Saratoga burning

Flames could consume the Saratoga Racecourse, the state Legislature could ban thoroughbred racing and one out of every three fans that attend the burned-out track could fall ill with atomic dysentery and the whole gig would still be a success in the minds of the New York Racing Association. With waning gate receipts and a declining handle, NYRA officials proclaimed the meet a booming success. Or rather a booming success compared to the gloomy forecast offered by the normally chipper leader of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce in July.

“By any measure, the 2009 Saratoga meet was an overwhelming success,” NYRA President and CEO Charles “Chipper” Hayward told the Times Union, while sporting his best poker face.

The 2009 meet was an afterthought the week after the track opened. Despite some cheery early season anecdotal predictions from spectators divorced from reality, the lack of attendance at the track certainly didn’t translate into a more bustling downtown. Those who decided to forgo the $3 general admission price certainly didn’t take that scratch to the bars, restaurants and boutique businesses lining Broadway.

All season, downtown seemed to lack the social luster it normal glows with every time an estimated 40,000 addled revelers pile into the city proper. The scene didn’t seem as vibrant, the bars not as packed and the streets almost ghostly compared to peaks seen during the economic swell that encapsulated the region until last year.

Even with a precipitous decline in track attendance in 2008, few were willing to suggest that the lavish, faux-Manhattan attitude in Saratoga Springs had finally bitten the city in its ass. The arrogant suggestion then was that the crashing national economy –the global worldwide recession –would never befall a gem like Saratoga. Many suffered bouts of sheer hubris and decided to blame the whole dismal meet on something that nobody could dispute: The weather.

But as some are realizing now, the weather is but a small factor in the overall equation that drives –or was driving –the Capital Region’s economic powerhouse. There were many other factors other than rain that have steered people away from downtown and the track that few like to contemplate and even fewer like to discuss openly in the media.

At the top of the list is the utter identity crisis that has struck the city when all of its lower and middle income neighborhoods were gentrified; when developers began building $350,000 homes in areas where there were once affordable homes. This massive overhaul of formerly modest-priced buildings resulted in a sudden influx of tax revenue for the city. But instead of saving this as a nest egg, city leaders instead used it as an excuse to begin spending like a trust fund baby who just nailed a trifecta.

Even four years ago, there was plenty of indication that the real estate bubble was at capacity in Saratoga. Yet a clan of greedy realtors instead decided to keep inflating the fucker. Others simply raped the system in any way they could muster, sucking vast tracts of cash out of the foundation that the whole bubble was built on in the first place.

The business community did its share too by raising the prices of food, booze and everything else downtown. Some did it to stave off the ever-increasing tax burden placed on them by a City Council and City School District thoroughly unwilling to craft budgets amenable to year-round residents. Others figured the sudden rise of multi-story condominiums meant the transition from faux-Manhattan to real Manhattan was only a few years away.

And now we’re seeing the results of this bungled experiment in city building. Seldom has there been a time when two downtown businesses have decided to file for Chapter 11 protection at the apex of the meet, and another on the outskirts being seized by the government for unpaid taxes. While most businesses interviewed in the prototypical “so how did the season go” stories published this week expressed optimism over their register receipts, others seemed a bit concerned about what the fall will bring.

Amazingly, there are still some who think the tenuous situation facing the Spa City is just fine; that the summer sales tax numbers will come in, and we’ll see that Saratoga Springs is indeed recession proof. Among them is Lew Benton, the city’s resident tree counter and patronage sponge, who is assured a nice bright future suckling up to a variety of publically funded retirement plans.

Not long ago, Benton used the auspices of the Albany Times Union’s failing exercise in community-driven blogging to claim the hubbub about the city’s declining fiscal conditions was nothing but politically-driven propaganda. Overall, the piece seems like a thinly veiled advocacy of the city’s decision to leave the county sales tax equation years ago. But Benton, who is among the decision makers in the recently hijacked Democratic Committee, must paint a not-so-bleak appearance of the city’s financial condition, lest he draw the booming chorus of voices that demanded the council curb spending.

Curbing spending these days is really the only way to prevent a sudden eye-popping boost in taxes, which is something that is all but assured anyway. And a boost in the levy will certainly doom plans for his long-sought-after public safety facility; the leading stump his candidate for mayor will stand on in the coming months.

Benton is among the string-pullers directing the otherwise vapid Ron Kim, a fellow who can barely form cogent sentences on his own. He’s hoping Kim can oust Republican Mayor Scott Johnson, while another disciple –Kevin Connolly –takes control of Kim’s abandoned seat at the head of Public Safety.

The frightening part of this scenario is that neither Kim nor Benton seem overly concerned about the danger signs that are starting to crop up in just about every sector of the city’s functioning: The gloomy track receipts, the closing businesses, the aborted building projects, the $3.5 million city deficient; hell, the number of wealthy residents under indictment for real estate fraud. In fact, Kim recently voted against the city’s modest capital budget because it didn’t include the money needed to build a public safety building nearly five times the size of the facility used today.

Hopefully, these stories are still fresh in voters’ minds as they head to the polls in November, lest we end up with a council inept in its ability to adapt to the changing times. Keep in mind: There was another gilded age when city leaders thought that nothing could go wrong.