Trustee likely to fail at effort to lose his job

Steve Warr is on a mission to do away with the village of Potsdam.

This wouldn't be nearly as newsworthy if he was one of the local nutjobs who periodically come out of the woodwork to protest something the village government is or isn't doing. It wouldn't be that newsworthy if he was just a longtime businessman with an opinion that village government is costly and unnecessary. What makes Warr's quest interesting is he is a village trustee – or at least soon will be.

The Democrat is running unopposed for a village seat in the Nov. 3 election. His campaign strategy is: “Hire me so I can work to get myself fired.” Well, not fired exactly, eliminated. Or consolidated. Or dissolved. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20091024/NEWS05/310249959 Call it what you want, he'll lose his job as a trustee if he is able to make good on his campaign promise to get rid of the village government. He WANTS to lose his job.

I like the way he thinks. But I also think he'll still have a job four years from now when his term expires. The idea of getting rid of the village isn't new ... people have been talking about doing it for more than a decade. The problem is it makes far too much sense for it to actually happen. People don't generally like change. And there is always some measure of comfort in the devil you know.

The truth is the change proposed by Warr probably wouldn't end up being that much of a change. There would be no village government, but services would likely continue under a new master and need to be paid for by residents. The only thing that would change is what you put on the “pay to” line of your checks. The devil would still be there, he would just have a different name.

If the goal is to lower the cost of living in what now is the village, getting rid of the government is a good first step. A baby step. Saving real money, though, will take more than losing a board of trustees here, a village administrator there. It will take residents willing to say things like we don't need to spend a boatload of bucks for a police force that doesn't do much beyond breaking up beer parties and giving out traffic tickets.

The generally safe streets of Potsdam would not go to the devil if we didn't have village cops. State police, the St. Lawrence County Sheriff's Department and SUNY Potsdam cops surely could fill the gaps well enough if we didn't have the village blue to stop students from occasionally relieving themselves from the pressures of college life in the middle of Market Street. So losing the local patrols would have no practical effect on Potsdam residents other than lowering their village tax bill by a considerable chunk of change. And I can almost guarantee it won't happen.

People like the perceived protection of having a local police force. It's comfortable seeing “Potsdam” on the side of a cop car in your neighborhood ... and comfort most often trumps cost-benefit analysis when it comes to paying for police. It's easy to complain about taxes being too high. It's not as easy to accept the cuts that would have to be made to lower the levy.

Steve is probably going to lose his fight to lose his job. But even if he wins and puts himself out of work, it won't be much of a victory if all we end up with is a different devil collecting the same high taxes for services – needed ones, luxuries and ones that aren't vital – that we've always gotten.