Quoted from 487

Jeesh Sure sounds like you voted for Tomassone.  Afterall you did pretty good by him eh Ron?  

Quoted from bumblethru

........see what happens in rotterdam when the rep and dems get along! NASTY!!

Rotterdam politics breeds contempt. In Rotterdam you are defined by your politics! Call me a pessimist....but rotterdam will never move forward. Actually there isn't much left to do here. It is what it is! A sh!thole!

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

If you don't like Rotterdam ... there are lots of other places to move to.

• Develop a master plan to determine proper zoning before development occurs
  
• Maintain and enhance the infrastructure needed to support growth and attract industry and technology firms.
  
• Retain autonomy, control, and independence from county government so that decisions affecting town residents are
  rendered by Rotterdam residents.
  
• Contract for services with the private sector before creating new taxing authorities to grow the size and cost of government.
  
• Investigate the cost savings and efficiency gains to be realized by consolidating some of the many fire departments.
  
• Enforce code regarding signs placed on public property.
  
• Legally seize dilapidated private properties from owners who are substantially delinquent in tax payments and who are derelict in adhering to code.   If in a state of disrepair, demolish the structures.
  
• Discontinue the encroachment on the aquifier by developers (regardless of the connections that they may have).
  
• Work to change the county government from a County Legislature to a County Board of Supervisors.  This will decrease the cost of government and increase the accountability of elected officials to the residents.
  

Quoted from 78

• Develop a master plan to determine proper zoning before development occurs
  
• Maintain and enhance the infrastructure needed to support growth and attract industry and technology firms.
  
• Retain autonomy, control, and independence from county government so that decisions affecting town residents are
  rendered by Rotterdam residents.
  
• Contract for services with the private sector before creating new taxing authorities to grow the size and cost of government.
  
• Investigate the cost savings and efficiency gains to be realized by consolidating some of the many fire departments.
  
• Enforce code regarding signs placed on public property.
  
• Legally seize dilapidated private properties from owners who are substantially delinquent in tax payments and who are derelict in adhering to code.   If in a state of disrepair, demolish the structures.
  
• Discontinue the encroachment on the aquifier by developers (regardless of the connections that they may have).
  
• Work to change the county government from a County Legislature to a County Board of Supervisors.  This will decrease the cost of government and increase the accountability of elected officials to the residents.
  

Quoted from CICERO

DVR gets in the fray by taking a pot shot at Mertz, referring to him as "someone he has no use for" then spidey swoops in when the rebuttals get too harsh.  Why does DVR get a pass on personal attacks?

You act as if DVR is a virgin to Rotterdam politics.  His posts would lead me to believe he's been around the political scene for some time.  

I also respect DVR's willingness to come here and offer positive comments.  Doesn't mean he's exempt from criticism.

Quoted Text

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason:
I agree with most of what you have written -- I particular like the idea of returning to a County Board of Supervisors (that is our town supervisors would also sit on the county board -- it makes sense -- promotes more direct communication between the county and the towns).
I would go one step further -- consider ways to consolidate government in the county -- I prefer an approach (similar to Canada) where they have regional governments in urban areas.   We don't need 6 school districts in the county -- 1 would be enough.  We don't need 7 police agencies - 1 would be enough.
7 highway departments - 1 would be enough.  and so on.

Quoted from 78

There is a dilemna that I, as a ideological conservative, face regarding your proposal.  Though I agree that less government should result in considerable cost savings and less intrusiveness on our individual liberties, I oppose the ceding of power to higher levels of government (e.g. town to county).  Decisions on the important issues that affect a community should be made by the local representatives who are accessible and accountable to the residents, not by faceless bureacrats who live and work outside the communities that their often baseless decisions impact.  I do concede, however, that there are certainly some functions of government that could be consolidated without a resulting loss of power of and influence by the people.

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

I would rather have 1 term on either the Town Board or County Legislature  and actually get something reasonable and intelligent ACCOMPLISHED to solve the problem .. than to serve  20 years just allowing the status quo to strangle us and our future (and the future of our children and grandchildren).

Quoted from Kevin March

Infrastructure.  The people need to know that the services that they have (water, sewer, power) will continue.  In the areas of town where these have not been looked at, there need to be pre-emptive repairs.  Some areas of town have had multiple major water main breaks.  If you look where these are / were, you would know the areas where wh need to pre-emptively dig up the current line that has been down for so many years and repair it, hopefully keeping the current infrastructure intact while the new is put in and brought into use.

I agree with Brad with going to the County Board of Supervisors.  This would save a great amount of money.  Also, it would be people who were closer to the people who would be dealing with their people's minds in interest, but that's a county level issue, not town.  

At the town level, I would say that the election should be changed.  The Supervisor should be a 4 year position.  At the same time, I believe that the board member seats should be broken up by district.  With this, we would have to look at the population of the town and design districts that would be proportional, but to at least make sure that the members that are elected to the board are from different areas of town.  I believe that our current board does not have one individual who lives in Rotterdam Junction or Pattersonville, but they are currently (or is this a closed issue) figuring out what's the best for the people of the junction as far as the water tower.  The people of Rotterdam Junction / Pattersonville should be able to decide at least one person on the board, and they could forward their ideas to this person for consideration.  Maybe the 4 districts could be Rotterdam Junction / Pattersonville, South Schenectady, Coldbrook and Carmen (somehow being billed as districts 1-4) (I know that I didn't include Pine Grove or anything to the west of the Thruway, I just don't know how to work it in).

We've had plenty of plans as far as what could be done around the Thruway exits.  The problem is ALL WE HAVE IS PLANS, NO ACTUAL ACTIONS.  We need to act on these, but at the same time, we need to reduce taxes, as no businesses will come into this area to build without reducing the costs to them.  Also, we need to allow plans to come through to build around the Thruway exits, especially 25A, since this is the intersection of 2 major highways, routes across New York State.  

Not only do we need to make sure that our aquifer is protected by no longer building on it, we also need to bring this town back to the small town feel that it was, unless, of course, we want to have the same problems as the city of Schenectady.  Part of those problems is people living right on top of each other.  I think we need to go back to using contractors (and having a specific zoning plan for the entire town, not changing every town board meeting) to build neighborhoods and business districts, not both on top of each other.  We need to have areas that are open for use to the residents.  Some of the worst eyesores around are all of the MFRH (multiple family residential housing) buildings that are popping up all over town.  You want to live in the big city, go move to the big city, we're a small town (although, growing necessarily to a point).  

We need to remove ourselves from groups that are supposedly there to help us.  We need to tell the Metroplex that we don't need their help and we'll just take the money back that they took from us and use it to make Rotterdam a place that people actually want to come to.  

That's all I have off the top of my head, but it's a start.  This alone would take long enough to get done to keep the board and county busy for years.

DVR, I understand your idea of consolodating school districts.  I don't know how you would think that we could bring them all into one school district.  There may be some reduction possible, but people don't want their children traveling as much as you're thinking on busses.  In fact, one of the major issues that Schalmont has constantly as a reason for the heavy tax burden (and believe me, it's heavy) is the bussing.  Also, remember that there's parts of some of the districts (at least Schalmont and Mohonasen) that both have students from outside the county. (Hence the name of Schalmont )

Quoted from TippyCanoe

it is too bad the owner of REVITALIZE ROTTERDAM doesn't feel that way

while he was the supervisor of the town or Root in Montgomery county he tried to push thru legislation to
dissolve the board of supervisors

Quoted from 474

It's cute how naive you are, Ron.