Please stay on the line

It looks like a packed agenda at the Aldermen tonight. I'll be back later with some of the high points.

Grove Street Bridge reopens

I just got word that the state finally did that inspection we've been waiting on and declared the Grove Street Bridge safe to cross. That means the back way to Pittsford is clear once again.

It also means I have the "Grumpy Old Troll" song from Dora stuck in my head. And now so do the rest of you with small children. You're welcome.

In other bridge news, tomorrow's Herald will carry a story on DPW seeking to close a funding gap in its 5-year bridge replacement plan.

Die Grunbergen?

Larry Arnold, a Department of Homeland Security auditor in Vermont as part of the Hurricane Irene relief effort, commented during a seminar today that he liked Vermont in part because it reminded him of Germany.

Germany? Warum?

"The towns, the quaint cities that I've seen, some with the cobble bricks on the ground," he said during a break.

Arnold said he was stationed in Germany with the military for four years and loved it.

"The people are very nice, hospitable," he said. "I've enjoyed my time here, the country feeling."

Arnold was speaking at a workshop for municipalities to help them get their accounting in line with what he and other auditors are going to want to see once the relief effort is finished.

Die volle Gechichte werden im morgenen Rutland Herald veröffentlichen.

(Apologies to Frau Burke, my high school German teacher, if I mangled that one, which I probably did.)

Full disclosure

Since I have a story in tomorrow's Rutland Herald (got it in at the top this time) on the cogeneration facility Rutland Plywood just got a permit for, I figured I should confess to my status as a former employee.

I spent the summers of 1994 and 1995 on the glue deck. For those of you who don't know what that means, plywood is made by taking thin sheets of wood and gluing them together with the grain of the different sheets at right angles to one another.

I don't know if the technique has changed since, but in the mid-'90s there was a big machine that coated the sheets of wood with glue and spat them out. My job was catching them.

It wasn't exactly "The Road to Wigan Pier," but it certainly encouraged me to stay in college.

THEO!

I just interviewed both Bill Cosby and Lewis Black for their upcoming shows at the Paramount. The story will be in this week's Invite section, which runs on Thursday.

Both interviews were rather sudden -- as I was trying to schedule each of them I was asked "well, can you do it right now?" I wasn't as prepared as I would liked to have been, but, fortunately, these kind of stories are fairly straightforward.

Cosby threw me right off my game. He answered the phone by screaming "Now what!" and went on like that for a moment before easing up with a chuckle.

Overheard in the newsroom

"How about City Hall gets rid of their employee parking and makes their employees park in the deck?"

A coworker none too thrilled at the prospect of higher on-street parking rates and no more dollar-a-day lots.

Speaking of parking plans likely to make people angry...

I finally got a look at the details of Mayor Louras' proposed plan to encourage people to park in the deck.

Meter and pass rates would go up, tickets would more than double and the dollar-a-day lots would all close if the city adopted the plan as-written. On the plus side, if the state went along, the monthly parking rate in the deck would drop to $35 and the deck would get an hourly ticketing system.

For more details, check tomorrow's Rutland Herald. For fewer details, spend the day watching reruns of Hogan's Heroes instead.

Bridge closing on North Street

We just got word from DPW that the bridge over Tenney Brook on North Street -- it's between Grove and Pearl -- is closed due damage discovered in an inspection.

The damage has nothing to do with the flooding triggered by Hurricane* Irene, and the bridge will need "extensive deck work."

 

*I know it was technically a tropical storm by the time it got here, but this is my blog so pthpthpthpth!

Parking spots

As has now been reported in three stories on the subject, two by me and one by my esteemed colleague Brent Curtis, the Wales Street traffic study includes a proposal to make the street two-way between West and Center by eliminating seven parking spots.

Three of those spots are handicapped spots in front of the VFW. Now, just for fun, let's phrase that in a slightly more sensational and inflammatory manner:

The city is talking about taking parking spaces away from disabled veterans.

Looking at it that way, I'm a bit startled that we haven't seen a deluge of angry mail on the subject, and I'll be even more surprised if it actually happens.

To be fair, the aldermen who have discussed the issue and Downtown Rutland Partnership executive director Micheal Coppinger, who presented the study to the Aldermen Monday, have spoken of "relocating" those spots and working with the VFW. Should the proposal get that far, it'll be interesting to see how they find an acceptable substitute for spots right next to the VFW's front door.

I talked to Coppinger today, and he reminded me of his membership in the VFW Auxiliary and said his father often uses one of those handicapped spots, so the implications are clearly on his mind.

Monday Morning Linkdump (for your convenience posted on Tuesday).

So, I was out yesterday. I was briefly tempted to live-blog the Board of Aldermen meeting while watching it on PEG-TV, but my wife convinced me that wouldn't seem like such a good idea once the cold medicine wore off.

Anyway, two things for your reading interest this morning:

Business Week says small businesses aren't all they're cracked up to be. Not a reasurring thought when we keep being told the era of big employers in Vermont is over.

For the military nerds out there, Foreign Policy offers an account of a computer game the Army is using to teach counterinsurgency strategy. Yeah, I can't really tie this one to anything local, but I thought it was interesting.