It was wonderful serving Oneida

I‘d like to thank Oneida for giving me the opportunity to serve on the Madison County Board of Supervisors for these past seven months. The new supervisors’ swearing-in ceremony will be on Friday, Dec. 29, and their new term starts Jan. 1. I’d especially like to thank Mayor Matzke and Deputy Mayor Chamberlain for trusting me with this duty, and all the Oneida Common Councilors and other County Supervisors and staff for their patience and graciousness welcoming me into the government fold.

I feel like we got some good things accomplished: cooperation on accommodating the Flats demolition waste in the County landfill; a new stream gauge that will be placed in the Oneida Creek watershed in 2018 to help improve the accuracy of flood height predictions; an awareness of and commitment to not having a waiting list for child care subsidies for income-eligible working families; a Child Care Affordability forum that will be hosted by Madison County DSS and Cornell Cooperative Extension in 2018; and the acquisition of Delphi Falls as a County Park, which was made possible by an extremely generous private donor. These are all initiatives I was able to push for or help along, with our hard-working County Departments bringing them to fruition. My own special con- tribution was writing a new County policy establishing an objective framework for the award of County funds to nonprofits, bringing it to the other Supervisors for their thoughts and revisions, and seeing it passed by the full Board in November.

I also want to thank those of you who reached out to me with your thoughts and comments on County issues during this time. I plan to stay involved as much as I can, and I hope you will too. Margaret Milman-Barris,

Oneida