Size Matters

Heavy metal: Make the Hummer your family wagon, and you may run afoul of the law. photo: John Whipple

Most of the Capital Region’s SUVs are frequently breaking the law, just by driving down the street

Attention SUV owners: Those same laws that keep tractor-trailers from taking a short-cut through your neighborhood might also make the family wagon a trespasser, too.

It’s no secret that city and town officials are often faced with tough decisions when it comes to balancing the needs of the residential and commercial districts. Like chaperones at a high school dance, those charged with enforcing this separation often rely upon rules as flimsy as the old “keep enough space between you for a Bible” in order to prevent overmingling. (This, of course, would raise such questions as, “The pocket Bible or the massive, Gutenberg edition?”)

Take, for instance, a situation that developed last November in Guilderland that received little attention outside of the town’s local newspaper, The Altamont Enterprise, but may be indicative of things to come around the Capital Region.

The controversy first made headlines when a feud between neighbors resulted in Guilderland resident Wesley Staroba receiving a ticket for parking his Chevrolet Silverado truck in his home’s driveway. As Staroba—and even a few town officials—soon discovered, local zoning laws define a commercial vehicle as any vehicle “having a registered carrying or hauling capacity of one ton or more.” According to the manufacturer’s specifications, Staroba’s heavy-duty pickup is rated to carry that much and more, and in Guilderland, like in many other municipalities around the region, commercial vehicles are prohibited from parking on residential streets or driveways overnight. Despite Staroba’s insistence that, just as with many families today, the large truck was used primarily as personal transportation for him and his family, the violation was dismissed only after Staroba agreed to treat the truck as the commercial vehicle it is—according to town code, at least—and keep it garaged overnight.

But it did raise the issue of what’s in those zoning codes. At a time when monstrous SUVs and four-door pickup trucks have become common methods of transporting the kids to soccer practice or yourself to work, similar regulations regarding vehicle weight and carrying capacity can be found in the zoning laws of many cities and towns around the Capital Region. Yet, just as town officials in Guilderland discovered, the question is not only whether the laws should be changed to accommodate the growing size of family vehicles, but also why such regulations exist and whether their enforcement should become more commonplace.

“Trucks, commercial vehicles, tractors and tractor-trailer combinations in excess of the weights indicated are hereby excluded from the following streets,” states section 119-35 of the town of Bethlehem’s traffic code, “except for the pickup and delivery of materials.”

This portion of the town code goes on to list 14 streets, including Ellsworth Avenue, Elm Avenue East (between Jericho Road and Elm Avenue) and Kenwood Avenue (between the Delmar Bypass and Delaware Avenue), all with a vehicle-weight restriction of three tons. Although three tons may initially seem like a hefty—and therefore, logical—cutoff point between commercial and passenger vehicles, manufacturers’ specifications place many of the most popular SUVs in violation of local zoning laws whenever their rubber meets certain roads.

>From the Cadillac Escalade, with a gross-vehicle-weight rating of 6,800 pounds in its lightest form, to the Chevrolet Suburban, weighing in at 7,000 to 8,600 pounds (and, of course, the 8,600-pound Hummer H2), there’s a strong case to be made that many of the vehicles common on local streets and avenues are, in fact, there illegally.

While there are various reasons for the infrequent enforcement of such laws, the reason for their existence is a bit more certain.

“Typically, a residential road is a little less structurally sound than a commercial road,” explained Bill Neeley, supervisor of public works for the town of Colonie. “The asphalt’s thickness tends to be greater on the roads where dump trucks and heavy vehicles are more common.”

According to Neeley, weight restrictions on local roads serve a dual purpose: protecting both the structural integrity and the aesthetic quality of neighborhoods. The town of Colonie has set a higher cutoff point than Bethlehem for its weight restriction (4 tons on the 80-or-so residential routes listed), and similar regulations exist for many of the other towns around the region, including Niskayuna, Scotia and Rotterdam, as well as the village of Colonie.

Neeley was cautious, however, about lumping SUVs and oversized pickup trucks into the same pool of potential street- wreckers as garbage trucks and tractors.

