TO: Batchellerville Bridge Action Committee Members
FROM: Peter VanAvery
DATE: March 18, 2004
You will soon find newspaper coverage of the Regulating District's March 8 board meeting on our web ste: www.nybbac.org. The hot news is that, on March 1, NYS Comptroller Alan Hevesi dispatched a team of auditors to the District's Albany office for a one-month expanded audit that covers accounting, budgeting, and governance. For the 4,650 access permit holders around Great Sacandaga Lake, this is a dream come true. The District has ignored our call for a management consulting study of its total operation. This audit should be almost as good.
Mr. Hevesi is no fan of independent state agencies that operate in the shadows outside the state budget process. In his view, many are guilty of widespread mismanagement, arrogance, and unwarranted secrecy. Last month, he and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer called for legislation that would make such agencies more accountable and better governed. The Regulating District, a public benefit corporation, is one of these "shadow agencies."
Mr. Hevesi's auditors should have a field day at the Regulating District. The District is still trying to cobble together a budget for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and for the next two years.
Last fall, as part of a three-year budget plan, the District proposed to increase its income from permit fees to $2,000,000 annually, up from actual 2003 permit revenues of $443,000. This was shot down by outraged property owners facing a 500 to 1,000 percent access permit fee hike. Result: a $1,557,000 budget hole for each of the next three years. To fill this year's gap, the District plans to tap $850,000 to $900,000 in surplus funds while trimming the budget by as much as $707,000. This is a one-time fix; its surplus funds are almost exhausted. Meanwhile, the District has scaled down the amount it expects to pay in future property taxes. The shell game continues
Apparently prompted by the Comptroller's auditors, the board voted to establish a three-step process for adopting a budget, with all three steps taking place in the public spotlight. The revised budget will be presented to the board in April, discussed by the board at its May meeting, and adopted, with any changes, at its June session.
At the board meeting, Chief Engineer Robert Foltan reiterated that the District has not heard a single complaint about high water levels from any of the 29 signatories to the Offer of Settlement. Several days earlier, I had called him to point out that, in a letter in the March issue of the Edinburg Newsletter, the GSL Fisheries Federation said: "Mr. Randy Gardinier, Chairman of the Great Sacandaga Fisheries Federation Inc., did have a discussion with the Chief Engineer Mr. Robert Foltan, P.E., of the Regulating District and expressed the Fish Federation's concerns regarding the high water levels in the fall and winter of 2003." The same letter says: "The Regulating District should have released water when levels exceeded 768 feet in June, and in the fall and winter." At the board meeting, Mr. Foltan said his telephone records show no summary of such a conversation with Mr. Gardinier. In other words, the game goes on, and we, the property owners, continue to be the losers. Keep complaining to the signatories, especially the Great Sacandaga Lake Association, which claims to be "the only organization that represents the entire lake region"!
My statement at the board meeting was once again focused on the high-water problem, and I made the point that a fix would be easy: "All that's necessary is to fine-tune the license a little bit. The reservoir's level may have to exceed 768 at certain times, but unless a downstream flood situation exists, the license should be revised to state that exceptions should be as few as possible and limited to 10 days. All it would take to give the Regulating District the flexibility it needs to dump excess water would be for a single new paragraph -- composed of about a half-dozen sentences -- to be added to the license." I concluded by saying: "Meanwhile, if the District truly wants to demonstrate that it has ended its seven-decade-old strategy of treating access permit holders as second-class citizens, it should stop dragging its heels on our proposal and take the corrective action we recommend."
The District is patting itself on the back for expediting the permit process for dock repairs. You can now call up and get a permit in as little as 24 hours. There will be no fee -- nor has there ever been one for this type of work. Of course, if the signatories to the Offer of Settlement had understood the document they were signing and had taken corrective steps, high water and ice would not have damaged or destroyed so many docks last year. Taking a long time to process a request for dock repair/replacement would have added insult to injury.
Incidentally, in case you have not heard, the District now requires all docks to have floatation. That includes wheeled docks. If you have questions, call the District's Sacandaga Field Office at 661-5535.
Timothy Foley, attorney for the District, made his monthly progress report on lawsuits brought against the District by Niagara Mohawk and Reliant Resources, energy firms that want a reduction in their annual assessments. In his opinion, the issues are much too complex for a judge to understand. His preference is for the lawsuits to be resolved by the real experts -- the parties involved. He admitted that such resolutions will always be open to criticism. And how! Incidentally, at a board meeting two months ago, a property owner stumped him by asking him to cite the law that empowers the District to charge fees for annual access permits. We still await the answer.
Our favorite lake is about to celebrate its 74th birthday. Gazette historian Larry Hart, in a 1998 "Tales of Old Dorp" column, put it this way: "About 100 curious spectators crowded the upper walkway of the new dam built at Conklingville about midday March 27, 1930, and watched chief engineer Edward H. Sargent pull three huge levers that set into motion the flooding of the ancient Sacandaga River Valley. They saw the three outlet valves gradually close, causing the onrushing water to splash and swirl against the unyielding might of the huge concrete wall. This was the beginning of a man-made lake known today as the Great Sacandaga Lake, a body of water which has since grown familiar to all who live and recreate there -- but which was then so foreign to the families who knew it for countless generations as the Sacandog, a valley beautiful."
If your private property -- your dock, wood stairway, boat, etc. -- suffered damage from Great Sacandaga Lake's excessively high water levels last year, please be sure to report the estimated or actual cost of repairs on the BBAC's Damage Survey. You can do this in two installments. At the moment, we are looking for damage resulting from the April to June 2003 high-water episode. During that time, the water level exceeded 768, the point at which the reservoir is considered full, for 59 days in a row. We won't know the bad news about the second high-water episode, from November 2003 until January 2004, until the ice melts. You can file a second report at that time. During the latter episode, the lake's level exceeded 768 for 52 days in a row. Our Damage Survey takes about two minutes to complete. Thanks!
The next meeting of the Regulating District's board will be held at 9:00 a.m. on April 5 in Conference Room A of the Utica State Office Building at 207 Genesee Street in Utica.