Over the past two nights, Mark Cronin, one of the co-founders of Concerned Citizens of Huntington, has addressed two civic organizations in Elwood; on Tuesday night he spoke at the Elwood Taxpayers Association meeting, and on Wednesday at the Old Chester Hills Civic Association meeting.
For anyone who may have missed the articles in Newsday, and in The Long-Islander, and perhaps it has appeared in other papers as well, Concerned Citizens of Huntington is a group which is promoting a change in the way the four non-Supervisor members of the Huntington Town Board are selected. At the present time the four members are elected on an "at-large" basis, where they run in the entire Town instead of running on a district, or councilmanic district, basis.
This has had the effect of promoting an expensive campaign, thereby limiting effective competition for these Town Board seats and also making it more likely that large contributors and other power brokers may have undue influence in the process.
It has also resulted in a Town Board which consists of five members of the local Democratic Party, and, in 170 recorded votes from 1/1/09 through 3/24/09, all 170 were unanimous votes by the Town Board.
And, if you imagine that might have been an aberration, in 2008 there were 729 recorded votes, and of those 721 votes were unanimous; I'll save you from doing the math, as that is 98.9% of the recorded votes.
Now, some of those votes are undoubtedly on mundane matters, so unanimity on those would be understandable, but anyone who attends Town Board meetings with some frequency, as I have done over the past several years, knows that there are numerous matters of substance as well as mundane matters which come before the Town Board.
99% seems a disturbing statistic.
Mr. Cronin also provided some very interesting statistics as comparison for our Town Board members who, on the current at-large system basis, are each theoretically representing about 200,000 people, since the population of the Town is just about that size.
In contrast:
(1) each member of the New York State Assembly represents approximately 130,000 people; and,
(2) each Suffolk County Legislator represents approximately 81,000 people.
Therefore, Mr. Cronin noted, a change to district representation, where four districts in the Town of Huntington would be created, would have each non-Supervisor member of the Town Board representing approximately 50,000 people, allowing the Councilman/Councilwoman to get to know his or her constituents better than they presently can, and allowing less money to be spent on the election for these positions.
Given that a Town is a lower level of government than a County, and that a County is a lower level of government than a State, it would also be much more logical to have the four non-Supervisor Town Board members representing 50,000 people.
Mr. Cronin advised that Concerned Citizens of Huntington is routing petitions to enable a ballot initiative for the proposal to convert to Council Districts, and that a minimum of 3,100 signatures is required. Also, signing the petition does not bind the signers to ultimately vote for the Council District conversion, merely to allow it to be placed on the ballot so that all Huntington residents can decide this matter for themselves.
The group was co-founded by Dennis Garetano (Republican) and Mark Cronin (Democrat), and it is now supported by individual Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives, Independence Party members, and Working Families Party members.
In fact, the only official "party organization" which seems opposed to the measure is the machine of the local Democratic Party.
Gee, what a surprise.
Before he departed, Mr. Cronin noted that Concerned Citizens of Huntington is not only non-partisan, as its structure and diverse party supporters makes clear, it is also a temporary organization which will go out of existence once the Council District structure for the Town of Huntington is a reality.
They will have no role in the selection of any possible candidates, and, indeed, they note that some of the present Town Board members could end up representing Districts in which they now reside. Of course, it is also possible that two current members could end up in competition, if they happened to live in the same District.
For my part, I feel that it would be very good to have each Town Board representative live in the same district that he or she was representing, just as we have for other legislative bodies in the County and State.
Mr. Cronin provided some very useful information and invited anyone to also go to their website (www.ConcernedCitizensofHuntington.com) for a more complete presentation.
Jerry Hannon
About Me
- Jerry Hannon
- After a thirty year career at Chase, serving as a Managing Director and Global Relationship Manager, I took early retirement in the summer of 2000, and that enabled me to become active in community, school district, and town activities. Since 2004, I have been a member of the Elwood School District's Citizens Finance/Budget Advisory Committee, and since 2005 I have been a member of its Audit Committee, and serve on three other committees of the district. During the 2006/07 school year I was President of the Elwood PTA Council, and I remain active in PTA activities. In the community I serve as EVP for Community Affairs of the Old Chester Hills Civic Association, and served the Town of Huntington as a member of its Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee. For thirty five years, I have been a Director of the NY Council of the Navy League, and currently am Chair of its Audit Committee. A Vietnam Veteran, I retired as a Commander in the US Navy Reserve, and previously commanded two Naval Security Group reserve units.