SARATOGA SPRINGS — A longtime West Avenue building may soon be demolished. 

The city’s Land Use Boards are this slated this week to determine the existence of any potential architectural or historic significance of the building that once housed D’Andrea’s Liquor Store on West Avenue, with a potential review of demolishing the structure. 

The single-story 2,200 square foot building stands on the northwest corner of Washington Street/Route 29 and West Avenue, and is perhaps most noticeable to passing motorists for its exterior letter design exhibiting Spanish and Greek, Italian, German and other languages in color-filled period script. 

It has previously served as a restaurant, and then a liquor store. In the summer of 2016, shortly after the liquor store closed, Faust D’Andrea sold the lot to David Mohr - president of 81 West Realty Inc., who acquired the property for $1.5 million, according to the Albany Business Review. 

81 West Realty Inc. is the applicant to the city asking for the architectural/historic review, citing that  the building “has been classified as an ‘unsafe structure.’  We are proposing to demolish this building and clear the lot.” 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — A new draft mapping the state’s Congressional Districts for the next decade shifts a greater number of Saratoga voters from District 20 to District 21.    

The proposed maps, drawn by court-appointed special master Jonathan R. Cervas, would specifically shift a larger number of Saratoga Springs residents into the 21st District, effectively placing Spa City voters in a district alongside those in Plattsburgh, Potsdam and other municipalities along the Canadian border. Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik currently represents the 21st district. 

The map, from court-appointed special master Jonathan Cervas, splits Saratoga County in a jagged west-to-east manner. The proposed new District 21 begins at the Kayderosserass Creek line at South Broadway, and includes most of Saratoga Spa State Park and points north – including Saratoga Race Course, Yaddo, downtown Saratoga Springs, west to Greenfield and east to Schuylerville, and includes Wilton, Warren and Washington Counties and extends north to the Canadian border. 

 “I look forward to running for re-election in NY-21 where I have been honored and humbled to earn historic support every election cycle. I will always work my very hardest to deliver real results for the hardworking families in Upstate New York and the North Country,” Stefanik said, in a statement. The town of Saratoga, where Stefanik maintains her home, would remain in her 21st district. 

Democrat Congressman Paul Tonko, who lives in Amsterdam, would see his home district carved away from the 20th Congressional District he currently represents. The draft map for District 20 includes: Ballston Spa, Malta, Milton – and the Saratoga County Airport, Round Lake, Malta, and most of Saratoga Lake, Clifton Park, Halfmoon, Mechanicville, as well as Albany, Schenectady, Troy and their surrounding communities. 

“I stand with our residents who loudly voiced that Albany, Amsterdam, Saratoga Springs, Schenectady and Troy must remain in the same district so we can continue to speak with a unified voice in Washington. I urge the (special master) to listen to the voters in the Capital District in his final maps. Anything less hamstrings our ability to get things done for our communities,” Tonko said in a statement. 

Representatives are not required to reside in the districts they represent. “If today’s maps are finalized, I intend to run for reelection in New York’s 20th Congressional District,” Tonko said. 

By The Numbers

District 21 – Saratoga County and points north and southwest, is one of only three of the state’s 26 Districts that lean Republican, with a 56.6% to 43.5% split, according to the Cervas special master proposal.  Current officeholder: Elise Stefanik (R). 

District 20 – Saratoga County and points south shows a 57.3% - 42.7% split favoring Democrats. Current officeholder; Paul Tonko (D).

Overall, there are 26 districts in New York with 3 districts leaning Republican, 15 leaning Democratic, and eight that fall in the 45-55% competitive range. 

The last Congressional races were held in 2020. In District 20, nearly 360,000 votes were counted. Democrat Paul Tonko defeated Republican challenger Elizabeth Joy by about 80,000 votes, with Tonko gaining 9,000 votes in that margin of victory in Saratoga County from about 81,000 overall county voters. 

In District 21, about 320,000 voted. Republican Elise Stefanik defeated Democrat challenger Tedra Cobb by about 56,000 votes. In the smaller segment of Saratoga County residents, about 52,000 voted, with Stefanik posting a 7,000 vote advantage difference.    

The maps are anticipated to be finalized May 20. 

BALLSTON SPA — The county Board of Supervisors staged a 30-minute special meeting May 11 and approved a pump savings cost for motorists in Saratoga of about .06 per gallon, which will go into effect on June 1. 

