We're Having Meetings To Make Multi-Million $$ Decisions! Is 6:00 p.m. a good time for you? How about 5:00 p.m.?

Just a couple thoughts on upcoming important Village meetings:

Apparently there is a "special meeting" of the Village Board being held tonight, Tuesday, April 22nd, to adopt the 2008-09 Village Budget. I believe it is supposed to take place at 6:00 p.m. at Village Hall. Kind of an odd time of day, if you want the public to attend. Right after normal work hours when people are either still in transit or just sitting down for supper. This information came to me "through the grapevine" rather than by having read an announcement about it in the newspaper or on the Town/Village website.

Just in case anyone reading this blog missed it, the Village Board held a required Public Hearing on the proposed budget on April 1st. A few residents made comments at the hearing for the official record, including myself. The Board members then "closed" the public hearing. Closing a public hearing means that there can be no more public comment allowed on the subject of the hearing. Only the Board members can now speak regarding this issue. If the Board had wanted any further comment from the public they could have "adjourned" the hearing to a later date instead, which would have allowed for more public comment before they take a vote. The budget must be passed according to State law before May 1st or the "tentative budget," as initially presented to the Board by the Mayor, would become automatically adopted.

At the April 1st Budget Hearing the Board decided not to vote on the budget at that time because Third Ward Trustee Petroccia was absent due to illness. While it is laudable that the Board would want to wait until the full Board could be present for the vote, it is unfortunate that tonight's "special meeting" to vote on the budget was not advertised more prominently to the public. Even though we residents can no longer speak about the budget or ask questions, it would have been more in keeping with the concept of open, inclusive government to prominently feature tonight's meeting in the media. Even the Town/Village website makes no mention of this special meeting.

Many residents may not have the time to review an annual municipal spending proposal in detail or attend meetings no matter what date or time they are held. Nonetheless, it is important that our elected leaders provide as much information, and as often as possible, on how they plan to spend our tax dollars. They should do so at times that maximize the possibility that residents can attend. It should also become a matter of routine (and a matter of sound fiscal management) that the Village Treasurer (Chief Fiscal Officer), and the Mayor (Budget Officer), provide regular, monthly reports to the Board and public on the status of the budget and departmental spending.

Taxpayers need to know whenever the budget presents areas of concern. For example, one area that grabbed my attention when reviewing the current budget (2007-08) is the amount we have been spending on engineering services. The 2007-08 budget included $50,000 for engineering costs. While this amount is far above the "usual" amount we pay for such services, it probably was reasonable given the need for engineering design and project oversight for the ongoing drainage projects. However, the current budget provides a projection that the final total for engineering services in 2007-08 will be $100,000!

Interestingly, although drainage projects are scheduled to continue (at least, that is what we have been told), the 2008-09 budget the Board is preparing to pass tonight only includes $15,000 for engineering services.

No explanation has been given for the exorbitant amount that will have been spent by June 1st, an amount double what had been budgeted. And no explanation can be found as to why the new budget includes only 15% of the amount spent this year. Why have we been kept in the dark, especially if these costs may have been legitimately necessary?

My review of the proposed spending plan showed that the Mayor's proposal shows "projections" that the Village's General Fund will be over budget in our current fiscal year by approximately $300,000. Given the rather wildly varying amounts spent as opposed to budgeted, what financial surprises may be in store for us in 2008-09? Could these cost overruns have been addressed or avoided if spending were more openly reviewed and the budget better planned?

During the recent election campaign, the First Ward Trustee suggested that consultant services, such as engineering, be put out to competitive bid in order to provide the Village Board the opportunity to compare and possibly save tax dollars. The Village has used the same engineering firm for decades. At the Village's organizational meeting on April 1st the Board once again appointed the same firm. The firm's work has been professional and reputable. However, this firm provides Village Board members and selected employees with free tickets to Rochester Red Wings baseball games in their corporate seating and tickets to Syracuse University basketball games.

