Photos

• South Allen Street Park Devastation

Appraisals & Assessments

• Hafner (44-unit construction project — $330,000)
• D'Anna (mitigated swampland — $120,000)
• Alvey (vacant wasteland — $25,000)
• Parkland Assessment Mark Down (the whole value reduced to much less than the sum of its parts)
• Neighborhood Land Sale Comparison

Eleftheria PILOT (IDA)

• Eleftheria Application
• Updated IDA Materials (includes city tax giveaway scam calculation)
• Kathy Sheehan's Certificate (our "highly distressed area")
• IDA FOIL Reply (contains "distressed census tract" information)

Deeds & Related Documents

• City to James J Googas & Mary E Googas 11/19/13 — $100,000
• James J Googas & Mary E Googas to William C Brockley 3/12/14 — $125,000
• William C Brockley to 241 South Allen Street Holdings LLC 3/14/14 — $125,000
• Real Property Transfer Report
• Sale Agreement to James J Googas & Mary E Googas 11/15/13

Eleftheria Site Plan Sham

• Letter to Chris Spencer 4/19/16
• Letter to Kathy Sheehan 12/5/17
• Tributary Area Maps (compare PRE DEVELOPMENT with POST DEVELOPMENT — no planned recontouring at Onderdonk!)
• Three expired temporary Certificates of Occupancy were issued despite site plan violations — no copy of a current CO was produced by the city in response to FOIL Request W009084-061318
  1. Temporary Certificate of Occupancy #1
  2. Temporary Certificate of Occupancy #2
  3. Temporary Certificate of Occupancy #3
• Stormwater Report (big file)
• Stormwater Report Revision (big file)
• Stormwater Plan Technical Review (big file of Site Plans C-1 thru C-10)

Misrepresentation Part I (Liars & Hooples)

• Times Union Prints Garbage
• Emails re: New Scotland Woodlawn Meeting 10/4/12 (rejection of a Sano/Googas appearance request)
• New Scotland Woodlawn Meeting 10/4/12 (Sano/Googas/Eleftheria are NOT on the agenda)
• Bamboozled by Fahy/Fahey
• Park Alienation FOIL #1 (Municipal Lies — Municipal Information Form #14 & #15)
• Park Alienation FOIL #2 (No Objection! — why bother with an investigation?)
• Specified Parkland Replacements (they remain undedicated)
• Alienation Statute (city violated all three requirements)

Misrepresentation Part II (Various)

• Brad Glass
• May 2014
• November 2013
• November December 2013 - Dec 5
• Pat Fahy
• September 2012 (1)
• September 2012 (2)

Government Documents

• FOIL Albany Common Council
• FOIL Development and Planning
  • Case_05-14,_912-1
  • Case_05-14,_912-2
  • Case_5-14,_4187
• FOIL Senior Housing Correspondence
• FOIL Requests 2018

Attorney General Drops the Ball

• Sequence of events
  1. October 24, 2014 — complaint #14-2483 filed with AG's Public Integrity Bureau.
  2. February 19, 2015 — AG Schneiderman acknowledged receipt of the complaint.
  3. April 8, 2015 — information update sent to AG.
  4. July 7, 2016 — meeting held at 510 W. Lawrence Street with Mark Terra, Sara Pogorzelski & Dan Bajger of the AG's office pursuant to the complaint, in the tacit context of a broad investigation into the honesty of city public officials. Whatever the other shady areas under scrutiny (parking ticket scandal, Coeymans land purchase scam & various assessment department irregularities, inter alia, all qualify as solid candidates), it's a cinch the AG would not have devoted so much staff & effort to a single instance of skulduggery involving a two acre park.
  5. May 8, 2018 — Schneiderman resigned under a cloud of sexual misconduct allegations, temporarily replaced by Cuomo associate Barbara Underwood.
  6. October 29, 2018 — request for case status emailed to Terra & Pogorzelski.
  7. November 1, 2018 — Christopher Baynes by telephone (518-776-2682) replied that the case was closed, provided no details.
  8. November 8, 2018 — Special Prosecutor Madeline Singas (Cuomo appointee) announced no charges would be pursued against Schneiderman.
  9. Any day — you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
• Correspondence
  • Attorney General's Acknowledgment Letter
  • Information Update Letter

Jerry's & Kathy's Supporting Cast (dishonest mayors can't despoil a neighborhood all by themselves)