The tax savings at the pump was approved by the majority of the board, although some expressed concern that the reduction may ultimately lead to less tax revenue for county municipalities.    

The move dovetails with a previously announced state measure, also going into effect June 1, that will provide motorists across the state with a savings of about .16 per gallon. 

“New York State recently vested New York counties with the authority to cap their sales tax that is paid on fuel at the pump,” county Board of Supervisors Chairman Todd Kusnierz said during the May 11 meeting.  “I can tell you on my way down here I fueled up in northern Saratoga County and the price was $4.69 per gallon. And the price of diesel is even higher than that,” he said.  “We don’t want the residents of Saratoga County to have to choose between buying food, buying prescriptions and putting fuel in their tanks.”

On April 9, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the state will suspend the state sales tax on motor fuels and called on counties to do the same. The special meeting of the county board was called to get in under a time deadline.   

Kusnierz said the reductions would equal about .06 cents savings per gallon for Saratoga County consumers. A separate state reduction - about .16 cents per gallon - would be added, totaling approximately .22 cents per gallon in overall savings. “We anticipate the savings may be as high as $4 million during this period.”      

Supervisors Joe Grasso and Jean Raymond expressed concern that the savings at-the-pump may later adversely affect municipalities dependent on the sales tax revenue, and Saratoga Springs City Supervisor Tara Gaston cast the lone vote against the measure. 

“I have real reservations that this is going to be as effective as we would like it to be because we have absolutely no way of monitoring this in any way,” Supervisor Raymond said. 

“I was in the business directly and indirectly for probably 30 years so I’m more than passingly familiar with how this works. On the other hand, if we can do anything to help people, I think that’s important, so I am reluctantly going to support it,” said Raymond, adding of the estimated $4 million tax savings “$2 million is going to come out of the pockets of all the towns and cities and villages when we come to the sales tax.”      

The measure, which goes into effect June 1, switches from an overall percentage of total sales tax to taxing only the first two dollars of each gallon of gas that is sold, according to the county attorney. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — It is Friday afternoon. A steel-silver sky dangles over a blacktop lot that cradles a motorcar blazoned in gunmetal gray. 

Inside the car, the beautiful tone fragments that flow from Richard Lloyd’s guitar gush from the speakers. The band is Television. The music is “Marquee Moon.” 

“I remember, how the darkness doubled. I recall, lightning struck itself. 

I was listening, listening to the rain. I was hearing, hearing something else…”

Just at that moment, the ring of the phone cuts through all sweetness and melancholy, and bullies its way across the Bluetooth, sounding over the speakers of the car. 

“This is Richard Lloyd,” the voice says. “It looks like it’s going to rain here. Is it raining where you are?”

The wondrous season lands in Saratoga early this year. Richard Lloyd performs Saturday, May 14 at Putnam Den with his four-piece band.  “Kevin Tooley, David Leonard and a new guy, Steve Geller. Two guitars, bass and drums,” Lloyd explains. Local favorites Family Tree opens the show. Lloyd says the show will feature songs from across his career. And a rich career it is. 

There are more than a half-dozen solo albums to his credit, loaded with anthemic guitars and tuneful gems that in a just and more welcoming country would have returned innumerable radio hits.  His craftsmanship as a six-string practitioner is showcased in a popular YouTube site someone put up heralding guitar drone theory and “the use the mixolydian scale to create a Richard Lloyd style solo.” 

Then there is Television. The four-member ensemble produced two albums – “Marquee Moon” and “Adventure” during their initial forage through the late 1970s - and a created a presence whose influence to this very day cannot be overstated. 

“Marquee Moon” in particular is hailed far-and-wide as a musical masterpiece. You have to wonder if he’s tired of talking about. “I’m just glad it still sells,” Lloyd responds, with a chuckle. “Forty-five years later, and I still get paid.”

He was born in the fall of 1951 in Pittsburgh – six years after the end of World War II, and at the start of the Cold War. “People at that time were in a strange halfway state – between the exhilaration of recovery from war and the threat of nuclear annihilation,” he reflects in his 2017 memoir “Everything Is Combustible.”

Lloyd was a New York City kid at a time when the city was ripping apart at the seams. He hung out at Max’s Kansas City and memorably recalls going to see the New York Dolls at the Hotel Diplomat.

