Brockport Moving Toward Dissolution?

It's probably a good idea that Brockport and a few other villages vote to dissolve, as examples to voters elsewhere.   Citizens looking for big cost savings are in for a big disappointment instead.   Under the law allowing village dissolution, all of the most expensive functions, like a police force, sewer districts, etc, all just get shifted into other entities either existing, or required to be created for the purpose.

The form of government changes; nearly all the expense to taxpayers continues.

And citizens lose one of the only functional forms of government still surviving in the State of New York.

We noted this last November:

It's yet another poignant, maddening irony of the farce passing for government in this state that the levels of government that citizens actually have power to change are the levels that work best. (Maybe that's why they work best.)

Those levels of government that cry out to be changed -- the State government and that 80% of County government functions dictated by the State -- citizens can't touch.

In New York, it's the town and village governments that work best, irrespective of party control. They're the most responsive to citizens, and the most fiscally responsible. Surely the very worst town government in the state looks exemplary compared to the Albany regime.

Want a real cost-saving consolidation?   Dissolve the Rochester City government.   There's already a body that represents citizens of the City, and for which City residents vote:   the Monroe County government.   The County can take over the functions currently performed by the City, and in this kind of consolidation you really would see some massive cost-saving through personnel reductions.

Naturally the laws of New York don't allow for it.   Because it would make sense, and because all the office-holders losing taxpayer-paid jobs would come from the wrong party.