Village Approves Budget with small tax increase

At the end of this blog appears a link to You Tube for the 4/8/13 meeting of the Patchogue Village Board of Trustees. This is actually a double video. The majority of the video covers the annual budget meeting, the second and smaller half covers the annual “Reorganization” meeting. That meeting represents the re-appointment of a host of village board members such as members of the Planning Board. Before starting a narrative that will help people view the more than one hour of video I want to address some comments made about the video taping effort recently made by Mayor Pontieri. That is the videotaping effort that is currently being made by members of the Citizens Campaign for Open Village Government. This last Monday at the Village Board of Trustees meeting Mayor Pontieri offered his criticism of the videotaping effort while explaining once again why he would not support placing the videos produced by the Citizens Campaign on public access TV with the village’s approval which it turns out is needed. He termed the videos “unprofessional appearing”, having sound issues, and he said that there were gaps in the video too. The Mayor is right. There have been issues from time to time producing these videos but he is wrong to place the blame for any of those issues on the citizens who have been taking videos and posting them. To go back to the beginning the Village was approached some months ago about taking videos of Board meetings to allow those residents who can’t get to meetings to see how the Board operates nevertheless by seeing videos on cable TV. This would be just like Brookhaven Town does. And like that effort it would be professional. Having rejected the effort as too costly and then asking the village to buy him a new car for his use for the same amount of money he claimed the village did not have to spend, citizens rallied to make something happen nevertheless. I am one of those citizens. None of us has any professional experience videotaping. I for one did not own a camcorder, nor had ever used a tripod in my entire life. Over the past months we have all had to learn by doing with no outside help. It has been a process of trial and error. One tape did have a gap when the camera shut off accidentally and the video was posted without our knowledge of that issue. Since then no tape is posted without being previewed to make sure that does not happen again. Sound quality sometimes is an issue. The current video may on some browsers have a slight voice delay. We have bought a second camera and maybe that will solve that problem, still to be seen. Panning, focusing, all the issues of directing a camera to capture images all are techniques we are learning each and every time we shoot a video. But as time goes by we are getting better. However one thing is crystal clear: ordinary citizens and not the Mayor have been responsible for something that is historic: residents can see how their village government works by seeing real images, not printed minutes. Professional or not that is one thing that no one can take away from the effort. While the Mayor sat on his hands we got busy. And yes not perfect yet, not as pretty as the Mayor says he wants it all to be but we know that too and we are working each and every time that one of these videos come out to make it better. We are citizen journalists of a sort operating to show the village residents more about their government than their elected officials have ever imagined that the people of the village were entitled to know. That said the current video can be seen in different parts. It begins with the Mayor providing a general description of the proposed village budget. The Village Treasurer provides his comments. There is then a back and forth exchange of views and information between the Treasurer, the Mayor and various Board members. The last part relates to the public portion. Three village residents appeared at the meeting and asked questions about the budget. The budget is then voted and approved and then the next phase of the meeting begins shortly thereafter and that is the reorganization meeting. More exactly at 2 minutes: Mayor Pontieri 3:50: Village Treasurer explains the budget and the reason for the tax increase. 15:48: Trustee Krieger offers question about spending down village the surplus. From that point on till the public portion back and forth between the trustees on a host of budget issues. 36 minutes: Public portion begins with Jo Miller: question about salaries John Bogack follows: questions about salaries of village officials, Mayor admits to his true salary level, question about ambulance costs, question about true cost of garbage pickup and potential for contracting out service to save money, questions about give away deals for leases, permits and easements, census mystery and impact on per capita revenue stream Trustees Crean and Krieger enter into discussion about reducing costs for code enforcement Laureen Prendergast: question about use of grant money for road repairs Shortly thereafter public portion ends, budget is approved. Reorganization meeting is held, appointments made, Board votes to permanently hold all future budget approval meetings at 5 p.m. and all Board meetings at 6 p.m. Village Policy “handbook” is approved (more about that another day). Meeting ends. The video is to be accessed from net link below exclusively via this Patch article For the video see: http://youtu.be/BqIEZGsJswI