The village and town boards met for their second meeting of the year in town hall this Monday to discuss various issues concerning shared services and support between the two municipalities. In addition to each of the boards' members, Village Manager Elliott Auerbach, Town Clerk Jane Eck, and Town Highway Superintendent Gil Davis were also in attendance. Absent from the meeting were Village Trustee Ephram Lopez and Deputy Mayor Ray Younger, with Town Councilwoman Theresa Hyatt arriving halfway through the meeting.

The first topic discussed was the possibility of "event rotation," in which the various town-wide events that are traditionally held in the village — such as the firehouse parade, the Blueberry Festival, and Run Like the Wind — may possibly be rotated between village and town locations. The idea came from a discussion regarding the town's charges for trash removal from the village around these events; Mayor Jeff Kaplan said that village taxpayers shouldn't have to pay the charges for post-event cleanup when these events benefit the town as a whole. The suggestion to allow areas outside the village, such as Napanoch, to host such events may help the effort to try and break down town/village barriers. The two boards will look to set up a "celebration committee," where representatives from the committees and organizations who sponsor and support these events will come together to discuss the rotation possibilities.

Next on the list of topics was the possibility of a joint municipal purchasing agent between the town and the village. Currently, each municipality has a separate agent to make purchases on the government's behalf: the town has Pat Althouse and the village has Tracy Jetter. The two boards discussed the benefits of combining certain purchases that both municipalities need, like office supplies, chlorine, or road salt, in order to take advantage of the lower prices suppliers offer for buying in higher volumes. There will be a future meeting between Althouse and Jetter to further discuss the logistics of such a sharing of services.

The topic of the oft-discussed economic development officer post was brought up next. There was a trade of information between each municipality's representatives regarding the requirements necessary for the creation of such a post; Town Councilman John Gavaris asked questions about where the position's office would be located, who would pay the officer, and to whom he or she would be answerable. Because the position has yet to be created, the answers were speculative, but it was reasoned that the position could be funded as a joint venture between the village's Local Development Corporation and the town's Revolving Loan Fund, the latter of which, it was suggested, may be converted to a similar organization as the village's at a later town board meeting. The officer could be answerable to a committee comprised of members from both municipalities' boards. Despite the resumption of talks between the two boards about this topic, no definite action was taken to move the creation of the position forward.

Toward the end of the meeting, tensions seemed to rise as Town Clerk Jane Eck expressed her dismay with Paul Brooks's recent article which appeared to quote Mayor Jeff Kaplan as leveling allegations of abandonment at the town, and Town Bookkeeper Pat Althouse read from a prepared list of services the town has provided to the village to respond to the article, and to try and set the record straight. Local businessman Dwight Coombe made a brief proposal about how the town and village governments can better work out their differences by creating an independent committee to reexamine the costs of services provided between the two municipalities. "What I see here are a great bunch of people," said Coombe. "We have a great community. We just need to find a better way to manage our tax dollars and services. We are accomplishing nothing by going back and forth about what entity does what and incurs what costs. What we should do is look at all the services and all the expenses that both the town and village currently have."

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