Photos by Tom Rivers – Ridgeway Town Supervisor Brian Napoli talks with reporters after dissolution was defetated on Tuesday. Napoli said the town can find cost savings for the village through shared services

MEDINA – With residents casting a decisive blow against dissolving the village, Medina Mayor Andrew Meier and town leaders from Shelby and Ridgeway say they will work towards cooperation to reduce the costs of government in the community.

Meier pushed dissolution, seeing it as a way for a more efficient government for the Medina area, while also bringing in much-needed state aid.

The dissolution plan was fiercely opposed by the leaders from the two town governments, as well as village employees and many village residents. The referendum – “Shall the Village of Medina, New York be dissolved?” – was defeated, 949-527. By law, the issue can’t be voted on again for at least four more years.

Meier said the village faces the same challenges after the vote as it did to start the day.

“We still have a declining tax base, a shrinking population and climbing costs,” he said shortly after the results were announced. “Our sustainability predicament remains.”

Medina Mayor Andrew Meier said he looks forward to seeing proposals from the two towns on how to reduce government costs in the Medina community.

Ridgeway Town Supervisor Brian Napoli said he wants to have serious talks with the village and Shelby town officials about shared services. He believes that cooperation among the municipalities can reduce taxes for village residents.

“The residents (through this vote) told us they want us to look at shared services,” Napoli said in the Senior Center, where many village and town officials, and other residents were gathered to hear the results of the vote.

David Stalker is a member of the Ridgeway Town Board who lives in the village. He sees the village is struggling and needs some help.

“We’ve been ready and willing to talk,” Stalker said about the Ridgeway officials.

He was among the group that waited for nearly 1,500 ballots to be counted, by far the most of an village vote in at least a generation.

Election Inspector Judy Szulis announced the results at 10:35 p.m. The polls closed at 9 p.m.

Stalker was like many of the residents who worried about the fate of the Fire Department and Police Department if dissolution had passed.

“I like having them and knowing they can be there in 3 minutes,” he said.

That was a common refrain from voters interviewed by the media on Tuesday. Residents said they don’t like their high taxes, but they said they didn’t want to lose a responsive police force and fire department.

“Taxes you can deal with, but the proper time for emergencies can’t be compromised,” said resident Peter Kaiser, 31.

He was one of several residents who wasn’t able to vote because he wasn’t registered. He said he assumed he could vote as a village resident, but he wasn’t recorded as registered by the Orleans County Board of Elections.

Tracy Cody had the same situation. She lives in the village, but unbeknownst to her, she wasn’t registered to vote.

She also owns land outside the village in Ridgeway. She went to the polls on Tuesday, concerned her town taxes would go up if dissolution went through. She also didn’t like the uncertainty with the police and fire department.

She supports the idea of one government for the community, with the two towns merged and a village dissolution to follow. She thinks consolidating the two towns is the first step.

“Combine everything into one,” she said.

It was a busy day for election inspectors with nearly 1,500 people voting at the Senior Center. Election inspector Norma Huth is at left wth inspector Judy Szulis at right.

Mayor Meier and supporters of OneMedina see merger of the two towns and elimination of the village as an ultimate goal for the community, providing a streamlined government, more state aid and a stronger political voice.

OneMedina saw dissolution of the village as a first step, but folding the village services into the towns, different taxing districts and an LDC for sewer services proved confusing to many people.

One woman, a life-long Medina resident at age 74, said there were too many unknowns if dissolution had passed.

“Everything is so unclear to everybody,” said the woman, who declined to give her name. “It’s been back and forth with the facts and there’s been too much fighting.”

Crystal Petry, 22, is a Shelby volunteer firefighter who lives in the village. She voted against dissolution. She said the Medina Fire Department, which includes paid firefighters, is critical to western Orleans County. She also thought it was unfair to residents in Shelby and Ridgeway outside the village who faced tax increases if the referendum had passed.

“There’s other ways of going about doing it,” Petry said. “Give the towns a chance.”

Steve Seitz, a Shelby town councilman, said Shelby welcomes the village officials for ongoing dialogue about sharing services.

“Hopefully we can get back to the table,” Seitz said.

Meier said he was encouraged by the 527 “yes” votes, 36 percent of the total. The 527 tops the number of people who voted in the last village election. Only about 400 voted last March.

