For Good Of All, Oneonta Needs To Be Vibrant Hub Of Entire Region

RICHARD P. MILLER  
MESSAGE FROM THE MAYOR

In my report to the Common Council on Tuesday, Jan. 18, I talked about the current state of the city and posed some thoughts about the future.
The city’s finances are managed with approximately $4 million in reserves in excess of the $3 million we consider to be the minimum necessary in case of emergencies.   The forecast for the future is that excess reserves will be consumed by 2015 or 2016, based upon a set of cost and revenue projections that we are constantly revising.
It can be argued that the excess reserves were created over time by a city practice of paying less-than competitive wages compared with other like communities (a condition corrected in the last round of labor negotiations) and by deferring maintenance of our infrastructure, which is most apparent in the condition of our streets and roads.
Our financial strategy over the next few years will be to carefully manage our costs and revenues, taking advantage of work-force reductions through attrition, using some of our surplus to address infrastructure and deferred maintenance while attempting to maintain desired service levels in essential areas like fire, police, public works, water and sewer.
Over a three- or four-year period, it is likely that these efforts will maintain Oneonta as we know it, but reserves will clearly be reduced and we should want to make our city better.

•

The opportunity presents itself to do so.  In my remarks I spoke to the council of two ingredients for a more vibrant future for the community.
The first ingredient is generating more economic activity, by encouraging investment in downtown and leveraging our exceptional array of arts and entertainment, individuals, organizations and facilities.
This effort has been launched by the two summits we held over the past months, along with the current strengthening of Main Street Oneonta, the organization that promotes downtown.
The Arts & Entertainment Task Force is at work.  The Oneonta Theater has announced a busy schedule for the spring and summer, and the sold-out Gordon Lightfoot concert at Foothills bodes well.
The second ingredient, and one which involves the participation of others, is reorganizing our governments to provide services in the most cost effective ways.  This will require us to think of Oneonta as a community, not as a city or town.
It will require that community to think of itself, not in isolation, but as the hub of our region, and for the region to see us as that, and the overall benefit of supporting our vibrancy.
Sam Dubben, chair of the Otsego County Board of Representatives, should be applauded for the leadership he is showing in convening the county, city and town supervisors to talk about shared services.
I have told him that the city is willing to consider all options, including shifting some of the services we now provide to others and taking on responsibility for providing services for other government entities.
All these things can be accomplished over time without threatening employees if we carefully manage attrition.  They require thoughtful discussion, planning, decision making and implementation.
Mayor Booan of Cooperstown and Sheriff Devlin should be complimented, too, for proposing a cost-effective plan for the county to provide police protection to the village.

•

My motivation, as mayor of the city, in working to increase economic activity and reduce the cost of government is driven by our special challenges:  52 percent of the real property in the city is not taxed.  The colleges and hospital, as well as other not-for-profits, are as strapped economically as our governments.
 As the principal drivers of our regional economy, turning to them for funds, through PILOT agreements would be counter-productive.  But, for example, the city, not the region, bears the cost of the police department ($3 million), 60 percent of the arrests of which are of college students, while the institutions and surrounding communities bear no cost.  That represents just one of our special challenges.
Another, from the state Comptroller’s figures, is that the city spends $1.6 million on recreation and culture.  Without college students, the city and town populations are approximately the same, but the town only spends $120,000.
Town residents use the programs of the city free, while City residents pay for them through taxes.  That is a condition that city taxpayers will not be able to sustain.
Even if we can continue to make this situation work in the short term, in the longer term, if Oneonta is to be a viable city, we have to address these issues. The inequity of city taxpayers supporting the region is not only unsustainable for the city, but for the region itself.
There is, of course, an easy way out.  That would be the “nuclear option” of the city dissolving into the town.
If it were to be the reverse, the town merging into the city, ultimately, the county would need to face the inequities of sales-tax distribution.  Per the retail census, the city and town generate 75 percent of the retail activity in Otsego County, but receive only 14 percent of sales-tax revenue.
The issue is how to avoid such destabilizing steps by working together to share the cost of government and its services, along with sales tax revenue, more equitably and to market the community more effectively, thus generating more economic activity for the entire region.
There has been criticism given of my not dropping the consolidation and shared services subjects.  I won’t do that as, along with generating more economic activity through tourism, it’s the key to a better future for the community of Oneonta and the surrounding region.