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Village Says No To County Infrastructure Study |
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by Dan Veaner
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Friday, 10 July 2009 |
 Village of Lansing Trustees decided not to endorse a county-wide infrastructure study when they declined to vote to support it Monday. This followed a similar reaction by the Lansing Town Board on June 19th. Without support from all the municipalities involved The $82,000 State Municipal Services Incentive grant money that was allocated for the study will likely not be released. All the other municipalities except the Town of Lansing have supported the grant. While Village officials expressed some reluctance to being the 'bad guy,' Trustee John O'Neill's strong opposition swayed the board.
"It's a tremendous waste of money, but the money is already committed," said Mayor Donald Hartill. "It is a grant from the state that we agreed to. If we bale we effectively go back on our word at some level, because we supported it originally. I didn't really understand what it was at that point."
 John O'Neill
"I think we can just say, 'Sorry,'" he said. "We don't do that. I think it is a shame to spend all that money again. They might hate us a little bit, but that's OK."
Last month the Town Board came to the same conclusion. Only Councilman Bud Shattuck argued in favor of the grant on its merits, but the other four including Supervisor Scott Pinney were against spending the money on what they considered a waste of taxpayer money. Hartill said that he hoped that would be the end of it, letting the Village off the hook, but said that Pinney seemed to be waffling in a recent newspaper article that quoted him as saying the Town might revisit the issue if more information is provided.
"All of the data is there," Hartill said. "All a consultant is going to do is to put it in a fancy book. There is no benefit. The trouble is that the claim is that this is the key element to affordable housing. It's just not true."
After some discussion Trustees Lynn Leopold and Larry Fresinski endorsed O'Neill's position. "We should do the right thing," Fresinski said.
The Board decided not to vote, effectively killing the project.
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