Edward Lynch new Director of Planning & Development

The City of Newburgh issued a press release this morning announcing the appointment of Edward Lynch as the new Director of Planning and Development.  He will be taking over the post from Courtney Kain, who had served as Acting Director.

According to the press release (download here from the City of Newburgh site), Mr. Lynch comes to Newburgh after spending sixteen years with the Department of Development in New Rochelle, NY.

In New Rochelle, Lynch served under the Development Commissioner Craig King.  When the Development Commissioner position opened up following Mr. King’s leaving due to health reasons, and Mr. Lynch was not selected for the position, he tendered his resignation earlier this year.

Newburgh’s press release attributes New Rochelle’s development successes to Mr. Lynch:

The City has radically changed since then with mixed use transit oriented development downtown, including a 40 story Trump Condominium and a 1000 unit Avalon Bay residential development, a mixed use family entertainment center and significantly more commercial development. As Planning Director and Clerk to the Planning Board, Mr. Lynch obviously had a role in making a positive change.

But New Rochelle’s developments, attributed to Lynch or not, may not all be so rosy.

Trump Tower project lacks lessees; OSC audit critical

Talk of the Sound, a New Rochelle blog, reported on June 21 about a New York State Comptroller audit of the New Rochelle Industrial Development Agency due to be published this month.  The OSC audit portrays a lack of oversight.  Additionally, Talk of the Sound reports that in the case of the Trump Tower, developer Louis Capelli has failed to rent retail space:

The report goes on to state that NRIDA did not monitor the status of ongoing projects to ensure reasonable progress toward the projected benefits described in the original applications so the board cannot be sure the projects will meet their intended goals, or know when they should invoke “recapture” agreements to recover some or all of the benefits provided when projects fall short of their promised goals.

The Capelli organization is on the NRIDA agenda tomorrow, in part to seek extensions on its recapture agreement for Trump Tower which expired in December. A recapture agreement is a clause which allows the City to claim money if a project fails to meet some promise, in this case to lease the retail space at Trump Tower.

The Comptroller warns that when NRIDA officials do not properly monitor ongoing projects and invoke recapture agreements, as appropriate, there is an increased risk that other taxpayers are subsidizing the projects’ financial incentives without receiving the expected benefits to the community. This is precisely what has been occurring since 2009 with Trump Tower.

Read the full post here.

Trump Tower didn’t do much for jobs

Talk of the Sound also reports that the Trump Tower project, according to the Office of the State Comptroller, failed to create the jobs it promised:

The report notes that NRIDA projects have, overall, failed to provide promised job gains for New Rochelle. In particular, Parcel 1A (Trump Tower) was supposed to deliver 358 jobs but has, as of December 31, 2008, delivered just 98 for a net deficit of 260.

Newburgh: New Rochelle North?

Mr. Lynch is not the first New Rochelle expatriate to join the City of Newburgh.  Current Corporation Counsel Bernis Nelson served as New Rochelle Corporation Counsel for twelve years (then under the name Bernis Shapiro.)

July 8, 2010 | Newburgh Advocate | Tags: , | 1 Comment »

Triple delinquency for the city

The New York State Authorities Budget Office issued their 2010 Annual Report on Public Authorities today.  The full report is available from the ABO website.

Newburgh is trebly delinquent

All three of Newburgh’s public authorities made it onto the ABO’s “Public Authority Delinquent Lists” section beginning on page 24.

The offenders are the Newburgh Community Development Agency, the Newburgh Industrial Development Agency, and the City of Newburgh Local Development Corporation.

All three failed to submit “a 2010 Budget Report in PARIS as of June 15, 2010.”  PARIS is the Public Authorities Reporting Information System, a computer system for authorities to file reports online.

Additionally, all three failed to submit “a 2009 Annual Report in PARIS as of June 15, 2010.”

NCDA•NIDA•NLDC: What’s going on?

The NCDA (Newburgh Community Development Agency) was recently voted by the council/NCDA board to be dissolved, with their assets and liabilities  transferred to the City.  Such an action would require final approval by the state legislature.  As of yet, though, there has been no bill referring to the NCDA (the successor of the Newburgh Urban Renewal Agency) appearing in either the Assembly or the Senate.  Other municipalities, Corning and Rome, have similar requests pending legislative approval, but not Newburgh.

This makes corporation counsel Bernis Nelson’s rush to transfer the agency assets a bit enigmatic.  With no bill on the horizon, why the need for speed?

Nevertheless, with a semi-dissolved agency, with governance of its assets and liabilities transferred to the city planning department, it is understandable why the NCDA would have failed to file.

The NIDA (Newburgh Industrial Development Agency) – in contrast to the other two authorities – has been actively working to get its books in order, with a board that meets regularly and auditors hired to prepare their needed annual reports.  But, as of the July 1 ABO report, they had not met their filing requirements.

The NLDC (Newburgh Local Development Corporation) is the mystery authority.  Comprised of members of the council, NCDA, and NIDA, it has not met in recent years yet continues to do business vis a vis the planning department.  (That is, business other than filing annual reports required by the ABO.)

