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#1 ·
Continued from the second thread

I had tried opening the thread a few times, and each time, my browser crashed. I don't know what was posted in there to make it do that, and I don't know if that was just on my end, but we're starting a new thread so that at least I don't have to deal with that.
 
#163 ·
I goofed on mine and didn't realize it until after I had mailed it out. But I already filled out my amended form and it's only going to cost $14. Just have to wait until the "wrong" one is processed. Live and learn.

I'm assuming you're doing the IT-203? Yeah, that one was a bit of a pain in the ass. Ever notice how NYS tax packets are about twice as thick as the Feds and the form's about twice as long?

NH's income tax forms are real easy to figure out...
 
#168 · (Edited)
Ironically I had no problem. Morning was slow but I think it was just normal volume. Afternoon, there was actually a huge break in the clouds around William St on the Thruway. I was actually going to take Transit but I didn't want to sit and wait 3 hours to make a left onto Jenahsee St so I decided "**** it" and took my chances with the wide-open Thruway and 219. Then again, I heard horror stories from others... Definitely got worse farther north, though.

The weirdest part was my electricity. I was "half" an outage this morning...some things worked perfectly normal, some didn't. Really odd.

If you really want a disaster, read up on those snowstorms in China. Holy crap. They're saying half the country? That's huge! Their handling of it isn't too great, either. They make Florida look like snow experts.
 
#173 ·
We'll recycle our snow yet again this winter. What'll that be, something like 5 times now?

What's been really odd about this winter is the distribution of the snow. It seems north of the city has been getting it alot worse than usual, and down here in the southtowns it hasn't been too much, unless you're in the Boston-Colden area, then you're about normal.
 
#174 ·
In Eastern Niagara County there has only been 5 inches of snow so far in January - except for the area within 1-2 miles of the Lake Ontario shore. I've only had to shovel once since the New Year and that was because I was afraid we were going to get more so I wanted to keep the driveway clear. Right now we have bare grass.:)
 
#176 ·
Thinking Regionally Works

Attendance spike lifts county fair standing

America's Fair is now listed in the upper echelon of all major county and state fairs in North America after having attracted more than 1 million patrons in 2007.

Carnivalwarehouse.com, a fair industry Web site, listed the popular summertime event, held every August in Hamburg, as the North Americas's 14th largest state or county fair. America's Fair attracted 1,009,122 people during its 12-day run last summer, a 4 percent increase from 2006 when 972,285 people and 12 percent more than 2005 when 855,664 visitors went through the fair's gates.

Carnivalwarehouse ranked the top 50 fairs in North America.

LouAnn Delaney, America's Fair director of marketing and public relations, attributed the attendance increase and high ranking to a number of factors, including warm weather and her group's ability to market the fair as a regional attraction.

"We also had a strong Canadian influx," Delaney said.

America's Fair is the nation's oldest country fair with the 2008 event to be the 169th in its history.

The State Fair of Texas in Dallas was the nation's largest fair in 2007 with 2,050,000 visitors who went there during its one-month run last fall. Collectively, the top 50 fairs attracted 41.46 million people, down slightly from the 41.47 million who went to one of the fairs in 2006.

The Canadian National Exhibition, held in late August in Toronto, was the seventh largest fair in 2007 with 1.2 million visitors. The CNE saw a 10 percent drop in attendance last summer.

The New York State Fair in Syracuse, which starts a few days after America's Fair ends and runs through Labor Day, was the 17th largest fair in the nation, attracting 936,397 people last summer, down 0.4 percent from the previous year when 955,800 people passed through its gates.
 
#181 ·
I played a softball game in snowshoes once before. Might I say that was quite an interesting game. Put it this way - it was an Army ROTC PT/morale building type exercise, so these generally weren't the type of people you'd expect to see tripping and falling and everything. Definitely one of the better days of that otherwise mistake I made.
 
#188 ·
I saw this in the newspaper today and put it in here for Elmwood, since he's from Cleveland.

Cities get creative to save neighborhoods
Rust Belt cities, Baltimore hit hard by mortgage debacle


CLEVELAND -- Judge Raymond Pianka views his courtroom as the emergency room of the foreclosure crisis.

Weary of lenders and wholesalers who don't show up to answer to housing code violations such as unsecured doors and windows on foreclosed properties, he began holding trials without them. He's put 12 companies on trial in absentia and has fined most, leaving each unable to sell any properties in the area until it pays up.

Rust Belt cities, already beaten down by a miserable economy before foreclosures began spiraling nationally, are moving to cut the number of houses left vacant when the mortgage can't be paid. At stake are valuable tax dollars and the survival of neighborhoods.

County treasurers and mayors are filing lawsuits and developing land banks to buy distressed properties and either demolish them or repair and sell them. Buffalo, N.Y., brings property owners and lenders together in court on monthly "Bank Days" to find solutions for cleaning up vacant homes.

