Elections and municipalities

Three important events happened this week in Saratoga Springs. First, the traditional League of Women Voters Candidate Forum at the Saratoga High School Auditorium brought together all the candidates for City Council in this year’s election. The unopposed candidates, John Franck, Commissioner of Accounts, Joanne Yepsen, Saratoga Springs Supervisor, and Rep. Matt Veitch, the second Saratoga Springs Supervisor, expressed their thanks to their respective sponsors and mentors.

As an aside it may be useful to remind the reader that Supervisor is the name of an elective job representing Saratoga Springs on the County Board of Supervisors, in effect the Saratoga County governing body.

On the stage sat at a table the six main actors in this local election; from left to right Michele Madigan, Democratic candidate for Commissioner of Finance; then the Republican incumbent, Commissioner Ivins; the Republican Commissioner for Public Safety, Richard Wirth; and the Democratic challenger for that job, Christian Mathiesen; finally the incumbent Mayor, Republican Scott Johnson and his Democratic opponent, Brent Wilkes. All of them lined up at the edge of the table, adjusting and fidgeting with their microphones and the papers in front of them. Not so Scott Johnson, who had pushed his chair back as if to distance himself from the proceedings, and turned slightly sideways to his left, but not enough to signify his recognition of his rival. Scott Johnson clearly felt and expressed that these proceedings were unrelated to him and that he consented reluctantly to participate. Body language is important on public occasions.

Everybody, except Michele Madigan, sported coat and tie; not so Brent Wilkes who had adopted, under a tweed jacket, the black mock turtleneck that Steve Jobs, the great innovator, used as trademark.

The rules of the game were laid down by the moderator, and were disregarded at several points of the night. The event was rightly themed as a Forum, as the strict time limits and the narrow format discouraged any attempt at real debate..

Brent Wilkes phrased his opening statement in the bluntest of terms: “Scott Johnson does not listen, Scott Johnson does not plan, Scott Johnson does not lead.” From then on Scott Johnson could only be on the defensive. He accused his tormentor of not being able to read the right information. No wonder, as City Hall had repeatedly stonewalled Wilkes’ requests of data under the Freedom of Information Act. Mr. Johnson came up with his own insider figures, which he then still did not disclose in written form.

Madigan opened the budget can of worms, accusing Ivins of not having complied with the present charter requirement of submitting a comprehensive budget to the City Council on the first meting of October. Instead he had only given a Power Point presentation, highlighting the main magnitudes. At that City Council, Ivins explained that the budget was not completed, not ready for prime time whereas in the Forum he claimed that the Budget was ready and comprehensive, but that he had no reason to share it with the wider public; he also claimed that it was up online the next day.

A further bone of contention was the Police Department overtime budget. Madigan and Mathiesen claimed that it was out of control, running way ahead of projections. Both Ivins and Wirth explained the hurdles to keeping track of overtime and comp time. A follow up article in the October 20th Saratogian by Lucien McCarthy indeed corroborated the out-of-control part of it, while explaining how it was so difficult to forecast.

The first question selected for comment by the candidates was Charter Reform. Brent Wilkes, a prominent member of the citizen’s group advocating for Charter change, castigated the Mayor for the money spent on outside counsel in order to fight the Saratoga Citizen petition, and to appeal Judge Nolan’s decision supporting its legality. Scott Johnson repeated his contention that the petition did not fulfill the legal requirements, and that he was protecting the City from special interests. Once the issue was decided he would be appointing a Charter Review Commission of his own.

To qualify a petition of 10% of the City’s residents as a “special interest” seems disingenuous at best, and certainly not democratic. It is well in line with the established and ongoing Republican Party efforts to disenfranchise and suppress voters by any means imaginable.

There seemed to be agreement around the table that the present Charter governing Saratoga Springs was outdated and needed reform; the disagreements revolved around the degree of the reforms to be undertaken, from “tweaking” to “replacing.”

It is probably in the Mayor’s mind to establish a Charter Review commission to ensure that the changes proposed do not make any difference in the basic functioning of City Government.

At the end of the evening, Mayor Johnson reiterated his demand for “civility”, and his claim to have reintroduced it in City Hall. He tried to present himself as the head of team working together for the greater good. Unfortunately his demeanor and his body language pointed to an imperious core, and a willful distance, a moat, between his groomed and coiffed presence and the rest of us.

Scott Johnson claims to have introduced modern management in City Hall by outsourcing the Human Relations function. Outsourcing was modern twenty years ago, the buzz-word in business schools that sent call-centers to India and much manufacturing to China. The devastating result for the livelihoods of many communities in this country is now patent in our hollowed out economy.

How can you ensure and protect the well-being of your community if your management model includes employing people under terms that evade any role in their sustenance, denying them the basic commitment to their health care or long-term security of their families.? What kind of community does such a Mayor envisage, if he will not build the kind of communal bonds that ensure loyalty and a sense of belonging in the people he employs?

At Skidmore, the next day, I sat in a symposium on the future of cities, where our very Saratogian Jim Howard Kunstler, who coined the word “clusterfuck” for the kind of urban planning prevalent in the region twenty years ago, confronted Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives. As moderator, Jeff Olsen tried to to keep the attack fish well apart from each other in their respective bowls.

As it were there was more agreement than not. Mr. Steely pointed to the increased vitality of neighborhoods provided with amenities such as bike lanes and rental bikes, pedestrian streets as boosters of commerce, fast bus lanes and improved rail transportation. These and other grass-roots initiatives have proven their value in communities such as Curitiba in Brazil, Amsterdam in Holland, and Portland, Oregon. Kunstler spoke of forgetting about such super-tech miraculous projects as high speed rail in the USA, and instead restoring the old rails right-of-way providing transportation for the masses at 100 miles per hour, as was usual, for instance, between New York and Chicago 100 years ago. The main obstacle to the realization of high-tech dreams is, according to Kunstler, not so much the lack of political will, but the dearth of investment capital by the state and local authorities.

But Mr. Steely also showed a statistical table pointing to the disconnect between what the politicians claim to believe the citizen wants, and what the citizen’s real concerns are.

Meanwhile communities all over the world are finding the political will and support to making their communities more livable. Steely pointed out that Curitiba, Brazil, transformed a deadly three mile long four lane highway into a vibrant pedestrian shopping and activity thoroughfare in 72 hours. High speed articulated buses on dedicated lanes in Bogotá, Colombia, move 50% more people than private cars, reducing pollution and congestion at the same time.

In New York City the boroughs are lobbying City Hall for dedicated bike lanes at the expense of street-side parking and circulation lanes, because they improve the feeling of community and the interaction among citizens. The transformation includes longer pedestrian crossing lights intervals to accommodate slower moving foot traffic.

The recent recuperation of Times Square as urban meeting place, an “agora” as the Greek polis conceived it, is another successful instance of municipal enlightenment.

The third community meeting in Saratoga Springs coalesced around the Occupy….. movement. Forty people met at the Public Library to discuss how the populist rebellion against job cuts and high bonuses for executives can be brought to Saratoga Springs. Occupy Saratoga Springs will come into existence first on a Facebook page, then joining with the weekly Saratoga Peace Alliance rally at the Post Office corner on Broadway on Saturdays at noon.

Stay tuned, citizens on the march!