Time for a cease-fire
In less than three weeks, a new state law will take effect that greatly simplifies the steps needed to eliminate some levels of local government. In particular, it will make it far easier for residents of villages to force a dissolution measure to a popular vote.
While there are many critics of the law, it will have one extremely positive effect: it will force local municipalities to come to grips with their own irrelevancies. And in doing that, it will force some local officials to take a serious look at whether their level of government is needed by its constituents.
In Potsdam, Mayor Reinhold J. Tischler is taking a no-nonsense approach, calling for volunteers for a dissolution study committee, warning that the work will be arduous and telling ideologues they need not apply. Still, there is plenty of room for mischief. Deputy Mayor Ruth Garner makes no bones about her position that dissolution is not a good idea. Trustee Stephen Warr was elected to office on a platform of dissolving the village. Still others who may apply may hold more subtle but nevertheless biased positions.
Add to this mix the raw enmity between the Potsdam village and town boards, and there is enough volatile material at hand to ignite a major explosion. These two bodies have fought over everything from public utilities for a super Walmart (in the town) to the town’s choice for a new municipal office (in the village). Neither has any ability to keep their hands off the other’s portfolio. A very reasonable suggestion that the two combine court functions was dropped because — well, perhaps because the village effectively blocked the town’s building plans. The Lawrence Avenue site for the new town hall is beyond the residential section of the street, out by A.A. Kingston Middle School. Check it out on a Google map — all you see is farms and farm fields. Yet the village deemed the site an inappropriate use of the property.
For its part, the Town Council has repeatedly told the village Board of Trustees it needs to quit proposing annexation into the village and start cooperating with the town on water and sewer districts. It went so far a couple of weeks ago as to tell the village it should amend its code to that effect. I’m sorry — didn’t village voters elect the trustees to make those decisions?
At first blush, it would appear this rift would make dissolution harder for Potsdam than for other places. I think that perhaps the opposite is true, and the words of Mr. Warr probably sum it up the best: “All this is just another reason why one level of government makes the most sense, or at least it does to me. ... And it’s not the inability to get along, it’s the inability to have the same vision, the inability to yield dollars and cents, money for one or the other.”
Consolidation — in the courts, the highway department, the clerks’ offices — requires cooperation. Consolidation is obviously not going to work in this generation of elected officials, all of whom are acting like adolescents with bruised egos. Yet dissolution can work quite well, because it is guided by statute and because there will be one elected body to resolve all the issues, one group charged with creating the vision, and achieving it. And one board to vote out if the people don’t like what they’re doing.
The mayor should put his dissolution study committee together as quickly as possible and let it do its work. And while the group is doing its job, the two municipal boards ought to declare a cease-fire.
