DNC Reception

Just got back from the DNC reception in downtown Charlotte.  I was ready for the bus, at the hotel lobby, at 4PM; I got home at 9:30, and spent only two hours during that time at the reception.  If you do the math, you will realize how far the organizers are from having a functioning transportation system.  Lots of time waiting (and getting to know fellow NY delegates), lots of time crawling toward Charlotte in a non-air-conditioned bus, and finally a 13 block walk to the reception, because the bus driver couldn't figure out how to get to the site.  In his defense, much of downtown Charlotte is closed to all traffic, and most of the ubiquitouos emergency services personnel he asked didn't know how to help.

But  we got there eventually, and the Democrats seem to be a very diverse group.  Lots of people of all colors (except, now that I think of it, Asians), a blind man, two in wheelchairs, and one person with dwarfism.  A large number of labor folks (to judge by the t-shirts), which is nice to see, given that the convention is being held in a right-to-work state and because of that, major labor groups are passing it up.

The reception was given in Discovery Place, the downtown science discovery center, two stories of colorful, mazelike, interesting science stuff.  If it were my place, I would have had a little more hands-on experiences, but it was great anyway.  Lots of us wandered around and played with the exhibits, but most talked in small groups and ate the Carolina specialty food (Carolina caviar on pimento dip was my favorite) and an open bar, which is apparently standard at conventions.  Lots of music; three stages on two floors - cool jazz, acoustic guitar/mandolin, Latin (but not ska, sorry Randall), and a group of black kids in colorful sweaters who sang and danced an energetic, athletic, irresistible set, including a sweet, touching version of "God Bless America" with everyone singing along.

There was nothing particularly political about the gathering (except for the Democrat/Obama sale table at one end), but there were a lot of conversations among people from all regions and backgrounds.  I met a lot of NYers - a State Assemblyman from LI, a bunch of retired teachers from upstate, the Mayor of Albany, an English teacher who is active in the teachers union statewide, and a recent college graduate from Manhattan who's a campaign volunteer.  Democrats took pictures of each other under the grizzly bear; they designed houses on computers in the design section; they laid on a metal bed where thousands of nails came up from thousands of holes to demonstrate the distribution of weight; they danced to Latin and some other kind of music that came from a DJ working a computer and that my sons would know the name of but I don't.

On the way home, we swapped stories with our bus driver, who is from Mississippi (highly skilled, but out-of-town bus drivers don't help the transport situation).  He lives near the home of Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, which was damaged by Hurricane Camille in 1969 - and was restored largely using donations from New Yorkers.  It's a strange world.

Sunday

After a nice visit with relatives outside Lancaster, PA, last night, I was on the road at 0:dark:30, heading south.  If you have to spend a day in the car, you can't do much better than I-81 through the Shenandoah Valley in western Virginia, and then I-77 south across North Carolina.  Coming down out of the mountains onto the piedmont this afternoon, I drove through scenery as breathtaking as any I've ever seen.

Charlotte is a new city - lots of chrome and glass in tall, modern buildings.  It's the smallest national convention venue since New Orleans in 1988; there are 'only' 15,000 hotel rooms in the metro area, and 40,000 folks are expected (just under 5,000 delegates), according to today's "Charlotte Observer."  I had looked forward to having my wife Abbey join me for the convention, but as the summer progressed, I got more and more bad news from the DNC and the NY Democratic Committee regarding how few, if any, credentials, venue space and even shuttle seats would be available to non-delegates.  It's a small town to be hosting such a huge event.

But so far so good.  There were representatives of the NY Democratic Committee and the Charlotte event planners right in the hotel lobby, with credentials, maps, and information.   I'm watching a baseball game for a while and - most important - not driving.

I had a note from a friend yesterday, remembering her experience of conventions past, when we were all much younger:

This is a ritual I remember (just watching) from a childhood where the trinity really was FDR, Adlai and Hubert.  When I see any of it I can go right back to the roasting Maryland nights we watched every last minute. Gavel to gavel quite literally.  I can feel the wallpaper peeling off from the humidity and hear the ice settle as it melted in the glasses of tea. That ritual and all that went with it all year long taught me to believe so strongly in the system, the power of the people to effect change and the truly good that we could all do together. That is why this means so much.

I have similar memories.  Ted Kennedy in 1980:  "The dream shall never die!"  Mario Cuomo in 1984:  "This country is a shining city on a hill."  The iconic 1968 DNC in Chicago:  "The whole world is watching!"  Barack Obama in 2004:

There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America... We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.  We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.  There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. 

