Amazing experience with town board

Went to planning board tonight to suggest a change to road construction regulations after seeing that one of the newest roads broke up last winter. After I got them to understand, they agreed and asked if I would come back to help them to get the town engineer on board with it. Amazing, you CAN make a difference.

Standing up and making sense does work. Even if it fails to change the leaders ideas, it becomes public and as a result when things go into the toilet, you can be assured many will remember the stand you took. It also provides a higher level of oversight on jobs (even when done the """other""" way. Jim

I'm on the planning board in our tiny town in upstate NY. We never get a guest to any of our meetings. It would be wonderful to get some interest and assistance from just one resident. In the 7 years I've been on the board, I don't think we have had more than 2 or 3 "visitors" - and all of them were there to pitch some personal political agenda to us.

So I can see why they were willing to "sign you up". We would too!

Tim in NY

We often have skilled people show up at town meetings. Often their good suggestions get ignored and sometimes resented.

If your town has its own genuine/trained engineer, you are way ahead of any of the small towns I own homes in.

I've got three places in rural New York and one in northern Michigan. Otsego, Hamilton, and Jefferson Counties NY and Presque Isle county,MI. In all, the town planning board is an advisory board only (no enforcement capabilities). Also none of the town board members or planning board members get any special training, nor do they have to know anything to become a member. Just recquires being appointed or elected. Most know little about the laws they sometimes enforce on an ad hoc basis.

Only person in any of the town governments that gets some training AFTER being elected, is the town highway supervisor, constable, and judge. We just had a new town clerk get removed because he screwed the books up so badly. His defense?? He claimed nobody gave him any training. My question is . . . if he didn't know how to do the job, why the heck did he run for the office??

I was a town board member for a few years. A pure exercise in futility. Many members wanted to make decisions based on who they knew and liked, not on the laws that exisited. I suspect that happens a bit in bigger governments also.

My wife's parents live in the somewhat rural city/town of Alpena in northern MI. There it's totally different. Everybody on the board seems dilligent and genuinely concerned about the public good. So, I guess it does exist in some places.

Actually in NY there is now a requirement for elected and appointed officials to attend 4 hrs of training per year. Our county does a pretty good job of providing opportunities.

Yes, along with a direct phone # to the New York "Association of Towns" for legal opinions on legal problems. Much of the after-being-appointed training is about protocol, who to reach with problems, etc. Our Town Board usually resents and refuses to call Albany for help on anything - even when they are collectively clueless on a given matter. I just asked the Board to get a free legal opinon from the NYS Attorney General. That is a free service to all NY town boards and town attorneys. The Board here refused.

Hey J, where's your property in Hamilton Co? I used to live in Long Lake, worked in Indian Lake, familiar with most of the rest of the county.

Yes, but sometimes its a real fight.

Years back I lived in a town where they dug up and changed out the storm water sewer system that ran under my street. The original was 3' in diameter and they not only replaced MOST of it with new 10' diameter concrete pipe, they extended all the way across town into that pipe, adding a whole lot more storm water into that pipe, which all came down hill from the other side of town, and there was a major problem with that design. The last 200 or so feet of it before it ran into another huge main remained the same old 3' diameter steel pipe that they sleaved down to from the new 10' diameter concrete pipe. What do you think happened when we got our first real hard rainfall after that Coke bottle design was implemented? Well, when all of that rushing rain water bottle necked at the smaller 3' diameter pipe, but continued to fill that much larger 10' diameter pipe as the water kept rushing down hill and filling that pipe at an incredible amount of pressure, one by one manhole covers started getting blown off of openings, heading up hill...pow, pow, pow manhole covers went flying like frisbies, just not as far.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what and where the problem was. I saw the problem before they buried it. I stood right there and looked down in the hole shaking my head before they buried it, and went to a village meeting and warned them before we even got a good rain. Four times I tried to explain to the Mayor, Board, and planners what was going to happen if we got a hard rain. They all told me that I was nuts. First hard rain, pow, pow, pow with the manhole covers and turning the low land into a lake and flooding everyone's homes and basements. That never happened once ever before the upgrade. I went to the next meeting and said I told you so, but they countered with it was an uncommon 100 year rain, a fluke. A week or two later we got another one of those fluke 100 year rains, and a couple or few weeks again, and folks were pretty angry. The village dug up that 200 or so feet of smaller pipe and replaced it with what thet should've done the first time, same diameter into same diameter without a choke point. In the long run that may not totally take care of the increased volume brought from across town, but as far as I know from friends that still live there, manhole covers don't fly and basements don't get flooded by a manmade lake every other week anymore. Common sense and basic mechanics aren't reserved for rocket scientists.

Mark

Town ofIndian Lake, not too far from town. On Chamberlin Road of of Route 28 near Lake Abanakee.

In my opinion, Indian Lake, Racquette Lake, and Blue Mountain make up the nicest area in the Adirondack Park. Not overly developed and not touristy (except for whitewater rides to/on the Hudson River).

You haven't faced the ego of the town engineer yet!!!!!!!