With the Tea Party activists getting a fair amount of press coverage across the country, it shouldn’t be too surprising that right here in Western New York there are some folks who might be willing to sacrifice services and a high quality of life in order to get a relatively small tax cut. It was through using the promise of small tax cuts and some of the anti-government rhetoric used by the Tea Party, after all, that the Brockport Taxcutters were able to get some momentum towards their efforts to dissolve the village. Fortunately, Brockport’s residents didn’t buy into their arguments and voted against the resolution to dissolve the village government yesterday by a margin of 911 to 645.
After the results were announced, I spoke with several of the activists from both sides of the campaign and the message was clear. They want the village to address some of the financial woes it’s been facing, but they clearly understand that “we’re in tough financial times” and that “communities across the country are facing similar problems.” With that it mind, one activist from Pro-Brockport told me she believed “it’d be simply ludicrous to give up the local services that a village can provide.”
While the results of yesterday’s vote can be considered a victory for Brockport residents who want to maintain a high quality of life, the vote was still relatively close. That is why the Brockport Taxcutters are claiming that “the landscape of the village is changed forever” and coverage of the vote is reminding the public that there are other villages throughout the state considering similar resolutions and that the Taxcutters could try again in Brockport in four years. In other words, there’s still a need to stand up for a high quality of life here in New York and to fight against those who want to take that away with the lure of slightly lower taxes.
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