Letter To The Editor – Berlin Lumber – A Great Loss

To the Editor:
More people should make an attempt to go to the Berlin Town Board meetings. I admit that I was one of those people who voted people into office and assumed that they would do what was best for the town. I kept up with what was happening through the Eastwick Press. Then I decided it was time to go and support our town supervisor. He has put his whole heart into trying to improve the quality of this town. The other board members seem to want to keep everything the way it has been for years.
I am a taxpayer and have been for about 30 years. When we bought our house, our land taxes were about $100 per year. They have gone up about 20 times that. The same with the school taxes. I don’t like it, but that is something that is going to happen. We are not going to make things better by voting everything down. In the long run, it is going to cost more by staying in the dark ages. We cannot keep fixing the old without spending more money.
Berlin Lumber has been a great loss. I don’t understand what they are thinking. There is money earmarked for a town garage or town hall. It cannot be used for anything else. There is enough to purchase Berlin Lumber and do most of the immediate repairs to make it handicapped accessible. At one board meeting, the people said they thought there should be several tests and reports done on the property. This was done except for one item. The report was given in great detail. One person asked what the cost would be for the same type of buildings and grounds if we started from scratch. The estimate was between $6,500,000 and $7,000.000. Wow! Talk about taxes going up! If we had purchased Berlin Lumber, we would no longer have to pay [Hoosick River] Hardwood rent for housing trucks. We would be getting income from the current town garage. We could rent out space. This would cover the loss of taxes that we have been receiving from Berlin Lumber.
One problem was stated that it wouldn’t be the center of Berlin. I measured the distance between the Stephentown town line and the Petersburgh town line. If the garage was in the “center” of town, it would have to be in the community cemetery.
The Town Clerk had to take her beautiful recreation room (in her basement) for storage of town records. There isn’t proper room in the town hall. The tax papers are in the basement of the town hall, but they have to be kept up high because of the constant flooding. It is damp and musty and is not good for those records. There would have been plenty of dry room for these things in the upstairs of the house at Berlin Lumber.
Another item that was stupidly denied was the purchase of a new truck. We could get a fair trade-in price this year. Next year, it will not be possible. Next year, a new truck would be a lot more than what was offered this year. One thing that the board was comparing was the mileage on state trucks to town trucks. State trucks go on all paved roads and they do straight runs. Town trucks deal with all types of terrain. They also have a lot of dead end roads and do a lot of backing up. Everyone should know that the mileage on the odometer does not go up when backing up. 100,000 miles on a town truck is equal to about 125,000 miles on a state truck. We all own cars or trucks. When they get so old, they start costing a lot of money for repairs. It becomes necessary to purchase a new car, because it is actually cheaper than to keep putting money into the old one.
Town elections need to be taken a lot more seriously. They cannot be popularity contests. We need to be sure that the people have the IQ needed to do the job properly. We also need to keep a better watch on how these people are working “for us.” They are paid by our tax dollars. The Town Supervisor, Town Clerk and the Town Highway Supervisor are doing excellent jobs, but they have to fight for everything they want and need to do.
JoAnn Kellar
Berlin resident and taxpayer