Stretch Breaks

Wegman's used to announce periodically, "Wegman's employees, time for a stretch break." It must have been at least once an hour, 'cause I heard it every time I was there. And, sure enough, the clerks would stretch their arms, arch their backs and touch their toes. Last night's Town Board meeting was four hours, with nary a single stretch break.

The perfectly reasonable agenda was derailed almost immediately by Ellis Hollow residents questions and discussion of the feasibility study for water and sewer service on Ellis Hollow Road. That's fine. But then we slid effortlessly into a presentation by insurance agent John Bailey on the relative benefits of commercial insurance vs collective municipal insurance. We should have seen this coming and had it on the agenda. But we didn't. The Insurance Committee (of which I'm a member) had met with Bailey and the NYMIR representative earlier in the month and had agreed to recommend the NYMIR policy if the price was competitive. I wonder how long this discussion would have gone on if we hadn't been prepared to make that recommendation.

There was one brief citizen comment urging timely action on the Renewable Energy Law under consideration. So it was 8:40 before we got to the "County Communications Tower Project" agenda under "Citizen Privilege." I don't know why it was listed there. "Citizen Privilege" is supposed to be three minute comments from the public. This was a thirty minute presentation (a very good presentation) regarding the construction of new towers and improvements to existing towers to support the new county-wide emergency communication system.

Reports from eight town departments followed. So, it was 10:45 before we went into executive session to consider a pending litigation issue and possible real estate transaction. My point, and I do have one, is that we need to take better advantage of our extensive committee system to research and present information to make best use of the four hours of the monthly meeting.