Potsdam Watching Seneca Falls Vote
POTSDAM - Trustee Steven W. Yurgartis and other Potsdam officials will be keeping a close eye on today's public referendum in the Finger Lakes village of Seneca Falls, where voters will decide whether to dissolve the village government and merge with the town.
Seneca Falls is one of three New York state villages voting on dissolution today, according to the Center for Governmental Research, a not-for-profit think tank with offices in Rochester and Albany.
The other villages voting on dissolution today are Perrysburg, Cattaraugus County, and Port Henry, Essex County, according to the CGR.
Potsdam is in the early stages of its own village dissolution study, and Mayor Reinhold J. Tischler has appointed a 15-member committee to begin exploring the idea. The village has also applied for a state grant to help fund the study initiative.
Mr. Yurgartis is not part of the mayor's dissolution team, but he has done extensive research on the subject of village dissolution and consolidation in recent months and placed that information on his website.
He said he has been following the debate in Seneca Falls, where the village of 6,600 will decide today whether to become simply the town of Seneca Falls or maintain its village-town divide.
"The Seneca Falls situation is, like all dissolution cases I have studied, unique," Mr. Yurgartis said. "For example, the town of Seneca Falls has a landfill that brings in about $3.5 million a year of revenue to the town, but the town government chooses for the most part not to share any of this money with the village of Seneca Falls, and this is a very sore point."
Mr. Yurgartis said dissolution of the village of Seneca Falls would give all town residents access to that pool of landfill money and has been key in driving the debate there. He said there is no such fight over dollars driving consolidation, merger and dissolution discussions in Potsdam.
"Clearly, that's not a situation we have in Potsdam," he said.
But Mr. Yurgartis said there are still noticeable similarities between the village of Potsdam and the village of Seneca Falls when looking at what dissolution will mean for the communties.
He said concerns about the future of police services, the shifting of tax burden from village to town, and the loss of local control over planning and development are all issues that were on the front burner in Seneca Falls and will be hotly debated as Potsdam dissolution talks unfold as well.
He said community rancor could also emerge.
"Another similarity may be, I'm afraid, the affect of the public debate, which tends not to bring the community together, but rather does quite the opposite," Mr. Yurgatis said. "I am hoping Potsdam will be an exception to this trend."
Mr. Yurgartis said he still hasn't decided whether dissolution of the village would be in the best interest of Potsdam. But he says the projected savings being touted from merging the two Seneca Falls has not impressed him.
"The financial study of Seneca Falls projects a savings due to efficiency improvements of $393,000 annually, but to encourage local government consolidation New York state is offering increased state aid of $495,000 annually," Mr. Yurgartis said.
"Only in the strange arithmetic of Albany can a net increase in government spending of $102,000 per year be considered an improvement in government efficiency."
