East Aurora mayor pushes dissolution
Residents of the Cattaraugus County village of Limestone have voted to dissolve their government.
And now East Aurora may be positioning itself to be the first Erie County village to merge itself out of existence.
That’s Mayor Clark Crook’s plan — pushing a citizen-driven movement that puts dissolution of East Aurora’s village government to referendum and letting residents decide whether they want to merge into one townwide government.
He thinks it makes perfect sense because the village and Town of Aurora are so similar and because village residents get taxed twice in some instances for duplicated services.
Crook feels so strongly about it that he’s making it his campaign platform for his re-election bid next March to seek a second term.
“A vote for me is not a vote for dissolution,” said the mayor who took office in January 2008. “The question is whether I’m the right guy to shepherd the process. Am I the guy you want to manage the process?”
“I will not say that all villages should dissolve. It has to come from within. I just think Aurora has the opportunity.”
And what about criticism that the village could lose its character if the village government is dissolved or merged?
“The reality is that East Aurora is not going anywhere,” Crook responded.
“This isn’t about East Aurora going away, but government is going away. Saving money is the cherry on the top.”
Some embrace his plan.
“We could be one of the examples for other municipalities,” Village Trustee Ernest Scheer said. “I think this is inevitable, and it will come sooner rather than later.”
And if that’s what the public decides, Aurora Supervisor-elect Jolene Jeffe says she’ll do whatever is needed to help make a government merger work.
“I have the ability to work with the mayor and village and town boards to make it a smooth transition if that does happen and for all the residents to benefit from it,” Jeffe said.
But some at Village Hall are skeptical.
“I won’t say yes or no,” Trustee Allan A. Kasprzak said. “To do this, you have to have a plan in place, and not three pages. This just doesn’t happen overnight.”
Trustee Kevin Biggs hates the idea, thinks it will cost taxpayers more money because of additional special districts that would be created for different services under a townwide government, and thinks the mayor should not be spearheading the move.
“I think the mayor leading this charge is completely wrong,” Biggs said. “He was elected to be the leader, not to take away the people’s voice. You need to get rid of the larger forms of government. They are the ones that are useless. The village form of government works for the people. It is their identity because it gives them somewhere to go to be heard.”
But Crook argues that now is the time to unite under one government.
“Tomorrow’s traffic, development, housing and public safety will need to be addressed on an Aurora-wide basis,” he said. “The future looks a lot brighter looking forward and a lot scarier when we look backward.”
Population of the town and village is just shy of 14,000 people, and with the village nearly built out, Crook says the future focus on development and other issues will be townwide. He recommends cutting the village’s government of six trustees and a mayor, and some department heads. He projects first-year savings to be nearly $400,000, with more to come as village and town work forces merge.
A debt district would still have to exist for the village, he said, and the village fire department would have to operate within a fire district since state law does not allow towns to run fire departments.
Crook’s push for the merger referendum comes in the midst of many local towns voting to downsize their town boards at the urging of regionalism activist Kevin Gaughan.
But East Aurora’s mayor goes out of his way to distance his plan from Gaughan.
“This isn’t a Kevin Gaughan crusade or a crusade at all,” Crook said.
In fact, when Gaughan has pitched his downsizing idea in East Aurora, it was not well-embraced at public meetings. Gaughan insists the resistance level in East Aurora wasn’t any different than it has been in other communities.
“The record is the record,” Gaughan said, noting that he will address village dissolution next spring, beginning with Williamsville. “East Aurora is on our list. This could be a magnificent accelerator of our schedule.”
Cook insists that his idea would not put a lot of people out of work. “The same people that pick up the leaves and plow snow will do it tomorrow,” he said.
Crook’s proposal comes in the midst of deep economic woes as taxpayers look closely at paying twice for some services provided by village and town taxes.
“How many layers of government do you need?” Scheer said. “If there are significant cost savings and taxes could actually go down, how can that be a bad thing? I would think that would be a no-brainer, because we’re being charged double for a number of things for the privilege of living in the village.”
Aurora Councilwoman-elect Susan Friess said she agrees with Crook.
“I agree wholeheartedly with Clark that we do not need two governments — village and town,” she said. “Dissolving the village is one option to take a look at. Another option would be to petition the State Legislature to allow the village and town to exist coterminously. This would allow the village and town to have the same boundaries and would allow us to have one governing board.”
The latter option, Friess said, would allow residents to choose whether they want this board to run more like a town, which has elected positions such as highway, town clerk and a chief financial officer—or run like a village, where the administrator, clerk and public works chief are hired as professionals by government.
Crook’s plan comes at a time when the village also is at a critical crossroads as village, town and library officials have been hard at work formulating a plan for a joint facility that is leaning toward proposing a new government building on Main Street with an expanded library. That plan is to be presented Monday.
“There’s a lot of dissatisfied people out there wondering what this is about. Why is this being done now?” Trustee Allan A. Kasprzak said. “Here we are working on a joint facility and then why are we doing this if we’re looking to eliminate the village and we’ve jumped through all these hoops and accepted a state grant?”
Crook said he’ll offer the Village Board in December the opportunity to initiate a plan to dissolve village government.
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