DemocratsPittsford.org

I have been doing some research using the New York State Board of Elections campaign finance database available through the link http://www.elections.state.ny.us/DisclosureReports.html# .

If you want to roll your own, the link http://www.elections.state.ny.us/CFDownloads.html leads to the full database downloads by filing period. Looking up the filer’s account numbers you want and doing some database work, you can really find out a lot.

Although I can do it and have done it in the past, I’m lazy and have been sticking to the disclosure reports recently.

As an exercise, I looked up contributions by ‘Christa’, uploaded it as both html and text to my machine and then started to work in a spreadsheet.

Stripping everything away but filings by Christa Construction, Christa Development and David Christa with addresses either of Victor, Fairport or Williamsville (Christa Construction apparently has an office there)  leads to some interesting data.

Here are the yearly totals:

Beginning in with July 2006, all local campaigns had to file through the State Board of Elections so it is not a surprise that the amounts jump in 2006.

Here are all the Christa contributions as of August 3, 2009 since the online system started in 1999 sorted by recipient and then date:

Judge for yourself how evenly split between Democrats and Republicans Christa entities make their contributions.

According to the New York State Board of Elections page http://www.elections.state.ny.us/Contributions.html :

The New York State Election Law places aggregate calendar year limits on the amount of political contributions that can be made by individuals and corporations to New York State candidates and committees, as follows:

• An individual may contribute up to a total of $150,000.00 in a calendar year.
• A corporation may contribute up to a total of $5,000.00 in a calendar year.
• Each affiliated or subsidiary corporation, if a separate legal entity, has its own limit.

Note that the table above covers several different entities and people so in order to see if these limits have been violated, you need to go back to the original page and total the individual entities up for each year. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

How much in consultations and contracts has Christa entities gotten during this period? I have no idea.

Of course, correlation is not causation – but I’m suspicious.

As of last Thursday, the Pierson signs at Sutherland and Monroe had come down but the Brizee sign was still up. As per the Village, the responsible employee is on vacation and won’t be back until Monday.

Since the Trustees get notified about a complaint, well the Pierson signs are gone.

My intent was just to mention the Village temporary signs before going on to Town temporary signs but there is more. My photos, the property lines as shown on the County mapping site (http://www.mappingmonroe.org/mmb)/ and the Village Code ( go to the Village website http://www.villageofpittsford.org/; use the link in the first paragraph, enter 168-6 as the section number you want to look at) indicate that as of last Thursday you would be hard pressed to find a legal real estate sign anywhere in the village!

Take the signs on the south side of Monroe east from Main to the bank. these include the for rent sign near the corner as well as several for lease/sale signs further east.

Blue line is emphasizes property line

Click on the image to see it blown up or go to the mapping site and look for yourself.

The property line is flush with the buildings, not out towards the sidewalk.

What is going on with code enforcement in the Village? If you understand, please comment below. I don’t have a clue.

And this is a newly revised ordinance as of 4-28-2009!

That for sale sign on the north side of Monroe further east- within the right of way and with the additional part on top, my estimate is that it is over the four square feet limit. The signs along Jefferson are apparently all in the right of way. Shoen Place – Flour Mill for rent sign is legal since the property goes essentially across the street but with the one on the grain tower, there are two signs on the parcel with only one permitted.

Pittsford Dairy has a temporary sign most days between the sidewalk and the curb, in the right of way.

While the Village Zoning Board of Appeals can allow exceptions, it looks like most temporary signs in the village don’t meet code.

Then there are the contractors signs allowed by 168-6 A(3). My guess is the intent of the new law was that these should be set back 10 feet, too, but the law doesn’t read that way. In any case they should be on the property being worked on, not in the right of way and certainly not in the right of way down at the corner.

The ones I saw last week didn’t seem to comply except for the one at Danielle’s which might and I mean might not be in the right of way. And whose house was being painted a few weeks back by the painter that had a sign at Monroe and Washington?

If these signs are gone or more legally placed by the time you look, great! But don’t let anyone claim they weren’t there – I have the pictures to prove it.

The Village has a reasonable Temporary Sign ordinance but gentle suggestions by me haven’t gotten it enforced recently.

I’ll use a club this time by using maps, pictures of the signs and references to the Village Code. If you know someone at the Village Hall, please suggest to them to look at this page.

If these aren’t illegal under the code, please register and enter a comment explaining why not.

Here is the first map.

Red Dots approximately indicate signs in question

Double click on the thumbnail to see the full image. The image was created with Monroe County mapping tool and the three red dots were added to indicate the locations of the signs in the following image.

The red dot in the upper left corner is the where the Brizee signis  in front of Village Green.

