Forged in the garage
Max Egdorf has run his custom automation manufacturing Forged Automation out two-car garage since 2019 with no plans to change until prices on commercial real estate drop, the Albany Business Journal reports. Automation manufacturers use industrial robots to make products from plans supplied by the customer. In Egdorf’s garage that means making specific products that other automation plants will not touch because they tend to focus on one type of product, the story says.
Nonprofits have trouble reaching Gov.
Grassroots and nonprofit organizations are asking that the spending cap on lobbying go up, the Times Union says. The story says the input on legislation gets lost because small nonprofits must register as lobbyists with the state if they wish to spend $5,000 or more on the effort. The expense, time needed to register and complexity of reporting on their efforts is enough to stop some, so they would like to see the limit move to $10,000. That change would allow some smaller nonprofits to get a seat in front of lawmakers and the governor. The belief, among the nonprofits pushing this, is that 99% of lobbyists would still go over the higher limit and need to register.
High Peaks Short-term rental under review
Just one large metal shed has a member of the Lake Placid-North Elba Review Board member worried about the effect short-term rentals will have in the High Peaks, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise is reporting. Stay at Lina, a company based in New York City, offered two projects to the review board in March, both of them would turn commercial land into STRs. The metal shed would become an eight-bedroom, four bath house intended solely for STRs. STRs are usually single family homes that the owner hopes to rent a week or weekend at a time. Although the board member wondered if an eight bedroom home was really a “single family home” in the Adirondacks, that project was tabled for other reasons, the story says.
Power cables in Lake Champlain to supply NYC
Manmade reservoirs in Quebec and Labrador will generate power that will feed one-fifth of New York City’s electric needs via cable laid in the sediment of Lake Champlain, a story in the Adirondack Explorer says. The project begins soon, and the cables — a.k.a. the Champlain Hudson Power Express — will be laid in 2024. It has detractors who say it is green in name only and is “built on a legacy of mistreatment of Indigenous peoples and continuing ecological harm to Canadian rivers, one that boxes out New York energy producers,” the story says.