He said dissolution could loom again because of the difficult situation the village faces. It has limited options for boosting revenue to pay for the services the community values so much. Meier said the village shouldn’t just raise property taxes. The $54 rate per $1,000 of assessed property (village, town, county and school taxes) is one of the highest in the state.

Election inspectors Mary Ann Arder, left, and Norma Huth count ballots. It took about an hour and half to record all of the votes.

Residents and businesses can save significant money in taxes just by moving outside the village and avoiding the village’s $16.44 tax rate. Dissolution would have chopped the overall rate by about $6 per $1,000, saving $420 for a village property owner with a house assessed at $70,000.

“Sometimes it takes time for people to warm up to this kind of transformational change,” Meier said. “We voted tonight. I can’t say if this will be the last vote on the issue. This is a conversation that will continue for years to come.”

He noted a vote to abolish the village court failed in its first vote but sailed through the second time in 2010.

Village Trustee Mark Irwin supported dissolution and was disappointed to see it be rejected. He noted a strong push from the dissolution foes – “They preyed on peoples’ misunderstanding.”

A dissolution plan would have preserved existing village services, realized $277,000 in efficiency saving and $541,000 in additional state aid.

“Right now the ball is in the towns’ court,” Irwin said.

Meier said he looks forward to seeing the ideas and plans from the two towns.

“I think we really need to figure out what the towns’ proposal are,” he said. “They have said, ‘There are better ways, there are better ways.’ All eyes are on them to follow through with what they said.”

The 1,476 who went to the polls on Tuesday is about half of the people who were eligible to vote. The village has 6,065 residents, according to the 2010 Census. Judy Szulis, an election inspector, was pleased by the big turnout.

“We’ve had people come out who had never voted before in a village election,” Szulis said. “There have been a lot of new faces in here today, which is a good thing.”

‘Dissolution has divided friends, neighbors and families. This cannot go on.’ – Ridgeway Town Supervisor Brian Napoli

Photos by Tom Rivers – Shelby Town Supervisor Skip Draper, right, responds to a question about village dissolution. He is joined by Councilman Dale Stalker during a meeting at the Medina High School Auditorium attended by more than 300 people.

MEDINA – A big crowd of about 300 people attended a public meeting by the Town Boards in Shelby and Ridgeway on Wednesday night. The town officials stated their strong opposition to the dissolution of the Village of Medina.

Villagers shouldn’t expect the towns to pick up the level of services currently provided in the village, officials from both towns said.

Medina Mayor Andrew Meier and other supporters of the dissolution plan see it as a restructuring of services that eases the tax burden on village residents, shifts some costs to the towns and brings in much-needed state aid.

But Jeff Toussaint, Ridgeway town councilman, called it a divisive effort that will only push costs onto the towns. He said the plan has residents outside the village fretting about “unbearable tax hikes.”

“The dissolution plan promoted by One Medina will not unite Medina but ruin it,” Toussaint said.

Ridgeway Town Board members David Stalker, right, and Paul Blajszczak both voiced their opposition to village dissolution. Stalker lives in the village and he said he enjoys the heightened services which come at a higher cost.

Village residents will vote on dissolution from noon to 9 p.m. on Jan. 20 at the Senior Center.

Residents won’t be voting on a specific dissolution plan. They will decide whether or not the village government will continue.

Shelby Town Supervisor Skip Draper and Ridgeway Town Supervisor Brian Napoli both said the dissolution plan doesn’t save nearly enough money to justify eliminating the village government and creating new layers of government bureaucracy, including special districts, a local development corporation and additional burdens on the two towns.

The plan identifies $277,000 in cost savings and $541,000 in additional state aid for $818,000 in overall benefit. (Click here to see the dissolution plan.)

But with combined budgets of more than $10 million, the $277,000 was called a small amount in operational savings.

“I don’t trust the math,” Draper said. “It’s very clear these are all estimates.”

Draper said he is dubious there would be any savings at all because the plan only calls for adding one full-time position to the police department, which would go from covering the village to both towns, or from 3 square miles to 98. If four police officers were needed that would offset the $277,000 in identified cost savings.

Gary Lamar, president of the Shelby Volunteer Fire Company, said the Medina Fire Department is critical to ambulance and fire service for Western Orleans County. He doesn’t want to see the Medina Fire Department disrupted through dissolution.