Will the NLDC be meeting the new requirements?

In addition to the budgets and annual reports that must be filed, the ABO’s report describes changes brought about by the Public Authorities Reform Act.  New requirements for public authorities include (from page 2):

• Effective March 1, 2010 the directors of state and local public authorities, and their official designees, are required to sign an Acknowledgment of Fiduciary Duty. The purpose of this requirement is to focus board members on their legal obligations, including understanding that these duties are the means by which the board carries out the mission of the authority (See Policy Guidance 10-01 available on the ABO’s website: www.abo.state.ny.us).

• By March 31, 2010 state authority boards of directors, in cooperation with the management of the authority, were to review and consider the intended purpose for which the authority was created and to file with the Authorities Budget Office a statement defining that mission and the measures the authority would use to evaluate annually its performance against that mission. Local authorities are required to file a mission statement and performance measures by March 31, 2011 (see Policy Guidance 10-02 on the ABO web site for additional information).

• Each board is now required to perform an annual self-evaluation of its performance, measured against the authority’s mission statement, the authority’s goals and values, and the expectations of those served by the authority and the state as a whole.

• The boards of public authorities that issue debt are now required to establish a finance committee to review the authority’s proposed debt issuances; to make recommendations to the full board concerning the nature and appropriate level of the authority’s debt; and to make recommendations to the board concerning the appointment and compensation of bond counsels, investment advisors and underwriting firms.

Since the NLDC has not even met as a board, despite efforts by the NIDA to initiate such a meeting, makes it doubtful that the NLDC is compliant at this time.

July 1, 2010 | Newburgh Advocate | Tags: , , | 1 Comment »

Newburgh mystery: what’s missing?

Newburgh Mystery: Here is the organizational chart from the 2009 City Manager’s Budget, prepared by Jean-Ann McGrane.  Can you spot what’s missing? (click on picture to enlarge)

NewburghOrgChart

Leave your suggestions as a comment…

9.17.09 Update:

Most commenters (what a wise, wonderful, bright bunch you are!) caught the Economic Development/Planning Department omission.  I think this is the cause of some of the more serious conflicts and confusions over recent years on the council (and in other areas) because agencies have been operating with minimal to no supervision or, in some cases, no awareness of their own existence (as in the recent example of the Newburgh Community Development Agency or the Newburgh Local Development Corporation).

Since E.D./Planning was funded from, as I understand it, a combination of Newburgh Industrial Development Agency money and NCDA money, at a time when the boards of those two agencies were principally council members, it was one-stop shopping to do business in Newburgh.  The two agencies even shared offices and a “received” correspondence stamp: NIDA/NCDA, documents will show, or you can see it on even fairly recent letterhead of RFP or RFQ documents.

The problem with all this is the absence of any kind of hierarchy of authority. With no chain of command, no boss or board to answer to, no department head or manager checking the time cards at the end of the day (time cards that apparently couldn’t be conveniently coughed up when the Department of Housing and Urban Development asked to see them, so Mr. Emberger pinned the tail on the NIDA’s donkey to foot the bill); not to mention the foibles of former economic development administrative directors Robert McKenna as well as his replacement Lourdes Zapata, Mr. McKenna in particular who has been vigorously and repeatedly thrown under multiple buses so many times by those left in City Hall it is a miracle he has any flesh left, even in effigy.

When it stopped: it was after 2005 that the City Council ceased passing resolutions appointing members of the NCDA.  Oddly enough, in 2005 there was the passage of the Public Authority Accountability Act, and perhaps, just perhaps, somewhere in City Hall this attracted some notice.

DiNapoli’s Office: No problem hereRecently, I checked with the Office of the State Comptroller as to whether there was any problem according to state law with the city acting on behalf of the NCDA without the agency’s knowledge.  Jennifer Freeman responded at length, citing General Municipal Law § 503-a:

§  503-a.  Cooperation  with  agencies.  For  the purpose of aiding an agency established pursuant to the provisions of  article  fifteen-A  of this chapter a municipality may:
1. Delegate to such agency such of its powers enumerated under section five hundred three of this article as it may deem appropriate, necessary or  desirable  to effectuate the purposes and provisions of this article and as are not inconsistent with the powers reserved  to  the  governing body or the commission under this article or the powers granted to such agencies in article fifteen-A of this chapter.

Ms.Freeman continues her citation, but the gist is that in this case, it looks like the City has the okay from the Comptroller to act for the NCDA.

But what if it wasn’t the city that was acting? What if, as a hypothetical example, it was a small group of individuals operating in abeyance of open government, including, as a purely fictional example, the mayor, the corporation counsel, the former acting city manager, and possibly an additional city council member?

Back to reality… At any rate, the organizational chart needs to be redrawn.  ALL of the suggestions mentioned by commenters below should be incorporated, and additional suggestions should be solicited, perhaps at a city council meeting and additionally at a public location such as the Newburgh Free Library.  It is only with a clear understanding of how such decisions get made that we can rest assured that our tax dollars are going to the right places.

August 17, 2009 | Newburgh Advocate | Tags: , , , | 4 Comments »
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