“I was taken aback by the audience,” Lloyd says. “Everybody was dressed to the nines - and they were more interested in each other than they were in the band. The band facilitated this scene, but it wasn’t like a normal concert where people are paying attention to what’s onstage.” It was a time when bands were starting to play in front of big crowds in large arenas.  “It was very cut-and-dried. Performer. Audience. Performer. Audience. All of a sudden there was a break in that. And that’s what it was like at CB’s as well, because if you played there regularly you got in for free, so there was always a lot of talented people there – not just musicians, but journalists and photographers and actors and writers. It was a very interesting time in New York.”

Lloyd and Television were instrumental in what was to transpire at CBGB. The Mercer Arts Center – the only showplace in town for creatives in 1973 – had collapsed in a heap of rubble on an August afternoon.   

“It fell down, while I was on my way (there), in a car driving from L.A. to New York,” said Lloyd, while sitting in a car traveling from New York to New Haven. 

“And you’re in a car now. Hopefully nothing’s falling down anywhere,” was the sequence of words that tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them. 

“I. Hope. Not,” he replied. 

Lloyd was living in Chinatown with Terry Ork. An assistant to Andy Warhol, Ork was perhaps inspired by Warhol’s sponsorship that had initiated the blooming of the Velvet Underground a decade earlier and  engaged in doing something with a band in a similar way. It was their visit to a Manhattan club on an audition night, that produced the first meeting between Lloyd and transplanted Delaware schoolmates Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine. 

“It was a cabaret club. People like Liza Minelli and Peter Lemongello played there,” Lloyd says. Verlaine played three songs on his audition night. That 10-minute set led to the collaborative formation that eventually became Television. 

Looking for a place that would let them play on a public stage, they found a dive on the Bowery and approached the owner – as the story goes - while he stood atop a stepladder fiddling with the canopy in front of his bar, convincing him he should showcase live original music in his bar. That owner was Hilly Kristal. The club was CBGB. Despite the moniker depicting what Kristal had imagined his bar showcasing (the acronym represents Country, BlueGrass and Blues), a new wave of creative people would discover the venue as a place to unveil their talents – Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Blondie and The Ramones, among scores of others. 

“It was like throwing a three-year-long New Year’s Eve party. It was a lot of fun. We made a rule that you had to play original music. No covers. Maybe one, if you did two - you’d never play there again,” Lloyd says. “We weren’t very good in the beginning. Technically we were pretty crappy. But there was an impulse there.” 

By the spring of 1975 and a few short years since Lloyd had gone to watch the New York Dolls perform,  Television was opening for the band. 

“It seemed that time represented a sort-of changing-of-the-guard. What do you recall of those shows?” I asked Lloyd. 

“Well, somebody’s got to go on first, so, yeah, we did,” he said. 

“Any memories that stand out?”

“Malcolm McLaren wanted to manage us, and we said no,” he says of the British impresario who worked with designer Vivienne Westwood and was at that point working with the Dolls.    

“So, he went back home to England to get his own band going.” 

“He put together a band based on all of the things we were doing,” Lloyd says. That band was The Sex Pistols. 

“Does that ever bug you?”

“Ah, only when it got written up as history - that it started in London. And it didn’t. It started in New York,” Lloyd says. “America is so big that you disappear in it, whereas if you’re in England and you make a splash, you’re in the daily papers for Crissakes.” 

In early 1977, Television’s debut, “Marquee Moon” was released and hit the Top 30 in the U.K. But America was asleep. The second album, “Adventure,” was issued in 1978. Later that year I smuggled myself (nobody checked ID’s in those days) and a palm-size Instamatic camera into the Bottom Line club to watch the band play. Lloyd wore a black button-up shirt, which I know not from memory but in a blurred, ghostly image that somehow has survived to this day. Patti Smith sat across the table, transfixed by the music coming from the stage. We all were. The band was mesmerizing. The next day the band was no more. 

“We broke up. That’s right. That was our swan song,” Lloyd says. “We didn’t tell anybody, but we already knew we were going to disband.”

The members of the group embarked on their respective solo careers, and there have been a few get- togethers resulting in one studio album. He puts little chance in the band getting together in the future.

“It’s amicable, but we’re not going to be playing together again. I don’t see that happening. Tom’s semi-retired, or retired completely,” Lloyd says. 

