Albany County Republican & Conservative Conference Agenda 

Yesterday’s announcement about the Pine Hills Land Authority may be good news to County officials, but it’s bad news for County taxpayers. Efforts to acquire the former College of St. Rose are completely misguided. How do residents in Colonie, Guilderland, Cohoes, Watervliet, Bethlehem and the Hilltowns stand to benefit from a multi-million dollar government takeover of a city college, especially when there’s not even a clear plan in place to develop the now-dormant campus?

From the start, many of my colleagues and I have said this is an issue for the private sector and City of Albany to figure out on their own. County government has no business becoming the landlord to dozens of dormant college properties on the backs of taxpayers. Centralized government planning to this degree will only create more inefficiency.

This entire ill-advised scheme has reminded me of a dog chasing a car. What do we do now that we’ve caught the car?