Eileen Hansen will become the new Scottsville mayor next month. File photo
BY JENNIFER CROWLEY
The 2018 village election season wrapped up Tuesday night in Scottsville with residents choosing retired schoolteacher Eileen Hansen as their new mayor. Hansen won the spot with 358 votes while her competitor Patrick Colville received 66 votes.
The election additionally included two village trustee races. Board incumbents Christie Offen and Leslie Lubking Wagar were re-elected for four-year terms while board newcomer Kathie Carl won the two-year trustee seat.
The new board will be sworn in on April 2nd.
Hansen, Carl and Wagar campaigned under a single ticket, “Community First,” for the election. “To uphold the highest standard of integrity, honesty and respect for the community,” was one of their key campaign tenets. In terms of tangible matters, a major focus for Community First during its campaigning was around the importance of exercising “financial responsibility” in all items affecting the village’s relatively small tax base.
The outgoing village board voted on March 13th with a margin of 3-1 to establish a local law enabling the village to override the state mandated 2% cap on its tax levy, if necessary (and without penalization from the state comptroller’s office). This law has been enacted in Scottsville largely systematically (though not in 2017) since the state passed the cap legislation in 2011. As a citizen, Hansen spoke against this measure at the February 13th meeting; as an existing trustee, Wagar was the sole dissenter at the March vote.
Campaign informational materials distributed by Mayor Elect Hansen prior to the election stated that if elected, she and the board will create and pass a 2018-2019 budget by June 1st and without exceeding the tax cap, reflecting her public commentary. Yet there are a number of looming fiscal concerns facing the new mayor and village board which will be comprised of Carl, Offen, Wagar and existing trustee, Todd Shero.
One of the most publicized and ongoing issues has to do with rising costs that must be managed effectively to sustain the Scottsville Fire Department. In order to operate in compliance with insurance, training, safety and equipment mandates, the village must be able to pay for these expenses which can arise with little advance notice.
As one example of a new mandate that will impact the village’s 2018-2019 budget, in late 2017, the state of New York voted to deliver health care benefits to volunteer firefighters who have been diagnosed with certain cancers. This new coverage will take effect on Jan. 1, 2019. It is expected this per-firefighter cost will be fairly nominal (i.e., less than $500 annually per firefighter) considering the vastly improved benefit it will ensure for firefighters diagnosed with cancer – a complication of firefighting that has been increasingly linked to the profession. But it does mean a new budgetary line item in the sum of thousands of dollars.
In an online survey conducted by The Sentinel last month, the ability of Scottsville to remain independent in an era of rising costs and flat business tax revenue was raised by residents as a top concern. For those interested in the detail of the village’s financial health as the mayoral transition unfolds, the Office of the New York State Comptroller is getting ready to release the results of an audit it undertook on the village’s financial performance from 2015 – 2017. Once the official report is available, a public meeting will be scheduled to share the state’s findings. Otherwise the first public meeting of the new board is scheduled for April 10th at 6:30 PM following the 6:00 PM Fire Commissioners Meeting. As a reminder, village meetings are open to the public and agenda items as well as recent meeting minutes are available on the village’s website at www.scottsvilleny.org.
