When you convince us taxpayers we need a building of 420,000 square feet and it will be built in its entirety by 2018 and after state aid it will cost you this, you entered into a contract with the taxpayers. When you now say the building will be 60,000 square feet smaller (you have yet to explain what’s no longer required), it’s going to take five years beyond what I told you before and, by the way, the cost to you taxpayers remains the same at $137.5 million, I believe a revote is necessary.
Let’s say as a homeowner you contract to have your house painted. You agree upon the color, the contractor says it will be done by this date, you agree on the price. Later the contractor says I will only paint two sides of your house, I’ll get it done when I have spare time but the price remains the same. Would you just shrug it off and say OK or would you say, sit down we need to agree on these new terms?
Pure and simple the school district changed the terms of the contract with us taxpayers and a revote is necessary. This time district, get your ducks in order before you ask us taxpayers to open our wallets.
Ronald E. Dietl, Kingston
The Gallo administration
My own personal view of any administration is if it happens on your watch, it’s yours. You get the credit for stuff that happens that’s good and a pie in the face for stuff that comes a cropper. As they say, “no tears.”
Mr. Gallo inherited some good stuff and some bad stuff, and if the bad had stayed that way, well, that would be on him. (Budget and taxes: he’s done well on.) And of course, vis-à-vis bad stuff, he gets that in spades (or pies) when it comes to infrastructure. It all belongs to the current mayor; otherwise it is an endless game of pointing fingers if one is permitted to deflect the problem anywhere else but your own desk. And it’s not all that arbitrary. The power in the office is such that this mayor has the wherewithal to make some serious change in anything at all: the way it all works might not be readily visible, but the connections are real. The social and economic connections in a community are so complex, connected like a spider’s web, that if you touch any part of the web, every other part of that web will be informed. And you can affect any part of the web from where you are.
So, however it has happened, Kingston has come alive on Mr. Gallo’s watch. I certainly don’t have the most consistently sunny attitude about Kingston, and I’ve been here a long time, but these years under Gallo have been spectacular. I was wont to say “Hey, I got a joke for you! I don’t know how the joke goes, but I sure remember the punch line: Kingston!” That’s changed: Kingston is way way not a joke anymore.
Like for instance, just the Lace Curtain Factory. Yeah, that’s RUPCO, but that is also Gallo who pushed back really hard on Stephen Aaron, took that away from him, and now it is a brilliant piece of work and architecture, a neighborhood renewal centerpiece of a work-in-place residence for 50-plus talented people.
And there is Parks and Recreation and just now we see Rosita’s under the Maritime Museum, soon we will see a new and grand Kinderland from the Junior League at Forsyth Park. Despite the “opportunities” that I can see have been missed, (yeah, I’ll have more to say on that) I can also see that something very very good is happening in Kingston and a whole lot of very good things are happening on Gallo’s watch.
Gerald Berke, Kingston
Gerald, the punch line is still “Kingston.” Did you hear the one about the city that got all kinds of CHIPS money, and did it do anything with it yet? What’s the punch line?