Flippin' Amsterdam NY

Stated simply: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

So for this reaction on the Walter Elwood Museum (Gazette article here):

The Walter Elwood Museum filed a notice of claim Tuesday afternoon with the Greater Amsterdam School District, a move that protects the museum’s financial future, according to Jacki Meola, president of the museum’s Board of Trustees.

[snip]

The notice protects the museum in case it incurs a financial loss associated with the building’s closure as a result of the school board’s decision on Aug. 28.

And here is the action (post here):

…as board member James *Walrath* put it “Our liability ended when we closed that building. We had no choice, contrary to what the press said. We closed the building, not the museum and the museum has been disingenuous to say we closed it. We’re offended.”

[snip]

“You have been in the building at the pleasure of the board; you have no lease or agreement. We don’t want to be adversarial. We could call a moving van and put everything in storage.”

If you step back and look at how we got here, it boils down to a $2500 expense (I think this is the right number) to clean out bats. And in the process, we’ve shut down the museum for four months, consumed many hours of valuable time amongst the community, the respective boards, the school administration and the museum.

If only Newton had a law that allowed travel back in time.

I found the thread below on another blog. It’s interesting vis-a-vis the identity and marketing of Amsterdam.To see the thread click below:

York Staters blog

Provided by Greater Capital Association of REALTORS. Montgomery County is the last page.

Caveat: These do not represent the City of Amsterdam so do not draw localized conclusions as this is county wide data.

National home data(large metro regions) looks like it’s cliff-diving. (here)

I just saw the list of taglines for Amsterdam and I’m disappointed. Here is the list:

-Neighbors first. Amsterdam always.

-More than a city. Home.

-Small City. Big Heart.

-Community matters.

I’d posted (here) that the criteria for a tagline should be:

It’s this disconnect that really needs to be addressed because a slogan becomes meaningless if the slogan has no bearing to making buyers want the product. After all, the only purpose of marketing is to sell the product: it’s not slogans, it’s not Web sites, it’s not a brochure– all that is meaningless if you can’t sell it.

The only one that comes close in my mind is  “Small City. Big Heart”. That said, how do we manifest “Big Heart”? I just don’t know.

Still, it’s almost impossible to choose a slogan without a broader sense of our marketing strategy and market position. Maybe “Small City. Big Heart” is genius (and my analysis not) but I have no way of gauging the tagline without some marketing context.

This site has a list of Top City slogans in the US and at the bottom they state their methodology for ranking:

• Attributes:Do they express a city’s brand character, affinity, style, and personality?

• Message: Do they tell a story in a clever, fun, and memorable way?

• Differentiation: Are they unique and original?

• Ambassadorship: Do they inspire you to visit there, live there, or learn more?

I think this methodology applies to us as well and why I think this process needs another round of brainstorming– “Community Matters” is simply shocking.

We need to tag Zone 5 back.

A sound editorial in the Recorder today. I have to highlight a key point that bears repeating:

If any public money is involved with enticing businesses to Bridge Street or Main Street, officials will need to choose wisely or they may find themselves with another Cliffside Restaurant situation on their hands.

If we’re going to entice businesses, we should choose to which industries we market and we finance. I’m not a fan of public money going to retail. We have so many instances, just within Amsterdam, of failed retail establishments that hopefully they will serve as lessons of how not to drive economic development. My hope is that the marketing study by Zone 5 provides some insight as to what the demand drivers will be for the city and by extension for Via Ponte.

In the short term, retail will be an industry under stress given economic conditions. While we may debate the performance of retail at our local level, why invest public moneys in a stressed, risky industry? More impotantly, retail is at the end of the economic chain of consumer spending– consumer incomes and the number of consumers is the beginning– so it seems backwards to me to invest public money in retail at any point in the economic cycle; we should invest in raising the number of consumers and the income of consumers locally. Retail organically follows.

It’s encouraging to see increases in local demand so let’s invest public money toward growing the consumer economic base and let’s encourage retail development via private investment and enterprises.

I posted a while back on how the governance and transparency at Muni needs radical changes (here). Let me be clear: Muni remains a key asset for the city and needs to be preserved as a viable entity. At the same time, the lack of accountability and transparency is totally unacceptable. Mayor Thane is right to veto the council’s decision especially given her points outlined in her blog. (A must read blog IMHO) The Gazette article is here.

