Town Board Meeting 11/10/08

You will see a link to an mp3 file of the meeting below. If you click on the link, you can listen from within your browser, but there is usually a way to move this mp3 file to your desktop. In Firefox, you wait for the whole file to move to the browser, (a minute or two) then you go - File - Save Page As..... and you can put it anywhere you want. The advantage is that you can then listen with other programs (Real Player, Itunes etc.) which allow you to adjust equalizer settings and they give you a time counter. With the time counter and my notes below, you can jump to the part that interests you.

Here's the link to the mp3 file

5 minutes 50 seconds - Chris Austin (dog control officer) says there is a discrepancy with the bill from the SPCA. Apparently there were a couple of incidents recently when the SPCA came out in spite of the fact that they no longer have a contract for dog control in Ulysses. They are still the animal cruelty investigators for the county, that is not the responsibility of Chris Austin? I'd like to know more about the details of these incidents. There appears to be a big difference between Chris Austins version of the story and the SPCA's version.

Chris implies that his relationship with the SPCA is not the greatest. He said that he's gotten into the habit of taking the dogs to his own kennel for 5 days, instead of the SPCA. Did the Town Board approve this change? Chris states here that Abigail Smith is not the director of the SPCA. If you go to http://www.lansingstar.com/content/view/3961/294/ you will see how wrong Chris is.

It seems irresponsible for Ulysses to refuse to support the SPCA. The residents of Ulysses have thousands of pets, and we benefit from the services of the SPCA. We ought to pay for it. The SPCA has had to double the price of their dog control contract, but this is just an indication of how low it was before. The new price brings them into line with the national average of four to six dollars per capita per year. Using a private dog control officer like Chris Austin can save Ulysses tax payers a couple of bucks per year, but we then are responsible for the budget shortfalls at the SPCA. Our SPCA is one of the best. They are available 24/7. They have vets on the staff. They are supported by 165 volunteers. It seems odd that our Town would refuse to fund them, in a year when they are reducing the Town of Ulysses tax levy.

0-42-0 Marsha discusses the upcoming Winter Festival. Go to http://www.tburgfestivaloflights.com/

0-52-0 Rod Ferintino says "no way" to funding the stream watch program that is run by http://communityscience.org/ Sounds like something we ought to support to me.

1-00-20 Rod says he doesn't want to put money aside for the action plan to implement the comprehensive plan. (is Rod missing the fundamental concept of communities organizing to protect and improve the commons?)

1-02-00 Rod says he doesn't want to put money aside for an audit of the Town's books.

1-11-14 - Liz Thomas seems to think that the budget process is somewhat less than ideal. There is a discussion of this here. Liz reads her resolution for improving the process into the record dispite Doug Austic's objections.

1-36-00 Jason Fulton gives a Fire Dept report. Referring to third party billing Jason says - "It's more when it's going to happen now, they're not going to push the issue now, but it's still ready to go whenever it's needed" I've written about this at the previous post.