Town approves horse show’s move to Stillwater
STILLWATER >> The town Planning Board has approved a site plan and special-use permit that allows the Skidmore College Saratoga Classic Horse Show to move to a new location at 28 Brickhouse Rd. in Stillwater.
The event has been held at the Yaddo grounds off Union Avenue in Saratoga Springs for many years.
However, organizers say the new 103-acre location, east of Saratoga Lake, has more room and will allow for more modern facilities.
The property was a gift to Skidmore College from the estate of the late Robert R. Rosenheim and is valued at $1 million.
“We are extremely excited about all the opportunities for improvements that this gift from Mr. Rosenheim makes possible,” said Adele Einhorn, horse show executive director of the horse show, in a statement. “This will allow us to build on the success of this very popular event by expanding the program and making this new facility more user-friendly for our participants. We
DiNapoli was referring to federal fraud charges that have been filed against some of Cuomo’s top aides over huge state contracts to build state owned facilities in Albany, Buffalo and Syracuse.
A lobbyist named Todd Howe with deep ties to the Cuomo family pleaded guilty to all charges last week and is cooperating in the prosecution of Cuomo’s former top aide Joseph Percoco, former SUNY Poly President Alain Kaloyeros, and several Cuomo campaign donors who landed lucrative state contracts.
The contracts that prosecutors said were fixed to favor certain bidders include the construction of a $750 million factory in Buffalo for a company called SolarCity, SUNY student housing in Albany, and state facilities in the Syracuse region.
There are also related allegations that Percoco and his wife took bribes and a no-show job from Orange County energy company that stood to make millions if the state guaranteed power purchases.
Cuomo has not been accused of any wrongdoing and said last week he knew nothing about the alleged crimes uncovered by the FBI and U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
DiNapoli said Cuomo and then Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority leader Dean Skelos ended his ability to review “SUNY and a number of statewide centralized contracts that are done now through the Office of General Services.” The change that also affects CUNY contracts came when Cuomo took office and moved swiftly to accrue more power over state funds and eliminate what he termed “duplicative and wasteful” review of contracts.
“At the time I raised the concern that the process was set up for us to have an additional set of eyes to look at these contracts on what we call a pre-audit basis or before the approval is done,” he said. “We can still audit some of this work after the fact but if there is a problem when you are auditing after the fact, you can’t really prevent the problem from happening.”
“So we felt that taxpayer value was not being protected by diminishing our oversight.”
DiNapoli was in Saratoga to speak at the convention of the StateWide Senior Action Council, a lobbying group for senior citizens.
Monday, he said he would return more than $20,000 in campaign donations he got from the companies facing charges, COR Development of Syracuse and LPCiminelli of Buffalo.
“People are very concerned about the scandals that seem to always be unfolding and I wanted to send a message that if there is a serious investigation and now charges, if we’ve had contributions from people who have been indicted, we don’t want to hold on to the contributions,” DiNapoli said after his Tuesday speech.
“That our way of saying we understand the frustration that’s out there and I felt the right thing to do was return that money.”
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is donating the money he got to charity, and Cuomo has announces his funds will be held in case the federal government seeks to seize them.