If We Want Professionals, Why Won’t We Pay Professionally?
A couple days ago, I wrote some pretty negative things about the way that the special village board meeting to review the budget and select a new mayor for Trumansburg was held. The meeting was run in an amateurish fashion, but then, why shouldn’t it have been? After all, our village board does consist of amateurs.
Yes, the village board members are paid, but what they’re paid in a year is on the level of what might be alloted for a college student’s stipend for a month’s internship. In effect, we are establishing our village trustees as amateurs.
Our amateur village board does a lot of good work, but there are gaps that strain to the point of breaking. This week’s board meeting gave several examples of those gaps. The fact that we have two appointees on a board of five is telling.
I didn’t like the behavior I saw from some of the board members on Tuesday, but that doesn’t mean that I think that these board members are bad people. Though I don’t know them very well personally, I suspect that they are good people. However, good people put in a bad situation will do bad things.
We want our village trustees to do a professional job, so why do we citizens refuse to pay them professionally?
What we pay our trustees is not just an insult to them. It’s an insult to our community. We should no more elect people to the Trumansburg Village Board of Trustees without giving them the resources to do their jobs than we should send soldiers to Iraq without giving them the resources they need.
We need not start out with a full professional salary. We could begin with an increase of $20,000 per board member per year. That might sound like a lot, but we have the money in Trumansburg to pay for it.
With five board members, including the mayor, the total increase would be $100,000. With roughly 1,500 people in the village, the cost of the salary increase would be only between $65 and $70 per person per year. The cost of a single month’s cable television can easily rise above that amount. I’ve got a household of five people, and I’d be happy to increase the amount I pay in taxes by $350 per year in exchange for a more professional village board.
It’s a question of values. Do we value Trumansburg enough to invest in creating a more reasonable village government, or is 70 dollars per year in our pockets so precious to us that we would turn our backs on the village government and continue to allow it to rot?
Before you say that money shouldn’t be an issue for the trustees, stop to think how long you would continue your own work without being paid for it.
A noble idea, Jonathan, but I would point out that giving a 1000% raise to trustees is no guarantee that you’d get a more professional result in terms of governance. You might have more people interested in running for office, for sure, but an elected trustee could do zero work and snooze through meetings for 4 years, and still collect a paycheck until the next election. Not a good use of taxpayer money.
Local residents are very sensitive about their taxes, and many residents are on fixed incomes. There’s no way the public would ever consider those kinds of raises, or anything remotely approximating them.
I think we just have to accept that the trustee salaries are really more just honoraria, and that for the most part, the position is voluntary. (Note that John Levine never was paid for his service in his time on the Village Board.)
Note also that those elected to the Tburg School Board, which decides on the distribution of vastly larger sums of money than the Village Board controls, serve without pay. Their service is completely voluntary.
Jonathon,
I have to agree with Mary on this one.
Mary and Marcia, I won’t deride your opinions. I understand where you’re coming from.
However, there’s one point you made Mary that I just can’t agree with. It’s that we have to accept things as they are. I reject that attitude. I say that everything’s up for discussion, and we shouldn’t take things like this for granted.
It’s clear to me that the present arrangement is not working well. The system is broken, and getting new people into a broken system won’t fix things.
As a snowbird just returning to the area after a few months, i had an evening to catch up on all the local happenings. Kind of disgusting the level of politics that has happened here. A lawsuit on the village board all to get a son elected, storeowners and an appointed board member supporting one side over the other..this jsut doesnt seem right given our small community. Granted i dont know how many of us shop for auto parts here or hardware (I usually go to Ithaca for these things – just cheaper) I dont see how the local business get involoved in local politics would help their cause. Taking sides in a small community doesnt sound good for business if you ask me. As an old timer myself I hope those who have been here long enough get there act together if we are going to keep this place alive.
Speaking of old timers vs. new residents, I just heard Hart Senior talking on news 10 now. He just DOESN”T sound like he’s from around here. He has an odd accent. More british, or perhaps Indian or Pakistani? Anyone know if he grew up here?
It doesn’t matter to me if Geoffrey Hart is a Trumansburg native or if he isn’t. He isnt, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. Each one of us has a spark to bring to the community, even Mr. Hart.
Nativism or anti-nativism isn’t appropriate. We aren’t living in a separated world. Trumansburg can be unique without there being ungenerous criteria for who’s counted as a true local.
