Apparently I’m somewhat of a spokesman for Mayor Thane according to the Judge Report (here):
According to flippin amsterdam, unofficial spokesman for the Thane regime,…
Man, that is a lot of responsibility to speak for an entire regime. I promise to do my best in my new role. Of course, you must now ignore the content and substance of what I write as I’m merely a spokesman; no original thinking here–just towing the party regime line. I don’t even write my own posts based upon my own views and analysis but what the regime instructs me to write.
Let the framing begin.
July 8, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Did I overstate? You must understand that simultaneously with my city hall insiders telling me that the Mayor was scrambling to recalculate her figures based on my analysis, suddenly you, Phil Lyford and a couple of other people who are not Mayor Thane were coming up with near-identical reasons why my figures were wrong, though absolutely no explanation has come from the mayor herself, who was 100% responsible for the figures I produced .
It thus appeared to me, reasonably I think, that “talking points” had been issued to the friendly media, or, in the case of Mr. Lyford, misanthropic supporters.
If my hasty conclusion was wrong, I apologize. Though we have differed on some matters, I appreciate that you generally appear to be open to reasoned discussion.
July 8, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Here is a timeline of my analysis and commentary:
I’d read your blog post in the AM and questioned the analysis as I wrote in my post given the fact that the city revenue would be the combined revenue of school, city and county not just the city portion. I’ve always considered the financial return to the city to include the totality from all sources so I thought it odd to just consider the city portion as you had calculated. In addition, you did not make clear until a later post or perhaps comment that you were basing your analysis on the mayor’s comments that the $890K would be solely from city taxes. As I stated in my prior comment to you, you would be right to criticize the mayor for misstating the numbers. (As no one has countered Mr. Going’s assertion of the radio comments I accept them as accurate)
I later received a document (source undisclosed) — which you would label as ‘talking points’ — that provided the rationale to get to the $890k. This document did in fact use the combined tax rate of $57/thousand which I had googled to see was basically correct (http://www.co.montgomery.ny.us/realproperty/TaxRates/rpt_CitAmsTaxRts2008.asp )
I then calculated my $15.6 million figure based upon (X * (57/1000)) = $890K and solved for X.
I then took the most conservative figure for number of units of 80 and calculated the approximate unit value of $200K. As $200K per unit seemed reasonable market value, I felt the numbers at a high level made sense and were not ludicrous.
I did not parrot back the numbers as provided but validated the mayor’s assertion of $890K, the underlying tax rate, the basis for using a combined tax rate and then calculated what the assessed value would be for the building. I did this with Google and Excel on my very own.
Let me highlight my comment in my initial post : Now, I admit that we are looking at projections so we need to discount and future earnings are not today’s earnings; I’ll admit that upfront. Still, the analysis presented above does not address these issues which are more relevant … In other words, we’re looking pretty far into the future so we have to financially hedge the numbers given we are looking into the future. I basically said we should treat the mayor’s numbers with that hedge in mind.
As far as ‘talking points’, I do not consider consumption of data and information as a talking point but rather the raw materials of analysis and discussion. So the document-in-question, local blogs, local media, et al fall into the category of raw materials. I do not merely parrot back what is given to me and I would never be the parrot for anyone, ever. I have many posts that I think support my claim here. Likewise, I would not consider the sources for your information as ‘talking points’ either.
As far as spokesman, I happen to agree with many of the mayor’s policies and strategies; not all of them, but quite a few so my posts reflect that. I also happen to believe in the need to push back against the critics and policies on the other side of the aisle if I do not agree with the statements and policies held and advocated; Chalmers being a good example. That said, I am only beholden to myself for what I write and advocate; I am not the voice of anyone or any group other than me.
How you choose to characterize me or my blog, well, that’s certainly not up to me.
July 8, 2009 at 9:56 pm
The real lesson to be learned here is the basic willingness to mislead of Going. He hears (or manufactures) a misstatement of the tax rate by the mayor. He knows that the 890,000 number related to the combined tax rate because he was a city employee and does a radio show with the former assessor. But instead of criticizing the misstatement (if it occurred) he elects to construct a lampooning analysis to propagate misleading information. Since he is caught in this blatant subterfuge he goes on the offensive and accuses Flippin of being a regime spokesperson. In his mind Ann Thane could be the only person in Amsterdam that would be concerned with the truth and be outraged by his comments. Fortunately, he is wrong. Other people have common sense and do not take what he says at face value.
July 10, 2009 at 12:00 am
Truthfully, I did not know the mayor was misstating when I did my calculations. How would I know that? I was never part of this administration and certainly not privy to her assessor’s methodology, if it indeed was her assessor’s. (He still hasn’t said anything publicly). All I ever did here was to present the meaning of what the mayor herself said were facts. Go to the show broadcast at wcsss1490.com, at about the 41 minute mark. The Mayor could not have been clearer in her belief.
I concluded the following: her figures made no sense, and she has been repeating them for months. Five minutes of reflection with a calculator should have caused her to realize it herself. Also, the figures don’t matter to her at all, because when faced with the realization that the city’s revenues from real property tax would be less than 25% of what she had thought, it obviously means nothing at all to her.
There has been misleading going on here, but it certainly hasn’t been by me. And you know that.
July 12, 2009 at 8:55 am
I took the time to listen to the WCSS broadcast. Within 20 seconds of stating that it was city money she said she was not sure. Should she have been sure – yes of course. Should you be less of a rabid critic – probably, but then what would we talk about?
BTW – when do we get to hear about the good ideas of Chiara that were ignored by the prior administration that you mentioned previously?
July 9, 2009 at 8:52 am
Sorry to burst your “I hate Bob Going bubble” there Dick, but if anyone was misleading it was the mayor! So if you used the common sense you claim to have and think about it…you would realize there are only two scenarios. The first being she had no clue what she was talking about and just spewed out whatever came into her head as to not look stupid, or the second, she intentionally misled the public. This proves her inability to produce important facts on a project that she has based her whole year and a half in office on.
July 9, 2009 at 5:28 pm
How do you explain Going generating a misleading projection? How does an apparently intentional propagation of misinformation help anyone make a decision?
When will he reveal the great ideas that were ignored by Isabel and Emmanuelle that he claims existed under a prior thread on this site?