.
Second baseman Joe Thurston was the star of the game, with two RBI’s
and several nice plays in the field.
The infield bailed Buchholz out with three double plays and errorless
play in the field. Timlin came in to relieve
Buchholz in the sixth and set down the home team 1-2-3. I think he
threw all of six pitches. He looks healthy.

Even though the game was played through a persistent drizzle, I had a
great time. There were tons of Sox fans out
flying the colors. In Boston, there is some sniping about poseurs
and folks jumping on the bandwagon.
The blogs are aflame with debates on being a “real” Sox fan. For
those of us in the hinterlands of Red Sox
Nation, the debate is silly. I don’t care if you’re wearing a pink
Sox hat or don’t know the 1967 Impossible Dream team
starting line up. All I know, there were more Ortiz, Papelbon.
Lowell, Dice K, Lester, Ramirez (even a Derek Lowe!)
shirts in evidence last night than Posada, Jeter and A-Rod shirts. In
the middle of Yankee country.

It’s Not About The Money. It’s Public Service.

Mayor Driscoll Skips Both SUN Meetings On Vacant Houses

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

According to today’s Post-Standard, the Mayor’s pay raise is a sure thing. I was quoted in the article, but I managed to merely paraphrase our member’s opinions. I avoided pontificating on the issue as if I spoke for the organization. That is not my role as an organizer.

However, it is my job as a blogger! And I’ve got issues!

The rate increase is retroactive. If this were truly not about the current occupant why not make it apply only to the incoming Mayor?

No one becomes Mayor because of the nice pay packet and the health insurance. If people are discouraged from running for the office because they may have to take a pay cut–we don’t want them. This isn’t a company manufacturing widgets , this is public service.

Executive compensation is an upper middle-class racket. The talking points are always the same–we will not be able to attract the really talented and gifted people we want for these top spots unless the pay is astronomical. Well I’m calling bullshit on that. Plenty of well-qualified candidates spend a lot of their own money competing for this job at every election.

Some people are concerned that the name at the top of the organizational chart doesn’t have the highest salary. I’m not overly concerned with that situation. The Mayor has a lot of institutional power that ensures his authority will be respected down through the ranks. Besides, people doing jobs like cops, firefighters and DPW workers SHOULD make more money than the Mayor. They do hard, dangerous and unpleasant jobs that merit top compensation.

Syracuse is a city that is perpetually cutting services while simultaneously raising people’s taxes and fees. In this kind of climate, it is wrong to raise elected officials’ pay.

More Photos Of Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

More Photos Of Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

Hose coming out of basement. Woman in window has apartment
immediately above shit pool.

More Photos On Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

More Photos On Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

Shit rolls downhill alright. Across the lawn (dirt patch) adjacent
to apartment building.

More Pictures: The Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

More Pictures: The Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

Sewage pooling up due to leak in hose connection–right at the front
stoop of the rear of the building. Three families, one with
an infant girl, live directly above this pool.

They Don’t Give A Shit About Us, Literally

They Don’t Give A Shit About Us, Literally

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

This photo is of the remains of a sewage backup that the absentee
landlords of 170 W. Brighton Ave. pumped out of
the basement into the adjoining yard. This apartment building tells
a years’ long tale of our neighborhood’s abuse
at the hands of slumlords and neglect at the hands of city officials.

The apartment building was owned for years by Harry Murphy, a
notorious Southside slumlord. The apartments
were actually two buildings–each containing 12 units. Tales of
drug trafficking, noise and gun shots were common
at this property, nicknamed Fort Apache by area residents. Many
members of the Brighton Brigades gang cycled
through the property. The properties taxes were unpaid for years.
This was actually a strategic move on the part of
Mr. Murphy, since the city decreed that it would not issue a
certificate of compliance–required of all multi-unit buildings
in the city–since the owner was tax delinquent. Was the logical
next step closure of the building until the taxes were
paid and the buildings inspected for code violations? No. The next
step was to do nothing. SUN complained to
Code Enforcement, the Community Development Commissioner, numerous
Common Councilors and the Mayor.
No response.

The building was sold in 2005 to an out-of-town developer based in
Long Island. The taxes remain unpaid, totaling
over $22, 000–not including the current years arrears. A fire
destroyed a good portion of one of the buildings, one
tenants manner of settling a dispute with another tenant. In 2007,
162 W. Brighton was torn down.

As a result of SUN’s complaints on Wednesday May 21st, city DPW came
out to the remaining building and stopped
the landlord’s hired men from pumping more sewage into the adjacent
lawn. City Code Enforcement and the County
Health Department both came out the next day as a result of our
complaints. The building was declared unfit for
habitation and the landlord hired a knowledgeable plumber to drain
the remaining sewage. County Health determined
that the sewage pumped onto the lawn could stay there, as the sun
would kill any toxins.

