EDITORIAL: Democracy Lives In Cooperstown; Next, Good Governance?

1-22-10

It is very good news that Village Trustee Joseph J. Booan, Jr. – experienced, level-headed, a consensus-builder, a problem-solver – has decided to seek the Republican nomination for mayor of Cooperstown.
If you’re a registered Republican and read this in time, go to the GOP caucus at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 21, at 22 Main, and help put him on the ballot.  (Or just go:  It’ll be the best show in town.)
Joe Booan’s entry will surely derail a cabal, the Waller/Katz Cabal if you will, that has been seeking to circumvent the public’s right to choose its mayor in a free and open election.

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You may remember:  Last March, Mayor Carol B. Waller, a Republican, declared her intent to self-select her successor, Trustee Jeff Katz, a Democrat.
Her husband, Bill Waller, is chairman of the village Republican Committee, and as of the other day said he had not yet recruited a candidate to run against his wife’s hand-picked successor.
Ironically – and commendably – it was Bill Waller who, in election seasons past, succeeded in exploding the “unity ticket,” a slate hand-picked by the village’s eminents gris as a pliant substitute for democracy.
It’s not that there are Democratic potholes or Republican streetlights, but competing party organizations recruit talent into the body politic; bossism does not.
That unhappy day of the unity ticket, you might have thought, has blessedly passed.  Not so, if the cabal succeeds.
Booan’s entry will defuse the plot a’borning.

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But that’s just the start of the good news.
Since joining the village board, Joe Booan, drawing on long experience in budgeting and priority-setting as a school administrator, has been politely asking questions that have put 22 Main in disarray.
His leadership provided a compelling voice to three other trustees, and the “new bloc,” if you will, has been steadfastly nudging forward good-government initiatives too long missing from the Village Hall mix.
As newly elected Oneonta Mayor Dick Miller has been demonstrating, these initiatives – benchmarking, goal-setting, adopting best practices – are not mysterious or exotic; they are what good local governance is all about.
Booan has also shown expertise – and consideration – when he’s sat down with village administrators to talk through these matters.

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The Democrats will say that Booan, a key BOCES executive, won’t be able to devote the time.  Actually, that ensures Booan will streamline village government, exactly what’s needed so that busy doctors, lawyers, retailers and entrepreneurs can again participate in their community’s key decisionmaking body.
The Democrats will say Katz has longer experience on the village board, including four years chairing the trustees’ Finance Committee.  Given the lost-and-found-and-who-knows-where-it-is $400,000 of the past year, that may not be much of a qualification.

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The campaign is yet to begin, so – while it is tempting to do so – Trustee Katz, a bright and amiable guy, should not be dismissed out of hand.
To date, though, he has been resistant to suggestions that anything might or should be done any differently.  If he has new ideas for the advancement of our local commonwealth, he should enter them in the electoral marketplace.
He may surprise voters, but it’s a long way back.
Meanwhile, we say Booan.

Meeting Mystifies; Put 22 Main Restoration
On Hold Until New Mayor Assumes Office
An odd meeting was held at Village Hall the other afternoon.
Mayor Carol B. Waller had summoned tenants of 22 Main and members of the 22 Main Restoration Committee, which she had formed during the village’s Bicentennial to achieve much-needed repair and renovations to the imposing Village Hall structure.
By meeting’s end, the mayor had unceremoniously removed the mandate from her 22 Main Committee and turned it over to The Friends of the Village Library, despite numerous good arguments as to why that shouldn’t happen.
The idea was that The Friends, as a 501c3 corporation, could fast-track an effort that the mayor has, at best, lethargically pursued since its initial launching.

The most convincing arguments against The Friends option came from Amanda May, the sterling Bassett fundraiser who has volunteered her much-sought-after talent to the 22 Main effort:
• First, since millions would have to be raised for the renovation – she knows how to do that – people will only contribute if the structure is simple and clear, with no financial entanglements or awkwardness.
• Second, the village library is just one of the stakeholders; there are eight in all, including the Cooperstown Art Association, village offices and the police department.  There are probably additional stakeholders that should be counted in.  The plan has to be built on objective criteria to ensure wide buy-in; if the effort is perceived to be crafted to benefit one entity, it fails.

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The 22 Main Committee was proceeding just fine.  It had interviewed two of the state’s leading preservation architects.  When Amanda May came to the trustees with a convincing plan to raise the $200,000 necessary to prepare a detailed plan and launch a professional fundraising effort, she was cut off at the knees.

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Nothing was done, and a crisis has surfaced.
The Cooperstown Art Association has had water coming through its ceiling from a steam-pipe leak.  Joe Pescola, the public works official who opened the ceiling to investigate, called it “the worse case of mould I’ve ever seen – and I’ve worked with mould.”
Trustees the other day approved repairs that could run up to $20,000 and beyond; meanwhile, the CAA  has to vacate its quarters.
An emergency is an emergency.  The point is to put a plan and a program in place that averts future emergencies.  And that need to be thought through, not rushed through.

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The mayor is leaving office in a couple of months.  It’s a little late in the game to launch such a major undertaking.  She should leave it for her successor.
This is a once-in-a-generation effort.  If it implodes, no one will touch it again for 20 years.
Everyone loves the elegant and be-pillared 22 Main, which Robert Sterling Clark donated to the village in 1932 in his mother’s memory.  Everyone would be willing to donate to its preservation and development as an ever-more-vital center of community life.
But a fund drive has to be done right.  It has to be above question or hint or reproach to succeed.
Instead, the matter’s been muddied.  Put the effort on hold; revisit it when a new mayor and village board are in place.  Then move assuredly and decisively.