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by Irene Wrenner
July 31, 2020
Tuesday, July 28th, the Village Trustees reviewed a memo from 27 Essex residents, nearly all Villagers. They had asked for “complete and accurate calculations of what the costs would be if our two communities separated.”
This is not the first inquiry about the cost of Separating, as Merging is being discussed. Merger costs have yet to be provided to those who’ve asked.
This inquiry requests “all pertinent information” re:
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The percentage of each Town department funded by Village and TOV taxes;
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For duplicated departments, the year established;
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Amount Village residents pay into Town Capital fund and percentage spent within the Village;
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Estimated tax increase / decrease for each community, assuming separation, and
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Number of salaried positions with benefits needed to fill positions created by separation, for the TOV and Village.
Trustee George Tyler responded that complete separation calculations would be hard to do because we might want to share things like police and
Citizens Seek Stat’s on Separation
There’s a “fundamental lack of understanding of how things are funded”. https://youtu.be/CsWWmOWN0p8?t=1864
The motion to satisfy the request in order to understand the implications of separation passed unanimously.
About half-way through a subsequent presentation on planning, a slide from a different presentation was briefly projected. It appears to show the 2018 revenue breakdown for the Town and Village currently, as well as those two entities under a scenario of separation.
This inadvertently-displayed chart seems to address separation information requested more than a year ago. More on this in a future article.
administration. He called this pricing-out of separation a politically-sensitive activity and suggested it’s not what staff want to be doing.
Manager Evan Teich acknowledged this will be a lot of work. It will take weeks to pull together, but he agreed to do so.