These people are standing on what will be the front parking lot of the new Albany police headquarters.
Everybody in Albany surely knows about the Albany fire and police buildings on which construction is starting now. So I thought, anyway. But on Tuesday somebody working in a downtown shop asked me if I knew what was going on where the old downtown fire station used to be. So I guess a recap would not hurt.
After years of planning and two bond elections, the city held the obligatory groundbreaking ceremonies Tuesday, first for the replacement Fire Station 11 at Lyon Street and Baker Avenue, then in the vacant lot at 2600 Pacific Blvd. S.W. where the new police headquarters will rise. I missed the fire hall occasion because of my Tuesday morning gig on KGAL in Lebanon, but had time to get my bike and make it to the police ceremony. (The bike because there’s no parking at the police site and I didn’t want to walk from the parking lot at Memorial Stadium.)
Gerding Builders, of Corvallis, has the $19,500,200 contract to put up both buildings. (The fire hall is costing $7.4 million, and the other $12 million and change go toward the cop shop. Gerding will work on both projects at the same time and expects to finish both in time for them to be in use by September 2017. (Completing a construction hat trick, Gerding is also building the Albany Carousel downtown.)
The new fire station will straddle Sixth Avenue on the east side of Lyon, and one block of Sixth between Lyon and Baker is being closed. The closure takes effect today (Wednesday).
After first rejecting a bond issue for $20 million-plus, Albany voters approved an $18 million bond to pay for most of the twin projects. The rest of the cost, which totals roughly $24 million including land acquisition and design expense, has been covered from other city funds, mostly from what was left of the Pepsi/Gatorage settlement of 2010. (hh)
This looks like a competition for who can best carry off wearing an unaccustomed hard hat.
Police Chief Mario Lattanzio holds the megaphone for City Manager Wes Hare as Mayor Sharon Konopa waits to speak.
It sure would be nice to see some private enterprise building instead of sucking more money out of the taxpayers’ pockets.
How interesting that you fail to acknowledge that the taxpayers were asked first, to review the whole issue and to recommend what to do, and second asked if they were willing to pay for it.
In both cases the taxpayers said yes, they believed the facilities were warranted and that they were willing to pay. In addition, the buildings are being built by the private sector and help provide jobs in the area.
So stop your whining and understand that the people ARE the government.
“In addition, the buildings are being built by the private sector and help provide jobs in the area.”
Bob intentionally overlooks the fact that, in the real world, city government can’t inject money into the private economy without first taking money out of the private economy. The result of the city’s borrowing and spending is a “jobs” pie that is only sliced differently. The pie is no bigger and the economy is not ‘helped.’
The Albany City Council, especially the Mayor, perpetuates this same type of lie by claiming CARA has created jobs.
Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson” should be mandatory reading for everyone in city government, including retired bureaucrats.
Another rant copied from the 1970’s. Just a tired misdirection that doesn’t refute the fact that men and women are going to be drawing good wages in building those facilities.
There is no way in the world to refute that jobs are occurring.
The people spoke loud and clear to you, Gordon, when they approved these facilities over your opposition just as they continue to support CARA over your opposition.
More tax cuts for the rich? Endless failed trickle down Econ 101?
In Hazlittian world, if we want the people (producers) who put water in the tank to prosper, all we need do is cut their taxes. The producers will hire more employees, build larger plants and make even more water. Utopia is born. Then there is reality.
If the tank fills up because no one is purchasing the water, the producers will have no choice but to stop putting water in it. When you cut taxes on one group, you must compensate for the reduced revenue by either reducing services to all or by raising taxes on another group or both.
Hazlitt is more right wing, trickle down garbage.
Gordon L. Shadle gets an “A” in econ.101. The two replies flunk it. A “public investment” is in reality a greater economic disinvestment by virtue of the demand curve. That curve declines as surely as the apple falls downward from the tree.
We see that Shadle is still lending his “positivity” to the Albany community. Given his predictions for public investment in new infrastructure, you might be thinking that money spent on public projects is forever lost in the government ether, never to surface again.
In Shadle’s world, when government spends, those dollars are somehow destroyed, made incapable of ever resurfacing in any other accounts. So, when the construction workers who are building the cop shop get paid, they take those payroll dollars and burn them so that they can never be re-injected into the economy.
Yes, the Shadle Sham never stops. In the Shadle Universe, the laws of thermodynamics are suspended. Energy, in the form of money, can be destroyed according to the Shadle Interpretation. All this in spite of the fact that Shadle knows little,or nothing about quantum physics.
Say what you may… The PD is still at the end of a dead end street!
Mr Woods. The voters spoke & passed our referendum! It was the council that refused to adopt it over a mere opinion from the City’s attorney & not any valid point of law! Well, it’s my opinion they were wrong…JE
Dead end street means very little energy spent protecting backside. Defense 101. This may actually be brilliant. Sarcasm or not…leave that up to you.