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Officials critical of Cuomo’s consolidation proposal

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul visits the Big Slide Brewery in Lake Placid last week while she was in town for the first North Country Regional Economic Development Council meeting of the year. (Enterprise photo — Antonio Olivero)

LAKE PLACID — As Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues his push for local governments across the state to consolidate services, lawmakers who work side by side in Lake Placid and the town of North Elba wonder how much more they can do.

Cuomo’s second-in-command, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, was at the Conference Center at Lake Placid last week for the first North Country Regional Economic Development Council meeting of the year.

As part of the meeting, Hochul sped through a slideshow of Cuomo’s 2017 budget proposal. But Hochul spent several minutes preaching to local elected officials and business leaders about the importance of the consolidation of services to reduce property taxes, urging them to put referendums to vote in November.

“Let’s ask them,” Hochul said in Lake Placid last week. “What a great exercise and opportunity to allow the people of our state who are getting very disillusioned — in case you haven’t noticed elected officials — they don’t have a lot of faith in their government at any level and all of us have a responsibility to restore that because that’s what democracy hinges on. And this is one shining example of how we can say, ‘We care enough about you and your families to put more money back in your pockets.'”

But here in the Olympic village, Mayor Craig Randall is towing the opposition line of the New York Conference of Mayors.

Last Monday, a day before Hochul’s visit to Lake Placid, mayors from around the state spoke out against Cuomo’s proposal to tie state aid for municipalities to new consolidation plans.

As part of his budget, the governor is proposing withholding unrestricted state aid to municipalities, or “AIM” funding, worth an estimated $715 million.

Randall, Lake Placid Deputy Mayor Art Devlin and Trustee Peter Holderied all attended the Conference of Mayors’ annual winter meeting in Albany last week, where Hochul also spoke.

Speaking Tuesday at the Conference Center at Lake Placid before Hochul’s visit, Randall said Cuomo’s proposal is not a good one, pointing to how state’s current property tax cap already strains the finances of localities.

“It’s not an (AIM funding) number that will kill us — but it’s going to hurt us if our county wasn’t complying with (Cuomo’s) wishes,” Randall said. “We will see what the legislature does with that, but there was a big push yesterday (at the NYCOM meeting) to kind of tone that down a little bit.

“We look at the removal of AIM funding as punitive, we really do,” he added. “And it is. To take something away from the property owners because (Cuomo) wants something else isn’t the right way to do this. I think Albany can do a better job than that. The buying power of AIM funding has been going down for the last nine years because they have not increased it, they have actually withdrawn some funding from it. There are some cities that it means a lot to in the state; it means a lot to all of us.”

Just this past year at the recommendation of Lake Placid and North Elba’s joint Community Development Commission, the two municipalities inadvertently did exactly what Cuomo is asking — put a referendum out to voters to consolidate services. But the people of Lake Placid voted in June not to dissolve their village court into the town of North Elba’s court system, by a vote of 104 to 72.

The special referendum took place after the village court’s lone remaining justice, William Hulshoff, circulated a petition to put the decision to ballot for the voters of Lake Placid. The village board voted unanimously on April 4 to abolish its remaining justice position. The completion of the dissolution of the court was set to take effect in April. This year’s budget allocated $52,000 for the village court.

At last Tuesday’s regularly scheduled town council meeting, North Elba town Supervisor Roby Politi said he feels the village and town are one of the leading examples across the state of a joint government working efficiently. He and town Councilman Bob Miller brought up how at a state Association of Towns meeting in recent years where there was a seminar focused on town consolidation, Lake Placid and North Elba were sighted as an example of a village not dissolving and working well with the town.

“I think Lake Placid and the town of North Elba do an awful lot as it is,” Politi said. “We are probably one of the most recognized dual municipalities in terms of sharing certain services and so forth — from the assessor to the fire department, building department, even the transfer station — there are so many things that we do already in that regard that other communities do not do.”

Politi then pointed back in the direction of the state, asking them to be more efficient in what they are charging taxpayers for services. He specifically brought up Essex County’s Medicaid transportation system, which the state took over in 2012. Politi said since the state took it over, the cost has ballooned from under $300,000 when the county last ran it in 2011 to $3.2 million last year.

“It’s gone up 800 percent,” Politi said. “Now how efficient is that? To me that’s like, ‘Are you kidding me.’ We are talking about efficiency in government and this kind of stuff is allowed to go on? This is the pot calling the kettle black. I was shocked when I saw those numbers this year.

“I think the state needs to be more efficient too,” he continued. “And a lot more efficient. And that’s Essex County a little county – can you imagine what these numbers are like in Westchester County?”

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