2007 picture of Higgins sign in same place that Brizee sign is now

As you can see from this 2007 pictures of a JJ. Higgins it is well into the right of way let alone 10 feet back from the property line. Today a Brizee real estate sign approximately in the same place. This past winter I counted four different signs at the same time in this location.

Where is the property line? Based on the map image, I think it is a good 10 feet plus off the sidewalk. Given the 10 foot setback requirement, these signs have been 20 feet closer to the sidewalk than required by Village Code.

In the lower right of the map image above are two more red dots on the property on the southwest corner of Monroe and Sutherland. One is on the Sutherland side and the other is on the Monroe side where at the time this picture was taken around 9:50am on 7/25/09 there was another illegal sign.

The Pierson sign is the one of interest

Forget the sign to the right, it was gone on Monday afternoon, 7/27/09. But if were removed by a Village employee why did they ignore the Pierson sign?

It is a three time loser. A close look using the mapping software indicates that the property line is approximately where the tree is. This sign may not even be on the property let alone have a ten foot setback.

Then there is the size. The Village says four square feet maximum. With the sold sign on top and the realtor addition below, this one might make six or seven square feet.

For the third strike, check out the ‘Sold’ sign on the top. I think it was there all last week and was still there on Monday afternoon. That makes it somewhere more than four times the maximum 24 hours allowed by Village code. Look it up – I think is section 168-6.

On the same property is this sign around the corner.

Same three strikes

Yes, it legal to have a sign on each street frontage. But the same three strikes make this one illegal, too.

Isn’t the owner of this real estate firm a newly elected member of the Village Board?

Pierson real estate is an equal transgressor in the Town, too. Another post or two about Village signs first before going back to signs outside the Village.

Am I wrong? Register and Comment.

Am I right? Call the Village Hall and ask why they allow all these illegal signs.

I basically like the temporary sign ordinances in the Village and in the Town.

It is the lack of enforcement that I have a problem with.

The town revised the October 2006 version in March of 2007 after a dispute over essentially the restriction on free speech. Not that I expect the Town to admit it, but there was a behind the scenes discussion with the local chapter of the NYCLU that created a new version that that would avoid a lawsuit.

The town ordinance is section 185-138.1 which can be found online through the town website http://townofpittsford.org through the town code link on the left side. Use the link http://www.ecode360.com/?custId=PI1657 to get to the Town Code directly and enter 185-138.1 in the block on the left.

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Michael Slade, Democratic candidate for Pittsford Town Supervisor

My reasons can be summed up in three words:

Frustration.

Despair.

Hope.

Frustration: I’ve lived in the same house in Pittsford for more than thirty years now. During this time my interest in town government has waxed and waned. I’ll go to town board meetings for a time or two before becoming frustrated again over how tight knit and resistant to change it is. If you aren’t a member in good standing of the Republican in group, forget it.

Even if a Democrat wins a single seat on the Town Board they would be outvoted 4-1 so there would be only exposure of what is going on but not much of a change.

Despair: Over the years there seems to be less interest in what is going on inside our local governments.

When Andy Wolfe ran the Brighton Pittsford Post, there seemed to be at least some coverage, even if it did seem biased. Now the BPP looks like one person is writing the whole paper each week. Notice I wrote writing not reporting! The way to get good press is to send in press releases for verbatim or lightly rewritten coverage.

Gannett coverage of Pittsford Town Government has essentially disappeared. Coverage of Town elections barely is more than a listing prior to Election Day and the results the day after Election Day. Gone are the days of a reporter appearing at Board meetings or even following up on a press release. Of course there are the feel good Pittsford sections occasionally but little hard news coverage.

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The short answer is yes!  It’s the ‘how to win’ that gets more complex.  We can look back at the last election, still fresh in our minds, and probably come up with a myriad of mistakes made and opportunities missed.  However, that’s not what this post is about.  It is about moving forward.  It is about preparing for the next time.

I only began attending committee meetings when I started to help Mike Nolan, but what I saw at our last meeting inspired me.  The members who were there were passionate, organized and ready to go to work.  If you need proof you only need to remember the committed visability organizers who stood at the four corners of Pittsford every morning and night from October 3rd right through election night.  Then we have the people who gave up their weekend to do  lit drops and those who came to phone bank on Monday and Tuesday.  Even with the unfortunate phone bank issue on election night the calls got made.  People were committed to follow through.  All this is good news for the future but there is more we need to do.

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We subconsciously know the real state of the news we learn about Pittsford.

Yet we still delude ourselves that the daily and weekly newspapers, combined with television news and radio, are telling us everything we need to know.

And now both the delusion and the reality are changing again.

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