“The occasional heavy SUV isn’t going to tear up the street like a dump truck,” he reasoned. “But with constant use over time—yeah, they certainly might cause some problems.”

And with large amounts of taxpayer dollars directed toward street repair each year—not to mention the personal expense that goes with pothole-induced wheel alignments and tire repair—the question of whether these restrictions should be enforced upon vehicles like Dodge Ram pickup trucks (6,350 pounds for the 1500 model and 9,000 pounds or more for the 2500 model) or the Chevrolet Avalanche (6,800 to 8,600 pounds) may gain importance as the average weight of passenger vehicles outpaces the capability of local roadways.

For now, though, the question of enforcement tends to depend on whom you ask.

“There aren’t any vehicles that weigh that much,” said a spokesman for the town of Niskayuna’s police department when asked whether any tickets have ever been issued for violations of the town’s 4-ton weight-restriction on the eight roads where a limit has been assigned. The town’s weight restriction, he later stated, referred to vehicles’ weights when empty. (There is no mention of empty or full vehicles in the code.) And while the same representative later implied that the local weight restrictions were intended only for commercial vehicles (the actual code only uses the word “vehicles,” and makes no distinction between personal or commercial use), this uncertainty highlights one of the more frustrating aspects of the weight-restriction issue: the problem of differing standards.

The most frequent weight-related classification applied to vehicles is the gross-vehicle-weight rating, which includes the weight of the vehicle, driver, passengers, optional equipment and cargo. However, most vehicle specifications also list the weight of the vehicle when empty, known as the curb weight. The two measures can differ by a ton or more in some cases, leading many to question exactly which “weight” to go by when enforcing regulations. (The weights listed for vehicles in this story are the GVWR weights.)

In addition to the significant lack of empty vehicles cruising around local roadways, a number of other arguments have been made for the use of GVWR as a representative measure of weight. The New York State Department of Transportation uses vehicles’ GVWR in order to make a distinction between different classes of vehicles throughout much of the state code, while the Internal Revenue Service also uses GVWR to determine applicability to certain taxes and tax breaks. The controversial federal tax break that once allowed business owners to deduct up to $100,000 for nominally “work-related” (no proof required) vehicles weighing more than 6,000 pounds also relied upon the GVWR measure, and though this loophole has since been altered to allow such a deduction only for vehicles with a GVWR of 14,000 pounds or more, “work-related” vehicles with a 6,000-pound GVWR can still qualify for up to $25,000 in deductions.

Some local municipalities have removed much of the confusion by specifying the standard of vehicle weight to which their restrictions apply. The town of Colonie’s restrictions apply to “every vehicle having a gross vehicle weight, whether unloaded or loaded,” of more than 4 tons while the town of Rotterdam’s restrictions simply apply to vehicles with a current, total weight greater than the designated tonnage.

According to Lt. William Manikas of the Rotterdam Police Department, the primary obstacle to enforcement of such restrictions is simply a matter of resources. With more than 70 streets where vehicle weights are restricted and a police force of less than 50 officers, checking the weight of every SUV or extended-cab pickup truck would simply be a waste of manpower, reasoned Manikas, who added that he has yet to receive any complaints about SUVs violating local vehicle-weight laws. And complaints, said Manikas, tend to be the only way the police are alerted to weight-restriction violations.

“We’ve never really received any complaints about SUVs’ weights,” said Manikas, “but certainly, if it’s something we started seeing, we would do our best to take care of it.”

—Rick Marshall

Walls Away! The Albany Housing Authority is in the process of demolishing its building at 159 Church St. The building has not been occupied since the 1970s, when the construction of I-787 made the noise levels in the building unbearable. Until a recent move to the new AHA building at 200 S. Pearl St., however, the AHA’s maintenance offices were still housed at 159 Church St. AHA plans to use the site for its garage and fleet. photo: John Whipple

We bid farewell to Tom Nattell, lifelong poet, activist and one of our own

On Monday, Capital Region poet-activist and Metroland columnist Tom Nattell lost his two-year battle against throat cancer. He was 52. We are all deeply saddened by this turn of events, and although we knew Tom was dying, we all hoped through a miracle, some sort of cosmic reordering and righting of a terrible wrong, that he’d somehow pull through. We wanted this not only because it’s difficult to imagine our broader community without him, or because we’ll miss his upbeat personality or the extra dessert at staff parties (Tom didn’t do refined sugar), but because he was a genuinely good guy.