"It's not a matter of if we do it. It's a matter of when we do it," City Councilman Tony Brancatelli said of the land bank planned in Cleveland. "We have to stop the cycle of abandonment."

A record-setting number of foreclosures nationally has helped drive down the U.S. economy. A report commissioned last November by the U.S. Conference of Mayors projected that 361 metropolitan areas would take an economic hit of $166 billion in 2008.

Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, has about 17,000 vacant foreclosed properties -- roughly 4 percent of its 395,000 houses. Baltimore has 16,000, up from 12,300 in 2000.

"The homeowner just assumes, well, the bank's going to take my house, but the bank can make the economic decision not to take the house," said Cindy Cooper, a Housing Court prosecutor in Buffalo. "Then that leaves two parties walking away, each one thinking that the other is going to take care of the house."

Pianka still lives in the neighborhood where he grew up and knows firsthand the blight of houses with boarded-up windows.

"The scrappers are taking the jewelry off the corpses that are left," he said from his 13th-floor office overlooking frozen Lake Erie.

"It scares people," said Joyce Porozynski, a block watch member who has lived in the Slavic Village neighborhood most of her life. "Many people have given up."

Cleveland, among cities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis, is modeling its land bank after a program in Genesee County, Mich., home to Flint, which made tax-delinquent properties available for redevelopment.

About 6,300 residential, commercial and industrial properties have been obtained since the Genesee County Land Bank started the program in 2002. About 2,300 parcels have been passed to new owners.

The Genesee County Land Bank also is serving as a model for Baltimore, where abandoned properties are as symbolic of the city as crab cakes and purple Ray Lewis jerseys. About six years ago, the city began aggressively buying up abandoned properties, acquiring more than 6,000 in that span.

The city has done little to reinvigorate those properties, so the housing department recommended creating a land bank that would take possession of abandoned properties and streamline their sale. In the interim, Baltimore plans to create a nonprofit this year that would perform similar functions.

"The goal is, ultimately, we spent the last five years buying property, and we want to, in a really disciplined, aggressive way, be able to return those properties to some kind of private ownership," Deputy Mayor Andrew Frank said.

Baltimore and Cleveland also have sued mortgage lenders, saying they're losing millions of dollars in tax money in protecting or demolishing abandoned homes.

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown last year announced a plan to demolish 5,000 vacant structures in five years. The city will put up $20 million of the $100 million cost and ask the state and federal government for much of the balance.

In cases of foreclosure, the city charges the homeowner and the bank with the same building violations for things such as peeling paint and broken windows. On "Bank Days," the idea is to hammer out who will take care of repairs.

"If the house is not in a terrible state, a lot of times the bank will discharge the mortgage so that the property can be donated either to a neighbor to be demolished or a nonprofit organization for rehabilitation," Cooper said.

An abandoned home is seen boarded up in Cleveland, Ohio, a Rust Belt city in Cuyahoga County, where there are about 17,000 vacant, foreclosed properties.



http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080206/BUSINESS/802060335/1003
 
#193 ·
http://buffalo.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2008/02/04/daily30.html?surround=lfn

Adelphia Pa. HQ again for sale

Business First of Buffalo - by James Fink Business First

After an initial deal to sell the former Adelphia Communications Corp. headquarters fell apart, the palatial corporate home is back on the market.

The LFC Group of Cos. has set a Feb. 14 deadline for an online bid for the 72,000-square-foot, three-story building located in the heart of Coudersport, Pa. The building is assessed for $30 million, but a previously-held online auction that concluded in October drew a $3 million offer as the top bid. That bid, from a real estate investment group, ultimately fell apart and LFC was retained to conduct a second online auction.

LFC officials expect several contenders to step forward for the building, which has a $3 million minimum bid.

"After bidding closed the first time around, we had numerous investors and other interested buyers step forward with offers," said Jack Ukropina, LFC senior auction manager. "They came to realize what a steal this property was and wanted to buy it, but by then, it was too late."

The building opened in 2002, just months before a financial accounting scandal involving members of the Rigas family took hold and ultimately led to the demise of Adelphia. Just before the scandal, Adelphia was the nation's fifth largest cable company.

Adelphia founder and chairman John Rigas, who also owned the Buffalo Sabres, was convicted on federal charges as was his son, Timothy. Both began serving their sentences last summer. Civil charges remain outstanding in the case.

Adelphia's cable assets were acquired by Time Warner Cable and Comcast Corp.

The California-based LFC has sold off more than 60 Adelphia properties ranging from vacant land to smaller offices and customer service centers.



All contents of this site © American City Business Journals Inc. All rights reserved.
 
#195 · (Edited)
Because that's where the Rigas family lived... before going to prison. Adelphia was founded in Coudersport in 1952 and eventually became the 5th largest cable company in the nation. Adelphia had plans to build a 40 story tower in Buffalo a few years ago, but the company collapsed amidst internal corruption.

http://image53.webshots.com/53/5/10/1/2683510010079727264UlmXGp_fs.jpg
 
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