On the ground

Sidney launches Conversations with discussion of town power

December 7th. 2007, 9:37am

The first in our series of meetings, called Conversations On … , went off without a hitch yesterday and an informative time was had by all.

The Sidney Democratic Committee played host to Leon Kalmus, former District 4 representative to the Otsego County Board of Representatives and, while he objects to the term, he really is an expert on town power.

More specifically, he is an expert on the history of town power, the legislation that allows it and a lot of the mechanics involved in launching a municipal power company anywhere in the state.

We were pleased to see a decent number of people joined us for the meeting, very interested citizens who asked really good questions. Sidney Mayor Jim Warren, who received a personal invitation from the Committee, joined us for the conversation. Recently elected Otsego County legislator Rich Murphy was also a member of the audience.

From what we learned, it seems that the option of municipal power is one that is worth exploring further. The town of Sidney (and, for that matter, Delaware County) has that option because it is written into the laws of the state. We could either buy from NYSEG or we could get into generating our own power and even building our own transmission and delivery infrastructure, if we wanted to. And, the best part about it, doing so really would lower the cost of electricity for the homes and businesses in our community.

We hope this is a conversation that will continue in the months ahead. That, after all, was the point of the exercise.

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