Above: Middleburgh's Municipal Building. Photo by Carolyn Simmons; reproduced by permission.
In a public vote Tuesday on whether or not to dissolve the village of Middleburgh, residents voted by a decisive 344-71 to keep their village government, several news outlets are reporting.
Mayor Matthew Avitabile issued a statement to the Watershed Post, thanking village residents for not dissolving the village:
"I want to thank the residents of the Village for believing in the future of the community. We're still recovering from the flood and I am glad to see this vote of confidence in the way things are headed," he wrote.
The vote, in which only village residents could participate, had the potential to affect tax rates both inside and outside the village line. Dissolving the village would have probably increased taxes in the town of Middleburgh as a whole, while taxes for residents inside village lines would have gone down.
YNN spoke to several Middleburghers who felt they needed more information before dissolving their village, some of whom said that the state-mandated four-month window for bringing a petition to dissolve to a popular vote was not long enough:
The four month period state law mandates a petition be brought to a vote wasn't enough time to make a decision.
Tom Vosalin said, “That is 100 percent correct. Not at all, so therefore, I say no.”
The Times-Journal reports that in the nearby village of Cobleskill, which is also mulling over a dissolution into the larger Town of Cobleskill, officials are wrangling over how town services would be affected by disbanding the village government.
The village of Middleburgh had 1,398 residents as of the 2000 census, roughly a third of the town of Middleburgh's population.
