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As the first vote on the fate of the village in over a generation approaches, final preparations are coming into place and voters are going to have to sit with the information they have as they make their decision.
Several public sessions are planned:
- Oct. 13, 2 p.m., Woodland Pond
- Oct. 20, 6 p.m., Lecture Center 108, SUNY New Paltz
- Oct. 22, 6:30 p.m., community center
- Oct. 20, 4 p.m., Van Den Berg Hall, SUNY New Paltz
Post cards a "situation"
Mayor Alex Wojcik reported at the Oct. 7 village board meeting that the promise of post cards has become complicated. Trustees had committed to spending $1,000, believed to be half of the total cost to send an informational piece out to all residents, but it seems that delivering to all addresses in the more rural outer parts of the town will be much more expensive. The total, as reported to Wojcik by the deputy supervisor, will be $4,361.03. Trustees have declined to pay half of that total bill on the recommendation of the village treasurer, who advised that $83,323.69 has already been spent on consolidation. Instead, they are committing to getting post cards out to village residents directly.
Trustee Allen Ross, a supporter of consolidation, agreed with that assessment but appeared torn. "The problem is that I am using words like 'we' or 'they,'" Ross said, and that's a dichotomy the trustee feels would disappear if the village layer of government were to be folded into the town. However, Ross recognized that trustees must represent their own constituents, and that paying the additional posted to reach residents outside beyond that remit was not appropriate.
The NYCOM position
Wojcik also read from an opinion prepared through the New York Conference of Mayors, which while linked in the agenda, was not accessible to without authorization. According to the mayor's recounting, the opinion suggests that consolidating governments with similar population bases—such as two rural populations, or two more dense areas—would be more likely to be a smooth process.
"That's the United States," said Ross, who rejected the suggestion that that made it a bad idea. Among the examples Ross offered was being able to have a voice in things that impact the viewshed from the village, or the urbanization of the downtown, for those who do not live in those particular areas. Moreover, Ross noted that given the concentration of residents in what's now the village, it appears unlikely that their democratic voice would be silenced if only one government ruled the community.
To Wojcik, the density of the village makes services like water and sewer possible, and that's why the village exists. Ross countered that the town has millions of dollars that had been held in fund balance, and that money might be more equitably distributed throughout the community without the us-or-them mentality imposed by the presence of two governments.
Funding
Supervisor Rogers has frequently spoken about "counterintuitive funding models" that exist when there's a village in a town. Wojcik has raised some of these to support the preservation of the village. While state grants to improve leaking sewer lines rely on the income levels in census tracts—because they draw on federal money—not all grants use the same formula, the mayor explained. Some funding relies on the independence of the village as an impoverished jurisdiction, and the mayor anticipates that if the village goes away, some sources of money do as well.
The labor question
Village employees are worried about the future, and that's been enough of an argument for many to plan to vote against consolidation. Union members have rejected it formally, and employees who have spoken on condition of anonymity have expressed a lack of confidence that Rogers will come through with a promised contract that preserves everything they now have under a new government. As has been noted many times, there's a lot that must be trusted to future town leaders to ensure should consolidation occur.
However, the supervisor is working toward negotiating a contract that captures the best features of the current town and village agreements. When asked for comment, Rogers acknowledged having said in the past that this would be needed for this vote to happen at all. It's too late to stop the vote now, but the supervisor did say that if such an agreement is not reached, then Rogers would no longer support consolidating the governments.
Another issue that lingers, though, is that of shop leadership. On the public works side, employees have been under a single appointed superintendent for decades, and would be moving to a structure overseen by someone who is elected—and may or may not be good at managing. Rogers has indicated that eliminating the elected highway superintendent could have been included in this plan, but was left out to minimize its complexity.
Financial and administrative employees in the village are now overseen by a clerk-treasurer who gets high marks all around, and who will likely retire. The town's comptroller continues to operate under a cloud, as having worked on the town board to create that as a civil service position, resign to take the job, only to fail the test. It was then restructured not to be a civil service job at all in order to retain the same person.
Village employees of all stripes appear uneasy with who they might be working for after consolidation.
