Anti-Windmill Group Explores New Strategy in Richmondville: Get Rid of Wind!

Frustrated by the fact that their persistent criticism is falling on deaf ears at Town meetings, Richmondville’s anti-windmill activists have decided to investigate alternative ways to stop Reunion Power from erecting industrial wind turbines. Joe Bloe, a resident of Dodge Lodge Road, whose property lies adjacent to the proposed turbine site, has proposed that residents go right to the heart of the matter and stop the wind from blowing in Richmondville altogether.

Bloe said, “I’ve never been a particular fan of the wind anyway. There have been many occasions when I’ve come outside to find patio furniture strewn all over my yard”. Other residents in the Dodge Lodge Road area expressed similar complaints about wind. “I’ve always hated wind”, Will Gust explained. “Now this whole wind turbine controversy gives us a reason to do something about it once and for all”. It seems Richmondville anti-windmill activists have reached a consensus: get rid of the wind, and the wind power companies will have no choice but to go somewhere else.

The question then becomes, how does one actually prevent wind from blowing? Rob Reid of Against the Wind, a not-for-profit 501(C) organization dedicated to fighting wind power in Schoharie County say’s the solution’s pretty simple. “We’ll just erect several clusters of 250-500 gigantic high-powered fans in several locations throughout the town. Depending on which way the wind is blowing on a particular day, we’ll just flick on one cluster of fans to blow in the opposite direction of the oncoming winds. This will stop the wind dead in its tracks. No wind turbine would generate a single watt of power in this situation.”

Reid recently pledged to a group of supporters that “we will destroy our natural resources before we allow some out-of-state company to come in here and exploit them”.

Cobleskill Town and Village Should Go Their Separate Ways

With many small towns abuzz with talk of “consolidation” and “sharing services” it may seem counter-intuitive to propose that Cobleskill’s Town and Village move further apart, but here’s why I think it would be better that way. No, I’m not proposing that we physically pick up the Village of Cobleskill and move it up to the Town of Carlisle. What I’m proposing is that the Village officially remove itself from the Town’s political jurisdiction by incorporating itself as the City of Cobleskill.

The Town and Village simply have too many irreconcilable differences to make consolidation a wise move for the Village. The Village needs to focus on reviving its downtown business district. The Town simply wants to use Village water and sewer services to develop more sprawl. The Village has a well-developed public infrastructure that it has invested in for decades (water, sewer, etc.). To simply allow the Town of Cobleskill to have the benefit of that investment is unfair to Village taxpayers and ratepayers. What’s more, it seems like the Village has a lot more to bring to the table here: a municipal water system, a sewer system and a police department for starters. What does the Town of Cobleskill have to “share” in exchange for these services?

The Times-Journal has sought to frame the issue in terms of eliminating duplication of services. In an editorial, the Times-Journal asks: “does Cobleskill need two offices, two sets of clerks, two planning boards, two heads of government and separate Town and Village boards to get daily duties accomplished”? The Times-Journal makes it sound like we’re talking about some vast legion of entrenched overpaid bureaucrats. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The Planning and Zoning Boards are staffed by volunteers and cost taxpayers nothing. Therefore, reducing the number of planning boards and ZBAs from two to one would have a taxpayers savings of ZERO dollars! The Village Mayor’s office pays an $8,000 dollar a year salary. Haven’t you ever heard the saying: two heads are better than one? For that price, we could throw in a few more! Clerks make a little more, but perform a wide variety of functions. Cobleskill’s Village clerk is much more intimately aware of the Village’s processes and operations and can be a valuable asset, why get rid of that? Eliminate the Village boards (planning, zoning and Trustees) and you are ceding an incredible amount of community control to the Town of Cobleskill. Why? So greedy developers like the Galasso’s can pick the bones of the Village?

Why is it that most of the debate seems to focus the spotlight on the Village government as unnecessary when it is the Village that has made the investments to establish and maintain the services that the Town now wants access to? I’m not saying there should be no sharing of services, but let’s look at other options before we hand over the whole Village to the Town.

In my view, incorporation as a city is the right option for the Village of Cobleskill. First off, to those of you thinking that Cobleskill is too small to be a city, let me just say, there is no minimum population required for a community to incorporate as a city. In fact, if Cobleskill became a city, it would not be the smallest is New York State. The City of Sherrill has a population of 3,109. Cities like Little Falls, Salamanca and Mechanicville all have a population of around 5,000.

Incorporating as a city, would politically and legally remove the Village from the Town. Presently, Village taxpayers pay taxes to both the Village AND the Town. If the Village became a city, residents would no longer owe taxes to the Town. A similar level of services would still have to be provided, but now the Village/City would have more control over how that money was spent and how those services were provided. This of course would eliminate any potential discrepancies over how the Town budgets and spends “Town-inside-Village” revenue. The problem in Cobleskill is not necessarily duplication of services, but the de facto obligation of Village residents to fund services that they do not use. Even aside from the above-mentioned discrepancies, the Village has to be losing some money on the taxes its residents pay to the Town. We need to know exactly how much of the Village’s share of town taxes actually benefits Village taxpayers and how much doesn’t. If the Village could use this money to cut taxes or increase spending on Downtown development, this alternative must be explored.

The best part, however, is that the very idea of the Town losing Village tax revenue will change the bargaining balance of power between the Town and Village on a whole bunch of issues (at the very least).

