Chris Churchill

4 days ago | timesunion.com | Chris Churchill

Troy resident Clifton Perez, born legally blind, has spent his life blazing trails and fighting for the rights of people with disabilities. In the late 1970s, for example, he was perhaps the first legally blind person to attend Hudson Valley Community College, where he joined the track team and became a sports photographer for the student newspaper. He also convinced the school to create an Office of Disabled Student Services.

1 week ago | timesunion.com | Chris Churchill

ALBANY — When Carolyn McLaughlin looks at South Pearl Street in the South End, she thinks about what was and could be. “There’s a richness here that I want to revive and preserve,” she told me. “You can’t let this community die. If you’re going to invest $200 million into the city, some of it has to flow to this neighborhood.”Article continues below this adMcLaughlin and I stood and talked near the Capital City Rescue Mission for about 90 minutes on Tuesday, a location of her choosing.

1 week ago | timesunion.com | Chris Churchill

State lawmakers often can’t leave well enough alone. They insist on fixing problems that don’t exist. For one recent example, I direct your attention to a proposal to divide public and private high schools into different playoff categories. As detailed by the Times Union’s Lucy Hodgman, the tired debate over whether private and public schools should compete has been revived by new legislation from Assemblyman Matt Slater, a Republican from Westchester County.

2 weeks ago | timesunion.com | Chris Churchill

Seamus Donnelly is Troy’s deputy mayor and a lifelong city resident. He’s also gay. Donnelly, 38, came out when he was 25 and is now married. In recent years, he organized the city’s 50th commemoration of the Stonewall Riots and assisted with the creation of Troy Pride Night Out. He speaks with, well, pride about both events. Article continues below this ad“Troy is so gay, so we asked why we don’t have an annual event,” Donnelly told me. “We didn’t want to take away from the big event in Albany.

2 weeks ago | timesunion.com | Chris Churchill

I recently wrote a column about developer Tom Burke and his defunct dream to build a baseball stadium north of downtown Albany at the site of the Central Warehouse. Burke showed me renderings and discussed a $1 billion plan to redevelop much of the city’s warehouse district, with a locally owned AAA affiliate of the New York Mets as the star attraction. The plan also featured a canal roughly akin to a small San Antonio Riverwalk.