Funeral held
Elizabeth “Betty” Alix, long-time colleague and friend of the Rensselaer community, passed away this past Saturday after a battle with cancer.
Alix had been working at the Institute as an administrative assistant for the past 28 years, the last 15 of which were with the Information Technology Services, now known as DotCIO.
She spent her earliers years at the New York State Workman’s Compensation Board, she was a communicant of St. Joseph’s Church in Green Island.
Funeral services are today at 9:15 am at the Phillip J. Brendese Funeral Home in Waterford, and at 10 am at St. Joseph’s Church in Green Island.
Memorial contributions may be made to Community Hospice at St. Peter’s Hospital in care of the funeral home office.
Spitting ban
The Troy City Council passed an ordinance in July making it illegal to spit on the sidewalk. According to council members, the purpose of this order is to improve the quality of life for the city’s residents. They plan to accomplish this by stopping groups of young loiterers from using abrasive language and spitting.
Violators of the ordinance will be fined $50. Five individuals have already been cited in violation of the city ordinance. Four out of the five violators were African-American, prompting concern from the Troy NAACP.
The Troy NAACP argues that the decree may be racially motivated.
While blacks make up 11.4 percent of the city’s population, the fact that 80 percent of the violators were black seems highly unlikely to the NAACP that the ordinance or enforcement of the ordinance is not racially biased.
The city insists that the issue is a matter of public health, however, and is not in the least racially motivated.
Editor’s Note: Information gathered from The Times Union .
Construction updates
Rensselaer hosted its fifth monthly public information meeting to update residents on the construction efforts as well as listen to any grievances they may have.
To date, College Avenue has been restriped. They have also created more no parking zones in that area to allow trucks more leway to maneuver in and out of the construction sites.
Currently the main contractor, McCarthy, is in search of a sub-contractor to lay the foundation for the parking garage.
McCarthy is scheduled to start pile driving in October.
They anticipate that noise will be a problem for the Institute because of the sensitive equipment on campus.
They will have vibration-monitoring equipment on-site but this is a routine practice for this type of procedure.
Once the garage is complete, it will hold 510 cars and will be primarily for faculty and staff members.
