Through The Looking Glass

Volume One, April 9, 2007:
The great Lewis Carroll treated his readers to fantasy adventures where perception disguised reality until viewed through the looking glass. Carroll understood the old English idiom that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Always take a closer look to seek the true picture is an unspoken lesson in life. In politics, the trade calls it “spin”, an interpretation of “truth” that favors an agenda, often at the expense of the truth.
Each week we are provided offerings by local politicians in a publication called the Sand Lake Advertiser. If you’re wired to multiple sources of information, it can be quite entertaining to see the “spin doctors” as they are called, twist reality through their own looking glass, sometimes to the point of fantasy worthy of a Lewis Carroll adventure.
This week’s Advertiser provides one such adventure as North Greenbush Conservatives claim to “Come together for a better future”. The question is “whose future?” They have all the buzz words; tax cuts, expanded tax base, “reasonable” economic development, services for seniors and youth. And they even have dragons like any good tale, their antagonists, the “unpopular” Dan Ashley and CB Smith. These guys are not the favorites with many in the development community because they supported a Democratic Platform that included a Master Plan Committee to guide future development. Developers had gotten used to having it their way. More about this later in the week.
The author notes that the Conservative Committee is under new leadership, Chairman Michael Casale. He fails to mention, however, that the Chairman is a big player in Casale Excavating. His company is enjoying the good life with a runaway contract in Water District 14, now $740,000 overspent without change orders, thanks in part to friendly allies running the town Building Department which administers the contract. Without a looking glass, one would not know the Conservative Committee has a well placed member in the Building Department in one Michael Miner, who played a role in approving most of the payments to the Chairman’s company and continues to justify the overspending in a recent memo of January 25, 2007.
And we wouldn’t be surprised to learn what the Casale’s are doing with all those profits from Water District Construction. We bet a peak through the looking glass might find him investing it in developer’s plans to build new homes, possible only because of the water districts. (He has a couple of adventures in Troy that have caused a big contribution to the Mayor.) Take the M. Carey Group for example. We’re told Charles “JR” Casale had his own set of drawings for this project at a recent Planning Board meeting and offered to buy land from a gentleman attending the meeting who was once on the Planning Board.
Their enemies include of course, Councilmen Fennelly, Mihalko and Michaels, all of whom support the concept of community supported development conceived from a Master Plan. They claim the trio has allowed “numerous ethical controversies” including “illegal firings of employees”. Yet they can’t find such a ruling no matter where they look.
Ethical controversies they don’t mention are easy to find. We won’t go into the past ethical lapses of the Vice Chairman, Mr. Desso, nor will we here go into much detail on his behavior at the polls last September. Suffice to say the Conservative Chairman, Mr. Casale, is reaping hundreds of thousands of dollars getting payments approved well beyond his agreed to bid in Water District 14 without required change orders. This is thanks in part to a well placed Conservative Committeeman in the Building Department. We should also recall Casale getting an $83,000 check without town board approval from the Conservative Supervisor, Mr. Evers.
What a crew these Conservatives are when viewed through the looking glass. A defeated GOP legislature candidate who with his colleagues, could not stand up to efforts to have town land annexed to Rensselaer and the consequences of our children being forced to become members of the Rensselaer City Schools. A defeated GOP town board candidate aligned with the same philosophy and the reform Democrats who took control of that party this year.
Well, let’s face it, there back, wearing slightly different labels but still about using government to make lots of money and as they say, a better future, but only for some, if you peak through the looking glass.