Cattaraugus legislator puzzled over losing Planning Board seat
LITTLE VALLEY — The week after someone else was appointed to fill the Cattaraugus County Planning Board seat he held for 15 years, Legislator Bill Sprague, D-Yorkshire, said he doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it but doesn’t understand why he wasn’t reappointed.
Despite the board’s routine recommendation in June to County Legislature Chairwoman Crystal J. Abers, R-South Dayton, to reappoint Sprague and three other long-standing members for three-year terms, Sprague was sidelined in favor of Mark Smith, chairman of the Dayton Town Planning Board. The move also ended Sprague’s five-year run as Planning Board chairman.
Sprague said Abers told him of her decision July 23 and said he was welcome to continue attending Planning Board meetings because of his expertise on the issues.
“What am I going to say?” recalled Sprague, noting he had taken the post before becoming a legislator and after serving many years on the county’s Ethics Board and helping to form the Yorkshire Town Planning Board.
He said he hopes the change was not made on a partisan basis or because of his legislative votes. But he added that the decision upset members of the Planning Board, which he said has always been a friendly and cooperative group.
“The only reason was when [Sprague] was originally put on [the board in 1993], they tried to put business people, or people outside the Legislature, on there,” Abers said Thursday, when asked about her decision. She added that Sprague was later elected to the Legislature, but that fact went unnoticed when he was reappointed to the panel three years ago.
Abers said she does not recall any legislators appointed to the Planning Board because, “technically, we don’t put legislators on the county Planning Board.”
She said the Planning Board should be made up of people who are not elected to county office but who represent the “outside towns.”
However Planning Board member Charles W. Couture, a former Republican legislator from West Valley who was appointed to the office to fill out the term of the late Jess Fitzpatrick, was placed on the Planning Board in 1999 and continued to serve on the panel after he became a legislator. He lost his seat in last November’s election and was one of the three who were reappointed to the Planning Board last week.
Another ex-legislator, Jack Berger, has served longest on the Planning Board — since 1980 — and was also reappointed last week, along with Tina Abrams of Salamanca.
County Attorney Dennis Tobolski said there are no rules against legislators serving on the Planning Board, and he could not remember if the issue has arisen previously. But the policy can change, he said, “if the chairman’s appointment philosophy is different than the original one who made the appointment.”
Abers said Planning Board members should be selected on a geographic basis, and Smith will provide representation for the towns of Dayton, Persia and Perrysburg.
She added that Smith was appointed primarily because he “is on the [town] planning board. He works for Gernatt [Asphalt Products and] has business behind him.”