With the exception of Tim Carroll, Director of Operations, who
managed to get DPW out to the site and stop the pumping,
no one acted with concern or speed. Code did not
return phone calls on either Wednesday or Thursday evening. The
Health Department did not return Wednesday’s
phone message and when contacted on Thursday stated they would get to
the dumping site the next day
“if nothing big came up.”

Five families still remain in the unfit building. They do not
qualify under HUD guidelines for relocation assistance. The
agency the city used to help relocate families in unfit properties
went out of business and the city never replaced the
service, despite putting $10,000 into the CDBG budget for this
purpose two years ago.

Remember, when you say nobody gives a shit about us, you are
absolutely right!

My First Taste Of The Grass

My First Taste Of The Grass

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

Last week I went out to Alliance Bank Stadium to root for the Pawtucket Red Sox against the hometown Chiefs. Why?
1) I’m never going to root against the Red Sox–majors or top farm team
2) The Chiefs nickname is racist.
3) I had to see the new grass field.

Oh well, the day was overcast and cold, the PawSox lost 8-5 and the thrilling young stars destined for Fenway are mostly already up in Boston due to injuries (Lowrie, Buchholz, Moss). It was still a fun day. Draft Saranac beer and a grass field. Beats lousy corporate brew and astroturf.

What’s Mine Is Mine And What’s Yours Is Open To Negotiation

Last night, I went to the Common Council’s public hearing on the city’s proposed 2008-09 budget. Unlike some hearings in past years, there were few people in attendance (perhaps a dozen) and the whole thing wrapped up in about a half hour.

However, the tenor of the meeting remains the same. People from the school district and various groups affiliated with teachers and parents of schoolchildren came to ask the city to spend more money on the school district.

The appeals came in two forms. The more savvy or connected speakers hewed to the school district’s party line and asked for a specific amount–$1.2 million. The less discriminating came and asked the city to fund the school district “fully.” Both groups alluded to the undeniable truth about the students in the city school district–students in abject poverty, many with little fluency in English, cost the district more to educate than do affluent children from the suburbs. When you start from so far behind, it takes more effort and more investment to catch up.

Unfortunately, no one speaking up for the school district has even an elementary grasp of the city’s economic structure and many speakers hold a thinly-veiled contempt for the city. The speakers constantly allude to the historic underfunding of the school district by Albany, lumping the city into the mix as an unindicted co-conspirator, questioning the Mayor and the Council’s commitment to our children.

Syracuse is a city where twice the amount of the local tax levy goes to the school district than to all other city services combined. Yet speakers for the school district seem to believe that the city is holding out on the schools, withholding money. The reality is that the city’s tax levy is now a small percentage of the both the city’s budget and the school district’s budget. The city and schools rely on transfer payments from Albany to survive. In fact, the structural deficits faced by both bodies–in the form of contracts with their unionized work forces–and the pensions, health care and other benefits that go along with those contracts–are insoluble without massive infusions of state aid.

Therefore, it is rather unseemly to go before the Council to beg for an additional $1 million, threatening to cut jobs if your budget isn’t increased by less than half a percentage point–particularly given the very large increase of state aid received this budget year. Is the school district so mismanaged that over 70 jobs are left to dangle in the wind unless an additional 0.3 % is added to the school budget? (An addition that was added at the very last meeting of the school board’s discussion of their budget?)

At least no one got up and asked the Council to please raise my taxes and give the money to the school district. Do these people even understand basic economics? Do they think that these costs are only born by those with the ability to pay? If the city raises its property taxes, it will fall disproportionally on the poorest neighborhoods and those least able to afford increases. The elderly on fixed incomes. Poor tenants paying higher rents. The poor students that you claim to care so much for will just have another stone thrown into their sinking boat.

Disaster Averted, Roy Bernardi Passed Over As New HUD Secretary

OH, THANK GOD! Roy Bernardi, currently Assistant Secretary at the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, has been sidestepped by the Bush Administration for the top job. GW announced today that Steve Preston, director of the Small Business Administrationhas been named to succeed the disgraced and retiring Alphonso Jackson as the next Secretary at HUD.

Preston is evidently competent, working diligently to remake the SBA. Most governmental agencies run by Bush appointees feature a steel cage match between incompetence and corruption to determine standard operating procedure. Preston apparently prizes competence and results. The signature accomplishment of his tenure at SBA was cutting through the languishing backlog of assistance requests at SBA for small businesses wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. Preston pushed $6 billion in aid out the door in a matter of months.

Our nation has been spared the incompetence of Roy Bernardi, a political hack whose signature accomplishment as mayor of Syracuse was mismanaging the Finance Department so badly that the city had no idea what its accounts receivable balance was on any given day. This led to charges of fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission because when the city issued a bond, the information provided to investors on the city’s finances was just a guess.

A Bernardi-directed HUD would be unable to tackle the pressing problems facing our country in the mortgage foreclosure/credit crunch/undefinable derivative financial product /Wall St. land grab (take your pick) crisis. Wow, it is certainly a new day in Bushland–competence over cronyism.