Heading into the home stretch before Election Day, supporters and detractors of the referendum to change Saratoga Springs’ nearly century-old system of government continue their debate in an effort to sway voters.
Saratoga Springs’ government has been commission style since the city was organized in 1915. In this form, a mayor and four commissioners sit as the City Council. Each commissioner also serves as the head of a department running a different city operation.
Under the revised charter, the Department of Public Safety would be eliminated and the mayor would appoint a police chief and a fire chief. All of the other departments would be lumped together, save for the director of finance, who would remain separate, but be renamed comptroller.
Instead of the current five-member council with administrative leaders for each of the city’s departments, the new format calls for five council members and a separate seat for the mayor. In the new form of government, the city’s representatives to the Saratoga County board of supervisors would also be voting members of the council, increasing the city council to seven members. The mayor would be able to veto council decisions, and the mayoral term would be increased to four years, but council members’ term limits would remain two years.
Proponents of the reformed charter, such as planning board chairman Lew Benton, say the current form of government has proven too costly, since it has no checks and balances.
The 1996, all-funds budget was $22.2 million. The 2006, all-funds budget is at $47.7 million. That’s a 115 percent increase in spending. The general-funds budget also has doubled to nearly $33 million, Benton said in a written statement.
He went on to say that, despite the increase in spending, Saratogians are still seeing the same problems they did a decade ago. He listed truck traffic, parking and an aging police station as decade-old problems, and cited the need for a public safety station for the lake, a new recreation center, a city center and a water source.
Benton said the current system allows for the unchecked abuse of a commissioner’s power.
`Abuses of power ` unchecked by a system that anoints some commissioners with the unilateral authority to dispense rewards and punishments ` have resulted in one lawsuit after another,` said Benton, a former commissioner of public safety and member of the 2000 Charter Revision Commission. `When was the last time the city successfully defended a lawsuit brought as a result of a council member’s abuse of power?`
Former state budget director Mark Lawton agrees the proposed charter changes would save the city money. Speaking at a Charter Revision Commission on Thursday, Oct. 19, Lawton also said a new form of government would make it easier to adopt programs and policies that are often left in gridlock in the current commission system.
`The taxpayer is the one who’s going to win on this unification,` said Lawton, a Saratoga Springs resident who served as former Gov. Hugh Carey’s budget director. `It takes all of the city operations and puts them under one person ` not the mayor ` a city manager.`
However, opponents of the charter reform, Saratogians United to Continue the Charter Essential to Sustain our Success (SUCCESS), held an informational session at which former commissioners of finance Remigia Foy and Ken Klotz weighed in on the issue. Dozens of jobs could be changed or perhaps eliminated, they said. Gordon Boyd, a SUCCESS member, said his organization can only assume the city will cut jobs, as the public has been left out of the loop on financial details.
`We can only go on what we know. The combined [annual] payroll of the mayor and city council will rise to $130,000 from $72,500 today. That’s $60,000 for the mayor and $10,000 for seven city council members. If the cost of their salaries is going up and the overall cost of government is going down, as they say, we can only assume that there will be job cuts,` he said after the meeting.
These anticipated job cuts have drawn the ire of the city’s largest union. The Civil Service Employees Union (CSEA) has plans to urge the 1,000 CSEA members who live in Saratoga Springs to vote against the reform, according to a statement released by Kathy Moran, president of the CSEA’s City Hall Unit.“