It is no wonder that the Smith Administration has been pushing to relax the Village Code of Ethics to allow elected officials, appointed officers, and employees to accept gifts of up to $75, when they currently are not allowed to accept gifts of any kind. When Mayor Smith was questioned at a mayoral candidate's forum regarding her plan to relax the Code of Ethics she stated that she felt the current code was too restrictive by not even allowing officers and employees to accept a birthday card. It would seem that birthday cards are the least of taxpayers' concerns. And still we see no movement toward competitive bidding of engineering consultant services.

Another upcoming "special meeting" is one that has, so far, been referred to in recent local news articles as taking place April 30th at the Seneca Falls Community Center at 6:00 p.m. It is to be a joint Town/Village Board meeting to continue discussion of plans for a possible joint Town/Village municipal facility. While this meeting has been better publicized than the budget vote, I have been told that the meeting time is now being pushed back to 5:00 p.m., ostensibly to better accommodate the schedules of members of both Boards who may have to leave by 7:00 p.m. for various reasons.

Without getting into the pros and cons of joint facilities and possible locations, it seems to me that the joint Boards are scheduling this meeting for a date and time that is inconvenient, apparently, to several Board members, and is certainly inconvenient for the public that may actually wish to witness how multi-million dollar decisions are made by our elected officials.

Many in the public are concerned that this decision is being pushed along before a full study of needs and options can be made and digested. This is a legitimate concern. Given the fact that the Town wants to build on its own land there should be no rush at this point because they are not competing to buy a piece of property. And given the Village Board's uncertainty - because they voted to accept the plan and now want to revisit that vote - there is still no need to rush this meeting. Instead of handcuffing members of these two Boards to a night when they obviously have other places to go and little time to spend on the issue why not reschedule this meeting altogether? Why not choose another date and time that doesn't effectively exclude the majority of the public who should be allowed to witness the decision making process on an issue that will have a long term effect on our community and its future?

This Place Matters!

May is National Historic Preservation Month, and the theme this year is "This Place Matters." As this celebration approaches consider this:

Once upon a time Seneca Falls forgot its past, disregarding its own heritage except for what was written in books, essays and newspaper articles. Buildings were lost: some great and noble, others modest and humble. Most were demolished in the name of progress; some were lost to fire, while some were simply lost through neglect over time.

Then in the 1970s the Village lost a few more landmarks that made people wake up to the potential loss of the Village’s very identity. The old Latham House on the corner of Center and West Bayard Streets was removed for construction of a new consolidated Fire Department; the Town Clock Building (the Hoskins Block) on the corner of Fall and Cayuga Streets came down; the Armitage on lower Fall Street, site of many weddings and anniversary banquets, was destroyed to make room for a new professional building housing doctors' offices; City Mills on Water Street was leveled creating Peoples Park; and the old Masonic Temple was part of the block removed to help straighten out the Fall/Cayuga Streets intersection.

These losses, as well as others, eventually prompted the Village, supported by ad hoc citizen groups, business people, and state and federal initiatives, to adopt legislation creating the locally designated historic district in 1980. New York State lent its support to Seneca Falls’ preservation efforts through its Heritage Area program, then known as the Urban Cultural Park system. The National Park Service’s enabling legislation that created Women’s Rights National Historical Park included language that called for the state and local governments to ensure the preservation of the Park’s historical context.

Despite some “bumps in the road” Seneca Falls became a community that eventually served as a model for other small municipalities seeking ways to protect their architectural heritage. Communities, institutions and individuals across the country have requested our local law and Guidelines and Standards for the Protection & Enhancement of the Seneca Falls Historic District.

Lately, however, it seems a second coming of the 1970s is fast approaching. Somehow nearly every announcement of potential local development is accompanied by a description of old buildings that will “have to” be demolished to ensure success. Sometimes there aren’t even any logical reasons offered for the demolition plans; the historic structures are just old and apparently in the way of something. Talk of demolition has gotten a little too comfortable for local officials willing to compromise the Village’s identity for ambiguous plans and unsubstantiated needs. For the first time in memory a sitting Mayor has gone before the local preservation commission advocating for demolitions, stating that the structures under review were not really that important, even if it were discovered that Elizabeth Cady Stanton had slept in one of them.

