City Hall Meeting
June 16, 2009<\/p>\n
I am making more of an effort to attend town hall meetings at City Hall because it isn’t enough for me or anyone else for that matter to just sit and complain about our elected officials. Granted, most meetings and their agendas boring but it’s the citizens of Saratoga Springs that inevitably make it interesting.<\/p>\n
For example, Remiga Foy, Saratoga Springs resident kept this meeting from being a complete snooze fest, she wasted no time making her point on a number of items such as: she suggested that the ‘current city council members make immediate adjustments on their current spending practices but must have meaningful expert projections of the long term liabilities resulting from the present contractual obligations that have been building up over the years to a total fiscal calamity.’<\/p>\n
She also suggested that the city of Saratoga Springs should get $1 of every single ticket sold for a performance at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center which isn’t a bad idea.<\/p>\n
Ms. Foy, also scolded the council for “having four lawyers in City Hall, two on the council. “It seems to me, said Ms. Foy that the two lawyers on the council could stop the political posturing and come together and focus their legal expertise on ways to explore on finding additional sources of revenue for our city.” <\/p>\n
Then she went on about the legislation regarding the flat track admission tax which in her opinion is discriminatory. The way she understands the way the legislation was written, the tax law specifically excludes cities that have a population under 100,000 people.<\/p>\n
The second piece of discriminatory legislation according to Ms. Foy is regarding the lack of funding to Saratoga Springs which deprives the city of Saratoga Springs of VLT money. Ms. Foy blames our ‘dysfunctional State Legislature by some sort of arbitrary and capricious formula that refers to average income.’<\/p>\n
“Whatever happens here in Saratoga, the taxpayers are footing the bill for racing season and for SPAC and any other venue that happens. Our city must hold this dysfunctional New York State legislature responsible and we should challenge this in court. If we can afford to spend $100,000 on attorney’s fees to negotiate contracts with our public employees, I think you ought to be able to find some money to hire the necessary legal experts to challenge the state legislation in order to produce some more revenue for our city.”<\/p>\n
Citizen Nancy’s note: Ms. Foy is every politicians worst nightmare but every good reporters dream as she is well spoken, combative, argumentative and strongly opinionated. Normally I do not agree with Ms. Foy but she made some very valid and sound points during Tuesdays meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
City Hall Meeting June 16, 2009 I am making more of an effort to attend town hall meetings at City Hall because it isn’t enough for me or anyone else for that matter to just sit and complain about our…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\r\n