We extend our most heart-felt sympathies to Tom’s longtime partner, Mary Anne Winslow, to his kids, Noah and Leah, and to his close friends. We’d also like to thank them for sharing Tom with us, because, no doubt, the time he spent working on various projects and causes over the years took time away from his family and loved ones.

At Metroland, we first got to know Tom as an activist and a poet. He’d stop by the office on a fairly regular basis with press releases, often printed on bright neon- colored paper to make them stand out from the rest, promoting everything from protests to poetry readings. More times than not, the events he organized were a little bit of both: Rock Against Reaganomics concerts; the 24-hour performance bash, Readings Against the End of the World, which ran for a decade in the ’80s and ’90s; the Poets Open Mic at QE2; the annual Poets Action Against AIDS; the Poets in the Park series held every summer at the Robert Burns statue in Washington Park; and, of course, his infamous performance-poetry troupe, 3 Guys From Albany, which has toured the country performing in—where else?—17 other cities named Albany.

We knew that Tom had the stuff a lot of us wish we were made of: His commitments to social justice, the environment, home-grown art and activism were tireless. He was dedicated to building the kind of community he wanted to live in—one that is vibrant, thoughtful, sustainable. He was one of those exceedingly rare individuals who didn’t just talk the talk, but walked the walk. In a world that often seems filled with people looking out only for themselves—and their financial well-being—Tom took only what he needed and gave back so much more. You know the saying: Think globally, act locally. That was Tom. Because he was the real deal, we wanted his voice in our paper and that’s how he came to write his column The Simple Life, which appeared in these pages every other week since 1997.

Through his writing Tom opened a window into his world and shared his approach to life with those who were not fortunate enough to know him personally. He taught us how we, too, could make a difference in this life through conscious personal actions, however great or small.

>From Tom we learned about things like the efficiency of the bicycle as a mode of transportation. Tom was an avid cyclist. Most days he left the car at home and rode his bike to his day job as a research scientist for the State Health Department. Or he walked—not as efficient as the bike, but gentle on the environment, nonetheless.

And who could forget his instructions for how to set up a deluxe home recycling center, complete with a box of dirt in the basement filled with supercomposting worms? He claimed they even recycled his cotton undershorts—everything but the elastic waistband.

Because of Tom we all know that something as simple as planting a seed—an organic, sustainably produced seed, mind you—can make a world of difference.

Near the end of his life, Tom was waxing philosophical about the meaning of it all. He told Paul Grondahl from the Times Union: “A human life is just an eye-blink in the universe, man, if even that.”

Maybe there’s some truth to that—especially if said life is lived in a vaccuum. But Tom certainly didn’t live that way. He lived a life in the world and touched countless people through his actions. Because of this, we know the ripple effect of his existence will continue to be felt in our own lives, throughout our greater community and, in turn, in the wider world.

To ensure that this happens and to honor Tom’s life and memory there are certain things we can all do. First—this is the easy one—make a donation to the Tom Nattell Peace Poetry Prize, which will be awarded annually to an Albany High School student for a poem that fosters a sense of social responsibility (checks may be made out to the Community Foundation for the Capital Region; write Tom Nattell Peace Poetry Prize on the memo line, and mailed to the Community Foundation for the Capital Region, Six Tower Place, Albany, NY 12203; visit www.cfcr.org for more information).

On a personal level, we can all choose to live a little bit more like Tom. We can all try to live simpler lives, as it were. Take your pick: There are any number of ways to start or add to the conscious decisions we make about how we spend our time on this planet and our world’s precious resources.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Walk, bike, take the bus. Get rid of your lawn and plant an organic garden instead. (If you can’t part with the grass, at least stop using petrochemicals to fertilize it and don’t waste water to keep it green at the height of summer.) Write to your elected officials and let them know what you think about policies affecting the environment, poverty, AIDS . . . .

You get the picture.

Tom led by example. It’s our turn to take up his mantle and follow, man.

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