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Orkin representatives Kenneth Watkins and David Parkhurst talk with the City Council and members of the Saratoga Springs Housing Authority Tuesday evening. (ERIC JENKS, photos@saratogian.com)

Commissioner John Franck talks with Mayor Scott Johnson during the City Council's legislative hearing on Saratoga Springs Housing Authority Tuesday evening. (ERIC JENKS, photos@saratogian.com)

Mayor Scott Johnson visits with Stonequist Apartments residents at the public housing building to discuss resident’s concerns Tuesday afternoon. He is shaking hands with Ollie Westcott, who has lived in the building for eight years. (ED BURKE, eburke@saratogian.com)

Stonequist resident David Wright claims has not slept at his apartment in two months although he stops to check email regularly. Behind him is a jar containing bed bugs he said he has collected from his apartment. (ED BURKE, eburke@saratogian.com)

Stonequist Apartments resident Emily Cammisa holds up bed bugs she collected in her apartment in September, as well as emailed reponses from Authority Director Ed Spychalski during a public hearing Tuesday afternoon. (ED BURKE, eburke@saratogian.com)

By LUCIAN McCARTY
lmccarty@saratogian.com

Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner John Franck talks Tuesday evening during the City Council’s legislative hearing on the Housing Authority. (ERIC JENKS, photos@saratogian.com)

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Two special meetings were held Tuesday regarding bed bugs and other issues at Saratoga Springs Housing Authority.

One meeting, held at Stonequist Apartments, was designed for residents to voice their concerns about bed bugs in public housing to the mayor.

The other was a public workshop held in City Hall for the City Council to get answers from the Housing Authority board about allegations of nepotism, financial irregularities and the mishandling of bed bug complaints.

Both meetings drew more than 50 people each.

The Housing Authority has been scrutinized over the past two months after residents approached the City Council about a lack of response to a bed bug infestation they said was gripping Stonequist.

Housing Authority representatives, including Director Ed Spychalski and Board of Directors Chair Dennis Brunelle, said reports of “infestation” were overblown and isolated cases were being handled.

A number of residents say their rooms were infested with bed bugs even while Brunelle, Spychalski and other officials denied the expanse of the infestation.

In addition, the director and board have been criticized for Spychalski’s $152,000 salary and approving perks, like Spychalski’s use of a public vehicle and spending for non-required travel. The director has also been criticized for the hiring of authority employee relatives, including his own children, as full-time employees.

On Monday, Mayor Scott Johnson called on the state comptroller to audit Saratoga Springs Housing Authority for “potential financial irregularities and spending practices such as salary, compensation, travel and business expenses and claims of nepotism in hiring.”

Spychalski was not in attendance at either meeting. Johnson said his absence allowed residents to feel they could voice their opinions, even if they were critical of Spychalski. Continued...

Mayor meets with residents

Johnson heard from about 30 Saratoga Springs Housing Authority residents about their issues with bed bugs, or lack thereof, at a public meeting he arranged at the Stonequist Apartments public housing building Tuesday afternoon.

“I’m here to hear the truth from you,” Johnson said to residents, some of whom poured out their experiences with infestations while others said the issue has been overblown.

That was Michelle Deyette’s comment when she introduced Johnson.

Deyette, who is running for a resident’s seat on the Housing Authority Board of Directors, said she believes the voices of the residents have gone unheard in the discussion over bed bugs.

“Stonequist is not and has never been infested with bed bugs,” she said, reading from the letter she wrote to Johnson inviting him to the building to hear residents’ concerns.

Immediately, several people in the back of the room shouted, “Wrong! You are wrong!”

The room seemed to be evenly divided between those who thought the issue was being addressed adequately and those who thought not enough was being done.

The director was accused both Tuesday and before of ignoring the issue and sweeping it under the carpet.

Holding up a jar of dead bed bugs he collected in his Stonequist apartment over the last two months, David Wright railed against what he sees as the mishandling of the complex’s infestation. Continued...

“I haven’t been in my apartment in two months,” Wright said. “I don’t stay here … I haven’t been bit in two months. They’re biting someone else.”

Wright said he believes the issue was mishandled by Stonequist’s management.

“Ed is lying to us and he needs to go,” he said, drawing applause. “I don’t want to live here anymore. Something needs to be done.”

Wright was not the only one to show up to the meeting toting dead insects. Emily Camissa, a Stonequist resident, said she found bed bugs in her apartment in the last week.

“Ed is not dealing with it,” she said. “Now I have to deal with bed bugs on top of poverty and having nothing.”

On the other hand, Bob Ebinger drew applause when he said Spychalski has been “vilified” by the press.

“This guy has a lot of good things going, too,” he said.

“I have lived here 17 years and I think people forget the good things Ed does,” another woman said.

