Buyers beware; don't buy any home that has visible asphalt. Add that to the list along with mold and asbestos.

Teachers working 180 days a year, generous benefits, being able to get their kids on the bus in the morning and meeting them when they get back home, having every day home with their kids because they have the exact same schedule, having summer camps, skiing trips and all this available because the occupation 'they voluntarily' chose.
Perhaps a 'cap' on salary raises is in order. Teachers want to compare their occupation with other professional doesn't make it. I work 8 to 5 every week day with 2 weeks off for vacation. I haven't had a raise in years yet my taxes continually go up because the schools hire royalty to baby sit the kids. Then the family is blamed because of low test scores.
ENOUGH!!!!

OKAY; teachers used to take the job because they worked around their kids. The teachers would leave when the kids got on the bus and be home on time to meet the youngens. Every day the kids had off, (snow days, vacations, summer recess), the teachers had off. The benefit was that it was about a 160 days a year or so.
If teachers want to make what an engineer or white collar professional works; then they need to work that schedule of 250 days with a 2 week vacation and hours of 8 to 4:30.
No one is forcing the teachers to take a safe, clean and low stress job with all the pay and benefits that an executive working for a high volume and stress corporation makes. They either need to be more productive or take less in compensation.
Welcome to the 21st century.

The barricades can be removed. A win - win deal needs to be brokered ASAP.

Gordon: the problem is lack of students. Back in the 1950s through the 1960s the average family had 8 to 10 kids in school. The cost per pupil was $10 bucks. Now; families have on 1 or 2 kids. The cost is $100 per kid.
People need to have more kids. Our taxes will go down because of economics of volume.
At 20 kids per family; the cost is $5 per pupil.
How many kids does a family have to have till the cost is at the point that the school districts give US money??

Try to sell a house in Niskayuna when the buyer finds out the tax rate. Who can afford a $ Thousand Dollar$$ a month in taxes? Greed, nepotism and self centered importance are destroying our state.
Go get a real job that pays you according to your contribution; not what you can extract from the tax payers.

I had people tell me if you buy 2 tickets you double your chances. If you buy 1 ticket you have a 1 in 175.2 million chance the second ticket makes it 2 in 175.2 million. It does not cut the 175.2 million in half.

The Gazette constantly bashes the city. Negativism is so hard to control. Positive people build things up-negative people get in the way and tear them down!!

The city of Saratoga was a dump in 1980. Then the city fathers decided to 'look outside the box'. Perhaps Schenectady needs to check with Saratoga and see what they did to turn their city around.
Horse racing is not the major draw to Saratoga. Security, night life, entertainment, quality of life is.

These land lords have to stop buying nice property and destroying it. The tenants ,(on welfare), all deserve a nice place to live. The land lords should cut their grass, shovel the side walks, take out the garbage and repair any damage the tenants accidentally make to broken windows, holes in walls and from their poor kids marking up walls and smashing appliances etc.
If any poor tenants should sell a little weed or drugs to make ends meet; the land lord should bail them out and pay all the fines for not reporting them. As any home built prior to 1978 has lead in the paint, the land lord needs to watch the kids and make sure they don't munch on the tasty trim. Since tenants have no income and don't buy the required renters insurance; the land lord needs to be responsible for that cute pit bull, also check the smoke detectors monthly to make sure the batteries are still there and be sure the tenants don't smoke in bed.
Going to be a little tough as there is a law against choosing to rent to tenants for just about every conceivable reason by the land lord and that the tenants can refuse entry to their apartments that they now 'own' under the lease laws.
Putting a tenant on a land lord list of who has been a problem tenant is unlawful.
Wanna buy some rental property in Schenectady??