From Rordan Hart’s posting on this very blog a couple of weeks ago:
“My parents, who were sitting in the audience, are immigrants, one from Taiwan, one from South Africa. They were accepted into this community some thirty years ago…”
One would assume that the part of his parental unit named Shern Feng is from Taiwan, which would leave the veddy British sounding Geoffrey a native of South Africa, birthplace of apartheid. When I do the math, I surmise he left the country when the handwriting appeared on the wall that the majority was just about foment revolution to bring about self-rule.
Interesting.
I didn’t ask if it mattered to you Jonathan, I didn’t ask to be once again judged by you. I asked a simple question. Thank you Mary for your thoughtful response.
Jonathan – from # 3 above you said “everything’s up for discussion”.
Great!
So don’t imply that certain ideas or questions are inappropriate. That’s not going to advance the discussion.
I think the nativism argument is crap too. I just thought it interesting that the Hart family, who’se son ran on a platform of being from the area and attending to the “local” needs, isn’t really local after all. The way they talk, you’d have thought their ancestors carved main street and built the Camp house with their bare hands
Uh, X, Jonathan didn’t say what you say he said.
Jewel – how so?
X, I’m not judging you personally. I’m judging the idea of anti-nativism (prejudice against natives). Whether you asked me what I think of it or not, I think I’ve got the right to say what I think about it without you getting upset.
I also didn’t tell you what to say or what questions to ask. I just gave an opinion about an idea that I think is inappropriate in our community. If you want to talk about it, fine, but part of talking about these things is that others have the right to disagree with you.
Dear Matthew,
I am the appointed trustee you speak of. I did support Rordan Hart in the election because I thought he was a good candidate. As others supported the other candidates that they also thought were qualified.
That is the process. One has to run or be endorsed by one party or the other. I certainly don’t seem to hear critisim from those who endorsed David or Chris.
Many years ago, the village had two parties, The Citizens and The Pioneers. Though there was still small town politics to some degree the system seemed to work because it alleviated the concept of “sides”.
One seemed to be able to run under this system without preconceived judgements.
One fact you may not know about the lawsuit is that David Filiberto WAS NOT named as a petitioner in that suit. He was the only trustee running for re-election.
In fact if anything there was a great chance that the suit could have worked against Rordans candidacy for the board.
I dont understand your comment on business’s in town taking political sides. They weren’t. They were looking for someone who they felt could communicate their needs to the board. These are people who have invested in our children, our community, volunteered their services, donated time and money into our local economy. They didnt do that because they cared what party we belonged to. They weren’t selective on who they chose to support or donate time and money to. They did it for the community. Not once have I gone into a local business asking for a donation and had anyone of those businessmen ask me what party I belonged to.
During the Main Street project, many of them felt their concerns weren’t being addressed. Many had a major loss of business. They were seeking someone who would communicate. It will be a sad day in this town when a businessman or woman cannot stand up in a board meeting and say something fearing they would lose business. If anything our business’s need to be valued here. We should care if they have concerns.
Just as board members should care about the concerns of their citizens regardless of party.
I am hopeful we are headed for a turnaround here.
Yes, I supported Rordan but I also think Chris Thomas is an amazing asset and he is someone I look very forward to working with. He went out of his way to meet me and talk with me and we are in agreement when we say, we are here to serve the people of this community, ALL of them.
When the community decides to invest in necessary infrastructure improvements, those improvements by definition have short term impacts on everyone. Did the heavy construction phase of the Main Street project affect the community? Absolutely. Were there inconveniences? Definitely. Were the businesses along Rt. 96 adversely affected? Some say yes, and I have no reason to doubt them. But, these impacts should not have come as a surprise to anyone. I’ve never seen as much communication with the community as there was in connection with the Main Street project (and for the record, I had no involvement in it). If someone wasn’t heard, or didn’t know what was going to happen, then they had to have been completely unconscious. There were multiple community information sessions, a weekly column in the paper, weekly walk-abouts, displays of the various design drawings, meetings with the contractor — an extraordinary degree of communication and opportunities for feedback (compare this, for example, with the amount of communication and input sought by Town Supervisor Austic in connection with his covert and unilateral WD5). My sense was that while some of the business owners who were directly affected were not happy about the short-term effects of the Main Street project, many were savvy enough to realize that the community’s large investment in infrastructure would allow them to reap significant long-term benefits for their businesses. Attractive store-fronts, walkable sidewalks, some actual landscaping, places to sit and talk, and a central intersection where yahoos can no longer make unsafe and illegal u-turns in the middle of a state highway, are unquestionably going to help existing businesses and will be more likely to attract the kinds of new businesses people seem to want in the Village. I think our newly-appointed Trustee should give a lot of credit to the community for making such an important long-term investment in our Village businesses, rather than issuing a back-handed slap about a communication issue that could only have existed in the minds of people who weren’t willing to listen anyway.
