Former Medina trustee doesn’t expect much from towns for villagers

Editor:

Personally I find it unseemly and perhaps counterproductive for village employees to enter the debate about dissolution of the Village of Medina. No matter what their true motives are, people will assume that they are doing it for fear of losing their jobs.

That said, I too worry very much about them losing their jobs. The dissolution plan sounds good and might make sense if the two towns were willing to have anything to do with it, but why should they? They have always looked after the interests of those constituents outside of the village rather than those in the village. That is not going to change. So let’s be realistic.

Without the cooperation of the two towns there are two possible outcomes from dissolution. The first will be losing village services and hoping that the towns will be willing to take up the slack but why should they? That would force them to raise taxes on those outside of the village.

The second outcome would be that the former village residents will have to pay extra taxes to cover the cost of keeping those services and of course the costs of an agency to oversee those services.

I guess that the good news is that with the dissolution of the village all contracts with village workers would become null and void. You can’t have a contract entered into by only one party. Whatever agency was overseeing the departments would be free to reduce hourly wages and tell the employees to take it or leave.

Over the years I have heard many complain about this department or that department and the quality of their work. I may have done that from time to time myself. But let’s think this through. If we are dissatisfied with the quality of the work of those earning, say, $40,000 a year will we be more satisfied with the quality of the work of those earning, say, $30,000 a year?

Dissolution might be a great way to break the unions but will it improve the quality of our lives? I wonder.

John S. Grimes
Medina

(Mr. Grimes is a former village trustee.)