That's something to believe in.   I listened to that one with my family, and at the end I said, "He will be the next Democratic nominee for President."  Now here I am, ready to vote on the convention floor, ready to put his name into nomination for a second term, this, the second inexperienced junior Senator from Illinois to become president.

It's been nearly 30 years since either party began their convention without a candidate who had clinched the nomination.  Many say the days of conventions as useful or relevant events are coming to a close.  We'll see.  I'm part of a history that means a great deal to me, and that's enough.

See you soon.

Charlotte bound!

As some of you may know, I'm a delegate to the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC next week.  I'm representing NY's 24th Congressional District - which no longer exists.  The delegate selection was done before the re-districting, so we're all representing the map the way it used to look (Oneonta's now in the 19th CD, which roughly covers the Catskill Mountains).

I'm going to try and record my experiences at the Convention right here at Otsego11.  I say 'try' because the schedule looks pretty full, especially if you factor in getting around an unfamiliar city. Things start early and end way past my bedtime.

I'll be driving our Prius down to Charlotte, a two day trip with an overnight outside Lancaster, PA, at my wife's sister's house.  I'm looking forward to the Shenandoah Valley.

I'll do my best to keep you up to date.  It's an entirely new experience for me, and I don't know what to expect.  Leave questions in the Comments, and I'll take a shot at answering them.

East Street Parking Lot Project

Not much has changed at the corners of East St., Bugbee Rd. and Meadowbrook Lane in the last few months. What looked like construction work on the property has stopped, and the status of the land use applications is about what it was at that time.

A parking lot is not considered a proper use of this land, in the City or the Town, so Mr. Ranieri must apply for a use variance from both the the Zoning Board of Appeals, in the City, and the Town Planning Board. The ZBA has not acted, as far as I know, and the Town Planning Board considers the application incomplete, and will not act, one would assume, until all the elements of the application are presented.

I received a copy of the County Planning Board's “Notice of Recommendation” for the project last week. The Planning Board neither approved nor disapproved, since there was 'no significant county-wide or inter-community impacts;' this is consistent with their responsibility in these matters. However, the document does mention some concerns, including the impact on the community character. I talked with Karen Sullivan, Director of the Otsego County Planning Board, this morning, and she noted that Mr. Ranieri has not produced the kinds of plans necessary for the various agencies to come to a decision, so significant change up on the corner is, apparently, still in the distant future – if at all.

More Detail on the Future of the Manor

As promised, a little more detail regarding the Manor and its future.

As I noted yesterday, keeping the Manor open and functioning, unchanged, will cost Otsego County taxpayers four to six million dollars a year above and beyond the expected revenues. Given that revenues (mostly Medicaid and Medicare) are dropping every year, and expenses are increasing, that annual subsidy will increase with time.

Here are the four options for the future, as developed by the Manor Committee and Manor Director Ed Marchi:

• Option 1: No change. See above.
• Option 2: Turn in the operating certificate, and sell the building to be used as a hotel. This would get us out of the nursing home business, and leave us only with debt service (depending on purchase price) and legacy costs (retirees' health insurance, etc.), which would diminish over time. As noted yesterday, this is somewhat unattractive to a potential buyer, because current residents have the option of remaining in the building for the rest of their lives, or moving voluntarily, and the transition to a hotel could not be done until the last resident was gone. This is not an option we are likely to pursue.
• Option 3: Retain the building with reduced Skilled Nursing beds, which would be operated by the County, and find “Community Partners” to run the Medicaid Assisted Living program. This would retain most of the services currently available through the Manor, and reduce the annual subsidy somewhat, but it wouldn't eliminate it, nor would it slow down its growth. In addition, for rather technical reasons, this option would probably lose money – above and beyond the subsidy – in the range of two million dollars per year.
• Option 4: Sell the building and lease the Skilled Nursing portion of the Manor function, but reduce the number of beds. This would be economically viable (as Option 3 would not be), and would leave us only with debt service on the building (depending on purchase price) and legacy costs (retirees' health insurance, etc.), which would diminish over time.
• Option 5: Sell the building and the operating certificate to an entity which would operate the Manor, to the greatest extent possible, as it has been. This process might be costly up front, and we would need to retain staff to continue to claim outstanding reimbursements for up to a year after the sale, but it would leave us, as in Options 2 and 4, only with debt service on the building (depending on purchase price) and legacy costs (retirees' health insurance, etc.), which would diminish over time.

