All Over Albany

Investigation into Obama-Osama mixup, enrollment surges for local community colleges, fire wood in high demand, opossum knocks out power in Troy

The Rensselaer County legislature has decided to investigate how absentee ballots in the county ended up listing Barack Obama as Barack Osama. [TU]

Albany County's proposed 2009 budget includes a 4 percent property tax increase, the first in four years. [TU]

Malta, Malta, Malta:
+ The transfer of AMD's state incentive package to its spinoff depends on a vote by the Empire State Development Corp. And that spin-off company will be organized in the Cayman Islands -- though it will pay US taxes on operations in this country. [TU]
+ AMD doesn't think its technology sharing agreement with Intel will pose any problem. At all.
+ The new chip fab won't be turning chips until 2012. [Daily Gazette]
+ Malta has a couple of "new urbanist" developments in the works for its downtown -- but some, including the town supervisor, worry the developments will be too dense. [TU]

Both HVCC and SCCC are reporting surges in enrollment, probably because of the weakening economy. Hot program of study at HVCC: overhead electric line worker. [TU]

It appears that fire wood is in unusually high demand locally this year. [Saratogian]

Schenectady police are looking for a trio of bike-riding, gun-wielding thieves. [Daily Gazette]

Delays in the re-design of the SPAC facade re-design (yes, two re-designs) will hold completion of the project until 2010. [Troy Record]

After rumors spread that their burned out street lights were not obsolete, residents of a Schenectady neighborhood were told the lights were still out because they hadn't done a good enough job of identifying the location of the lights. One problem: the lights actually are obsolete and have to be completely replaced. [Daily Gazette]

A opossum with a death wish knocked out power for 5,500 people this weekend in Troy. [Troy Record]