Another dissolution nightmare

From Orleans Hub on 08/21/13:

MEDINA – The consulting firm that is working with Medina to prepare a dissolution plan for the village shouldn’t expect much assistance from the town of Ridgeway.

“We're really not interested,” said Brian Napoli, the Ridgeway town supervisor. “We’ve never been consulted. They formed a committee and we were never asked or consulted.”

The village received a $50,000 state grant to work on a dissolution plan, a document that is required by law before the village can hold a public referendum on whether or not to dissolve the village government.

The plan would identify how village government functions could best be assumed by the towns of Ridgeway and Shelby, or perhaps through new special taxing districts or water and sewer authorities.

Editor's note:

Dissolution is one of those conceptual ideas that superficially seem to make some intuitive sense because it involves consolidating overlapping, and some say redundant, levels of government. But when it comes right down to doing it, it rarely saves money, and isn't popular with the citizens who live in the governmental entities being consolidated.

Dissolution was brought to a vote in Brockport in June of 2010 by the slumlord faction of Brockport who wanted to throw off the constraints of having to follow  building codes and have their tenants follow the law enforced by Brockport police. The proposition was soundly defeated 2 to 1, but the dissolutionist mayor, Connie Castaneda, kept proposing grants to study dissolution until the end of her term when she was soundly defeated in her bid for re-election. The message should be clear that Brockporters love their Village and don't want it messed up by Town of Sweden officials and won't tolerate further attempts to dissolve the bonds that tie us together as the lovely Victorian Village that we are and aspire to be.

In this light, it is interesting to see another example of dissolution not being favored in Medina and Ridgeway and the lack of cooperation between the layers of government.