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
