My Reflections on Mayor Stratton’s Seven Years of Scams, Schemes, and Swindles April 3, 2011 By Pat Zollinger for The Schenectady Informer
Today’s [April 3, 2011], Daily Gazette’s article regarding former Mayor Brian Stratton reads like a paid advertisement. An ad prepared by an inexperienced advertising agency. I realize that the City of Schenectady is one of the largest financial supporters of the Gazette. This is a result of the municipality’s required purchases of legal notices and other mandated items to publish in a local newspaper. On the other hand, this story is a combination of omissions and editorializing. My limited knowledge of journalism is that a news story is just that; a news story. It is not to contain the writer’s own opinions and glorifications. I would like to touch upon some of the items that the Daily Gazette and Kathleen Moore failed to tell you.
For example, if you owned a home that was worth seventy five thousand dollars when Mayor Stratton took office, you were paying approximately $4000 in taxes. You were not paying garbage fees, inflated water and sewer fees or inflated building permit fees among other money-grabbing items disguised as other fees. For the same house today, you are paying $6000 plus garbage fees, plus increased water and sewer fees, plus higher building permit fees and a variety of other increased charges.
Setting aside the exorbitant increase in taxes under his administration, in my opinion Mayor Stratton betrayed all of the Schenectadians on behalf of whom he took an oath. When re-elected, he swore to serve for four years. Whether it is because the former Mayor was piloting a sinking ship or whether it is because he turned into a carpetbagger, he clearly took advantage of the post offered to him, about which he knows nothing. ..........>>>>......................>>>>...............Read the complete article at http://www.schenectadyinformer.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1301844907/
Logged
