Downtown Utica: Dazzling & Disgusting . . .

 Old intricate brickwork contrasting with New marble, steel and glass = Dazzling!

Meanwhile, only One block away . . .  a taxpayer-financed  so-called "green" "rain garden" is Disgusting with garbage!

With the taxes Uticans pay, one would think that city leaders could at least keep our "5-Star Main Street" clean.

If we cannot trust them with small things, how can we trust them to make the right decisions about Downtown's future?

What's Next On the Agenda?

Today's Observer Dispatch editorial, "OUR VIEW: ‘Base’ has come a long way since BRACC," repeats an old "feel good" story of MV EDGE bringing economic "growth" to Rome.

Why repeat this now?

Is it to make us feel better that EDGE marketed the land from underneath some 40 businesses, Not-for-Profits, and even Utica's new police garage to a tax-exempt hospital because EDGE's leader deemed Utica's Columbia-Lafayette a "do over" neighborhood?

Maybe it is to make us feel better when one of EDGE's alphabet-soup of "partner" agencies takes these properties by eminent domain -- and EDGE and its partners can again justify their existence by offering to find their victims new homes? 

EDGE has been unaccountable to anyone, yet has such power that it can override local zoning and plans, rearrange streets, and even change a neighborhood's character -- all without public input. The County Legislature and City Council have been mere rubber-stamps to EDGE's machinations.

While contemplating EDGE's "growth" in Rome let's remember that some of it came at Utica's expense. EDGE's stock in trade, after all,  has been to move the economic deck chairs around this region's sinking ship. 

Utica seemed to do better at attracting jobs before EDGE was put there to eliminate the "politics and infighting."

Maybe it is time to get rid of EDGE!

Three Beds? Three Beds!

Three Beds!

That would be the net increase in hospital beds located at the St. Luke's Campus IF the new hospital proposed for Downtown were, instead, constructed on the St. Luke's Campus.  This conclusion is based upon MVHS's existing and proposed beds summary tabulated in the DOH's Needs Analysis, below.














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As already explained in "Don't be Misled," there is NO legal requirement that the hospital be built in the City of Utica -- in spite of repeated statements by Mr. Perra and others. [I guess they are following the adage "if you repeat a lie often enough . . ."]

As already made clear in "Downtown Hospital: Locally Hatched and Conceived" the idea of putting the hospital downtown comes from local people: Mr. Brindisi, Mr. Picente, Mr. Dimeo and others -- not Albany.

With a negligible increase of only 3 beds, there is no question that if the new hospital were built at St. Lukes, the finished project would have NO impacts (environmental or otherwise) distinguishable from the hospital already there. No need to change public infrastructure. No need to add water pipes. No need to add sewer pipes. No need to change traffic patterns off campus. NO NEED FOR MORE PARKING!

The more we learn about this project, the more foolish it appears to build it Downtown!

BUILD IT AT ST. LUKES!!!