Changing The Terms Of Office
By Thaddeus Flint
New Lebanon’s two-year Town Supervisor position, as well as the Town Clerk, the Highway Superintendent and the Tax Collector, are one step closer to becoming four-year terms after a resolution and a proposed local law passed at the April 9 Town Board meeting.
By a vote of four for and one against ( Councilman Jesse Newton) a resolution was passed that will allow the voters of New Lebanon to decide this November if they want their Supervisor to stay at the job for four years instead of the current two. Should the measure pass at the ballots, the extra two years would begin in 2022. Current Town Supervisor Colleen Teal said the idea was to streamline local government and make it more efficient. A new Supervisor coming in is working with the previous Supervisor’s budget and if a new Town Clerk were to come in at the same time, it could take a while for government to get back up to speed. Not that that often happens. Or ever. Teal noted that, for the most part, New Lebanon Town Supervisors are usually there for four years anyway. In the past 20 years, only one Supervisor—David Katz—served just two years, “and that was by choice,” Teal said.
As for the Town Clerk, the Highway Superintendent and the Tax Collector, since a local law is needed to also put them on the ballots, the locals will get the chance to voice their opinions on the matter at a Public Hearing scheduled for 6:45 pm preceding the May 14 Town Board meeting. Should the law be adopted, a referendum on those positions would also be on the November ballot. This was done some years back and it failed. The difference this time will be that residents will be able to weigh in on each position separately instead of having to either accept or deny all three at once. Those positions voted in for the new four-year terms would begin as of January 2020.
Residents who want in on some of this under appreciated local government responsibility are in luck. While the vacant position at the Planning Board was filled last Tuesday—Tegan Joy Cook of Berkshire Thrift (“the biggest little thrift store in the Berkshires”) was appointed– the Comprehensive Plan Review Steering Committee still lacks committee members. All of them, in fact. Contact the Town Clerk if you have any interest.
Just as a reminder, the Town Highway Superintendent has nothing to do with the state of State Route 22. That responsibility belongs to NYSDOT Region 8 who hide down there in Poughkeepsie. While it belongs to them, it doesn’t seem like they are up to the task at hand since the section of 22 between New Lebanon and Canaan is slowly working itself back to the way it was in dinosaur times. Columbia County, on the other hand, is currently doing what it can to get things patched up. “We are still working very hard to get Route 22 paved,” said Supervisor Teal.
“But you shouldn’t have to,” was Jeff Winestock’s reply to that. The Highway Superintendent questioned why it was that the County and area Supervisors were trying to find the millions of dollars needed to really fix Route 22 when that’s not what they are responsible for doing. The road belongs to the State, and the State agency responsible for keeping it roadworthy isn’t doing what it’s supposed to be doing. And yet nobody seems to be able to say why. New York State resident’s tax burdens are amongst the highest in the entire nation, said Dutchess County Executive Marcus Molinaro last April when he was trying to unseat Governor Andrew Cuomo. People actually then looked into that and found he was right. So shouldn’t the infrastructure of this State be amongst the best in the Nation as well? Of course the weather here doesn’t help, but a 2018 CNBC study found that 60% of the roads were bad, and 10.5% of bridges. Even New Jersey beat New York in overall infrastructure and that’s entirely unacceptable in itself. So why is the State handing out grants for things like electric vehicle charging stations while at the same time ignoring the roads those vehicles would then travel on, Winestock asked.
Residents with similar questions are in luck. Assemblyman Jake Ashby is coming to New Lebanon April 17 and maybe he knows why the proper vehicle to get to Canaan now is not a Prius but something sturdier, like an Abrams tank perhaps. In the meantime, NYSDOT will supposedly be patching three sections of Route 22 between New Lebanon and Canaan in June.
This doesn’t mean that all of New York States agencies are sitting around doing nothing. Maybe they can’t fix a road or a bridge, but if a small town puts out a non-boring municipal newsletter they are really taking their chances. New Lebanon used to have a lot of interesting things in their newsletter and then the Town’s attorney pointed out that it’s forbidden to be interesting. Just keep it to all that uninteresting government stuff that nobody wants to read and everything will be fine. Except of course it’s lacklustre. According to Supervisor Teal, the Town is still looking to find a way around that (In the meantime, all the good stuff is on the newsletter at GrowTheValley.org). Apparently some other local towns are ignoring whatever rule it is that forces town newsletters to be tedious and mind-numbing. As the Town has a new attorney, the idea is to ask him the same question and maybe he will have a different answer. “That’s why they are lawyers,” pointed out Councilman Mark Baumli. “They like to argue and go to court.”