On Wednesday, we empowered Cathy Clarke, Board Chair, to negotiate with a well-recommended consulting company who is in the business of doing just this: helping with the transfer of health facilities.

Our first priority is still the care and comfort of our residents. Stay tuned for further develpments.

The Future of the Manor

My apologies for the long absence from this blog – life tends to get complicated. As a friend says, “So this is retirement, is it?” Yes, it is. But everything I'm up to is something I've always wanted to do.

I have some more detailed information regarding the proposed parking lot on East and Bugbee, and I've been working on a series of posts detailing some of the committee work I'm involved in. They'll be finished, and up on this blog, within a month or so. But I wanted to make sure I said a word or two about the Manor today.

At today's Board meeting, much was accomplished. We hired a new Personnel Director for the county; we set an end date for our involvement in MOSA (April 30, 2013), and took the first step toward changing the Representatives' term of office from two years to four (Public Hearing 9:30 AM, Wed. Sept. 5, in the Board Room). But most importantly, I think, we took the first step in solving what is, on one hand, an exceptionally expensive problem, and on the other hand, a crucial part of the lives of many of our friends and neighbors.

I'll be back with more details, and update them as time goes on, but the single most important number to consider when discussion the Manor is 6 million. That's how many dollars, give or take, it takes, from the County budget, to bridge the gap between the Manor's revenue and its expenses every year. This is an major burden on the Otsego County taxpayer which is unsustainable, especially since revenues (mostly Medicaid and Medicare) are being reduced each year, and expenses are increasing.

The Manor Committee and Director Ed Marchi laid out options for the full Board this morning. They ran the gamut between making no changes and selling the building, with a couple of combination sale/lease options in the middle. The Board voted unanimously to negotiate a contract with a highly qualified consultant to lead us through the process and negotiate any changes we decide on.

As I said, more details later. But here's the bottom line for most, if not all, citizens of the County:

Public Health law prohibits us from displacing any residents of the Manor against their will, ever. So if the Manor is sold to an entity intending to use it for something other than a nursing home, they can't have it until every patient is placed, by their own choice. If they choose to stay, they can stay for the rest of their life. This makes the Manor unattractive to prospective buyers who want to use it for something else, and makes that kind of sale very improbable. But regardless of what the final disposition of the Manor is, current residents get to stay as long as they choose to.

We, the Board, affirmed our commitment to patient care as our first priority, and whatever happens, the quality of care will be our first priority in choosing among alternatives. At no point will the process be out of the Board's hands, so your Representative is the point person for questions, concerns and suggestions.

We all know how important it for the folks who live at the Manor to continue to be assured that their home will not be taken from them or changed substantially. We have an obligation to provide them with that assurance for as long as they choose to live there, and the Board is committed to doing that. Today, we started the process that will lead us to that goal, without having to continue to pay the massive subsidy required for the County to own and operate the buiding.

Fracking Black Holes

Like most of us, I have been trying to maintain a steep learning curve regarding fracking, so when the time comes to make a decision in one arena or another, I'll be working with enough facts to make a knowledgeable choice. As I've been filling in the picture, two things stand out – two things that seem not to be addressed, and that seem to be central to the whole issue:

• What do people mean when they talk about finding out if fracking is 'safe?' For the most part, they mean that there is a high probability that wells will not fail and pollute the water table. That, it seems, is not the point – the 'high probability' part. 98%, for instance, is a high probability, but assurances that 98% of the wells in Otsego County, or New York State, or anywhere, will be safe, means that two of every one hundred wells will damage people's drinking water. With wells that will number in the tens of thousands, 98% isn't nearly good enough. Nothing short of a guaranteed 100% can even start the discussion.
• Pro-fracking activists are aiming in the wrong direction. If they really want to make a compelling case to the people of New York, they need to convince the guardians of the New York City and Syracuse water systems (and to NYC mayor Bloomberg) that drilling will pose no danger to their water, ever. If they can do that (and they obviously haven't), then perhaps we can start the discussion (the EPA insists that the exemption is because NYC and Syracuse use unfiltered water – but how can filtered water systems remain safe, if we don't know what's in the fluids, so we don't know what we need to filter out – or whether it's even possible to filter it all out?).

I asked the folks at the County Planning Department (Karen Sullivan and Psalm Wyckoff) about the parking lot today, and they were generous with their time and very helpful. Karen made some calls later on and filled in some blanks. It seems it's a three-part story.

