Governor Cuomo's upstate economic revival plan based on tech bombs again with devaluing of Tesla plant

Wall Street Journal

 State officials recently wrote down more than $1 billion in economic development investments on several high-tech projects across upstate New York, including the solar-panel factory in Buffalo operated by Tesla Inc., documents show.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo first announced the factory in 2013 as the cornerstone of an effort to jump-start the upstate economy with manufacturing facilities developed by the State University of New York’s Polytechnic Institute. The state spent $959 million to build and equip it.

The Buffalo plant, as well as other factories near Syracuse and Plattsburgh, is owned by the Fort Schuyler Management Corp., a nonprofit entity led by officials from SUNY Poly and other state agencies. In financial statements posted on its website last month, Fort Schuyler wrote down the value of the Buffalo factory by $884 million and other high-tech projects by $311 million. The statements haven’t been previously reported.

Auditors said in the documents that they re-evaluated the terms of the facilities’ leases and determined the corporation “will not likely receive the direct financial benefits associated with ownership of the manufacturing facility and equipment.” Fort Schuyler’s financial statements, which cover the fiscal year ended June 30, 2018, valued its land, buildings and equipment at $94.8 million, down from $1.2 billion in 2017.

The change is refueling debate over the Democratic governor’s economic development programs and whether they deliver a good return for taxpayers. State officials insisted the write-downs were merely an accounting change, but critics said they show the facilities have little residual value for the taxpayers who built them.

“This is black and white evidence that they wasted $1.2 billion of taxpayer money,” said E.J. McMahon, research director of the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative think tank.

Activity at Civic Virtue site

"Hello Crapman:

Drove by Borough Hall today and noted that the green plywood fencing surrounding the Civic Virtue site was down. The workers were hosing the site with water. I spoke to them and they said that blue boxood and white lilies - the colors of the Queens flag - will be planted in the fountain area. Flower planting to come from somewhere in New Jersey. Will Katz have a ribbon-cutting ceremony very soon?

Check out my post here with today's photos of the renovated site.

All the best,
GtheA"

Glad to hear we're even outsourcing flower planting.

Students help the ecosystem of Jamaica Bay

From CBS 2:

It’s a new day for Jamaica Bay. Hundreds of volunteers will spend a week digging in to help shore up the coastline.

As CBS2’s Vanessa Murdock reported, their efforts may make the area more storm-resistant and keep local wildlife thriving.

Over one week, 400 volunteers will shovel the shoreline of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge to make room for 10,000 native trees and shrubs. They’re plant now to create a more resilient coast in the future.

“Our world is changing, sea level is rising. We’re having increased flooding in areas that were drier than before.” Chief of Resource Stewardship, Gateway National Recreation Area, Patti Rafferty said, “Sandy produced a surge of nearly 8.5-ft in Jamaica Bay – caused big problems for the ecosystem.”

Rafferty said the beach was breached. What was a freshwater source for hundreds of species of birds became brackish. Trees were uprooted, plants died, and invasive species took over.

Now, volunteers – led by the National Park Service, Jamaica Bay Rockaway Parks Conservancy, and the Nature Conservancy are taking it back.

They’re making room for natives like juniper and pitch pine.

Oakland Lake is now closed

From the Times Ledger:

Oakland Lake is closed to visitors until next fall.

Recreational enjoyment is off-limits at the 15,000-year-old spring-fed, glacial kettle lake as it undergoes a major transformation to upgrade the sometimes flooded path and improve the water quality.

According to a spokeswoman from the New York City Parks, the project includes the installation of stone swales and drywells “to collect water seeping from surrounding slopes and divert water from the pathway.”

Parks said while construction is underway, “it is necessary to keep the park closed in the interest of public safety.”

Oakland Lake, originally known as Mill Pond, has been closed off since the end of last month. The lake was renamed for the 19th century estate on the site called The Oaks, because of the abundance of oak trees in the area.

Once the project is concluded, “the original stream bed will be re-established and slopes will be stabilized with boulders,” the spokeswoman said.

In addition, the reconstruction will also clean out the existing drainage system and, in some areas, the contractor will install new native wetland plantings.

The work is part of the city Parks and Department of Environmental Protection capital improvement project to restore the 46-acre Oakland Lake Park.

As part of the DEP’s Bluebelt Program, workers will also install storm sewers in the streets near the park in order to prevent erosion.

Planned "Civic Virtue" replacement a total embarrassment

From Triumph of Civic Virtue:

Ever since plans to exile the Triumph of Civic Virtue statue to Brooklyn came to light, enquiring minds have wanted to know: What will replace the statue at its former location on Queens Boulevard?

On July 29, 2013, DNAInfo reported that Queens Borough President Helen Marshall was “in negotiations with the departments of Design and Construction and Citywide Administrative Services” concerning the future use of the Queens Boulevard site, but that “renderings that were presented to Marshall ‘were not acceptable to the borough president.’”

Thanks to a new Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) Request made by Robert LoScalzo (who has previously successfully sued the NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services (“DCAS”) to obtain Civic Virtue records), now we know how DCAS intends to utilize the former site of the statue: As a “planted ruin”.