The town officials said they want to recommit to shared service discussions. Draper said the communities have established a record of cooperation before through courts and assessing services. He sees benefits to the village if the towns took over all plowing and street maintenance. However, if villagers want sidewalk plowing, they could pay for that and other “enhanced services,” Draper said.

The Shelby town supervisor sees the two towns providing “baseline services,” with village residents paying for additional services such as police.

Meier has said shared services don’t do enough to ease the significant tax strain on village residents. Villagers pay a combined tax rate of $54 per $1,000 of assessed property. Moving outside the village can knock about $12 off that combined tax rate, a significant disparity and major disincentive to invest in the village, the mayor has said.

The village tax rate would drop about $6, according to the dissolution plan. Ridgeway residents outside the village in 2013 paid a $6.71 rate for town, lighting and fire protection. That would rise 46 percent to $9.83 if the village dissolves and services are picked up according to the plan.

Shelby residents would see a 10 percent increase with dissolution with the 2013 rate for outside-village residents going from $8.36 per $1,000 of assessed property to $9.17. That would raise taxes for a $70,000 home from $585 to $642.

But the town officials don’t buy the numbers, particularly with the costs for police.

Paul Hendel served as moderator for the meeting at Medina High School.

Shelby Town Councilman Steve Seitz said the plan wasn’t well thought out and didn’t include input from the town officials. He told the village officials they shouldn’t quit on the village. He urged them to come back to the table and find more ways to share services and cooperate.

Ridgeway Town Councilman Paul Blajszczak described the dissolution plan as “radical and premature.”

He urged village residents “to elect candidates interested in productive collaboration.”

The town officials were asked to be specific in how the taxes could be cut for village residents. Shared services was a refrain among the two towns.

Napoli, the Ridgeway supervisor, said the dissolution push has stirred the passions of the community – for the wrong reasons.

“Dissolution has divided friends, neighbors and families,” Napoli said. “This cannot go on.”

Ridgeway Town Supervisor Brian Napoli speaks against dissolution, saying the community should preserve the village. Jeff Toussaint is at right.

Ed Weider is one the proponents of “One Medina,” an effort that seeks to dissolve the village and merge the two towns. He spoke after several residents and town officials spoke about the beautiful downtown and historic flavor of the community.

Weider said there is another part of Medina, and it is growing: decay. He travels the village in a motorized wheelchair. He sees lots of vacant houses and properties being neglected.

Dissolving the village and merging the towns would lower government costs and bring in much needed state aid, helping to pay for services and lower residents’ tax bills, Weider said.

“i don’t think we can afford to maintain the status quo,” Weider said.

Weider praised the two town boards for their presentation on Wednesday night. The boards have proven they work well together and are willing to face community challenges. Weider urged them to support the village dissolution, to bring a unified and streamlined voice to local government.

Ed Weider addresses the two town boards before about 300 people on Wednesday night. Owen Toale is at right, holding the microphone for Weider.

The town officials were asked if they had been approached about a merger of the two towns. They said they hadn’t. Blajszczak said they would have to consider the issue if there was a citizen petition.

But he doubted there would be significant savings because there would still be the same amount of work with water, sewer, street maintenance and plowing, and other services.

“Would a merger save money?” Blajszczak said. “That’s an assumption.”

Some of the residents asked the town officials what the village residents get for the $1.1 million villagers pay to the two towns annually. Draper noted assessing and court for sure.

“The amount of service from the town is minimal at best,” resident Dick Berry responded to Draper.

Berry said he wished more of his local taxes could be directed to the village, which is doing the bulk of the work.

“There has to be a better way,” Berry said.

The town officials were also urged to press for more sales tax revenue from the county and to demand more municipal state aid from New York.

Proponents of dissolution will have a public meeting on Friday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Medina Theatre. That meeting will include Don Earle, Seneca Falls town supervisor. He will share his community’s experience with dissolution, discussing impacts on taxes and services, and the community’s reaction to the changes.

Photos by Tom Rivers – There will soon be about 250 signs out in Medina, urging village residents not to support dissolving the village government on Jan. 20. This sign is on East Center Street.

MEDINA – Dissolution opponents are stepping up their efforts to sway village residents not to support a dissolution vote on Jan. 20, saying the village will lose critical services and won’t see promised tax savings.

