RHINEBECK —Village and town officials held a virtual public hearing to follow up on the resolution for consolidating the village and town courts, which became official on October 30th after a period during which a public petition and legal filing in opposition of the referendum could have been submitted.
There were no legal filings made, but there was an informal petition created by village residents. Elected officials said Thursday evening they would honor the informal petition, hence the additional public hearing.
A large majority of both town and village officials backed the consolidation for a number of reasons, many of which had already been outlined in September when it was first resolved. The village and town courts are in close proximity, which periodically caused confusion to individuals reporting to court. Also, since there are two separate computer systems, both of which have to file reports with the state individually, a number of redundancies and inefficient scheduling results.
The village also needs to meet handicap compliances, have more robust security, a holding area for those in custody and a private conferencing room for counsel/clients.
Village Mayor Gary Bassett said consolidating can help mitigate these problems and will ultimately improve service to both village and town.
“By consolidating the court, we can make many improvements. Some of those improvements require security measures that will be made to the court to not only protect the court but protect the people in the court,” said Bassett. “Besides services and improvements to the customer portion of that and protection of the court, really that’s the main genesis of driving to make this consolidation.”
There are also some expected property tax savings. According to the report made by the LaBerge Group, it is approximately 10 cents per $1,000 of assessed value.
The consolidated court would run off one computer system, corrections would only have to come to Rhinebeck once for the transport of inmates to their court cases and both the town and village judges would preside there.
Rhinebeck Town Supervisor Elizabeth Spinzia said the town is in favor of keeping village court employees. However, she criticized Village Court Judge William Sanchez for not participating in any of the public discussions regarding personnel, or the consolidation in general because he is the one with the authority to approve it.
“What upset me most is this air of misinformation that’s out there; and again, I lay this at the feet of Judge Sanchez who will not come and discuss this with us,” said Spinzia. “He will not participate. He will not protect his employees. He is making this about him, not about what’s best for the town or the village,” she said.
Spinzia maintained the referendum will move forward. A date for the referendum will be set on November 10th at the village’s next regular board meeting.
