Where to move a skiing family in NY?

(Admins note: I broke these posts out because they were a bit off topic and I thought it could make a good thread. The thread drift was really caused by yours truly.)

ausable skier wrote

Harv - you need to step up your game and commitment to a higher level - how is that you say I'm already driving 500+ miles a weekend.  I did that for 10 years until i decided to the sane thing to do was to just move to the mountain since the mountain was not going to move to me.  Given your electronic skills get a telecommute job and live here then you can ski during your lunch hours.

We talk about this all the time. Funny thing about our family... it resembles a democracy.

I really would dig Glens Falls.  Seems like my kinda place. I'd be hitting 60 days a year if I lived there.

Slight FYI drift...

Queensbury is a much better place to live than Glens Falls. Newer homes, bigger lots. The taxes are much lower. Glens Falls doesn't have any school buses so parents have to drive the  kiddies to school everyday. Glens Falls is experiencing some violent crime now. The Mills and sewage plant quite often foul the air very badly for a radius of a mile or more. Industrial stench can't be healthy but it is smelly. The sewage plant lends a pungant poo smell to it's environs which can extend for quite a ways.

That said, GF has alot of cool resturants, breweries, art galleries, a museum, semi pro hockey and baseball. Further, the whole Lake George area has tons to do being a tourist destination. In fact, for small towns, it's had to beat this area for entertainment. Plus there's always Ma Nature and all the fun she provides.

If one were to move here, stay north of the Hudson River(lower taxes), and away from Hudson Falls, Fort Eddie, Glens Falls proper.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programing....

Harv

If you are going to move 150 miles north you might as well keep going another 70-90 miles and make WF your home mt

as long as you stay east of WF the real estate prices are much lower then Queensbury.  It a real small town whrere people know everyone not a suburb like the GF area.  its been great to see how the community has come together to support each other post Irene

oh and when i comes to skiing its a benelvent dictatorship not a democracy but then again i have a wife who also is addicted to skiing and am raising a little ripper in the same vein.

Snowballs ... thread drift was really started by me and your input was good so I broke this thread out.

I'm showing my flatlander ignorance by lumping all the areas surrounding GF in with Glens Falls.  I assumed we'd never be able afford Saratoga and figure north would be the direction to go. I've heard good things about Queensbury schools.

New homes and big lots aren't really a priority for us. Our current home is small, some would say tiny, and the only regret is the complete lack of closet space.  Central air would be nice, but probably not as necessary up there as is in the flatlands.

ausable skier wrote

Harv

If you are going to move 150 miles north you might as well keep going another 70-90 miles and make WF your home mt

as long as you stay east of WF the real estate prices are much lower then Queensbury.  It a real small town whrere people know everyone not a suburb like the GF area.  its been great to see how the community has come together to support each other post Irene

oh and when i comes to skiing its a benelvent dictatorship not a democracy but then again i have a wife who also is addicted to skiing and am raising a little ripper in the same vein.

Ausable skier ... get ready for this, maybe you should sit down. Gore suits me much better than Whiteface.  The only place I can keep up with expert skiers at Whiteface is in the slides. The long relentless pitch that you guys THRIVE on, exhausts me.  I need trees, bumps, 800 vert runs, and slow lifts to be able to run with the big kids. When I skied the slides on April 9 of this year, by 11, I was praying inside that the slides would open as Riverc0il and was absolutely wearing me out on the groomers.  Once they opened the access, I was fine.

There are two or three issues that affect moving for us.  Both Zelda and I don't like the drive. Her desire to ski is probably a 5, with mine being much higher, so her motivation to drive is much less. She doesn't ever want to drive two weekends in a row, and I'd make the trip ever time I could. So that's motivation to move.  Zelda would ski more if we could drive from GF/Queensbury at 5pm on a Friday and get to the cabin by 6:15 or whatever.  I could day trip Gore if she didn't want to go.

Another thing that bothers both of us, (especially Zelda) is our use of fuel.  She really feels like we are using more than our fare share of the planet when we use two tanks of gas to ski one and a half days. It's hard to argue with that.  I rationalize it to some extent as I usually drive less than 10,000 miles a year in total, but it's really basically BS.

The thing keeping us here are the schools and the community.  I have been paying astronomical property tax in this tiny house since 1988.  It's basically almost all school tax and until this year, I never had a child in school. Now we do, and it's really an incredible school.  We walk to school every day with all Neve's friends. It's an amazing environment.  There are some big bucks execs from nearby towns who have had to "downsize" by taking their kids out of expensive private schools in the area. Almost without exception when those kids enter our public school, they are put into remedial programs. With those big (BIG!) tuitions, the kids are behind.