I’d like to gently remind the council that Muni is a public asset and as such, the principles of accountability, transparency, sound governance and protecting the public interest must hold. Anything less is unacceptable.

After reading this story on MOSA in the Gazette, I thought of my 550 pound dog.

First, here’s the key highlight of the story:

MOSA member counties, according to the contract binding their waste streams to the authority, are required to pay MOSA the per-ton cost for the bulk of the estimated amount of garbage the counties produce.

In 2007, Montgomery County fell roughly 1,700 tons short of its garbage quota and paid nearly $180,000 in penalty. This year, the county is projected to fall short of its quota by 10,500 tons of garbage, which would yield a $1.1 million tab.

So what does MOSA have to with my dog? Let me explain.

When my dog turned one year old, she weighed 55 pounds. So I figured that when she turns ten, she’ll weigh 550 pounds! (55 pounds per year times 10 years equals 550 pounds). How could this happen?

It’s quite simple really: it’s called “forecasting” where you look at past performance , you make some assumptions on future performance based upon the past performance and you ultimately predict what the future state looks like. What’s so critical in any forecast is the quality of assumptions. Clearly my assumption that my dog would sustain her rate of growth over the full 10 years versus just her puppy phase is laughable.

What’s not laughable is when silly assumptions drive financial forecasts and decisions. This brings us to the MOSA penalties above. Year after year Montgomery County pays hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, in penalties due to shortfalls in garbage output due to a simple principle: the underlying assumptions in the establishment of MOSA and its operations were the financial equivalent of my 550 pound dog.

So while the rest of the nation embraces green, sustainability, and the 3 Rs — recycle, reuse, reduce– we actually find ourselves incentivized by MOSA to generate more garbage and waste. Even worse, we get penalized for generating less waste.

Sweet.

Yet variations on such flawed financial decisions seem endemic to this area. I just don’t get it. If my 550 pound dog were a taxpayer, I think she would not only be quite large but quite rabid.

According to Wikipedia, Kirk Douglas was #17 on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time.

Kirk Douglas was born right here in Amsterdam NY. This might make you might think, “Wow, that’s pretty cool. I’m sure the community recognizes his achievements, maybe there’s even a Kirk Douglas Playhouse, a Kirk Douglas Theater, or maybe even a Kirk Douglas School of Drama and Performing Arts. That’s cool.”

Well, not so much. You see, we do recognize Kirk Douglas but in a different way, a uniquely Amsterdamian way– the Kirk Douglas Park. Nestled between three major traffic arteries, the park adjoins the Chuctanunda Creek and offers a playground for kids. So if you’re a parent looking to play a real-life, death-defying game of Frogger with your toddlers, the Kirk Douglas Park is the perfect park for you! You can see its location on the Google Maps image below:

Kirk Douglas Park

Once you and your kids, hopefully with attached limbs and embedded innards, make it to the park, you can then appreciate the plaque dedicating the park:

Kirk Douglas Plaque (courtesy of Roadside America)

So if Kirk Douglas — an Academy Award nominated, AFI screen legend , distinguished actor — rates with a rock-bolted plaque , I think the best any of us can ever expect would be a cardboard sign duct taped to a bridge post. Ah, the fame and riches of blogging.

I’m not sure how the whole park and plaque came to be but I seem to recall some community consternation over Kirk Douglas’ less-than-flattering depiction of the city in his autobiography. Here is the first sentence in The Ragman’s Son:
“Nobody” meant being the son of illiterate Russian Jewish immigrants in the WASP town of Amsterdam, New York, twenty-eight miles northwest of Albany.

Oh, I so hate it when the harsh reality of someone’s experience punctures the halcyon memories of yesteryear.

Frogger anyone?

Today’s Gazette editorial nails it:

Crime, corruption or bad governance in the city causes people who can afford it to to leave, hurting the schools; bad schools cause the same kind of people to shun the city, hurting its stability and tax base. In other words, the fate and fortunes of a city and its school district are intertwined.

If you want to understand the financial crisis with a snarky twist, check out:

A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis

Understanding the Mortgage Mess (caution: contains adult language )

Now you know what drives my skepticism on local financial issues and analysis…