Others, too, said Spychalski was ushered into the directorship of Stonequist by those, including residents, who were impressed with the job he did as facilities manager.

“We wanted Ed in that chair,” said one resident. “We fought long and hard to get him in that seat. You have no idea what it was like here before he got in that seat. This place was a dump.” Continued...

One message that came through from several residents was, overblown or not, the public discussion over bed bugs at Stonequist has attached a negative stigma to all its residents.

“I want my privacy,” one resident said.

After hearing from residents for about an hour and a half, Johnson said, “This investigation is still ongoing.”

Council questions Authority board

The City Council grilled four members of the Saratoga Springs Housing Authority Board of Directors Tuesday night at a well-attended workshop meant to address allegations of nepotism, financial mismanagement and a failure to adequately address the problem of bed bugs in Stonequist Apartments.

After presenting videos of the City Council meeting where a Stonequist resident first brought the issue of bed bugs to the council’s attention, Accounts Commissioner John Franck also had Orkin representatives, who inspected the building, present their solution.

Spychalski previously told the council he hired an entomologist — an expert on insects — to come up with a solution for the bed bug outbreak in Stonequist because he thought exterminators lacked the adequate knowledge to do so.

He and his staff provided steamers to residents to clean their furniture and apartments, and the Housing Authority staff started training to administer pesticides in the building.

David Parkhurst and Kenny Watkins, both regional Orkin representatives, said while entomologists know more about insects, Orkin has more knowledge on how to deal with them.

They also said they have specific programs to deal with infestations of buildings the size of Stonequist.

“This program is designed by our entomologists. It is the corporate program,” Watkins said. “This isn’t something Dave and I just put together.”

Parkhurst said the use of steamers to treat bed bugs typically does not work. “It just drives them somewhere else,” he said.

They estimated the cost of treating the entire building for one year would be about $25,000.

Board Chair Dennis Brunelle answered a number of questions from the board while being teleconferenced into the meeting from Florida.

He said while cost was not prohibitive to treating bed bugs, “we just wanted to treat them in the most economical way.”

“Everyone was figuring out the best options to treat them,” he said.

Brunelle said while the plan was to develop the staff to be able to treat the problem, it has become too burdensome on the Housing Authority’s resources and they plan on consulting with exterminators.

Franck, though, pointed out that the Housing Authority has millions of dollars in its “slush fund” and recently hired a public relations firm for an undisclosed amount of money to deal with the public fallout from the surrounding issues, but had not spent the money to address the bed bugs.

“It makes absolutely no sense to me why you haven’t hired an outside firm to clean this mess up,” he said.

Franck also addressed the issue of Spychalski hiring his own relatives and others to the authority.

Brunelle said there was justification for all of Spychalski’s hiring decisions.

The board chairman also reiterated his defense of Spychalski’s $152,000 salary in 2012, stating, “He has done a great job as executive director.” He added that Spychalski has improved the Housing Authority’s national rating since he took his position and is doing the work of three positions.

“He’s not working 120 hours a week,” Franck said.

“He’s working a lot more than 40,” Brunelle retorted.

“So is everyone in this room,” Franck said.

Franck questioned the approximately $56,000 spent on trips to conferences Brunelle and Spychalski have taken between 2010 and 2011 to Las Vegas, Phoenix, Florida and Washington, D.C.

Brunelle vehemently defended the conferences as much of the reason Spychalski has been able to improve the authority.

“We’re not the one who located them in the most desirable places,” Brunelle said. “We go where the conferences are held because we really want to learn something.”

Originally posted here:
Saratoga Springs Housing Authority put under microscope at City Council, resident meetings

Just as overnight temperatures are forecast to drop into the 30s,
the Salvation Army men's shelter in Orlando has
been forced to shutter its doors temporarily, the charity
announced Thursday.

The culprit? An infestation of bed bugs.

The closure, expected to last up to a week, left the agency
scrambling to find accommodations for about 75 homeless men.
Another 50 men, enrolled in the Salvation Army's long-term
transitional program, will be housed in a gymnasium on the
property until the shelter reopens.

The charity hopes that local residents will pitch in to help
cover the estimated $15,000 cost of tenting the building for
treatment.

"It's a lot of money," said public relations coordinator Vicki
Hastings. "We do have some funds available for an emergency, but
then that's money we can't spend on other needs."

The incident also comes as shelters in general are struggling
to keep pace with Central Florida's ballooning number of
homeless men, women and children.

"We know the strain our closure, even for these few days, puts
on the homeless population and its already overstretched
providers," said Major Andrew Kelly, the Salvation Army's
Orlando Area Commander. "So we are working quickly to be able
to … operate at full capacity."

The Coalition for the Homeless, just over a mile away, is
expected to take many of the men, though its emergency shelter
has no mattresses to sleep on, only floor space.

