PRGS

One of the Board committees I'm on is the Performance Review and Goal Setting Committee (PRGS); this is my second year on that committee. Last year, under the leadership of Beth Rosenthal, PRGS developed a new system and forms for evaluating department heads. This year, under Ed Lentz's leadership, we have begun a bi-annual evaluation process, which includes the Board committee that oversees the department, reviewing written assessments and meeting with department heads to go over them.

It's a bittersweet process: on one hand, most of our department heads are doing a great job with few resources, and we hate to divert any time or energy to engage them in a process which, essentially, tells them that. On the other hand, there are opportunities for improvement scattered around the group, and some of them are pretty important. So far, I think we have been able to address these areas needing improvement pretty well, and have developed some strategies that should lead to improvement.

I think that it's important that the citizens of the County know that we, the Board, are doing the often-difficult and uncomfortable – but essential – job of oversight, keeping track of the job performance of those professionals who are responsible for enormously varied work that the County does.

This process is also a way for us to get feedback from departments regarding how we're doing in the job of supporting those departments. During the interviews and document reviews, two pieces of feedback have consistently appeared. First, we hear that over the years, the Board has cut too many positions and this has threatened the mission of a number of departments. This second issue is the Board's tendency to micromanage departments and thus, in some cases, give department heads conflicting signals.

Both of these are true. However, I fear we will not be able to address these issues really effectively until the majority shifts to the party which feels that the Board should be engaged in longer term planning and goal-setting, and that we should leave the operation of the departments to the department heads.

SWEC, Among Others

For much of the last few months I've been working six and seven days a week, and have not had a chance to do what I had done in the past – attend meetings of committees of which I was not a member. I think it's essential to the training of any Board member (although not many others do) as most of the detail work of the Board is discussed, debated and voted on in Committee. The Administration Committee is most instructive, as many if not most proposals have to be approved by Admin after being approved in the home Committee. Admin meetings are usually long, but very instructive.

I'm especially looking forward to returning to Solid Waste/Environmental Concerns (SWEC) Committee meetings in the fall, when my schedule loosens up a bit. SWEC oversees, and makes decisions about, most of the environmental policy that the County has authority over. It oversees the Otsego County Soil and Water Conservation District which, despite its name, is a state agency partly supported by the county's budget. The Soil and Water folks are always doing things that interest me, including stream bank management (you probably know I live right on Oneonta Creek), hydroseeding, agricultural plastic recycling, and lots more. Hopefully, I'll have more detailed reports later on. Last fall, I participated in an all-day tour of Otsego County farms put on by S&W, looking at waste management projects that improve overall production while reducing the organic wastes that run into our streams and rivers. There's another one scheduled this fall.

SWEC is also still working on the solar project I reported on last year; the sticking point has been location. We need about ten clear acres which is reasonably near an appropriate power line, and that last part is the problem. The solar project will, to oversimplify, be selling power to the NYSEG grid, and it seems that NYSEG really doesn't want it (as you'd expect, they'd rather we bought our power from them). They have, apparently, been less than totally cooperative. But there are real physical constraints, and we haven't yet found a location that meets all the requirements.

SWEC has also spun off a 3R Task Force (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) which I am part of.  It is looking into some wholesale recycling projects in the county, including textiles, mattresses and expanded polystyrene (styrofoam). Stay tuned for more.

And finally, the new solid waste system seems to be working out well. SWEC has worked through some problems with the Northern Transfer Station, outside Cooperstown, caused by its small size and the increased usage. These difficulties should be addressed at this point, partly by rearranging the site, and partly by a new permit which allows a good deal more tonnage to be collected. And we seem to be making some money at the end of the day (actually, the end of the year): the more waste that comes through the two transfer stations, the better off we are, so we make money in the summer and pay Casella in the winter. Overall, we seem to come out ahead.

Eventually, We Need to Take a Look

As promised, a new beginning...

And what better way to begin again than to weigh in, at least a little bit, on the Oneonta Town-City merger conversation. A somewhat loud, and, at times, unpleasant conversation, to be sure.

My position is simple: let's take a look. I think that no one really knows what the merged landscape would look like for sure, in detail. Those who come closest are probably Bill Shue and Al Colone, of GO-EDC, two enterprising citizens who have been beating the bushes for a merger and, for that reason, have done an enormous amount of research and investigation. This is all the more creditable when we consider that no one is paying them anything for all that work.

Bill and Al make a very compelling case, but they're just one side of the coin. They are not disinterested, and never claim to be. They are citizens trying to make something good (as they see it) happen in a democracy.

So we need to find out for sure. It seems that everybody loves a study, and everybody hates one. There have been other studies, and many point to them as evidence that no more need be done. However, they were done a relatively long time ago, considering the very recent developments in the state incentive world.

So it seems to me that we don't know the answer – we don't know what a merger would end up doing for us, or to us, City or Town. We are, incredibly, all speaking from ignorance when we put forward a strong opinion on this topic. So lets find out.

A merger study is probably dead for now. To be fair, it seems that it would be hard for any Oneonta Town Councilperson to get re-elected after supporting a merger study. Unfortunately, many Towns-people are living on the myth of higher taxes for the Town and lower taxes for the City. Bill and Al have debunked that one, but it still lives and breathes and determines the politics of the Town. No one – certainly not myself – would pursue a merger that would raise taxes significantly on anyone.

There are other things to think of, at least for me, and for the other four County Representatives involved in this. As a larger City could capture a much larger proportion of the sales taxes generated within its borders (a very substantial sum), the implications for the County – and for the county's taxpayers – could be significant.

We shall see. I suspect this issue will re-emerge after the new City Council, Town Council and Board of Representatives are seated in January. Then we may have enough breathing room to take a good look

The Blog is Back!

I see that my last post on this blog was November 11, exactly one week before my mom died, down on Long Island.  She was 95 and had lived independently in the house I grew up in until the day before she died, when she went into the hospital with what was diagnosed as colitis and died the next day of a massive infection leading to heart failure.  

She had a great life and was a fascinating person.  She was the matriarch of the family history and heirlooms.  As the extended family gathered, we all acknowledged that she was the last of her generation, and the responsibility of being the "grown up" in a family that had descended from Revolutionary War soldiers and Jamestown settlers had come to rest on me, the oldest of my generation.  A weighty mission, indeed.  So, after a long period of time sorting and clearing out her house and fulfilling endless executor duties, I set off across the country to deliver the mementos of a great family to my cousins and sons:  photo albums, handwork, china, portraits, scrapbooks, journals, jewelry and accessories, an ancient rifle, mirrors, and nicknacks we had seen on her shelves for half a century.  In two and a half weeks I drove coast to coast, through a dozen or more National Parks, stopping at the homes of four family members, and, on the way home, taking an end run south around the Rockies to avoid an April snowstorm.   

I'm not sure who, if anyone, reads this blog, so I'm allowing myself luxury of writing about my mom and my trip west as a way to apologize for letting the blog go since November.  Life just got to complicated, and some things had to go.  I put a high priority on my job of representing you in Cooperstown - sometimes driving up from working on the LI house to attend a meeting, then driving right back - but it's been a disruptive few months.  And then in February a nearby school district lost its School Psychologist and asked me to fill in for the rest of the school year.  I'll finish my last two reports on Friday.  

So - my apologies for the gap.  I hope to pick it up immediately and then continue to provide you with communications from the County Board in Cooperstown.