About 20 people, many of them village employees, met to distribute yard signs and talk strategy on Tuesday night at the Knights of Columbus. The group said they expect to soon have 250 signs out against dissolution.

They will be going door to door, and may put out a mass mailer.

Cindy Troy, president of the CSEA union for Orleans County employees, was at the meeting in Medina. She wants to see the village government stay intact.

“You can lose the things that make you identifiable as a community,” she said. “The Village of Medina could lose control over things they hold dear. They have a density of population. They have needs the people in the country do not.”

She worries if the dissolution goes through, other local villages will follow.

“We as a whole community need to be concerned about this,” she said about the dissolution vote. “Medina won’t be the last to look at it.”

A second anti-dissolution sign also has been put out.

A dissolution plan put together by a committee with help of a consultant suggested many of the village services be taken over the towns of Shelby and Ridgeway. The committee also proposed a new debt district, two lighting districts, a water/sewer local development corporation, and a new fire district. Ridgeway would take over a town police force that would be contracted to include Shelby, according to the committee’s report.

Mike Maak, a Medina firefighter, said there is no guarantee the town officials would put that plan in place. He is among the dissolution opponents.

The dissolution plan sees $277,000 in cost savings and $541,000 in additional state aid for $818,000 in overall benefit. But with combined budgets of more than $10 million, the $277,000 is seen as a small amount in operational savings.

Village Trustees Mike Sidari and Marguerite Sherman both oppose the dissolution. Sidari is running a Facebook page – “Medina, This Village Matters.” Sidari also is helping to get anti-dissolution signs to residents. He said some of the signs have been stolen or damaged.

Sidari and Maak both would like to see the village push for other revenue without disrupting the village government and services. They want to see Medina press for more state aid and county sales tax dollars. Maak said the village should work to become a city, which would significantly boost its state aid and also spare village residents from paying town taxes.

The state hasn’t allowed a new city since the 1950s. Medina Mayor Andrew Meier sees little chance in the state approving Medina as a city, and the county has shown no openness to giving more local sales tax to villages.

Dissolution is one way to secure more state aid, and also run a more efficient local government, said Meier, who is part of the “One Medina” group that would ultimately like to see the towns of Shelby and Ridgeway merge into one town – “Medina.”

“One Medina” has had many signs out for months. The group also has a Facebook page with Dean Bellack and Meier fielding questions from the community, and trying to provide them with answers.

Meier sees dissolution as a way for village residents to shape their destination, without pleading for aid from the county and state, assistance that Meier thinks is unlikely to materialize if the village government remains. The state is providing incentives for dissolution, but gives very little to villages for “Aid and Incentives to Municipalities.” Most villages get less than $10 per person in AIM funding, while the state gives most cities at least $100 per person.

Maak thinks the county and state could be swayed to share revenue with the village.

“We haven’t tried,” he said about that effort. “With dissolution, we’re cutting our nose off to spite our face.”

Owen Toale, a former village trustee, believes the village and towns of Shelby and Ridgeway could reach sizable tax savings by sharing services and consolidating services. He faulted the village for setting a dissolution vote while there was still the prospect of shared services for the trio of municipalities.

“One Medina pushed for the vote while they were still in the middle of the (shared services) process,” Toale said. “That to me is poor.”

He is helping to get out the anti-dissolution signs.

“I’m interested in helping my village,” said Toale, a retired newspaper publisher.

Many village residents have been called in the past two weeks by PAF Opinion Research in Albany. The firm asks a series of questions about dissolution, seeking residents’ opinions.

Meier and “One Medina” say PAF makes many misleading statements. The firm, in a taped phone call to a local resident, says it was hired by “one of the larger unions in the state.” CSEA has denied hiring the firm. Orleans Hub hasn’t been able to verify who hired the firm.

In phone calls to village residents, PAF tells villagers that they will lose their local police. The service might be picked up by the Orleans County Sheriff’s Department, but response times will more than double. PAF attributes that claim to Meier.

The mayor said he never said that. He was on the Dissolution Committee that recommends a town-wide police force.

PAF makes a number of claims about the future of the village in a dissolution goes forward. The firm tells villagers there won’t be any tax savings if the village government dissolves.