(People who work with planning, zoning and code enforcement speak their own language, fluently and swiftly, and it's a language that I don't speak, yet, so some of the vocabulary may be misplaced or inaccurate.)

The land being developed for the parking lot straddles the town-city line, so the code inspectors and Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) in both municipalities are involved. In both the town and the city, the original application for permits was denied, but the ZBA in the City approved a use variance. The Town ZBA has deemed the application incomplete, so no decision has been made there. So at this point, the project is not approved. It's not clear whether the project can go ahead in the city section without the whole thing being approved by both municipalities.

The County gets involved if a project is within 500' of a municipal boundary, and this one fits because it's right on a municipal boundary. However, this is where it gets interesting: the project began, apparently, as a collection of townhouses, and it was sent to the County at that point, about two years ago. Now that the plans have changed, it's not clear whether the City or the town will request that the County look at the project and then make recommendations.  The County's rulings in these cases are usually focused on whether the project in one municipality will cause an undue burden on the neighboring municipality, and these rulings are only recommendations; they have no authority over the municipality's final decision.  When the County is asked to get involved (and it only gets involved when a municipality requests it), it can do one of four things: approve, disapprove, approve with modifications, or decline to rule because no significant impact has been found.

And finally, the City Code Enforcement office is asking DEC to become involved with the project; more on this as time goes on.

Overall, this project is raising a lot of questions. Apparently, the plan is to market the parking spaces to freshmen for long-term parking, although whether there is a sufficient market to make the project pay is one of those questions. The owner is hoping to get OPT to stop there – but where? It's a busy, residential corner, and for most of the project's length, East Street has a 45 mph speed limit. Not a great place for buses to stop every fifteen minutes.

Anyway, more to come. At least we can be assured that there are people in the middle of this who are asking the right questions. If you want to take more action, contact:

•  your City Councilman  
•  your Town Board member
•  the Town of Oneonta Planning Board and ZBA 

The Parking Lot

I've gotten a number of calls and e-mails regarding the planned parking lot at the top of East St., where Bugbee Rd. and Meadowbrook Lane intersect it. The vacant lots on that corner, on either side of Meadowbrook Lane, have been bulldozed and graded recently, in preparation for what the owner hopes will be a lot for long-term parking for 300+ student cars.

Everyone who contacted me had concerns about the project, concerns that I share. Many questions are unanswered: questions about foot traffic crossing East St. and traveling through neighborhoods, security, lighting, runoff (and many other environmental concerns), increased traffic, and others.

I went to City Hall to talk with Robert Chiappisi, city Code Enforcement Officer, last week. Many factors make this a complex issue. The land is part in the City, and part in the Town, which (usually but not always) means that the County gets involved. The project has been given a preliminary variance, but each step requires approval, and Mr. Chiappisi, who will be making the decisions about those approvals, has grave concerns about the project as well.

I'll be at the Meadows for a committee meeting on Friday, and I'll stop in at the County Planning Department office and see if I can learn anything more about how this all works, and what's in store for that neighborhood. I'll let you know what I learn, here at the weblog. Stay tuned.

MOSA Letter

If you were down to the Oneonta MOSA transfer station in March, you might have been handed a letter from the Executive Director of MOSA, Dennis Heaton, listing reasons why he thought Otsego County's plan to depart from MOSA was a bad idea – specifically, because it will cost Otsego County citizens a lot more to dispose of their trash: “In summary, Otsego County citizens will pay substantially more if Otsego departs MOSA.”

I don't know about you, but I don't think this was a good idea – especially since Mr. Heaton didn't inform the MOSA Board that he was going to distribute a one-sided argument on an important and complex topic to whoever showed up at the transfer station. There are better ways to get your point across, in our media-rich world. Worse, it turns out that his facts were cherry-picked and incomplete; he did not mention, in many instances, many of the MOSA expenditures which would occur even if Otsego County remained with the Authority.

Cathy Clark, the Otsego County Board Chair, wrote to Mr. Heaton, outlining the errors in his presentation, and calling his attempt to 'impugn' and 'undermine' a member county of the Authority 'regrettable.' I'd be glad to send you a copy of it if you'd like to read it, especially if you've seen Mr. Heaton's letter.

The truth is, we don't know the details of how everything is going to work out. The County Board decided to leave MOSA well before I arrived, and everything I've heard convinces me that it was a good decision. It's a decision we're going to stick with, and I think it's going to turn out well for the citizens of Otsego County.