Colonie building inspectors completed a series of room-to-room walk-throughs last week at a string of Central Avenue motels, a process that began before county legislators passed a law urging them to do so Monday, Aug. 13.
Colonie building and fire inspectors, police and county health department officials toured the Skylane and Best Value Inn motels on Central Avenue. The two were among a list of four Central Avenue corridor motels County Legislator Christine Benedict, R-Colonie, called on to be cleaned up for deplorable living conditions.
County social services have used the motels to house families on welfare and post-release sex offenders.
Inspectors said many of the conditions cited in town documents in May acquired by Benedict no longer exist. They had been addressed over the summer.
Still, the inspections are far from over, said Colonie officials.
We are going to generate a list of violations we picked up that, in my opinion, were fairly minor. We will probably give them two weeks (to address them), said Michael Rosch, building department director. `They were fairly minor, still they’re not the Marriott.`
Most of the citations were along the lines of missing batteries in smoke detectors and windows painted shut. They were not like many Benedict had earlier pointed out, such as raw sewage, exposed wiring and rotting ceilings and roofs. Still, several rooms remained to be seen at the Skylane, and inspectors were returning to the Best Value Inn to see the other half of the 40 rooms they were unable to access.
The living conditions at the motels became the focus of a county legislative front to revamp the county’s stance on housing welfare recipients and convicted sex offenders placed at the motels. After an attempt to relocate families and people living in the motels failed last Monday in the legislature, lawmakers opted to inform Colonie to crack down on motel owners and clean the sites up.
Although the legislation Benedict proposed last week lost much of its muscle, it’s still playing a part in cleaning up the facilities, especially as word got out that inspectors will be visiting, unannounced, other motels not on her list.
`Since all of this has been exposed, a lot of the motels you are seeing the workers outside doing work. If Colonie is on a mission to bring these motels up to code, then I’m sure that they will,` Benedict said.
She said it needs to be done because there is a larger issue at the heart of her recent legislative action: What to do with the county’s sex offenders.
Benedict sat in on a Schenectady County legislative hearing Wednesday, Aug. 22, where lawmakers discussed a 2,000-foot residency restriction on sex offenders. Benedict, like many leaders in Albany and Schenectady county were wary of the legislation because they feared it could push sex offenders into hill towns, underground or onto the Central Avenue corridor in Benedict’s district.
Now not only will some of those Central Avenue motels serve Albany County’s sex offenders placed by Albany County Social Services, but Schenectady’s as well. Benedict described it a pinning one county against another.
Schenectady county legislators passed new legislation that prohibits level 2 and 3 sex offenders from living with 2,000 feet from anywhere children frequent. Level one, sex offenders are exempt from the residency restriction.
Albany County requires that the sex offenders live outside of 1,000 feet from such areas.
Town Supervisor Mary Brizzell said she shares Benedict’s concerns, but is quick to point the finger at the county for placing the responsibility for the condition of the hotels solely on Colonie.
`It’s kind of like the sign law. You can’t go out and do every illegal sign in the town. You get a complaint, and we go out and investigate it,` said Brizzell.
And that is exactly what the town is doing now by investigating the motels, she said.
While the town compiles its checklists of the two motels, and more to come, Brizzell suggested that county social services might want to jump in.
She said Colonie and the county need to be careful with future sex offender legislation and include social services in better gauging the condition of these motels and the future practice of placing both welfare families and sex offenders at them, she said.
She said she doesn’t like the county suggestion that Colonie isn’t doing what it should do.
For years, motels such as the Skylane have contracted with Albany County to house post-release sex offenders.
During the recent inspections, Rosch said he noted a prominently displayed sign on the wall reading: `No Children Allowed.`
Early on in her fight to clean up the hotels, Benedict discovered that at one point in time, sex offenders and welfare families were placed under the same roof. Social services officials have stated that that has not happened in years.
Regardless, Benedict fears a surge of sex offenders could inundate these motels as Schenectady chases convicted individuals out of town and down Central Avenue. Also, these motels, which make a decent dollar of the county contracts, will be quick to collect on the windfall, she said.
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