At the county level, the Village/City would now get its own representation on the County Board of Supervisors who could in turn be an advocate for bringing county funds back to the Village. At present, the Village is represented at the County level by the Town Supervisor. Can this person be expected to adequately represent the interests of the Village when Town-Village relations go sour? This would allow for a better opportunity to direct a more appropriate share of the Village sales taxes (which are collected by the County) back to the Village itself. A County Supervisor representing solely the village/city of Cobleskill would be able to focus all of his or her time on bringing back county resources, as they would not serve simultaneously as a Town executive.

Downtown Cobleskill needs to be focusing on rehabilitating streets and facades and finding ways to bring back businesses. We should be looking for ways to empower the community to do this, not ways to cut its legs off and serve it up to another municipality.

Downtown Cobleskill is an entirely different animal than the Town of Cobleskill and requires (at the very least) a separate municipal corporation to provide for its needs and future development. I believe we should look into reincorporation as a city, and at the very least we should rule out dissolution or consolidation with the Town.

I’ll admit, I don’t have all the answers on this subject (in fact, I haven’t been able to find anyone who does), but it certainly warrants more attention and exploration than it received at the Village’s recent public meeting on the subject of consolidation and sharing services.

Central Bridge to Explore “Pay-as-you-Poop” Sewer System

Inspired by a new law being talked about in the Village of Cobleskill that charges residents for garbage pick-up according to how much they throw away (pay-as-you-throw), Central Bridge Sewer District officials have raised the possibility of employing the same principle to resolve the hamlet’s long-standing sewer development challenge.

Instead of simply developing a sewer system and charging sewer district residents a flat rate, this new program would charge sewer district residents on the basis of how much “material” they discharge from their homes. John Crapser of the Central Bridge Sewer District explains how the system would work: “each home in the district would be fitted with a special toilet that weighs the contents of the toilet before every flush. A charge would be assessed to that home based on the monthly weight of outgoing sewage”.

According to supporters, this program provides an incentive for residents to cut down on unnecessary bowel movements, to make alterations to their diets to encourage lighter stools, to use less toilet paper and best of all, to compost their own fecal material. “This will increase the general health of the public AND be beneficial for the environment”, Crapser explained.

However, Joan Hotaling, a 450-pound mother of eight, thinks this plan will unfairly penalize her household. At a public meeting, Hotaling estimated that she defecated on average four times a day and insisted that her stool probably weighed more than that of the average person due to the amount of fat and grease she consumes. Angry and frustrated, Hotaling claimed she would be forced to leave Central Bridge if the community started charging her “by the pound” to process her bowel movements.

At this point, a rather svelte-looking individual stood up and shouted, “good riddance”! “Why should I have to pay so you can shit like an elephant”, he screamed, drawing wild applause from the audience.

A few members in the audience claimed to have already lived in a “pay-as-you-poop” city. They explained how at first it was confusing but after a while they began having bowel movements outdoors in order to fertilize their garden. “Once we started doing it the ‘natural way’ our sewer bill was cut in half”, they explained.

Another potential plan, which also received support, would involve selling residents special bags into which they would defecate and then deposit at the local sewage treatment plant. Whatever plan is chosen, it appears that Central Bridge is tired of the old ways of doing things and is ready to try something new.

Wal-Mart Worries about Aesthetic Impact of Lowe’s Home Improvement Center

“We chose the current Wal-Mart store location over ten years ago because of its natural beauty” say’s Wal-Mart District Manager George Deitz. But now a proposed Lowe’s Home Improvement Center in Cobleskill, NY threatens that very natural beauty. The Lowe’s store will tower over Wal-Mart on a nearby hill, dwarfing the 12-year old big-box store, bathing its newly rehabilitated concrete façade and vast parking lot in a sea of hazy yellow phosphorescent light. This “monstrosity” as Dietz calls it, threatens to darken Wal-Mart with its shadows during the day and blind the store with its lights during the night.

“This suburban sprawl has got to stop” Dietz laments. “When we chose this location, there was nothing here but farms, now there’s car dealerships, gas stations, a Dunkin’ Donuts, and now Lowe’s. It’s like Wal-Mart is being swallowed up by ugly suburban sprawl”.

The real tragedy, according to Dietz, is that Wal-Mart just finished remodeling the interior and exterior of its Cobleskill store. The Wal-Mart exterior just received a major facelift in which its familiar blue and gray was replaced by a more humble and Earthy brown and tan. But Dietz asks, “Who will enjoy looking at Wal-Mart’s exciting new façade when there’s an ugly, behemoth, big-box store looming over it”?

A long-time Wal-Mart employee recounts memories of sitting outside on breaks in the smokers’ shack looking out upon the rolling pastures of the farm just over the hill. “It was just so relaxing, it literally helped to recharge me to go back to work”. But now Wal-Mart employees will look out of their smoking shack and see a dizzying whir of traffic and blinding phosphorescent lights.

A local historic preservation group has issued a scathing critique of the impact that Lowe’s would have on Wal-Mart. They are urging the Town and Village to work together to make sure that the proposed Lowe’s does not adversely impact enjoyment of Wal-Mart’s striking concrete façade.

According to Dietz, “That’s all I’m asking for. We just spent a ton of money painting our entire building brown and tan so that it would be more of a pleasure to look at, and we don’t want to see a Lowe’s come in and spoil that view for everybody”.