January 3, 2015
New year brings legislative changes
With the new year comes changes for the Cortland County Legislature in the form of some reassignments of committee memberships and the addition of a new legislator.
Republican Linda Jones is completing the final year of the two-year term vacated by Newell Willcox, who represented the town of Homer.
Willcox was appointed to a one year term after former Legislator Mike Park resigned and the Republican Party in September nominated Jones to run for the remaining year of the term.
Legislature Chairperson Susan Briggs (R-Cortlandville) announced Wednesday morning in an e-mail that Jones will be serving on the Buildings and Grounds Committee, chaired by Gordon Wheelock (D-Homer) and vice chaired by Tom Hartnett (D-LD3) and the Highway Committee, chaired by Don Boyden (R-Preble, Scott, Homer) and vice chaired by Joe Steinhoff (R-Cortlandville).
Amy Cobb (D-LD2) has moved from the Highway Committee to make room for Jones.
Cobb is moving to the Buildings and Grounds Committee, which will increase the committee number to seven members.
George Wagner (R- Marathon and Lapeer) will sit on the Health and Human Services Committee due to Willcox’s departure.
Briggs said the switch needed to be made to keep the numbers on the committees the same.
“All our committees are either made up of five or seven (members) and this is to avoid a tie,” Briggs said Friday morning. “Otherwise we would have had to increase numbers of committees, which would have been asking more legislators to sit on more committees.”
Some initiatives Briggs wants to see this year include discussing further the ash for trash proposal between Cortland and Onondaga counties, implementing an assigned counsel plan after some tweaking in the agreement and hiring a solid waste manager.
“I think this Legislature has been very effective,” Briggs said Friday morning.
“I think the public will see that ... they have been very cooperative, very informed and willing to jump in and get to the bottom of issues.”
Another item high on the agenda is to hire a budget and finance director to start the budget process early in the hopes of getting the proposed 2016 budget out prior to election day.
Briggs said it is possible that Randy Deal, director of real property tax services, could help again with the budget if the Legislature fails to find the right person for the budget and finance director position. Deal was asked by the Legislature to help with the 2015 budget after the resignation of previous county administrator Martin Murphy, who left to become the city manager in Oneonta.
But it will not stop them from trying to get the budget out early again.
“We’ll just get it done,” she said.
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