1. James Googas
   • Former city buildings department functionary & Jennings city hall crony.
   • Lied about South Allen Pocket Playground, alleging it was a place where drug deals & rapes occurred.
   • Made a bogus (uninvited & unannounced) presentation at a meeting in another neighborhood (Quail Street) with the ward's common council member.
   • Closed & fenced in the Dale Place public right of way used by 261 S. Allen St.
   • Emailed a series of lies to public officials about a neighborhood resident, whom he had never met, to discredit the concerns she expressed to these officials about the proposed plan to destroy the South Allen Street wetland.
   • Attempted to convince City of Albany officials to allow the Planning Board to approve his project prior to receiving the letter from the Army Corps of Engineers presenting its findings about the South Allen Street wetland.
   • Repeatedly violated the City of Albany noise ordinance during the construction phase by commencing work earlier than the allowed start time, despite repeated complaints from neighbors and requests to comply by city officials.
   • Constructed general housing units, knowingly violating the provision in the park alienation law passed by the NYS Legislature to build "independent senior garden apartments."
   • Violated his building and stormwater management plans by neglecting to plant trees or install a fence behind his buildings, and by grading onto the city's right of way to redirect stormwater runoff away from his property.
   • Installed harsh exterior airport runway lighting to the detriment of the entire neighborhood.
   • Harbors an insane delusion that his development would spare the APD from having to maintain a South Allen Street presence, a neighborhood wherein the only major crime was the theft of a park. He was the perpetrator. The list of accomplices follows.
2. Jim Sano
   • Former council member, public mouthpiece, source of a stream of lies (swallowed whole and spit out again by the Times Union).
   • Lied about the nature of the project to individual homeowners in the immediate neighborhood.
   • Made a bogus (uninvited & unannounced) presentation at a meeting in another neighborhood (Quail Street) with the developer.
   • Lied about use of the playground, the users being the only interested parties spared his lies since he refused to talk to them, or even recognize their existence.
   • Lied to his constituents about his indecision to endorse or not endorse the project, thereby keeping them quiet and out of the loop, at the same time shepherding the project through the Common Council.
   • Brought motions in Common Council to close & sell Dale Place to the developer, despite the public right of way in use by a contiguous property owner & the fact that transfer of the street was unnecessary to the project.
3. Patrick Jordan
   • Former city attorney, produced fraudulent documents while pulling strings behind the scene.
   • Directed the downward reassessment of the property to the value of swampland not being sold explicitly for development.
   • Issued a deed pursuant to the park alienation statute minus the requisite restrictive covenant.
   • Failed to send the required BZA hearing notice, then lied about this fact.
   • Stonewalled FOIL requests for months to buy time while concealing important documents.
   • Furnished a dishonest Municipal Information Form to OPRHP.
4. Albert DeSalvo
   • Planning board chair, schemer who imposed fake (disregarded & unenforced) site plan requirements on the developer.
   • Sneaky & sly, imposed a phony (unenforced) application requirement on the developer [Prior to making an application for a Certificate of Occupancy, the applicant will be required to submit to the Building Department an “as built” site plan which depicts all the elements shown on the approved site plan...], a subterfuge calculated to maintain the Albany planning charade.
5. Joe Igoe
   • Present council member, silence is not golden when a neighborhood suffers from a lack of effective representation.
6. Keith McDonald
   • Superserviceable city assessor, rolled over when Jordan tugged at his string to mark down the property value, subsequently left office when he took the fall for other shenanigans.
7. Chris Spencer
   • In charge of planning & buildings, connived in ruthless exploitation of a neighborhood by a mean-spirited developer.
   • Issued several temporary certficates of occupancy to a development that violated its site plan.
   • Refuses to do anything about the stagnant water problem on Onderdonk Avenue.
8. Tracy Metzger
   • IDA chair, presided over the process employing a bureaucratic trick whereby a prosperous area including Manning Boulevard & Marion Avenue was declared "highly distressed."
   • Approved a half million dollar handout for the sake of the creation of a single low paying job.
9. Patricia Fahy
   • Assembly member, co-sponsored legislation to deprive a neighborhood of its only park/greenspace, making no attempt to reach out to the residents.
   • Ignores the fact that all three requirements imposed by her law (the alienation statute) were violated.
10. Neil Breslin
    • Senator, co-sponsored legislation to deprive a neighborhood of its only park/greenspace, ignored residents who contacted him about the outrage.
11. Patrick Bradford
    • OPRHP attorney, ignored or disregarded the investigator's report exposing Jordan's lies on the Municipal Information Form.
    • Issued a no objection to alienation statement predicated on three conditions that were all violated.