"Gov. David Paterson, citing the state's financial woes, has vetoed a bill that would have would have boosted the state's aid to the city of Albany by $5.5 million this year and $11 million annually in subsequent years.

The veto is a blow for Mayor Jerry Jennings, who had lobbied hard for the bill and called it a vital tool for helping the city close a looming budget gap.

Albany, like many state capitals, has a substantial amount of state-owned land it can't tax, and the bill would have provided an annual ``payment in lieu of taxes'' as a way to overcome that handicap..."

"...That the legislation even reached Paterson's desk was a surprise. Its prospects for passage looked poor at the end of the last legislative session. Then, at Jennings' urging, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno guided the bill through the Republican-led Senate."

First, thanks to those of you who particpated in and/or attended the Neighborhood FORUM on 118-120 Washington Avenue on July 15.

The BZA met last night (7/23) but did not make a decision on the variances that would result in the demolition of these rare historic buildings.

It's not too late to make it clear that we don't EVER think it's a good idea to trade our sound urban fabric for surface parking lots!

You can:

visit the Times Union's Capital Region at the Crossroads  blog and add a comment;

visit 'All Over Albany' and comment on the article "Who should have a say about where the Fort Orange Club plays squash?";

write a letter to the Board of Zoning Appeals and email it to Bradley Glass at the Department of Planning, glassb@ci.albany.ny.us;

write a letter to the editor, http://timesunion. com/forms/emaileditor.asp;

talk to your neighbors and encourage them to do the same.

Please visit http://neoalbany.blogspot.com/ to view an alternate site plan that would preserve the historic cores of the buildings while providing additional parking for the Fort Orange Club.

Community Forum

Attorney General Cuomo and senior representatives from the New York State Attorney General's Office will discuss their work in your community and answer your questions.

For More Information Please Call: 518-474-3527 or Visit www.oag.state.ny.us

Office of the Attorney General Information and Complaint Helpline: 1-800-771-7755

For the hearing impaired: 1-800-788-9898

Light refreshments will be served.

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Please RSVP to 518-474-3527 or e-mail communityaffairs@oag.state.ny.us

Tuesday, July 22nd 7:00 PM
Albany High School 700 Washington Ave., Albany, NY 12203

A panel of experts will provide their professional opinions on several issues that have been raised and debated regarding these structures, currently threatened by the Fort Orange Club's expansion plans, including:

    - what is the age and significance of the
      buildings at 118-120 Washington,
    - did the Fort Orange Club ever really stand
      alone as a "pastoral" estate, and
    - can a compromise solution be reached to
      preserve the streetscape?

Panelists:

    - Sandra M. Baptie AIA LEED AP
    - Tricia Barbagallo, Research Associate at NY State Museum's
       Colonial Albany Project
    - Tony Opalka, Albany City Historian
    - Walter R. Wheeler, Architectural Historian, Hartgen Archeological Associates

WHEN:
      Tuesday, July 15

   Panel Presentation - 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.
   Discussion - 7:00 - 8:00 p.m.

WHERE:
Westminster Presbyterian Church Auditorium, Albany
(enter at 85 Chestnut Street)

Albany's Fort Orange Club has applied to the city's Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) for area variances for a comprehensive plan to expand their facility. The club seeks to raze these buildings, which could date to the 1830s, as part of that plan. Concerned residents are convening this meeting to support a grassroots effort to preserve these buildings.

Please visit http://neoalbany. blogspot. com to review photos of the endangered buildings, the text of the Fort Orange Club's plan, a proposed site plan, recent letters to the editor of the Times Union, and many documents providing background on the issue.

"Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that the dumb might eloquently speak and the "lame man leap as an hart."

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn that it is dangerous to copy the example of nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can today take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people.

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! We wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."

Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! Whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorry this day, "may my right hand cleave to the roof of my mouth"! To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine. I do not hesitate to declare with all my soul that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate, I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, shall not confess to be right and just....

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not as astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, and secretaries, having among us lawyers doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; and that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!...  

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply....

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms- of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival."

On Wednesday, June 25, the City of Albany's Board of Zoning Appeals will meet to consider the application of the Fort Orange Club for the demolition of 2 buildings on Washington Avenue, a parking lot expansion, and an expansion of their building.

Several area neighborhood associations, elected officials and CDTA (the Capital District Transportation Authority) have already voiced their opposition to these demolitions.

Now, we need to show that area residents really do care what happens on our streets and in our neighborhoods, and we're willing to take time from our busy schedules to participate in meetings.

We need to demonstrate that the needs of a few hundred members of an elite private club should NOT outweigh the needs of a few thousand taxpayers.

Won't you take a stand with your neighbors on Wednesday, June 25th?

We hope you'll take a moment to visit our new blog, NeoAlbany. You can find it at http://neoalbany. blogspot. com ... We've posted photos of the endangered buildings, the text of the Fort Orange Club's plan, a proposed site plan, a recent letter to the editor of the Times Union, and many documents providing background on the issue. More are being posted soon.

Your presence at the BZA meeting on 6/25 will help us illustrate a few crucial themes:

-These buildings -- which may date back to before 1830 -- are rare and important;
-Voices of are residents should not be silenced by the few and powerful who drive their cars to the exclusive Fort Orange Club; and
-Taxpayers in the City of Albany deserve a clean, safe and decent environment in which to live and raise our families -- not more private parking lots.
If we want our desires to be taken seriously, we must have a large turnout on Wednesday evening.

Please pass this email along to your contact lists. Print it out and drop it through your neighbors' mail slots. Bring a friend, bring your strollers -- and please help us show the Board of Zoning Appeals that the demolition of viable, historic buildings for the benefit of a few is not healthy for the rest of the city.

We'll hope to see you on Wednesday, June 25, at 5:30 p.m. for the BZA Hearing at Albany City Hall.

Cheers,
Colleen Ryan

"I read DIA everyday. If you think the murder of Kathina (my granddaughters' best friend) was senseless wait until the summer gets real hot.

Starting in the month of June and lasting thru October the Criminal Justice System will be releasing people that were arrested in 2005, 2006 and the beginning of 2007.

Albany is going to become a living hell.

I spoke at a Common Council meeting warning them of the impending doom that will probably hit this summer.

With the police harassing the felons that will be getting out of jail and the felons trying to reclaim their positions we are all in trouble.

I also believe that Albany is well on the way to experiencing an uprising because of the way the APD disrespects the people living in our improverished communities. That and because of their extreme frustration with the authorities continued failure to keep their streets safe.

Know that when the uprising comes, it will be a lot different than that which occurred in East Los Angeles. LA only had one ghetto Albany has three ghettos.

There is no way in hell that the 330 APD can handle that.

There are better guns on the street in the hands of those who shouldn't have them than the APD has (remember theirs are missing).

Monthly Meeting Agenda
Wednesday,  June 4, 2008, at 7 PM
Main Branch Albany Public Library
(Parking available at rear of library)

1. Introduction

2. Presentation

b)  Michael O'Brien, Joe Cunniff will address the legislative proposals concerning the Planning & Zoning Board meetings - if time permits.

3. Minutes

4. Committee Reports

5) Communications/Announcements

a)   Financial Report as of  May 24, 2008

6) Reminder about CANA ListServ

a)   CANA ListServe to simplify the mailing process and store all the sent e-mails in one place. To subscribe to this mailing list, please go to this site,
http://www.topica.com/lists/CANA/, and
choose "subscribe," under the heading "To Join," or send an e-mail to CANA-subscribe@topica.com.  

7) Future Meetings

a)   September 3, Vacant Building Inventory