The Village even included demolition of an historic Stanton-era building in a recent grant application. The Village’s unsuccessful 2007 Restore NY application through the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) requested funds for demolition of the former Boarding House at the corner of Bridge and Canal Streets, a structure from our early industrial era that became part of our local Irish and Italian immigrant story, in the Village's oldest commercial district. Of course, first the building was claimed to be “not historic” at all, despite evidence to the contrary, and it was condemned as unsafe for occupation. The building is clearly in bad shape, but so is the Knitting Mill across the street. Neither is beyond salvation. Why single out the Boarding House when it, too, can be rehabilitated and adaptively reused? What would its demolition accomplish other than freeing up enough space to park an additional three or so cars and exposing the backs of buildings on West Bayard Street that would not normally be visible to anyone coming over the Bridge Street bridge into the Sackett Business District?

The same Restore NY grant application also called for rehabilitation and reuse of the former Trinity Church at the Westcott Rule Company property, most recently used as the local “Haunted House” at Halloween. Oddly enough, according to the property owners, at approximately the same time the grant application was submitted they say they secured a determination from the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) that demolition of the former church would have no impact on significant cultural resources. Interesting that SHPO seems to be under the impression that their determination of “no impact” was issued not for demolition, but for regular maintenance and environmental actions, in anticipation of an historic rehabilitation of the property.

SHPO was required to review the proposed project. At the church, this included hazardous material abatement; a new roof; new windows and doors; removal of an exterior stairway; and to scrape and paint the exterior. This was to be done in hopes of ultimately reusing the building as an Elder Community Center. Nowhere was demolition of the church mentioned.

Lest we place all of the blame on local officials and developers, it should be noted that NY State shares in the current atmosphere where irreplaceable buildings are treated as expendable. When the former Lehigh Valley freight depot on the Mill property was knocked down without SHPO approval after being virtually demolished by neglect by Seneca Knit Development Corporation (SKDC), SHPO required a Memorandum of Agreement be signed by several involved state and federal agencies, the Village and SKDC. The Memorandum actually required, among other things, the Mill be protected against the elements and the Boarding House be “mothballed” for future restoration. The SHPO never followed up on these requirements, allowing both buildings to continue deteriorating to the point where SKDC and the Village are using that deterioration as reason for the pending demolition of the Boarding House.

Of course, like many municipalities, Seneca Falls has a property maintenance law on the books. The idea behind it is to protect property values, public safety, and protect against irresponsible property owners. The Village can force SKDC to bring the building up to code or have the work done and have the bill sent to the owners, thus avoiding demolition. This law is seldom used, and its enforcement seems to get applied to some properties and not others.

Adaptive reuse, the principle of finding new uses for old buildings and re-establishing them as productive community assets, was once an exciting trend in Seneca Falls. The First, Third and Fourth Ward School buildings, once the subjects of demolition talk now provide much needed housing. The former P&C supermarket on Clinton Street, long vacant, is now a Seneca-Cayuga ARC facility. Neighbors of the downtown building now housing Henry B’s Restaurant once believed that structure couldn’t be saved. Who could now imagine downtown without Henry B’s? The former NY Central freight station now houses professional offices, and its cross street neighbor, the passenger depot, was rehabilitated as Village Hall. The former Village Hall, so full of code violations that the standard joke was that no one but the federal government could fix it, was donated to, you guessed it, the federal government and now is headquarters and Visitor Center for Women’s Rights National Historical Park.

The demolition of historic buildings, unless absolutely necessary, is wrong. Demolitions are permanent. Condemnation of a structure does not necessarily require demolition - rehabilitation is often a viable option. Once the historic structure is gone, it’s gone forever. The physical evidence of a piece of history is erased.

Seneca Falls, once progressive in the context of historic preservation and heritage tourism, now displays growing evidence of regressing to a short-sighted approach to the future. We don’t have to destroy the Village in order to save it. One of the reasons developers have shown interest and have invested in Seneca Falls is the very appearance of our charming, historic community.

Let’s not revert to whittling away at our heritage, building by building, as if this place does not matter.