Lloyd estimates he worked about two weeks in the first two years of the initial wave of the pandemic, but he’s now back out on stage performing. So far, so good. He says he continues to carry close-to-heart the works of philosopher and mystic G.I. Gurdjieff. 

“He was a very interesting fellow and well worth looking up,” Lloyd says.  “It was all about being aware. Being conscious. Inhabiting your life more fully.  I don’t go to church, so it’s my spiritual interest.”

An interest in visual art has seen him produce his own works. He’s sold a couple of hundred of his paintings in recent years. 

“I color. I’m crazy about rich, vibrant color,” Lloyd says.   

“The same could be said about sound.” 

“You bet. Sound and light – they’re related. They’re just octaves away from each other.”

Richard Lloyd performs with his band Saturday, May 14 at Putnam Place, 63A Putnam St., Saratoga Springs. Also appearing: Family Tree. Doors open 8 p.m., show starts at 9. Tickets: $15, putnamplace.com.   

SARATOGA SPRINGS — More than 75 million people visit New York’s 180 state parks, 40 historic sites and numerous beaches every year. Less than 200 officers are charged with protecting those visitors, and in recent years the number of officers representing the N.Y. State Park Police has dwindled at an alarming rate.

“They are truly ambassadors for New York’s parks,” said Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner (D-Round Lake), leading a presser alongside members of N.Y. State Park Police from across the state, at the Hall of Springs this week.  “But in the past few years, terrible things have happened,” said Woerner, citing employee promotions and transfers being frozen, investigative and detective positions eliminated and dispatch services removed altogether from the Saratoga Zone and placed instead with state police. 

“We had 266 in July 2019 and we have about 188 today. Our attrition rate is at least four times the national average. What we are seeing is elimination through attrition, but no one has told us we are being phased out,” said Frank McGarity, associate director of the state Park Police Sergeants’ Association for the PBA. 

“In December 2019, Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a memorandum which basically said the N.Y. State Police would have operations control over N.Y. State Park Police,” said McGarity, who has 20 years on the job, 16 of them in Saratoga. “Since the memo where are we? There are no transfers, no promotions, no hirings.” 

The last hire was in October 2018, McGarity said and 78 Park Police officers lost in the past three years. The Park Police has had a patrol force since 1885. 

Of the 31 women officers who were on staff, 11 left, resulting in about 20 currently on the job and representing just over 10% of the overall force statewide. In March, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a 30x30 Initiative, setting a goal of ensuring women comprise at least 30% of new recruitment classes in all agencies by 2030.

Part of the reason for the shortage is the disparity in wages – which are less, and retirement benefits, which require five additional years of service before eligibility kicks in – compared to other protection agencies in the state, officials said. Rules limiting pay, promotions and transfers all play a role in the difficulty of recruiting and retaining officers. 

“I hate to use that word, but our own agency is ‘defunding’ us,” said Troy Caupain, PBA Secretary & Park Police Officers Director.   

Park Police officers are highly trained specialists, they handle very large crowds, assist park users, search for and rescue missing persons, make arrests, conduct criminal and non-criminal investigations, and provide emergency services wherever they are needed. Special services the State Park Police also offer include marine law enforcement and education duties on New York waterways, snowmobile enforcement and education, and high angle and swift water rescue teams.

The cost of training an officer is $130,000, and the majority of those who have left over the past few years have stayed in law enforcement, making the move to other policing agencies. Local municipal departments across the state are doing much of the employee poaching. For local departments they are getting someone well-trained who doesn’t have to go through a police academy course, and therefore have limited costs associated with doing so. For officers, they are offered better opportunities given the park police restrictions on promotions, transfers and benefits. 

Some changes that would help the park police recruiting efforts would be lowering the retirement eligibility to 20 years to be on par with other agencies, a geographic pay upgrade, and hiring a director of law enforcement, McGarity said. “We do not have what you would call a Chief – we do not have a director of law enforcement, we do not have an assistant director of law enforcement.” 

This past January, Gov. Kathy Hochul suggested the park police should be separate from state police, but no definitive action has been made since that time. 

“I don’t think the average New Yorker understands how devastating this quasi-merger between the parks police and the state police has been on our park police,” Woerner said. “Our Governor has said she thinks it’s time to separate the Parks Police and the State Police. I couldn’t agree more - but now is the time to make that real - before we start our very busy summer season.”