Dear Editor,
The Village of Owego Election is Tuesday, March 15. The Rebuild Owego Party would like your vote.
Rebuild Owego Party candidates are incumbents Kevin Millar for Mayor, Rod Marchewka for Clerk / Treasurer, newcomers Dick Van Hall, Theresa Gosart and Patrick Cartwright, Jr. for Trustee.
Theresa Gosart, candidate for Ward 2 Trustee, was instrumental in organizing “I want my OPD”, a group formed to keep the Owego Police Department; Patrick Cartwright Jr., Ward 3 Trustee candidate is a former EMT, a former NYS Peace Officer and is certified in FEMA Emergency Management. He bought and rebuilt a flooded house here because he believes in a future for this Village.
Dick Van Hall, Ward 1 Trustee candidate, is an engineer at Lockheed Martin and has used his analytical talents to help the Village on the Zoning and Planning board. His talents will be instrumental as the Rebuild Party works to keep our budget under the tax cap again.
We have worked to keep the Village under the tax cap for four years in a row while keeping critical services of police and fire intact. Over the past two years we sought to hire and fully staff the Owego Police Department. Four trustees have consistently opposed this. We consider a fully staffed police department to be essential for the health and safety of village residents. In fact, just last week a Village Police Officer was first on the scene of a house fire, woke a sleeping person in the burning building and saved his life.
The Village of Owego Fire Department has been in turmoil over the past year as some members sought to abolish the Owego Fire Department and form a separate fire district. It is our opinion, supported by NYS Department of State reports that forming a district would lead to a sharp rise in taxes since a fire district tax would be a new added tax, not subject to village board oversight. We opposed a fire district since it would be an added tax burden on residents.
Mayor Millar got a grant to change all interior lights to LED’s, saving $9,000 annually. We are working to switch our streetlights to village owned LED’s which will save the Village $78,000 the first year and almost $2,000,000 over 20 years. We are participating in a solar power purchase agreement that will reduce our electricity cost by 25 percent. We have revived a grant that lapsed under past boards and secured over $600,000 to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure in Evergreen Cemetery. We are currently pursuing a historic structures grant to refurbish the Central Fire Station. We have refinanced and paid off all Fire Department loans. We continue to look for grants for infrastructure upkeep.
We worked with the entire board to respond to the state audit and implemented their recommendations immediately. The audit notes that they “did not identify any inappropriate disbursement during out testing” and they “found the revenues and expenses in the current year’s budget-to-actual reports to be accurate”. We hired a bookkeeper with over 20 years of experience in municipal accounting, as recommended by the audit, to segregate fiscal duties.
The mayor has presented budgets to the village board for the past four years that have been below the state mandated tax cap. This has enabled taxpayers to get a tax rebate check. We will continue to act with fiscal frugality.
The Rebuild Owego Party candidates take their roles and responsibilities seriously and agree that having an experienced mayor that can devote full time to the position is important to the village.
We ask for you to vote for all of the Rebuild Owego candidates on Row B on Election Day, March 15, 2016.
Sincerely,
Kevin Millar
Village of Owego Mayor
