Tonight (2020-01-21) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls Board of Trustees.
Most years I miss this meeting, as the Village moves off of the regular Monday due to it being a holiday, and being part of the School’s PBAC which meets on Tuesdays. While the Village didn’t change their schedule this year, the School did. How that change plays out long term remains to be seen, but it did allow me to go to this meeting tonight. Either that or I missed a meeting I should have been at.
As Festival on the Green has ceased to be a coherent event, the Village has canceled the fireworks that would have occurred that weekend. It sounds like some of the individual activities will still occur, but no fireworks. Not enough ‘bang for the buck’, if you will.
More planning ahead for summer fun, despite the winter cold: Both the ‘Good Vibes Flowing’ and ‘Movies in the Park’ events are being worked on. The one got it’s approval, the other is making progress. Something to look forward to for those that enjoy these activities.
The Village Court is adding more days to it’s schedule. This appears to be in response to recent changes in State laws. By the sounds of it, the increased hours will be more then covered by the income from fines. While good from a budgetary standpoint, unfortunate from a law and order standpoint.
Also in the ‘illegal activity’ front, it sounds like the are drug dealers in the parking lot by the Episcopal Church. No idea if this is new or not, as I’m not in that parking lot often enough. I know Harry Allen park used to be the place to find drug dealers, no idea if it still is. The lighting was improved not too long ago, maybe the increased visibility encouraged the lawbreakers to relocate? I can but speculate.
There was discussion about setting up a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) for the Village. While I have insufficient information to weigh the value of such an act, I do have enough to be suspicious. My limited understanding says a CCA effectively become another layer between the producers and users of electricity, yet they claim to lower the cost to those end users. As more layers tends to lead to increased overhead (and thus costs), I don’t see how that works. Either someone else is paying, or it’s some sort of scam. That it requires a government act (with the implied ‘force’ that brings) to opt everyone in makes me even more suspicious. If it was truly as worthwhile and beneficial as it claims, the average user would happily sign up without the need for government to do anything. Saving money causes that sort of action. It feels like another attempt to leverage the ‘green’ movement in otherwise foolish ways.
At the other end of the pipe, the early steps of some repairs/replacing at the waste treatment plant were approved. Still a long way to go before actual changes at the site, but I do like it when my waste goes away as it should. Another case where planning ahead is for all of our benefit.
During Ed’s report on the ambulance, it was mentioned that it is difficult to find enough staff. Reminded me of last weeks School Budget Presentation and the staffing issues there. Never having looked for employees to hire myself, is ongoing staffing issues a regular thing? I do hear about it often enough. I would think this is a good thing for the (potential) employees, as it gives them leverage (see Supply and Demand). Or does this point to a larger issue in our society? Do people just not want to do these jobs? Are we all gainfully employed elsewhere already? Or is something else at play?
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the January 21, 2020 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Board of Trustees.
Agenda was not available anywhere I could find. Perhaps it will be on the Village’s website in the future, perhaps not…