EDITORIAL: Streamline Government, Make It Solvent, Innovate. Amen

1-15-10

Not to keep going back to the Otsego Chamber’s State of the State luncheon, but members of the state delegation kept calling us – their constituents – “taxpayers.”
Sure, we’re taxpayers, but that’s too narrow a definition.  We’re citizens, meaning we have rights and responsibilities (only one of which is paying taxes).
Likewise, state government is more than just an aggregation of accountants, sending out bills and collecting money.  And municipalities – local governments – should be more than road-repairing and snow-plowing operations.
To reduce the grand experiment that is the United States of America to financial transactions shows a pinched imagination.

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That’s why Mayor Richard P. Miller, Jr.’s first in-depth conversation with Common Council was so, frankly, exciting.  That’s not too strong a word.
Miller challenged the alderpeople not to be bookkeepers of City Government.
“Are you guys and ladies spending your time on the right things?” he asked during a five-hour retreat Saturday, Jan. 9, in a City Hall basement conference room.  (Lunch was pizza from Sal’s.)
The mayor succinctly presented the financial challenge:  City Hall has been spending $1 million more than it has each of the past three years; in three years, reserves will be gone.
And, point by point, he ticked off ways to enhance revenues and ways to cut costs.  And he streamlined the committee system (to just four) and introduced a “consent agenda” to free up Common Council’s time to do the right things right.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Alderman Paul Robinson observed when Miller completed his recommendations.

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The mayor sees this financial challenge as an opportunity to do things that make sense but, for whatever reason (a variety of them) haven’t.
For instance, the savings and efficiencies that would result from merging and city and town of Oneonta were first detailed in the mid-1990s in a study by SUNY Oneonta’s Center for Community and Economic Development.
Governor Spitzer’s Commission on Local Government Efficiency and Competitiveness identified two cases – the City of Cortland and Town of Cortlandville; and the city and town of Oneonta – that could optimize benefits of a merger.
Miller ran on the issue of consolidation, and told Common Council he is “encouraged” by the initial reaction of Town Supervisor Bob Wood and others.
Wisely, the mayor said that for such a concept to work, there have to be assurances no one will lose jobs for at least five years.

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The mayor also talked about enhancing quality of life, of energizing the retail economy downtown and on the east and west ends, of reviving the 2030 sustainability committee to look at ways to “green” Oneonta, and assuring the Tigers’ future at Damaschke Field.
This is all exciting stuff, but Common Council, certainly, but for we citizens – the taxpayer part and everything else – as well.
If people – and communities – do well by doing good, then let’s do good by doing things right.  Mayor Miller is plugged into that dynamic.  We say, go for it.