Utica/Rome Voter Issue 32; April 2010 Newsletter of the League of Women Voters, Utica/Rome Metro Area P.O. Box 24 Washington Mills, NY 13479 (315) 733-6244 www.lwvuticarome.org Officers 2009-2010 Co-Presidents Carole Torok-Huxtable (822-5283/827-4203) dchuxtable@windstream.net Donna Gillette (865-6546) donnagillette72@yahoo.com 1 st Vice-President Johanna Albrecht (732-3769) jalbrecht2@verizon.net 2 nd Vice-President Margaret Pfeiffer (839-5682) megfish@roadrunner.com Treasurer Audrey Sotendahl (797-3282) audrey25@verizon.net Secretary Barbara Brookes (853-2723) bbrookes2003@yahoo.com ANNUAL LUNCHEON MEETING WHEN: Saturday, May 1 st, 2010 11:30 a.m. registration 12 noon. Speaker begins after lunch WHERE: SPEAKER: COST: Dorothy Smith Advocacy Center -- RCIL 1607 Genesee Street, Utica (corner of Scott St., formerly Temple Beth El) (THIS LOCATION IS FULLY ACCESSIBLE) Susan Multer President, LWV of Steuben County $20.00 per person Call or email Reservations to Trudy (trewck@roadrunner.com, 733-6244) by Fri., April 23 rd Bring a guest! About the Speaker Susan Multer has been active in raising awareness about the dangers and risks of Hydrofracking. She has organized a number of information events and lead a workshop on this topic at the LWV state convention last year. She has also had speaking engagements with other local leagues to raise awareness. We are lucky to have her speak to us about this issue. Directors Lilian (Trudy) Kennedy Karen McBride Isabel Chiquoine Lisa Ostrander (733-6244) (724-2359) (853-2925) (736-3898) trewck@roadrunner.com skiesprit@aol.com ichiquoi@hamilton.edu lostrander@aol.com Lucile Argenzia Jean Pierce Lori Wasielewski Sharen Barboza (337-7043) (797-4109) (736-7425) (534-9253) luciluci67@yahoo.com pierce4273@roadrunner.com loriwaz@gmail.com sharenb@gmail.com Off Board Specialists Barbara Weaver Paul Baker Donna L. Rubin buckyw1@verizon.net dormark@markson.net loomisrubin@windstream.net
* Program Considerations for Adoption at Annual Meeting In conjunction with the By-Laws of the League of Women Voters of the Utica/Rome Metropolitan Area, the following are presented for consideration at the Annual Meeting on May 1, 2010: Continue the local study issue of Smart Growth, including the Sewer Study monitoring the Permit Compliance and Abatement Project Continue with plan to work with local Boards of Elections as necessary to educate citizens on the selected certified voting systems to implement the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in New York. Please see last month s voter for nominations and the annual budget! CO-PRESIDENTS CORNER It was a great way to welcome Spring with our March 20th general meeting on Fair Pay/Pay Equity. We are especially appreciative of our guest presenters, Lois Haignere and Barbara Thomas, NY State League issue specialists who traveled from Albany and Saratoga Counties respectively, and to Deborah Hagenbuch, Executive Director of the Central New York Labor Agency in Utica, Lisha Thayer, an employee at Remington Arms in Ilion, and Natalie Brown, newly appointed Executive Director of the YWCA of the Mohawk Valley, Utica. Although we have made progress in the pay arena, there are still challenges. Our presenters educated us on the issues and the continued need for vigilance. Our Annual Meeting is a luncheon on May 1 st at The Dorothy Smith Advocacy Center of RCIL in Utica with a wonderful buffet and an interesting speaker on an environmental issue that is geographically in some our own backyards, the concerns raised with drilling for natural gas in the rich shale areas of upstate NY. This is also an important meeting for all League members as we elect officers, approve our budget and program/local study issue(s) for the upcoming year. The board rolled the hot topic program meeting scheduled for April 24 th into the Annual Meeting since they were only a week apart. With your input, we will plan other hot topic meetings for the upcoming year. Several League members attended the presentation on the documentary, