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No resolutions, just hopes, for 2016

We have just rung in 2016 with ball drops, fireworks and champagne toasts along with a skyscraper fire in Dubai and several terrorist scares in Germany. The new year seems very much like old times.

This is the point where many people are prone to make new year’s resolutions. Usually most resolutions last until the end of January. The problem with resolutions is well illustrated by the popular resolution to lose weight and exercise more in the new year.

During the holidays, in anticipation of your resolution, you end the old year by eating more and gaining weight. In the new year, shocked by your weight gain, you hurry to the gym and exercise like mad, becoming sore and exhausted in the process. Consequently, in the end, you stop going to the gym and old eating habits return.

I never make “new year” resolutions because I think that when you resolve to do something that is good for you, you do it then no matter if it’s January, May or October. More than 30 years ago, one day in November, I quit a two-pack a day cigarette habit because it seemed it was time. I didn’t wait for the new year.

This also is the time when people look back at the past year and ahead to the new year and give voice to what they hope for in the coming year. Like a lot of “Miss America” contestants, I wish for world peace in 2016. But since the day mankind became the dominate species on Earth, total peace hasn’t existed. Therefore the things I hope for the coming year are lower on the scale and closer to home.

I hope that Silver Creek’s leaders will find ways to lessen the impact of loan repayments on citizens who already pay the highest village taxes in the county. This administration didn’t get us in the mess, but they have the unenviable task of dealing with the issue. I wish them luck.

I hope those same leaders, given the harsh budget realities the village faces will, in concert with the town of Hanover, come up with a policing plan for the village that will adequately protect lives and property. If they don’t, gun sales in the area will probably spike.

I also hope that Silver Creek leaders and citizens will finally see that a municipality of some 2,700 people that has lost its largest employer and with it the taxes that business paid, can no longer go it alone. With a declining tax base, financing future capital improvements will likely become impossible and even paying for normal expenses, like street repair and equipment replacement, will become a struggle. In the end dissolution of the village will go from being a possibility to being a necessity.

I fervently hope Silver Creek government, and all governments for that matter, will remember they work for us and not the other way around. Too often Silver Creek’s leaders give the impression of going out of their way to avoid public scrutiny. Meetings are sometimes not announced and the OBSERVER has noted that the village sometimes plays fast and lose with the Open Meetings Law, notifying the paper of a meeting less than 24 hours in advance. As a citizen of Silver Creek, I have begun to wonder what our leaders don’t want us to know about such issues as the monumental debt repayment crises the village faces.

I hope that 2016 will mark the beginning of a movement toward the elimination of our multiple layers of government in Chautauqua County. Consolidation at the county level will eliminate waste, duplication of services and multiple tax bills.

In a recent series of interviews in the OBSERVER, retiring County Legislator Keith Ahlstrom eloquently stated the case for county government. I hope that more voices like his will emerge in both political parties. In the interview he stated that he does not expect to see county government in his lifetime, but I hope that both of us will be around long enough to see the beginning of the process.

I hope that Albany will start cleaning up its act this year and that those senators and assemblymen who see state government as something of a personal asset will be forced to seek other employment. However, for that to occur citizens have to be engaged, and to know the issues and candidates. Then when we vote, and it is vital that we do, we vote for the best person regardless of party affiliation.

I hope that in November we elect a president who will govern in the best interest of all citizens, exercise the powers of the presidency as the Constitution intended, and who understands that active American leadership in the world is all that stands between international stability and international catastrophe.

Finally I wish everyone a belated happy and prosperous 2016.

Tom Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com

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