Village Treasurer Mark Socolo talked first:

He said, "Currently, we have three different authorizations for borrowing. $1.5 million to renovate the St. John's Substation on the other end of town, currently in Bond Anticipation Note format, with short term borrowing. With closure of the project we will bond those dollars and have a more concrete cost estimate. For the Water Fund, we have two separate authorizations that allow us to borrow up to $1.4 million dollars. Currently, we've done projects on East Elm, Cornwall, Walnut, Florence, Lake, Commercial and currently have about $287,000 left which we're going to use to redo the waterline from the Main Street Bridge to Elm Street. That will take place in the spring. For Sewer we have one authorization to borrow up to $750,000. We've done work on Lake, Commercial, Florence, and Walnut. We've painted the Waste Water Treatment Plant and we've done work at the Cherry Street Pump Station as well. Lastly, we have authorization for $3.6 million which would include the construction of this [village office] building, and to renovate the Firehouse. Up to this point we've spent $3,163,000. $3,146,000 was for this building here. $17,000 and change was utilized to do work on the Firehouse up to this point. Currently we have $436,000 and change left to spend on the firehouse and demolishing the old village office building. The $3 million bond issue taken a couple of months ago was for financing this building. The total cost was $3.146 million. We've spent approximately $140,000 out of the capital reserve - money we've set aside knowing that this work was going to be done. We've financed the rest through long term debt (bonds)".

Then Gary Smith (in full campaign mode) talked at length. Here is what he said:

For a number of years, a lot of work wasn't done. There was a lot of deferred maintenance that went on. It's expensive anytime you have to replace water, sewer lines, equipment, plant, etc. I don't think in the past that we have kept up to speed with the replacement and renewal of those facilities and planning for the future. In the last several years the Penn Yan Municipal Utilities Board (MUB) has been planning a number of these projects that the public is now aware of having been undertaken and the cost associated with that. Although there has been some dramatic changes in the rate structure recently, when you look at the rate structure over time, over the past decade or two, if the MUB had raised rates 2% every year, it would be equal to the most recent rate increases. So in many ways we've put off these improvements and now we're paying for them as opposed to paying for and matching the true cost of service with those consuming those services. Over the last several years the village and the MUB have been looking at how do we accurately cost these projects and spread that cost out to the rate payers and taxpayers. Although there have been some dramatic rate changes in the MUB, they're really not out of line with what annual increases should have been and also we've done studies with communities around us with their rates and we're actually very competitive now. Nobody likes to see their rates increase but I think there is a very important lesson to be learned in this process [emphasis added] which is the need to raise rates annually and spread that true cost out over time so we don't have this kind of sticker shock. We still have a number of projects that are underway and will continue to consume resources.

On the village side, the work obviously is complete here on the village hall. The Firehouse project has been re-evaluated as many of you know. We have completed I believe the foundation now and by us stepping back and taking a look at how we approached that project I think we have a much better sense today of how to move forward. And at this point we are ready to start moving forward on the Firehouse project on the design phase and addressing those needs over there. We do have monies available from borrowing to address that. And I'm fairly confident that we'll be able to address the top priorities at least the short term elevators, doors, windows, and those items that have been identified as high priority. Again, related to these projects is also the village court. We've had ongoing discussions regarding village court and where the ultimate home of that will be.

A lot of these projects were planned four or five years ago before there was a Gulf War, before there was an increase in the cost of materials, before many changes that we now take for granted today took place. It's important to step back and re-evaluate those decisions that were made several years ago and ask if they're still valid and still in the best interest of the village, still the most cost effective way to do something. And willingness to revisit these things and say well, yeah, we said we're going to do this but we're willing to be flexible now. A number of issues such as the Firehouse, the village court, are still under discussion.

One of the questions related to these projects is what is the cost to the rate payer or the tax payer. When we talked about the village hall project, we talked about how we would be financing this project with a variety of cash flows from the village, from the municipal. We talked about how we had debt that was scheduled to be retired, and how taking on new debt would take the place of those old debt payments and that the impact to the rate payer and taxpayer would be nominal. That's been our strategy in these building projects and it continues to be our strategy and although it has been suggested otherwise, we can demonstrate that this financing cash flow model is still the model we follow.