from ALBERT COLONE

City of Oneonta’s Misfortune

Also A Drag On Town, County

To the Editor:

The City of Oneonta has been designated the fifth poorest city in New York State!  It’s a real depressing condition that has gradually emerged over a couple of generation.

Though the city is not alone in local poverty, likewise families within the entire surrounding area have been on a sinking ship into poverty, too – when in fact we should be one of the wealthiest small urban markets in the entire state!

Who’s at fault?  Typically, local folks blame Albany and in some cases, D.C. However, the leading candidates for our ever-increasing poverty is the Town of Oneonta, which has had a multi-generational opposition to consolidate with the city.

And who are the losers?  Town residents for having to live in an “Appalachia-like” community, city residents of course, and indeed all people who live within our outlying little towns and villages.

The town’s continued selfish stubbornness is costing the immediate Greater Oneonta area somewhere between $5 to 7.5 million annually (maybe more) in new public revenue; that’s at least $50-75 million over 10 years.

One united City of Oneonta, a much wealthier

Oneonta, would finally be able to do the things it currently can’t.

Like moving aggressively on the Downtown DRI.  Like completing the Southside water project.  We could plan and work as one in the upgrade of local energy and infrastructure matters.  And in the common development of the former D&H Railyards.

The consolidation solution would also generate the respect of state, national and private-sector business leaders, everywhere, private investors far more willing to invest here.

Nope, the town leaders must all believe it’s better to keep our area community and it’s people in a perpetual state of economic weakness and poverty.

Town taxpayers and voters should be up in arms against a failed public vision and leadership.

And county government?  Instead of investing in the City of Oneonta, the county’s most important municipality, they pass off to the city every initiative to make the place even poorer, while annually squirreling away sales and lodging tax revenue to support keeping countywide property taxes artificially low.

The County has the good fortune of generating three times more in sales taxes than it does from property tax revenue.  Instead of committing some of those county resources to invest annually in a build-up of Oneonta area economic and tourism development, likely unbeknownst to County leaders, they are actually blindly shortchanging their own treasury by stifling expanded commerce in Oneonta.  Call it benign neglect!

For the sake of turning the corner on Upstate poverty, the State of New York needs to immediately legislate expanded incentives to force more municipal consolidations, while in the same legislation imposing limits on the percentages of sales tax revenues New York counties can apply to their general funds!

ALBERT COLONE

Resident, Sixth Ward

City of Oneonta