Nov. 18, 2008 Schuylerville Victory Water Board

The Schuylerville Victory Water Board met on Tuesday, Nov. 18th and it was public discussion. A full Board was present.

The Board announced there would be one meeting in December on the 19th in the Village of Victory. This meeting will be public comments.

I am not sure if they approved any minutes because when I arrived at 7:04 they had already breezed through the Board Announcements, the Minutes, the Treasurer’s Report and were already into the Chief Water Operator’s report.

Victory Plant – there are contract issues regarding the plant and they are having some problems getting a good product out of the plant. This plant was supposed to be up and running last September but was not ready in September. Anyway, at least they are not combining the water from the Victory plant with the Schuylerville water while they try to work through all the contract issues. The Victory Plant will be paved next week. There also appears to be a gas tank (that powers the generator) located outside that needs to be protected. Three bids will be obtained for this work.

Schuylerville Plant – There are a couple of doors that are no longer operating because they have rusted. Approval was made for Mark to order new doors.

Old Business –
Board members were provided a copy of a Victory Personnel Manual to approve a while back. No one was prepared to discuss the manual, except for maybe Whitney, and one Victory WB member had already lost his. Whitney asked everyone to email him their comments. Didn’t I write on September 29, 2008:
One of the problems I see – the Water Board does not have a personnel manual so anyone they interview can not be provided any information on what their benefits will be. Anyone who takes a job without this knowledge would be getting what they deserved –which is nothing.
Hiring of employee – a new employee is dependent on approving a Personnel Manual. No employee update.
Tree removal – trees were removed from both the Village of Schuylerville and Victory for a total cost of $2950.
Business Credit Card/Petty Cash/ per diem update was tabled.

New Business –
The S/V Water Board will be contacting CT Male to prepare a Local Government Records Management Improvement Grant Application for water meters. That is very odd because “The Local Government Records Management Improvement Fund Act (Chapter 78, Laws of 1989) established a dedicated fund to improve records management and archival administration in New York’s local governments.”[1] I guess I should call the Village Clerk to really investigate what they are really applying for.
The NYS Dept. of Health has requested that there be no parking within 500 feet of the well heads at the Schuylerville Water Treatment Plant. This will have to be the responsibility of the Schuylerville Village Board. There was also a recommendation that the Boat Launch be paved. As nice as that sounds – because the Village has a terrible history of being able to maintain roads and sidewalks, I would not want to see the pavement start to go and then be an eyesore.

The Board went into Executive Session at 7:30 pm to discuss litigation with Joanna Albertson – Nov. 20, 2008 and to discuss the AmeriGas requests for reimbursement of water fees back to May, 2007.

A very short public meeting and only two residents in the audience – however one was a Village of Victory Trustee.


[1] http://www.archives.nysed.gov/a/grants/grants_lgrmif_appl.shtml

Soon to be Letter to the Editor

Jim Kinney wrote an article for the Saratogian, 12/12/2004, “Is the village still viable?” which discussed merging the Villages of Schuylerville and Victory and the Town of Saratoga. Both Village Mayors were quoted supporting the idea of merging all services. The article quoted Mayor Sherman “There is no doubt that we could save money.” On July 15, 2008, the Saratogian ran an Editorial “Time to do away with village government”. I agree with the statement in the article “Some local villages and towns can point to successfully shared services. But their eye ought to be on the bigger prize, the actual dissolution of village government.” There are too many layers of government in the Town of Saratoga and it’s time to consider reinventing into one unified governing body. Village government is expensive to Village taxpayers. The NYS Comptrollers Office did a study and they determined that villages are “Outdated Municipal Structures”. “A structure no one would design today.”
A small group of residents from the Villages of Schuylerville, Victory and the Town of Saratoga have formed the RSVP group and we believe our Villages should take advantage of the noncompetitive money available for Village Dissolution studies. Our website is http://dissolveourvillages.blogspot.com.

Letter to the editor #1

This was posted in the Post Star on November 12th.

Sir/Madam; 11/06/08

I’m writing this letter in response to a staff editorial I read recently regarding village dissolution in New York state. I’ve been in this conversation many times about the Village of Schuylerville.

As a resident of the Town of Saratoga and owner of two properties in the Village of Schuylerville, dissolving the village seems long overdue.

Taxpayers are paying dearly for unnecessary bureaucracy and getting very little for it other than a hard working Department of Public Works with inadequate funding. With crumbling sidewalks, roads, storm drains, sewers, and water lines, the entire infrastructure is failing with no plan or money to rebuild it. If the village were to be “absorbed” into the Town of Saratoga, it would have the resources needed to maintain the “village” to the standard it deserves.

The “village” would remain the same quaint, tight arrangement of buildings and neighbors in the same geographic location. With proper planning it would seem the DPW could continue on with their jobs for the new municipality, Saratoga.

It has recently come to my attention that there is noncompetitive grant money available from the State of New York to do the feasibility study for the dissolution of villages. This money won’t last long and it seems, to me, this would be a great time to investigate the logistics of how this would work..



Sincerely,

Jerry Geiling

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