Dear Richard,
You don’t have to defend the main street project to me. Im scrolling up and no where did I say anything against it. I said there were some issues during the course of the project. ” A communication issue that could only have exsited in the minds of people who weren’t willing to listen anyway.”
Quite a judgement.
I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized you had talked with them.
Here’s what you said: “During the Main Street project, many of them felt their concerns weren’t being addressed. Many had a major loss of business. They were seeking someone who would communicate. It will be a sad day in this town when a businessman or woman cannot stand up in a board meeting and say something fearing they would lose business. If anything our business’s need to be valued here. We should care if they have concerns.”
Who are the “they” you are referring to, and how is it that they could have missed the incredible number of ways that were available to them to communicate about and give feedback on the project?
You say you didn’t say anything against it. So, are you/were you for it? What’s your position? Mine is that it was/is a strong show of support by the community for our local businesses, whose advise and input was sought at every juncture.
Richard, like you, I think the Village bent over backwards with the Main St. Project to get the input of the residents. It’s interesting to hear how some business owners felt they were not listened to, or communicated with. Let me put out two little anecdotes that may help shed some light on this topic.
Originally, the Main St. Project (MSP) design eliminated the island in front of Ron Don’s. Business owners said, “But people use it all the time to turn around!” Skip Davis, the owner of the laundromat, then set up a camera which recorded, over a series of days, how many times cars heading west used that island to turn around and head in the other direction. I don’t remember the number, but it was indeed a lot. So the island was put back in the design. The Village Board, and the MSP Advisory Committee most definitely did listen. (Skip was very also a smart guy to document his objection. That really does help the decision-makers in their decisions.)
Now, once construction started, the MSP had these weekly early morning Q&A sessions to which the public was invited, including business owners. Here’s a quote from Andres’ MSP Blog, on the village web site, explaining what these sessions were:
“The MSP is happy to announce our first “Morning on Main Street” meeting scheduled for Tuesday August 8th at 8am on the Village Office porch. These meetings will continue throughout the month of August, every Tuesday at the same time and place. If there is public interest then the MSP will continue these meetings for the duration of the project, but in the meantime make sure to mark your calendar for August 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th.
“These short (30 minutes to an hour) meetings will let members of the Trumansburg community and commuters along 96 North the chance to stop by and chat with members of the MSP, Village, and Economy Paving. There will, hopefully, be complimentary coffee and doughnuts at the meeting to energize folks! Hope to see you there!”
Hardly anybody came. I think over the course of the summer, maybe 5 or 6 people total. No business owners, although I believe that the liquor store owner’s mom was there once.
So without factual knowledge of any events to the contrary, it’s kind of hard to believe that “they didn’t listen to us!” If people are not doing things right, it is far MORE helpful to specifically point to how things went wrong instead of just repeating the mantra “they don’t listen to us!” That just doesn’t advance things, and in fact, contributes to a more polarized environment. And I think we can agree that at this point we really don’t need that.
Jonathan, I will let you have the last word but that doesn’t mean that you’re right. It just means that you have more time to type stuff into this thing.
This discussion of the Main Street Project seems to conflate the planning stage of it with the construction phase of it. Two different animals.
It is my understanding that the merchants were upset with the construction phase. I don’t think anyone will deny that, in spite of the best efforts of Andres Perez-Charneco, there was a failure to communicate.
Most of the blame must go to NYSEG, the DOT and Mother Nature. The original plan was to do the sidewalks on the northside and then the sidewalks on the south side, so that the road would essentially be shifted one lane over (using the parking spots as a lane).
This would have been less confusing and less intimidating to people trying to use the businesses. Best intentions fell apart when NYSEG delayed the start of their work and then decided to do more than they had originally announced. The DOT dilly-dallied a while before letting Economy trench Main at Washington instead of drilling under it. They also reversed themselves on the sanctity of the guardrail near the redbud tree. The weather was the final monkey wrench in the works.
Communications among the Economy Paving supervisor, his subcontractors, the Main Street Project advisory committee members, the liaison to the village and the community liaison were not good. It was therefore difficult for the merchants to get good information.
Frankly, I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for the complaining consumers. There hasn’t been a major construction project on Main Street since 1962 when they moved Rt. 96 from “Old Main Street” to have it go around the hill on the new “Main Street” (formerly Hector Street). This lack of experience with construction showed in the generally freaked response.