Records obtained by LoScalzo discuss the fountain that served as the base for the Civic Virtue statue. The statue has been exiled to Brooklyn, but what is left of the fountain base is still at the Queens Boulevard site. According to the records:

DCAS wishes to keep the original fountain as a planted ruin, a scenic backdrop to a busy and important intersection in the borough. … [T]he fountain, although left as a ‘ruin’, will be planted with grades and groundcovers and act as a landscape folly to enhance this prominent corner.

An artist’s rendering of the proposed “planted ruin” shows the fountain area closed off behind a cyclone fence, with wildflowers sprouting from the fountain and surrounding property.

Is DCAS serious? They’ve removed the colossal statue and artwork from Queens, and intend to leave behind a “planted ruin” to “act as a landscape folly”?

A “landscape folly”?

Who writes this stuff, and how dumb do they think we are?

Read the full prospective from the NYC Department of Design and Construction.

Keeping stuff out of the country

From NBC:

Federal officers in Queens inspect packages, making sure the environment stays free of invasive plant and animal species that could harm our local ecosystems. Marc Santia reports.

Flooding bill too little, too late

From the Times Ledger:

A bill that would help prevent flooding after intense storms — an increasingly common scourge of many homeowners in some areas of Queens — was passed by the City Council last week to the applause of a Queens councilman.

The legislation, passed Feb. 6, requires the city Parks Department to identify types of vegetation it could plant that would help absorb stormwater before it could overwhelm storm sewers, causing a mix of polluted rainwater and sewage to overflow.

Councilman James Gennaro (D-Fresh Meadows), chairman of the Council’s Committee on Environmental Protection who drafted the legislation, applauded the bill’s passage Monday.

“In Queens, we know the challenges of managing stormwater all too well,” Gennaro said. “Several areas in our borough, and in the rest of our city, are prone to flooding with rainwater after heavy storms.”

Areas of Fresh Meadows, Forest Hills and other parts of the borough are particularly vulnerable to flooding, with many area residents saying their homes become inundated by a mixture of stormwater and sewage during intense storms. Some have complained that as soon as they fix the damage from flooding the next storm will hit and they will be deluged again.

Flooding is also occurring more often in recent years as intense storms happen more frequently than in the past, a development that Gennaro has attributed to climate change.

Gennaro said the flooding is also due in large part to the urban transformation of the city, with large portions of the previous natural vegetated landscape morphed into swaths of concrete, which does not absorb rainwater.

Oh? And who allowed that to happen?

Someone's stealing garden plants in Sunnyside

From Sunnyside Post:

Terry Murphy, a resident of 47th Street, said thieves have stolen his plants on three occasions since he moved to a house between Skillman and 43rd Avenues in March.

The most recent incident occurred Sunday night when a large “Sum and Substance Hosta” was stolen from his front yard. The plant, a garden giant known for its glossy, heart-shaped leaves, averages 30 inches tall and 60 inches wide. Murphy estimated that his weighed at least 25 pounds.

“It’s a very bizarre kind of thing to steal,” he said.

Problems at MacDonald Park

Macdonald Park Maintenance Problems

Electeds want to stop Kissena Park poachers

From the Village Voice:

Earlier today in Flushing, Assembly members Grace Meng and Rory Lancman, and park advocate Beverly McDermott, said the theft of flora and fauna remains especially egregious in Kissena Park.

McDermott, the president of the Kissena Park Civic Association and unofficial mayor of the park, has witnessed people leaving with coolers full of turtles and fish from the park's pond, and come upon hidden snares. And, she said, thieves are not just looking for food. It appears some are looking for beauty too, and are "luxury" poaching. Hundreds of daffodil bulbs planted one day have disappeared by the next day. (Note to the thief, before he/she gets any ideas: Daffodils are poisonous to humans.)

Lancman announced that in the next two weeks "Please do not harm or remove wildife" signs in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Korean will be posted around the park. The Parks Department has not wanted to post similar warnings in Central Park in the past, to avoid giving markers of where all the best treats can be scavenged.

Lancman also called for the Parks Department to step up the loosely enforced $250 fines against illegal foraging.

And to perpetrators: "Stop treating the park like their personal salad bar," Lancman admonished. After detailing the array of adorable -- and possibly mouthwatering -- bounty that calls Kissena Park home: fish, turtles, rabbit, pheasants, he warned: "That's not your personal buffet table."

Native flora endangered

From Yahoo News:

Oriental Bittersweet was an exotic foreigner still found mostly in East Asia when the New York Botanical Garden planted its first specimen in 1897.

Today, it is everywhere. The shrubby vine is common in woodlands and fields in 21 states, ranging from North Carolina, to Maine, to Illinois.

The American Bittersweet, meanwhile, has been in a slow decline.

Once common across the eastern two-thirds of the U.S., the native version of the plant still is around, but it has vanished from many areas now dominated by its hardier, faster-breeding Asian cousin.

The rise and fall of the two plants has been chronicled by the Botanic Garden as part of a 20-year study that offers a dispiriting outlook on the future of some native flora.

So far, the project has identified 50 native species that have disappeared from metropolitan New York during the last 100 years, and others that have become far less abundant due to factors including the destruction of their habitat, pollution and competition from foreign interlopers.

In some areas, the landscape is also becoming less biologically diverse.