To dissolve or not to dissolve? – that is the question for Wilson villagers

[steven]

WILSON – The proposal that Village of Wilson residents will consider at the polls Tuesday will ask, simply, whether they are in favor of dissolving the village. But the issue is much more convoluted than that.

If the majority of residents vote in favor of dissolution, the Village Board will have seven months to devise and approve a dissolution plan. Once approved, the board then must hold public hearings and possibly amend and adopt the final plan.

If the majority of the public doesn’t like that final plan, residents have 45 days from its adoption to file another petition forcing a second vote on village dissolution.

That petition requires the signatures of at least 25 percent of the registered voters. This village of 1,300 people had 842 registered voters in its March elections . And if the referendum fails Tuesday, no one is permitted to pursue dissolving the village again for four years, according to state law.

Mayor Bernard J. Leiker Jr. said he feels that the supporters and dissenters are pretty evenly split in this small lakeside community.

“Every vote that happens here in the village is always very close, and we always have a large number of voters come out,” Leiker said. “Our last election for trustee (in March) was won by four votes. I won by 17.

“My employees are afraid they will lose their jobs, so they will vote ‘no’ and their families and friends will vote ‘no,’ ” he said. “And you have people who will vote ‘yes’ because they think dissolving the village will save them some money.”

The village has six full-time and two part-time employees, an elected mayor and two trustees who receive stipends and a paid village attorney.

But Leiker, long critical of the way the state handles the process, pointed out that because the feasibility study, by state law, follows the vote, “this forces people to jump into the dark, not knowing what will happen, and that’s not fair.

http://www.buffalonews.com/city-regi...agers-20140824

[grump]

That whole law re: dissolution and merger was written by a group of rumdums who work for Cuomo. That's the same bunch of rumdums that wrote the Safe Act, Same sex marriage. Every one of them was written by rumdums.

[Linda_D]

I think that the current law pre-dates Cuomo, who only took office in 2011. He and his pals might have tweeked existing law, but certainly the mania for dissolving cities and villages, ie, "consolidation" or "regionalism" under the myth of saving $$$, goes back at least a decade. You can find posts from 2004 or 2005 on this MB. Cretins like Joel Giambra and Kevin Gaughan along with the chief regionalism cheerleaders/editorial board at the Buffalo News, were probably the chief local architects with their proposal to merge Buffalo and Erie county and pretend they were the same thing. That plan was simply a ploy for Giambra to get his paws on more patronage, and for the local business/political elite to prevent blacks from gaining political control of the City of Buffalo.

Of course, the "regionalists" like Gaughan (who has been pushing this BS for about 20 years) don't want voters to see the numbers on the "savings" because the savings are miniscule. The chief drivers of local taxes are the school districts and the county share of Medicaid. Furthermore, many village residents mistakenly believe that dissolution will spread the cost of water, sewer, sidewalks, village debt, etc over the entire town when, in fact, they will not. Instead of a village government, there will simply be a series of administrative districts covering the former village to take care of what the village government used to maintain, including any long-term debt.

[grump]

Linda, you're right. The consolidation law was the brain dead child of Elliot Splits-her, I believe. The whole notion was supported by Giambra and tax scofflaw Gaughan. If we're gonna do away with local governments lets start with the one Joel put in bankruptcy, Erie County. At least we won't have to pay people to scour county government to find a job for Markie's brother.

[300miles]

Wilson!! I'm sorry Wilson!!

[grump]

That's good!!

[gorja]

Aug 1998- The law has changed somewhat since then.



http://celdf.org/downloads/New%20Yor...20Villages.pdf

[Linda_D]

Aug 1998- The law has changed somewhat since then.



http://celdf.org/downloads/New%20Yor...20Villages.pdf

That's got to be a lie! Only Democrats or Democrats claiming to be Republicans would ever support government consolidation.

[grump]

So the people spoke & now it's dead for 4 years.

[4248]

You can say what you want about patronage and J.Giambra - but - its a fact when it came to job appointments that were and are patronage - its a well know and documented fact - at least his appointments crossed "Party Lines".

He hired from both sides of the aisle - fact.

Polancarz on the other hand has stayed with the Family/Party Patronage line. As many before him Mark went on a "Political Purge" after his election.

Just sayin!

[grump]

And under his "leadership" this bipartisan group managed Erie County into bankruptcy.

[4248]

Should I use a Nogods party line, "That's because of the financial mess the past Admin left them with"

[grump]

Should I use a Nogods party line, "That's because of the financial mess the past Admin left them with"

Feel free to use it if you want to but it's not true. Dennis Gorski is an a** hole but he left the county with healthy cash balances. One of the reasons he was defeated was his refusal to cut taxes when it was painfully obvious that the county was flush. Giambra wanted to cut taxes by too much and he spent like a drunken sailer. But let's don't forget the role of the county legislature which adopted his irresponsible budgets as long as the cash kept flowing for their idiot district pet projects.

[Linda_D]

Feel free to use it if you want to but it's not true. Dennis Gorski is an a** hole but he left the county with healthy cash balances. One of the reasons he was defeated was his refusal to cut taxes when it was painfully obvious that the county was flush. Giambra wanted to cut taxes by too much and he spent like a drunken sailer. But let's don't forget the role of the county legislature which adopted his irresponsible budgets as long as the cash kept flowing for their idiot district pet projects.

Pretty much sums it up. There were probably two major reasons that Giambra and members of his administration weren't indicted for their mishandling of county finances: 1) Giambra's and his staff's record keeping was so sloppy, there was virtually no paper trail; and 2) too many well-connected and deep-pocketed "leaders" would have been exposed for their roles in aiding and abetting Giambra.

I also don't think it was just coincidence that Buffalo's deficit was discovered shortly after Giambra left the city comptroller's job when somebody finally looked at the books, and that the city's finances have been on pretty solid ground since even though the general economy has been a lot worse than it was in the 1990s when Giambra was in control of the city's finances.

[grump]

Linda, it's sure easy to keep the finances in order when there's a control board ready to take over at the drop of a hat.