“In villages that voted to dissolve themselves, the promised property tax savings never happened,” a survey worker told a village resident in a phone call. “Does hearing this make you lean against dissolving Medina or for dissolving Medina?”

A CSEA representative said the union didn’t put out the phone messages. However, the union said it knows about the phone calls and sees them as a way to gauge public opinion, and not influence village residents with their vote.

Meier has decried the calls as “push polling,” an attempt to intimidate and confuse residents into voting against dissolution.

Provided photo – Lee-Whedon Memorial Library has received several grants from the Medina Sandstone Trust to retain a program to microfilm or digitize old Medina newspapers, thus preserving access to hometown history. Catherine Cooper, library directory, is shown here. She said the library web site gets a steady stream of “hits” at this program by people seeking Medina facts and background.

Press Release
Medina Sandstone Society

MEDINA – The Medina Sandstone Society is guiding its endowment, the Sandstone Trust, into its fourth season of taking grant requests in the immediate community that comprises Medina, Ridgeway and Shelby. The society will accept grant applications until Nov. 14.

Michael Zelazny, chairman of the committee on grants, stressed that filing of the grant requests is a simple matter of only five or 10 minutes.

“We’ve had a good history of providing our small-sized grants to Medina area programs and organizations and we’ve been able to distribute over $15,000 to more than 30 organizations,” he continued.

Zelazny’s request for applications is targeting organizations that qualify through tax or regulatory status and which have “a clear profile of programs to benefit the community.”

Checks ranging from $200 to $500 go to help worthy programs. The chairman listed typical projects benefitted since 2011 such as downtown Christmas lighting, Lee-Whedon Memorial Library, Medina Historical Society, Medina Business Association, The Arc of Orleans, YMCA, Orleans Renaissance Group, CAC pre-school, school-parent activities, downtown clock project, Medina Tourism Program, Parade of Lights, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Family Literacy, Millville Cemetery Association and other groups.

Application forms for the grant program are available from the society’s website (click here). Printed copies of the application can be obtained at the Medina Village Offices, 119 Park Ave., NAPA Auto Parts on North Main Street, or at the office of Mr. Zelazny at 511 Main St. Or by a mail request to the Sandstone Society, Box 25, Medina 14108.

MEDINA – Village officials were scheduled to meet with the towns of Ridgeway and Shelby last week for continued shared service talks.

The meeting set for Oct. 6 was cancelled. Ridgeway Town Supervisor Brian Napoli sent an email to reporters today trying to clear up misunderstanding about why the meeting was cancelled. Napoli said leaders from all three municipalities agreed to cancel the meeting “because Medina asked for additional time to prepare.”

But Medina Mayor Andrew Meier disagreed with Napoli’s assessment. Meier said the village isn’t dragging out the process.

The two towns were supposed to crunch numbers for the costs of taking over plowing and highway work within the village. The towns were to have numbers ready for a Sept. 2 meeting. Shelby Town Supervisor Skip Draper presented a proposal that would save villagers in Shelby $2.46 per $1,000 of assessed property in their tax rate, while other Shelby residents (outside the village) would see a tax increase of 45 cents per $1,000.

“If there is a message here it’s that this is very doable,” Draper said on Sept. 2.

Meier didn’t think those numbers were completely accurate because they didn’t include costs for salt and gasoline.

Napoli didn’t have a proposal at that meeting, but sent one about two weeks later. Meier said both proposals have been lacking in detail. The towns have also asked for more information from the village.

Meier said he is hopeful there can be serious talks among the three municipalities.

“We do have things we can work on, but it seems like we’re stalling out again,” he said.

The three municipalities met regularly in 2012 but those meetings were shelved. The village supported a dissolution study and that plan has the village dissolving with its services passed to the town towns, a local development corporation and an authority.

The two towns have questioned the accuracy of the dissolution data, and doubt if there would be significant savings with dissolution.

The dissolution plan identifies $277,000 in savings spread over three budgets that total about $11 million. That’s less than 3 percent and town officials said they only occur if everything went according to the plan perfectly.

The plan also identifies $541,000 in additional state aid as an incentive for dissolution, bringing the total benefit to the community of $818,000. The town leaders said the state aid may not be long-lasting

Village residents have the only vote on the issue if it goes to a public vote. The Village Board hasn’t set a referendum but a group of residents have been circulating petitions to force a vote on the issue.