Yates town officials pleased with progress and seek more dialogue with community

Editor:

Now that the election is in the rearview mirror, it’s time to move on and get on with the business of governance for all of the constituents of Yates.

While we all have our disagreements, the people of our town come from a place of genuine passion and desire to improve all that is the Town of Yates. It is indeed a special place.

However, it’s never a bad time to use the experiences of the past in order to continually improve how we communicate as a Board and as a constituency.

While the Board has addressed recent challenges on spending in the pages of this publication, we have not addressed the improvement and successes of the last four years for the Town of Yates:

• Town Finances improved via a 3-year effort to reduce and eliminate the legacy A-fund issue.
• Standard & Poor’s financial rating improvement from B to A-.
• Successful financial management under the tax cap, excepting the 2020 COVID year.
• Successful implementation of the Western Orleans Comprehensive Plan.
• Successful finalization of the Kendall-Yates-Carlton-Lyndonville Local Waterfront Revitalization Program.
• Successful renegotiation of the Ambulance contract with Medina.
• Successful completion of Yates water district #2.
• Successful implementation of the Orleans County Hazard Mitigation Plan.
• Successful opening of Niagara Food Specialties (employing 15 people) at the old Shoreline Fruit site.Plans are for this business to grow.
• Initial fact-finding on a possible community biodigester as a joint effort with the Town of Somerset.
• Improvements at the Yates Town Park that will benefit the constituents as a lake access portal.

We value your support shown by the election and are ready for any and all challenges that we will face in the coming year to ensure we continue to build a better Town of Yates.

While the active misinformation effort on the part of a few in the run-up to the election is disappointing, it does identify a corrective action for the Board.

In the future, we will be actively communicating via newsletters, open house meetings and other methods to ensure that the taxpayers are given ample opportunity to communicate issues and new ideas to the community.

In that way, and in the spirit of transparency, we will leave no room for misinformation.  We look forward to working with everyone to ensure that we shine a light on the issues.  Dialog is critical to ensuring that repeated conveying of misinformation doesn’t become the truth.

Looking forward to the process.

John Riggi

Councilman, Town of Yates