On Tuesday, voters in Port Henry will go to the polls to cast the most important vote ever in this little village of 1,200 people.
They will be deciding the fate of the Village of Port Henry. If a majority of the people vote yes in Tuesday's referendum, the village will dissolve as a municipality on Dec. 31, 2011.
What an affirmative vote would do is turn the village's property and functions over to the surrounding Town of Moriah, replacing the village government with five special taxing districts.
Former village residents would pay new taxes for water, sewage, trash and recyclables collection, sidewalk maintenance and snow removal, and a Port Henry Fire District.
The dissolution vote would bypass state laws that normally require a public referendum for each special district to be created.
So residents would not just be voting to do away with Port Henry, they'd also be voting to create a bunch of special taxing districts whose tax rates are probably not going to stay the same or go down in future years.
But village residents would save about 33 percent on their total property taxes in 2012, the first year without a village. After that, who knows?
The 33 percent is valid, though, only if the town receives state dissolution aid of $303,600 a year. If the aid were ended, the savings would drop to 24 percent.
With the state eliminating or cutting tourism aid, school aid and any other aid it can, it's unlikely the special dissolution aid would continue in the same amount, if at all.
Village Mayor Ernest Guerin said he's casting his vote as though the special aid weren't there. We think that's a good idea.
The push toward dissolution was started several years ago by a group of friends dissatisfied with village land-use planning that affected them. They reasoned that the village was standing in the way of their self interests.
A petition turned in by this group didn't have the required number of signatures to force a vote and was deemed invalid. But the Village Board decided to study dissolution anyway, getting a state grant to hire a consultant and ultimately voting to put the question of dissolution on the Village Election ballot.
Now that it's almost time to vote, we'd like to urge Port Henry residents to think carefully before they cast their ballots.
You can save 24 to 33 percent on your taxes the first year. You lose control of village assets, including the Fire Department, and can no longer elect officials who work for the good of just Port Henry. The vote would leave Port Henry on the same footing as the town's other hamlets of Mineville, Witherbee, Cheever and so on.
Dissolving the municipality of Port Henry, like almost everything else in the world, could have both good and bad outcomes.
This isn't an issue to be taken lightly.
