Make sure you go to the next Town Board meeting, which is March 18th, 2009 at 7:00 pm at Town Hall. (Originally scheduled for 3/17 but changed due to St. Patrick's Day festivities.)
Bring a sweater and mittens, as the room is kept at a very chilly temperature. I wonder if their heat works? Or, did they turn down all the thermostats like I remember the Supervisor saying a while back? Maybe that's why that one political flier said: "Right now, as you're reading this, certain rooms there are freezing cold..." because they are conserving energy and cutting some costs by turning the thermostat down? I do that at my house.
Go to the meetings, attend any workshops, sign up for committees to study/see/comment on the data. Let's have more options than just King$ Pork.
Mention that Joe Morelle's grant was state funds, and if he was truly a "man of the people" he would offer that grant for Pinegrove to have repairs temporarily while a new center is DISCUSSED. Why only offer our own tax money for King$ Pork? That press conference where he offered it - a resident had to ask THREE TIMES if that grant could be used for Pinegrove before getting the answer: "Yes, but we're not here to talk about that." Nice. Why not?
Demand that the Town use the CDBG to fix up Pinegrove in the meantime. Their 2009 Budget Recreation Center Analysis states that it would cost around $220,000 to make "Major Improvements needed at Pinegrove but cut from the proposed 2009 budget", and with operating and maintenance costs would be a total of around $300,000 that could be funded through CDBG.
How many seniors in Irondequoit?
How many seniors are year round residents?
How many are at St. Anns etc., or in Senior "campus" type neighborhoods where facilities are on site to be utilized, or do they belong to senior centers through their churches etc.?
How many seniors want to move?
How many want a bigger facility at Pinegrove?
If there is a lease involved in any "temporary" move in the future - ask what type of lease it is (triple net is not good!), and what is included in the CAM (Common Area Maintenance) fees, and if the rate is variable or fixed on the CAM.
Find out who owns the building to be leased and check out their campaign contributions. You'd be surprised at how important it is to do this with just about any project that uses taxpayer money.
When the Town tells you that "they don't want to sink money into a deteriorating building" - ask them why they were going to do exactly that while paying a lease for King$ Pork for their idea. The Town would have still owned Pinegrove, and what were they going to do? Let that deteriorate more even though the seniors weren't using it? They would have had to make the repairs sooner or later. If they sold the building to the WISD, they would need to make repairs and that means your school budgets would have gone up to cover that. Either way, our tax money was going to be "sunk" into Pinegrove.
Improve what we own and keep our taxes here, in our own community, to be spent for our benefit.
Watching the news last night and today....there's conflicting information out there again.
Channel 10 news article said: "Town Supervisor Mary Ellen Hayman told us she does not see the town board spending any money to improve the Pinegrove facility."
While the Ch 8 news article said: The town will likely fix up the old location. (Not a quote from anyone, just a statement in the article.)
Demand that the Town make the necessary repairs to Pinegrove, AND the libraries. Sitting on these problems, cutting budgets and funding for them isn't going to fix what needs to be fixed now. The residents don't want King$ Pork. That should be clear by now.
DON'T FORGET ABOUT THE MEDLEY/MIXED USE PROJECT!
An exciting, expensive, project is under way. Make sure you become informed, and ask the questions that need to be asked!
Also for consideration, is the PILOT part of the Medley/Mixed use project.
You can read a bit about that here, along with tons of resident letters/comments here, here, here, and here.
See what others are concerned about or happy with regarding this project. Become informed about all the issues about this. One area that I'm concerned with is PILOT tax breaks for developers, for any project in any town - but especially this project since the property is already enjoying PILOT tax breaks for the past 5 years, and it is being proposed that this property will enjoy 30 more years of PILOT tax breaks.
PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) pay an agreed upon lower rate of property taxes with a gradual increase to be paid over the life of the PILOT agreement.
County, Town, and the East Irondequoit School District all share in property taxes.
PILOT tax breaks are a concern for me. With the absence of uniform standards for negotiations.....it makes the whole PILOT program open to abuse, because each company gets to negotiate its own private deal. In addition, companies that fail to meet their original job creation promises rarely get penalized.
We're all familiar with companies that fail to meet their original promises, right?
In my opinion, the idea of a mixed use development at the Medley property is a great idea - but I'd like to see a "smaller scale" version for right now, and if it seems successful - build on that....that is if we, the taxpayers, are going to "subsidize" this development like Congel is asking for with COMIDA breaks and PILOT agreements.
Since "we" have a stake in this development's success or failure via our tax money paying for the "incentives".....I think they owe it to us to be as open and transparent about all the details as possible.
Maybe Congel himself will make an appearance someday to talk about the project, or some of the "success" with his other projects?
That would be nice.
