A Meeting Was Held, Yet No One Came.
By Bob Steiner
At 3:00 P.M. last Wednesday the town of Edgewood hosted a meeting for our elected legislators from the local legislative districts. The purpose of the gathering held at the Community Center, was to brief our representatives on projects(“Capital Outlay Requests”) that the town would like to see funded during the forthcoming January legislative session. The ladies representing our area, King, McCoy, and Beffort-Wilson, were present and in good form. They readily answered the questions asked of them and did their best to clarify how they believed the legislature will respond to the projects requested. It was unfortunate that Mr. Campos could not make the trip to Edgewood and be in attendance. I would like to have heard his input.
Perhaps the most important points raised by our representatives was the issue of fewer tax dollars being available to finance our requests and that the Governor is already exhorting the various state agencies to drastically cut back on spending. In view of this situation the town council was advised to insure the town’s expeditious participation in any of the projects they could, the rationale being any project in progress would be less likey to be curtailed if a funding shortfall were to occur.
For the information of those not in attendance, The council , wisely,  seems to be giving the public works facility its highest priority. We really need to have a facility with a roof for our road crews to maintain their equipment out of the weather. Finally, it looks like something will be started in Section#16. If the reader desires more information on other potential projects, please contact Ms. Mahalick at the town headquarters.
Karen Mahalick, Roger Holden, and the rest of the town staff are to be commended for the professional manner in which the town conducted its briefing of the legislators. The charts and written handouts were especially well-done. Any questions raised by the representatives were quickly answered.
It was unfortunate, though, other than the actual participants, only four members of the public, including this writer, were present. In fairness to the town staff, this meeting had been announced at the last council meeting. I suspect though,  the local print media didn’t find it worthy of mention?
3 Responses “A Meeting Was Held, Yet No One Came.”
There was a notice in the November 5 edition of The Independent. The Calendar on the Telegraph site has been replaced with this week’s version, so I can’t check that directly, but I suspect that they had something. I’ll send a message to the editor asking whether they printed a notice.
I checked with the editor of the Telegraph, and he indicated that the newspaper did not receive notification that the meeting was being held.
I regret that some members in the print media did not
get the” word”. The fact remains the meeting was announced at a previous town council meeting, as stated in the last paragraph of the article.
Perhaps the town council could do more to insure advance notice of their gatherings???
In any case. I was disappointed at the low attendence
turnout for such an important subject!