[Announce] Wanted: Ideas!

[James Travers]

Sally,
   
  With all due respect, what ideas do you have on how to replace the lost revenue that the landfill closing will result in? Surely you must have some. By sharing what your proposals are, we may also avoid making redundant suggestions.
   
  That said, I would suggest that prior to your meeting with Nitido you  first survey the members of the Common Council to gather their input on what they may have thoughts on or have already suggested to offset the revenue shortfall the landfill closing will cause. If any have done so already, this will also avoid redundancy.
   
  Next, and again before meeting with the city comptroller, I would suggest you meet with the Mayor to hear what his ideas he has to offset the lost revenue, if any at all.
   
  Then, after gleaning the thoughts and suggestions of our elected officials, and having completed compiling our input, is when you should meet with the comptroller.
   
  While I find it a bit onerous that we are the ones who are pressured to come up with a way to solve the fiscal mismanagement of the city's finances instead of our elected officials, regardless of this, I will gather my thoughts on this and offer you a few suggestions. But some may be unpopular.
   
  All will in part or completely replace the lost revenue.
   
  For now, here's a few: 
   
  1)   An income tax for all city residents and city employees living
        outside the city.
   
  2)   A fee charged to all households and businesses for trash pick
        up,removal and disposal.
   
  3)   Take through the city's power of eminent domain all 
         abandoned or vacant for three years properties, rehab them and
         get them back on the tax rolls. This will restore not only a huge 
         amount of money to the budget, but will alleviate many of the 
         city's problems its blighted neighborhoods present. (Also, it's 
         hard to fairly evaluate an immaculate and well kept home if the 
         adjoining properties are decrepit shells.)
   
  Lastly, in closing I would add that there's really no problem at all in finding the funds to replace the budgetary shortfall. 
   
  How's that? 
   
  If the city can come up with a few hundred million dollars for an unwanted and doomed for failure convention center then the city's administrators should have no problem at all finding the funds to replace the pittance in comparison monies lost to the city's coffers created by the landfill 's closing.
   
  For more than a few years I and many others have been providing Mike O'Brien and the other Common Council members with many, many viable options to enhance the city's revenue stream to replace that lost if the landfill is closed. We have encouraged city's leaders at every turn to get out of the dirty, scandal ridden and corrupt solid waste business.
   
  Nothing, absolutely nothing at all has been proposed by any CC member to help offset this lost revenue stream in all that time. 
   
  Not even an enhanced recycling program has been proposed, as is required in their long term solid waste plan and their current landfill operating permit, because it would reduce the flow of trucks across the scales and hence, their tipping fees. 
   
  This administration seems to want to continue doing business with that mob of waste haulers regardless of what the citizens who put them in office think or desire for their city.
   
  I'll be send you much more over the course of next week.
   
  Jim Travers

Sally Cummings <sbgarden at gmail.com> wrote:
    
To help the City of Albany become financially solvent without using the landfill revenue to support/balance the budget, I am planning on speaking to the City Comptroller to give him the ideas.  I am thinking that perhaps several different funding sources could be suggested that, together would bring in the needed income. 
   
  Please email me your ideas as soon as possible.  They still have it on their plans to go ahead with the expansion, in spite of all the opposition.  I have been told that it is a "done deal", so we have to get our ideas in to them soon to try and head them off!  
   
  I believe that they agree that it is not the best solution, but they do not know of any other way to balance the budget.
   
  Any ideas you have, however small, would be gratefully appreciated.

Sally Cummings

Happy people don't have the best of everything but make the best of everything they have 
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