Kevin Gaughan was standing in front of Williamsville Village Hall not long ago, smiling for

the camera, when two villagers confronted him.

"You're coming here, an outsider," a steaming mad Paul Steinbruckner told Gaughan after

spotting him from his wife's shop, Village Artisans, across the street. "Do you actually think

you can just show up here and act like my savior?"

"You don't understand," Bea Slick added. "Williamsville is very special. We are very

passionate about our village."

Call it a preview of things to come.

In March, a new law making it easier for public votes on dissolution goes into effect and

Gaughan will shift his campaign on downsizing town boards to putting Erie County's 16 villages

out of existence.

"I feel very confident," Gaughan said. "We have an organization of volunteers in each of

the villages, a handful in some and hundreds in others."

Village officials know this and are experiencing their own version of the five stages of

grief:

Williamsville — first on Gaughan's hit list — is angry.

Depew is in denial but reluctantly exploring the option. Sloan, too.

East Aurora seems to be bargaining.

Lancaster sounds sort of depressed.

North Collins might be forced into acceptance.

And you can add a sixth stage: doing studies.

That, in fact, might be the biggest reaction to the coming of Gaughan.

"We need to be prepared," said Williamsville Trustee Brian Geary, who is trying to conduct

his own study on the impact of dissolution after the rest of the board rebuffed his suggestion

that they do so.

His first step is putting together a list of "stakeholders," such as department heads and

union leaders.

Meanwhile, Lancaster village officials are seeking a $50,000 state grant for a feasibility

study on dissolution — but not necessarily because they want the village abolished.

Mayor William Cansdale said he's just trying to be realistic.

"We recognize it is coming, and we should be prepared," Cansdale said of the petition

drives Gaughan is launching. "But we want voters to make decisions based on facts in advance,

not on guestimates."

Depew Mayor Barbara Alberti feels compelled to consider elimination even though she doesn't

like the idea.

Sloan village officials also are starting to discuss the idea.

And East Aurora voted recently to approve a referendum on whether to commission an

independent dissolution plan.

Little of the above impresses Gaughan.

"If you look up "Let's do a study' in the dictionary, it says "Let's kill it now.' We don't

need any more studies," he said.

Lancaster, which was the first Village Board in Erie County to downsize from seven to five

members, may take its study to heart, he said. But North Collins is a more typical case of the

value of continued studies, he added.

The issue came to a head there after a study by the Center for Government Research, a

Rochester-based consulting firm, found dissolving the village would save the village and town

$106,000 annually — or $33 per capita in the town and $105 in the village.

The new, combined property tax rate for village taxpayers, including user charges, would be

19 percent less. Given the economic condition of North Collins, the savings should have been

welcome news. North Collins has lost a third of its population in recent decades — the

biggest drop of all 16 of Erie County's villages. And its tax base has suffered as jobs and

people leave.

The board voted 4-1 against putting dissolution to a referendum.

Trustee Jennie Alessi called the study misleading. "They made it [dissolving] sound easy,

and it isn't," she said.

Mayor John Mrozek, who has championed dissolving the village — and who cast the only

vote Jan. 5 for a public referendum on the issue — said he was disappointed but that

local supporters will push on. They plan to begin collecting signatures for a referendum this

spring.

About 75 signatures are needed.

Gaughan was also upset given how close the village had come to acting on the question. The

village hadn't been a particular priority before, but that will probably change now.

"I think I'll have to move North Collins up the list," he said.

All of this activity is the result of the Government Reorganization and Citizen Empowerment

Act, which was signed into law in Albany last year.

The act, which takes effect March 21, changes the number of signatures required on

petitions for dissolution from 33 percent of the residents to 10 percent.

Once the petitions are filed and deemed valid, a referendum must be conducted. If

dissolving the village or other entity is approved, then the village must create a plan

— quickly — that determines how the dissolution would take place.

After the plan is adopted, if residents do not like the plan, petitions signed by 25

percent of the residents could cancel it.

As spring comes closer, hostility is growing among village leaders, primarily toward

Gaughan, who most think paints an overly simple picture of the impact of dissolving villages.

Government or no, residents of villages will still cost money for basic services, they say.

And that cost is not being adequately estimated.

Most portray Gaughan, a longtime Hamburg

resident who lives in Buffalo, as an interloper with no understanding of villages and no

respect for the things those who live in them value.

In Williamsville, Geary sees a historic village transformed by town leaders into a new

destination for brightly lit, big-box stores.

Like "Las Vegas or something," he said.

"With Gaughan, it's one size fits all," Slick said after the Village Hall confrontation

with him. "He doesn't understand this is grass-roots government."

In North Collins, Alessi said that, in the end, outsiders like Gaughan just don't

understand the issues that are important to their residents.

Those issues, like the villages themselves, can seem very small, like whether leaf pickup

or sidewalk snowplowing would continue. But they are important nonetheless.

"The best way to come up with [a dissolution] plan is for the people who live here to do

it," she said.

There are, however, no current plans to do so.