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December 1, 2011

Our Opinion: County board ignores village again

In mid-November the county’s tentative $117.9 million spending plan for the coming year was unveiled by Treasurer Dan Crowell. It would cut spending by $4 million, raise property taxes by 1.81 percent and calls for cuts in foster care, emergency services, senior citizen programs and road repairs.

And now it no longer includes the $100,000 in bed tax funds promised to the village of Cooperstown.

Given deep cuts to a number of county departments, Rep. Kate Stuligross, D-Oneonta, said, “I don’t think we can afford it this year.”

We give credit to Board of Representatives Chairman Sam Dubben, who tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade fellow board members to give a lesser amount to Cooperstown — first asking for $50,000, then backing a proposal for $10,000. Rep. Jim Johnson, R-Otsego, championed the proposal to provide the funding to the village during his campaign for re-election, but he was defeated and did not attend the board meeting.

The money will go instead to the highway department’s asphalt account that had been cut.

Former Mayor Carol Waller and members of the board of trustees lobbied for a long time to get the county board to help the village pay for the upkeep of the infrastructure that supports tourism. And that tourism is driven largely by the Baseball Hall of Fame and generates sales tax and bed tax revenues for the county.

Jeff Katz, one of the trustees who worked with Waller to persuade the board of representatives to give Cooperstown a larger slice of the bed tax pie, said in a letter to the editor that the board’s decision was “infuriating.”

“I understand the need in tough financial times to make difficult decisions,” he wrote, “but taking the slated $100,000 for Cooperstown and putting it in the county’s asphalt budget is a slap in the face.”

We agree with Katz. It is an insult that the board of representatives could not see the benefit to allotting less than one-tenth of one percent of the budget to the village. We believe an investment like that in the village would pay dividends to the county as a whole through the revenue it generates by hosting hundreds of thousands of visitors

each year.

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