Group to help dispense funds to victims of downtown fire
Catholic Charities of Albany volunteering to handle distribution, mayor says
COH0ES, N.Y. » During Tuesday night’s Common Council workshop meeting, Mayor Shawn Morse addressed social media posts about how the funds raised for the Nov. 30 fire victims have still not been dispensed to any of the victims.
In late November, a city man who was trying to imitate the History Channel television series “Forged in Fire” caused more than 20 buildings in downtown Cohoes to be affected by a huge fire.
The Northeastern Chapter of the American Red Cross reported after the fire that they were helping 23 adults and three children who were impacted by the blaze.
Since then, several businesses and organizations have held fundraisers to help gather a total amount that is estimated to be around $100,000 or more.
However, six weeks after the fire none of those victims have received any of those funds.
“It starts by having nine people call [me] and now I have 90 people calling, everybody wants a dollar,” said Morse on Tuesday night. “There are people three blocks away that said their curtains smell like smoke and that they should get a couple hundred bucks. It really becomes a daunting task.”
Morse said the city never had the intention of acting as the lead agency — since doing that becomes a difficult task to figure out who needs and deserves funds.
However, Morse said Tuesday, since no notfor-profit organizations stepped up with volunteering to help dispense the funds fairly, he would meet with the city’s attorney, Brian Kramer, on Thursday to discuss the best way for the city to help dispense the funds.
“Somebody posted something on Facebook that [said] nobody has gotten any money and it’s all being spent on fire boats or whatever, and I can assure you that one penny has not been taken out of the bank,” said Morse. “We will sit down with the bank and with Brian [Kramer] and make sure that there’s some kind of systematical, professional and safe way to start putting out this money.”
But on Thursday, Morse said he and Kramer agreed the city should keep trying to find a local organization that could help dispense the funds to the fire victims.
By Thursday afternoon, Morse said Catholic Charities in Albany was volunteering to help, dispense funds to all of the fire victims. City officials will be meeting Tuesday morning in City Hall with representatives from Catholic Charities along with CAP COM Federal Credit Union, Pioneer Bank and KeyBank, which are the three local banks that have been securing the funds.
“This feels absolutely wonderful, this is what I wanted all along. As I said to everybody the city is not in the position to do this, and legally I don’t even know if we could have done it, but I felt helpless; we’re now getting phone calls and people have nothing and I don’t know what else I could have done. So I spent the day contacting people I thought could help us and Catholic Charities is coming [here] Tuesday and we will turn the money over [to them],” said Morse. “It’s going to be wonderful to know that an organization that understands disaster relief will be able to help these families.”
During the Tuesday night workshop meeting, the council and Morse agreed that in the future the city would like to stay out of a fundraising process like this. Officials said they intend to come up with a plan to try to have other organizations step up in future situations like this.