Fredonia Mayor Michael Ferguson emphasized Monday that local municipal consolidation is at an early, strictly exploratory stage.

“Let’s please put this in perspective. It’s called the future of the north county. No one is deciding anyone’s future. It is a discussion that elected leaders have been elected to do,” Ferguson said during his mayoral report at a Fredonia Board of Trustees meeting.

Ferguson revealed that a second meeting has been held among local officials to discuss consolidation. “County Executive (PJ) Wendel had called for the first meeting, we attended the first meeting — this is meeting number two of possible ideas.”

Fredonia’s first-term mayor had extensive comments on consolidation of municipalities, and the financial perils that make it appealing to some.

“It is absolutely wonderful that we all want our separate communities, our separate ways — and as our relatives, and our parents and great-grandparents will tell you, this is not like it was 20 years ago,” Ferguson said. “Nothing is. It’s far more expensive. This is Economics 101.

“What I mean by that is, when you have a population declining…you have a declining tax base. Which means you have less money coming in. And yet, all of you who have a checkbook, all of you who pay for your home and groceries, know that costs have risen.

“Take that from the government’s standpoint, where every contract has risen every year, where the costs of operating … has risen greatly over the years.” Ferguson kept raising one hand when discussing costs, but kept the other hand steady and low as he said, “And yet the money coming in sits here.”

Ferguson then got to one more important point: “These (consolidation) meetings are nothing more than to say, ‘What if.'”

He added, “For too long, communities our size have just kept moving on, meeting agenda to agenda, without any vision, without any plan of where the community is going to be in the next five to 10 years. That’s wrong.”