To make a move I'd have to make a very strong case for a school system, and it wouldn't be likely to happen until fifth grade (5 years).

Harv,

Have you ever checked out Saratoga Springs? You'd be less than an hour from Gore (about 50 miles from Exit 15 on the Northway). For someone from the northern NYC suburbs (I'm assuming), culture shock would be nonexistent.

Spongeworthy wrote

Harv,

Have you ever checked out Saratoga Springs? You'd be less than an hour from Gore (about 50 miles from Exit 15 on the Northway). For someone from the northern NYC suburbs (I'm assuming), culture shock would be nonexistent.

I'll vouch for it having a great public school system, too.

+1 for Saratoga Springs.  

I grew up in Queensbury.  It's okay I suppose, and it certainly meets the criteria of a good place to raise a family.  My complaint about the place is more aesthetic-- the strip malls, and the cookie-cutter neighborhoods.  

Harv, I'm in Greenfield Center, just north of Saratoga Springs.  The elementary school is fantastic!  Saratoga Springs school system.  Gentrified rural area.  I'm in a subdivision with large lots, but you can find seclusion in the woods if you want.  I can take my dog for a walk in the woods and not see another human being for hours.  There are snowmobile trails, too.  You can see the stars at night because there are no lights of the city to hide them.   It's so quiet here.   The Greenfield road crew does a fantastic job on the snow removal.  Fire and EMT services have fast response time.  I have a deep well and I have the best water you have ever tasted. I can be at Exit 15 in 10 minutes for shopping.  Albany airport in 45 minutes.

I can be at Gore in 50 minutes.  I did 55 days last year.

Just my opinion - I would rather put my children in Saratoga Schools than Glens Falls or Queensbury.  Ballston Spa (Exit 12 area) schools are also good, according to my friends.  

Toga has a nice downtown but imo, TOO much traffic everywhere, etc. Not a fan of a bunch of people, traffic and all that. Toga has some nice neighborhoods, but they're not nicer than Queensbury's unless you hit the ritzy sections and who can afford that. For that kinda money I'ld have a Lake house somewhere north of the Hudson.

Toga has nice night life, tho a little violent recently with drunkin mobs beating and stabbing people. Punk azz bitches.

Hey, it's only a 15-20 min drive from Queensbury/GF if one wants to visit.

Aussie has a good point about WF area, IF skiing/hiking is the main/sole priority. Other than that it's BFE, far, far from everything esp. good jobs. Some like that, but I know of people who drive 2-3 hours one way every day to work down this way. That would suck and quickly negate being close to the mtn, any mtn.

Plenty of them drive way down here to shop once a month or more, loading up at Wally world with provisions to save serious cash. Ok for some, but not most. Few people can make a good living up there, even in the Placid/Willy area.

Naturally, people like diff areas.

OH, come to think of it, all yooz folks just stay where you're already at. We don't need any more people.  Go the hell away. Just kidding. Not really.....Savy?

ski2moro wrote

Just my opinion - I would rather put my children in Saratoga Schools than Glens Falls or Queensbury.  Ballston Spa (Exit 12 area) schools are also good, according to my friends.

Ballston Spa does have a great school system, however their school taxes are realllly high. More than Saratoga's.
Suds lives in an awesome area. He's in a neighborhood with 1/2 acre lots, generous sized houses, but his back yard is to the woods. He technically lives in Milton (part of Ballston Spa) so his property taxes are a bit lower than Saratoga, but it is still part of the Saratoga School district.

Does anyone know what Gansevoort property taxes run compared to Saratoga? What about Greenfield? I've heard GField isn't much lower than Saratoga as I expected it to be.

Harv, What size/style house are you looking for? Setting? (As in, smaller neighborhood with good sized lots, or 3/4 mile driveway in the sticks? )

Harv, I do think you'd find either Glens Falls city or Saratoga Springs very well suited to what you're after. GF is definitely on the upswing, and despite Snowballs' points I think it would be a good fit.  My folks lived in the city for 20+ years, so I'm very familiar.  That said, I think you'd like Saratoga Springs quite a bit as well.  Both are excellent, livable small cities.

