To start, I want to again thank all those residents who voted for me in the April spring election and to acknowledge those residents who have continued to place their trust in me as it concerns Town matters that they needed information about or assistance with an issue.
Even though I do not currently serve on the Town Board, I remain concerned about issues that would have an effect on residents in the area and on issues that would affect all residents in the Town.
One issue that affects every resident is how our roads are to be funded. As a resident first and later as a Town Supervisor, it has always been my position that there are three principles for road funding:
First, all roads wear out over time and require major maintenance periodically;
Second, we all use the roads in the Town at different times and in different amounts depending on what we need to do each day. There isn’t any case where any one resident uses the road in front of their property 100% and no other resident ever uses it.
Third, the Town has the experience and tools to be able to determine the amount of funds needed for our roads into the future when those funds would be needed for road maintenance and it is the responsibility of the Town, through its Board Supervisors, to make certain that the Town has accumulated those funds without the need to special assess anyone. We need to pay for our roads as we use them. This is simply common sense.
The only reason that the Town would need to special asses for roads is because the Town by its Board Supervisors did not meet their duty to the residents to accumulate the funds over time as the roads are used. But here we go again on special assessments owing to Board Supervisors Gehring and English.
The Town has now engaged an opinion firm to survey the residents on how the roads should be funded. The survey should come out late this month. One of the questions will concern special assessments, most likely with some dollar cap amount, which is a position that Supervisor Gehring has put forth on occasion. But that begs the fundamental question of why the Town would need to special assess for road costs in the first place.
That the Town would need to special assess for a road is an admission in fact that the Board Supervisors have not lived up to their responsibility to the residents in the first place; that is, to accumulate the needed funds over time as the roads are used. Again, I am talking about a common-sense position and not the serious legal issues that resulted in the past lawsuits against the Town.
Consider for a minute a situation where a new Town resident just moves onto a road that the Town would then decide to work on and special assess the residents on that road. That new resident has not used that road for the past 20 or so years but is now being charged for how others have used that road who would have not paid anything for the use of that road. That is simply unethical by any measure and is just one example of the basic unfairness of special assessments for road funding.
It is clear that a Town can special assess for certain types of situations where they meet the legal requirements. Road funding is not one of them.
Some residents are aware that I have challenged both Supervisor Gehring and English to put into writing why they are of the opinion that special assessments are good policy for road funding. So far, that has not happened.
We all use the roads and we all need to pay for them as we do.
Thank you for your time.
Walt Nocito
