State proposes changes in local voting

Bonacic weighs in on Toronto

By FRITZ MAYER

BETHEL, NY — If the governor’s budget passes as it is, it will be easier for town boards to change some jobs from elected positions to appointed positions. Governor David Paterson’s budget would allow the change for town clerks, highway superintendents and receivers of taxes.

Now, if a board wants to make the change, it must vote to do so and then submit the change to a mandatory public referendum. Under the proposed change, the referendum would be permissive instead of mandatory. That means a vote would only be held if residents gathered enough signatures on a petition?equaling five percent of the number of voters who cast ballots in the most recent gubernatorial election.

The proposition got a negative reaction from lawmakers in the Town of Bethel at a meeting on March 4. Following the reading of a letter from Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, who said she was working to have the measure stripped from the budget bill, supervisor Dan Sturm said, “I believe they’re simplifying the process to make these positions appointed ones, and they’re slipping it into the budget. I always felt, whether we agree with a change or not, it should go to a mandatory referendum.”

Councilmember Denise Frangipane agreed. She said, “It changes the process and takes a little bit away from the public.”

The board voted unanimously to register its opposition to the measure.

The Toronto Reservoir

Also at the meeting, a letter from another representative in Albany, Senator John Bonacic, was read. It concerned the dispute the town is having with Alliance Energy Renewables (AER) over water levels in the Toronto Reservoir.

Bonacic responded to a letter from Alliance with a stinging rebuke. He wrote, “Alliance has been a horrible steward of the reservoirs, and your letter appears to be insincere at best. There is simply no good reason to leave the water draining out of Toronto as Alliance has been doing other than to cause annoyance to the Town of Bethel and its tax-paying residents.”

Sturm complained in a letter to the Department of Environmental Conservation in early February that low water levels were threatening the tax assessments of lakefront properties in The Chapin Estate and other developments on the reservoir. Sturm indicated that Alliance might be doing this in retaliation over litigation regarding tax assessments of the reservoirs.

Alliance responded with a detailed letter from Joseph Klimaszewski Jr., a vice president, which explained that while the company tried as much as possible to maintain water levels that would provide for maximum recreation, the reservoir is, nevertheless, part of a hydropower operation. He wrote, “The Toronto Reservoir is not a lake and cannot be operated to maintain lake-front living expectations. Additionally, because AER owns an approximately 50-foot buffer around the majority of the reservoir, which is open to the public for a variety of uses, the properties contained within the recent residential developments are not waterfront lands.”

But Bonacic did not buy the company’s message. He wrote, “The reality is, Alliance might be a worse manager of water than the City of New York and that is telling, given the city’s inability to properly control its reservoirs.” He then urged the company to find some common ground with the town.

In an email to The River Reporter, Klimaszewski said Bonacic’s letter “ignores the facts,” but he added that the Alliance is “more than willing to work with all of the entities involved to address their concerns within the boundaries of our obligations under the Federal Power Act.”