Amsterdam's year marked by AUDs, grant awards

The Recorder, Amsterdam, N.Y.
LOCAL
January 10, 2015 / 7
Trevor Junquera/Recorder staff
Amsterdam’s skyline, as seen from Lynch Literacy Academy.
Amsterdam’s year marked by AUDs, grant awards
Staff report
The Amsterdam Common
Council and Mayor Ann Thane
had a big year in 2014, and the
city itself and all of its employees
and residents had an interesting
year as well.
The year started off with a positive tone as newly elected controller Matthew Agresta vowed to
dig the city out of its financial
mess.
The state comptroller issued an
unofficial report in October 2013
which said the city inappropriately recorded its figures, leaving its
financial picture cloudy for the
past four years.
The city’s Annual Update
Document is a mandated document required by the state
Governmental
Accounting
Standards Board. The AUD
includes a complete list of financial records or that year. Every
municipality in the state is
required to file this report annually.
After winning the November
2013 election, Agresta got right
to work. He and had to correct the
city’s AUDs dating back to the
2011-12 fiscal year.
The 2011-12 AUD, which was
due October 2012, was finally
filed in August, after almost nine
months of correcting and reconciling city assets.
Immediately after that filing,
Agresta started working on the
2012-13 AUD, which he said in a
December meeting he planned to
file at the beginning of the new
year. The 2012-13 AUD was due
Nov. 1, 2013.
Agresta plans to have the city’s
financial records up to date in
2015.
• In 2014 the city started its land
bank project with a home at 35
Julia St. In February, volunteers
started working on the home to
prepare it for work that would be
funded by money allocated
through the land bank. Attorney
General Eric Schneiderman
awarded the Land Revitalization
Corp. of the Capital Region $3
million in October. The capital
region’s land bank includes the
city of Amsterdam, the city of
Schenectady and Schenectady
County. Amsterdam received
$552,000 of the allocated $3 million, and the city and county of
Schenectady received the rest. In
2013 the city was awarded roughly $250,000 in administrative
fees. City officials are looking at
demolitions on Division Street,
finishing a rehabilitation project
on Julia Street, rehabilitating
217-219 Brookside Ave., and
rehabilitating 10 Ellsworth St. in
the new year.
• Shuttleworth Park celebrated
its 100th anniversary and
received a synthetic turf baseball
field for $170,000 and the Stars
and Stripes Deck, a veterans
memorial deck.
• In April, Gov. Andrew Cuomo
awarded nearly $150,000 to the
city and its Carpetland property,
as it progressed to the next stage
of federal action based on several
Hazard
Mitigation
Grant
Program proposals. Because of
numerous floods including tropical storms Irene and Lee, the
Carpetland building on West
Main Street was damaged
beyond repair. Amsterdam proposed to acquire and demolish
the building, clear the site and
restore the property as open
space. The building was demolished a few months later.
• Also in April, Mohawk Fabric
Co. Inc. was awarded a $40,000
grant to purchase new machinery
and updated equipment through
help of the Amsterdam Industrial
Development Agency.
The funding approved ensured
industries such as tourism, agricultural production, manufacturing, and biomedical engineering
would continue to bring their
business, and jobs to the state.
The project retained 10 existing
jobs and created five new ones.
• In early May, Mayor Ann
Thane was sworn in as the next
president of the New York
Conference of Mayors. She’s
been a member of NYCOM since
she took office seven years ago.
She replaced former president
Richard J. Donovan, mayor of the
village of Minoa. She had been
serving as the group’s first vice
president.
• The Public Safety Building
was the first city building to
install solar panels during the
year, at no charge. Energy group
Monolith Solar of Rensselaer
contracted with the city in August
2013 to install solar panels at
seven sites in the city including
City Hall, the water treatment
plant and the sewer plant.
Monolith isn’t charging the city
for installation or equipment,
instead they’re selling the city the
energy the system generates at a
25 percent discounted rate compared to National Grid.
The agreement is a 20-year
commitment, and the company
estimates the city will save
$310,000.
• Two prominent first responders in the city retired in 2014:
Police Sgt. Owen Fuhs and Fire
Chief Richard Liberti. Fuhs
worked in law enforcement for
34 years and Liberti worked for
the city’s fire department for 34
years.
• The city had its first farmers
market in the summer, on
Saturdays in the Walter Elwood
Museum parking lot at 100
Church St.
• In August city volunteers and
officials gave Sassafras playground on Henrietta Boulevard a
facelift. They fixed dangerous
nails and screws, sanded the
wooden playground back to its
original, smooth surface and
repainted the equipment.
• Also in August, officials from
Fiber Glass Industries announced
the company would be closing
both of its plants because the
industry had too much competition in other parts of the world.
• The Common Council passed
a resolution in September to ban
smoking in city parks. Project
Action–Tobacco Free Coalition
provided the city with free signs
to place in the parks to notify
people the area is smoke-free.
• Also in September, the former
America’s Best Value Inn on
Market Street was vandalized
with damage to windows, mirrors, fire extinguishers, lighting
and water damage on all five
floors. The culprits were never
caught, but the company —
American Hotel and Hospitality
Management — hired to turn the
hotel into a Hampton Inn &
Suites, isn’t concerned with the
damage since they plan to gut the
building in the new year.
• In December the city received
a $400,000 grant award from the
state’s Housing Trust Fund Corp.
under the U.S. Department of
Housing
and
Urban
Development’s
HOME
Investment
Partnerships
Program. The $400,000 grant
will assist rehabilitation of rental
apartments in the city. It is anticipated that this program will
enable the rehabilitation of 17
units of housing, with a com-
bined total investment of
$700,000 in upgrading for the
city.
• Also in December the city
received the most funding in
Montgomery County under the
Mohawk
Valley
Regional
Economic
Development
Council’s award of $59.6 million.
Out of the $1.7 million awarded
to
Montgomery
County,
$224,625 went toward the
restoration of City Hall,
$325,000 went toward some of
the artistic elements of the
Mohawk
Valley
Gateway
Overlook Bridge, and $600,000
was dedicated to Phase 5 of the
city’s sewer improvement project.
• At the very end of 2014, cofounders David DeFazio and
James Burbank of Carmel’s Free
Diner announced they were
restoring the century-old eatery,
Carmel’s Diner, on East Main
Street within the next three years.
The diner will be a non-profit
restaurant where those who don’t
have the money to pay for a meal
will be able to work for it.