I’m with ski2moro and can’t say enough wonderful attributes about living in Greenfield Center.  Location, Location, Location!  When it comes to choosing where to move a family, the school system is paramount.  We raised three kids in rural Greenfield and they each excelled in the Saratoga Springs School District.  Any parent has to be in their child’s back pocket to get the most out of the educational system.  What I found exceptional about Saratoga was a huge offering of AP classes, a wonderful music program, and opportunities to participate in sports.  Now my kids sat the bench plenty but those were good life lessons learned about being a team member and dealing with disappointment.  Our kids were neither phenoms nor geniuses, but they got one heck of a great education in Saratoga.

Our kids had wonderful choices for colleges, all graduated in 4 years, all got good jobs before they graduated, and are now independent.  Many of their friends had very similar success stories.

One other point is that as the kids get older, the weekends don’t belong to the parents alone anymore.  Quite a few family ski days were cut short due to an AP Physics Lab packet that was posted online Sunday morning  due Monday morning.  There are team practices, group projects, friend’s parties, performances, and religious obligations, that all take precedence over skiing.  If you live close you can at least get in a ½ day before parental duty calls.  

Gore is the home mountain to many Saratoga families and often times the kids would meet friends to ski in the morning and leave together to work on school projects.  There was plenty of car pooling from Saratoga and for as much as we liked to ski with the kids; they wanted to meet their friends on the mountain.  We made it work.

West Mountain is only 20 minutes away and it’s not a huge place but is great for a “Ski two hours in the morning, get to work a little late day”.   Plus West Mtn. has a very active night skiing scene.

And personal to Harvey- we moved to NY when the middle child was entering 5th grade.  She was missing huge pieces of math due to an inferior school in Ohio.  Her awesome teacher detected the deficits early and got her quickly up to speed.  That kid now teaches math in a charter school in DC-nuff said!

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Thanks for the details about the schools, BigDogMom.  I have no children in the schools, but I have volunteered at the Greenfield School.  I'm favorably impressed.

Arrrrg - taxes are high everywhere.  In NY, we are broken down into School Tax and Property Tax, but no matter how you cut it, it's high. I live in a developed subdivision in Greenfield - from a little over 1 acre to as much as 5 acres, wooded lots, well and septic.  Our taxes are higher than the guy who lives on the main street.  It's all based on valuation and how (what percentage) you are assessed.  I believe that the tax rate in Gansevoort is higher than Wilton.  Greenfield Center is less. Saratoga Springs is more.  

I look at a much bigger picture than simply taxes.  I make a list of what I want - rural vs city, subdivision vs seclusion,   school quality, to build or buy used, house size and features...then I decide if it can fit my budget.  Taxes are only one part of the equation.  

I'm down with Saratoga too, great town IMO. That said, face it Harv with the wife and daughter's needs you ain't going anywhere. You said 5 years...by them you'll be hearing from both of them that your daughter has friends and ties to community life and if you moved she'd have to start all over as the new kid.

Anyway, keep the faith brother...false hope is better then no hope.

Any opinions on Clifton Park?  Many of my lift rides at Gore include people from Clifton Park. How about Mechanicville or Greenwich? These 2 would allow easy access to Bromley/Stratton/Magic.

x10003q wrote

Any opinions on Clifton Park?  Many of my lift rides at Gore include people from Clifton Park. How about Mechanicville or Greenwich? These 2 would allow easy access to Bromley/Stratton/Magic.

The only thing Clifton Park has going for it is proximity, especially for state workers in Albany. It’s about 1 hr and 10 min to Gore and 2 hours to WF, Kmart etc.  Other than that it is a soulless suburban wasteland of perfect lawns and minivans.

Highpeaksdrifter wrote

face it Harv with the wife and daughter's needs you ain't going anywhere. You said 5 years...by then you'll be hearing from both of them that your daughter has friends and ties to community life and if you moved she'd have to start all over as the new kid. Anyway, keep the faith brother...false hope is better then no hope.

The awful truth ^^^

I think that if you are as far south as Clifton Park, Mechanicville or Schuylerville, you will reduce your chances of a day trip because you are adding 30+ minutes to your commute to Gore.  CP has a good school in Shenendehowa.  M'ville and Schuylerville, not so much.  Staying north, the villages of Lake Lucerne and Hadley have some nice areas with okay schools, but you have to watch out for lack of cell phone service and expensive internet.

Lots of things to consider.

I really like living in a small town.  All the places you guys are talking about are the same as NJ just farther north.  I costs significantly less for the house and the taxes are less up in Jay compared to the land of the strip mall farther south.  To each his own.