(The following article by Mike Goodwin was posted on the Albany Times-Union website on September 19.)
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — The city’s brief tenure in the train station business is reaching its final stop.
The City Council’s Development and Planning Committee will be urged tonight to sign off on plans to return the train station on Erie Boulevard to Amtrak, four years after the city inadvertently foreclosed on the property over a $192 unpaid water bill dating back to 1994.
“There is no question the city doesn’t want it,” city Corporation Counsel Alfred Goldberger said. “They want to give it back to Amtrak.”
The council will be briefed on the city’s plan to convey a quick deed to Amtrak and could vote on the property transfer next Monday.
The move is largely a bookkeeping measure. Amtrak officials contend the city didn’t have legal standing to foreclose on property owned by Amtrak, a subsidiary of the federal government, leaving null and void the foreclosure and a deed filed four years ago in the Schenectady County clerk’s office.
The city discovered the flawed foreclosure in September 2004 when a paralegal for the corporation counsel began taking an inventory of city-owned property.
The train station at 322 Liberty St. was one of 117 properties the city foreclosed on in 2001 and its identity apparently did not draw the notice of the attorney that handled the case.
Amtrak is tax exempt because it is a government subsidiary, but it has to pay the city fees for water and sewer use.
Foreclosure notices were sent to Amtrak, but they were sent to an address Amtrak no longer uses, Goldberger said.
“They might not have ever seen it,” he said.
City officials have speculated that the attorney who handled the case at the time may not have realized the property he was foreclosing on was the Amtrak station.