Stay the course in Saratoga Springs
It is most obvious to the majority of informed Saratogians, especially the natives, the voters are being wrongly subjected to change our system of governance which has worked well for over 100 years. Many of these change advocates haven’t lived here long enough to realize how many wonderful projects and successes our commission form of government has wrought over these many, many years. The carousel in Congress Park and the wonderful new solar field at the old dump are prime examples of great success by commissioners. The advocates for change should take the time to read our history and see what wonderful champions of the city, past commissioners were. To slight our history is typical of revisionist promoters by ignoring our past and attempt to mislead the voters by forging ahead with half truths and false projections.
Some letter writers to the Saratogian cite one recent issue concerning the potential land swap by the current Comm. of Public Safety as a reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are checks and balances in our system, and they worked. For these “change advocates” to squander our history by promoting a new system in which some outsider will be hired as a City Manager, assumes this flawless city manager won’t make similar errors in judgement? Is this person guaranteed to be perfect? Is our government stands now, a series of mistakes by any mayor or commissioner, gives the voters an option to terminate bad apples every two years. That system will be gone under the proposed charter and the real power for change will be removed from the voters. The city manager will hold too much power and the other “new” commissioners will be emasculated in power and position. What will it cost to fire a city manager, as the city most certainly will be forced to honor a contractual golden parachute to rid our city of a nefarious character? Look at the recent history of SPAC to see how that works in the real world.
And to think our current mayor, who was censured by the current commissioners, was allowed to appoint the change commission and filled it with her “charter change minions” - knowing full well they only wanted to completely change the charter as opposed to tweaking our existing charter. How despicable. To top that, this sitting mayor will again be able to stack the deck by controlling a majority of appointees to the transition team. She has been censured once, but that didn’t stop her efforts to destroy Saratoga’s current government.
The underhanded efforts by the change advocates to first try to slip this important “change” vote in a special election, knowing full well they wouldn’t get the turnout a general election brings, was all to their favor, but they failed. For this hand picked team of change advocates to now promote false cost savings exposes another cheap trick to promote the “carrot” of tax savings. They are trying to sell the voters a package of twice defeated pabulum, which would certainly change our government, sadly not for the better, and with far more sinister pitfalls.
Do not be duped by these folks — learn from our history and then do all in your power to stay the course with our current commission form of government.
Lance Walworth Ingmire Saratoga Springs