"We can accommodate all of them at this point," said
spokeswoman Muffet Robinson.

But those shelters with actual beds report none to spare.

"The majority of the emergency beds are full every night
anyway," said Cathy Jackson, executive director of the Homeless
Services Network of Central Florida. "And there's already no
room at the inn for the 150 to 200 folks who are sleeping
outside or in abandoned buildings or carefully concealed
tents."

At the Orlando Union Rescue Mission, which has 60
emergency-shelter beds, president and CEO Allen Harden said
there's typically competition for a spot.

"We've got guys that stand in line for hours trying to get a
bed," he said. "We keep talking to the powers that be, trying
to expand. We're sitting right there in the shadow of the new
gazillion-dollar arena and we're saying, 'Come on, throw us
some crumbs.' "

Bed bugs have become a scourge of the developed world over the
past 15 years, affecting everything from five-star hotels to
mom-and-pop motels to individual homes. They can be carried by
humans and pets, and hitchhike on clothing and luggage. Though
their bite itself is painless, it can lead to severe itching
and subsequent skin infections.

While other shelters in Orlando report periodic problems with
the pests, operators said this was the first time an entire
building would be closed. The Salvation Army's shelter for
women and shelter, housed in a different building, remains
open.

ksantich@tribune.com or
407-420-5503

Read this article:
Bed bug infestation closes Salvation Army shelter

Discovered: La Niña weather patterns could cause pandemics,
when men outnumber women they tend to spend more, and the
Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle gets an update. 

RELATED: The HIV Discovery of the Year; Women Aren't
Better Politicians

La Niña brings pandemics New research
suggests that La Niña, weather-pattern cousin of El Niño,
makes global pandemics more likely. La Niña periodically
brings cool water to the surface of the Pacific Ocean making
for warmer, dryer winters. More importantly, the U.S.
researchers posit, it alters the migratory patterns of
flu-carrying birds, which might explain why the four most
recent outbreaks -- in 1918, 1957 and 1958, and most recently
in 2009 with the swine flu -- were preceeded by periods
of La Niña. This is less than awesome news as we're in the
middle of a La Niña episode right now. Researchers note,
though, that there are many incidents when La Niña doesn't
precede a flu outbreak, so more research should
be done to explain why certain periods result in the spread of
disease. Luckily, the fear inspired by swine flu, bird flu, and
Gwyneth Paltrow mean we've stepped up
efforts to monitor pigs, people and flu genes, so research
into its spread should only move more quickly. [BBC, Houston Chronicle]

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Brain

When women are scarce, men will spend more.
New research posits that when men think they outnumber women,
they'll often increase the amount they spend. Researchers at
the University of Minnesota fed men articles saying they
outnumbered the women in the area, then asked them questions
about how much of their next paycheck they wanted to save and
how much they wanted to borrow. The lady drought made them 42
percent less willing to save and 84 percent more willing to
borrow money. The researchers draw some reasonable theories for
why: "How do humans compete for access to mates? What you find
across cultures is that men often do it through money, through
status and through products," lead author Vladas
Griskevicius said. The Wall Street Journal finds this
pretty natural when examined through an economic lens. "When
something is in short supply, common sense suggests that it
should become more valuable." So there you have it ladies. Move
to China! [USA Today, Wall Street Journal]

RELATED: 'Skim' Is a Generous Word for How People Read
Nutrition Labels

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle gets
more complicated. Just when we were wrapping our heads
around the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (just kidding),
research published in the journal Nature
Physics suggests our understanding of it is
incomplete. As you might recall, the principle is a
foundational one for quantum physics and it says that it's hard
to measure multiple properties of a particle at the same time
because the act of measuring them alters the properties. But
Vienna University of Technology researchers found
experimentally what Japanese researchers had already posited
theoretically that different sources of uncertainty can, in
fact, be distinguished. Heisenberg's principle isn't disproven,
it's just often oversimplified (uncertain, dare we say?), they
say. It's all a bit confusing, but a good reminder that even
foundational theories can be updated. [Science Daily] 

RELATED: Lab Rats Finally Get Their Due; How Cavemen
Fought Bed Bugs

Babies can learn language by lip reading.
Previous research held that babies learned language primarily
through hearing it, but a new study says babies learn langauge
partly by watching the mouth move, and the new finding could
help us diagnose autism earlier. Researchers at Florida
Atlantic University tracked the eyeballs of infants less than
12 months old and found that their eyes moved to the speaker's
mouth more often than older babies or adults. Other research
has shown that older autistic children keep paying close
attention to a speaker's mouth even after most infants stop the
habit after about one year, potentially allowing earlier
diagnoses of the condition. [ABC News]

View post:
La Niña and Flu Outbreaks; Men Overspend When Women Are Scarce