Schenectady results touted as ‘reflective of the community’
Candidates of color fare well in contests
At least a couple of trends emerged as a result of Tuesday’s primary contests in Schenectady:
It was a good night for candidates of color, and a mixed bag for the Democratic establishment.
Two Black newcomers are well positioned to win City Council seats, bringing the potential total number of lawmakers of color to four — potentially the most at one time on the seven-member panel — and the Schenectady County Legislature may seat its second Black lawmaker in its history.
Activist Damonni Farley, a Black candidate, was one of three victors in the Democratic primary for a full, fouryear seat on the Council. He and Marion Porterfield and John Mootooveren clinched the party nod over Councilwoman
Karen Zalewski-wildzunas. The five-member body currently has two lawmakers of color: Porterfield and Council President Mootooveren.
Another Black candidate, Omar Mcgill, defeated Brendan Savage in the Democratic faceoff for the Legislature’s District 1 seat.
Neither Mcgill nor Farley were endorsed by the city and county Democratic committees and waged insurgent campaigns, despite efforts by party leadership to quash primaries.
Two of the three candidates running for the special election to fill a pair of vacancies on City Council, Carl Williams and Haileab Samuel, are Black.
The Water Department’s latest wooden water main find is likely part of a system that was laid out in the late 1790s to bring fresh water to an expanding city, more than 100 years after the first wooden water mains were laid by English colonists.
The trunks, typically made of white pine or pitch pine, were connected with iron bands and relied on gravity to carry the water to reservoirs in the city. The city began replacing the wooden mains with cast iron in the early 1800s.
This most recently discovered wooden main brought water from the Maezlandtkill, which was a city water source until the 1920s, to the Eagle Reservoir, which was where the Albany County courthouse is today.
The roughly 12-foot trunk is sitting on a truck behind the Water Department’s
headquarters on Erie Boulevard.
Coffey said his hope is that the New York State Museum or another group might display the wooden main as part of an exhibit on the city’s history.
Last week’s find is just the latest of the old mains to be dug up. Parts of the city’s original water main system were discovered when Interstate 787 was built.
More recently, the department pulled wooden water mains from a
site near Broadway and Colonie Street last October and another one from the road in front of 412 Broadway in February 2019.
While the city has no idea how many old wooden water mains remain buried beneath the streets, officials are relatively confident that none are still in use.
“Although unlikely, there is a very remote outside chance that somewhere beneath some of the oldest parts of our city, a functioning wooden water main remains,” the city’s website reads.
And those wooden mains will likely continue to be rediscovered for years to come.
Coffey said that when crews stumble upon the wooden mains while digging up streets, they’ll typically leave them where they are in order to not have to patch up larger sections of the street.
“They’re really all over downtown,” he said.
Although unlikely, there is a very remote outside chance that somewhere beneath some of the oldest parts of our city, a functioning wooden water main remains.”
The city of Albany website