The Same Old Song

By Don Rittner

In January, Albany residents saw their tax bill go up 4%. Recently, Schenectady's mayor proposed a 6.9% tax increase and Troy's mayor offered an increase of 6.5%. Meanwhile, Saratoga raked in $80 million in tourism dollars last year.

In his State of the City address last January, Saratoga's mayor said it well: "Together we have created a city that has enormous value, historically, culturally, and as a tourist destination with a vibrant downtown." He added, "We draw thousands of tourists, as well as many new families...to our community."

Saratoga's $80 million tourist dollars are revealing. Only $19 million came from the track. That means most tourists went to Saratoga to enjoy the city and its history and culture. These figures do not include money spent by day-trippers or people staying with relatives, so you could add a good percentage increase to those overall tourist dollars. As one of Saratoga's officials stated: "We actively market Saratoga as a tourism destination."

Here in the Capital District of Albany, Schenectady, and Troy, the taxes go up, services down, and everyone blames everyone else, or previous administrations for the situation. The Tourist Council of America has stated that heritage tourism in America will be the number one industry in this country by next year. Saratoga gets it. Many other communities around the country get it. But here in the Capital District, the OLDEST continually settled region in America with a combined history and complement of historic and cultural resources second to none, heritage tourism isn't even a line item.

Many in our local communities continue to tear down the very resources that could bring us out of this fiscal stress. Instead, historic buildings become vacant lots, "shovel ready" for some perceived savior, be it a new hotel (for people staying to see what?); tacky chain drugstore (for a drug-needy crazed society?); or cold, unfriendly office buildings, often with no retail inside, and a scared suburban workforce that doesn't venture outside its secluded dark glass walls.

In the past few months, two major books have been published that have given world notice to the importance of the history of our region. Russell Shorto's "Island at the Center of the World," about the Dutch founding of New Netherland, of which we are a part, is in its 5th printing, and is being translated into several other languages. Janny Venema's book about the founding of Beverwyck (Albany) is winning critical acclaim and awards. Finally, for the Christmas season, Susan Staffa's long-awaited book about the founding of Schenectady will be hitting the shelves.

All three are major intellectual works that bring into focus the importance of this region as the template for American society as we know it today: the region in which free trade, tolerance, and justice for all was nurtured and grew. It is where the word “American” was first used to describe a group of people who shared a vision, but came from diverse backgrounds. It is a region in which every major American event can boast a local participant.

But in the meantime, if you want to see our local history, you can tour the country and find it.

For example, I recently took my kids to Maine. The trolley museum in Wells has two working trolleys made by the Jones Company from Watervliet. At a nearby historical society, a West Troy Meneely Bell was sitting in the yard.

You can visit Saratoga's auto museum if you want to see a Schenectady electric car that Charles Steinmetz built and drove in 1929. The Adirondack Museum, in Blue Mountain Lake, has an Eliza and George Waters paper boat originally made in Troy. Or you can go to Dearborn, Michigan, to the Ford Museum, and see the authentic replica of the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad (the Dewitt Clinton) that was the first steam passenger train in the country, and ran between Albany and Schenectady in 1831.

A Net user from Virginia recently sent me a photo of a nice wooden Troy Freihofer breadbox. There is the Uncle Sam Museum in California, yes, not Troy.

You can drive up through the Adirondacks to North Creek and take a historic train ride hauled by Schenectady-built ALCO engines.

Hello? Does anyone see the pattern here?

If we want to ensure a good local future, we need to understand, appreciate, and promote our own past. Machiavelli put it best: "Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results. "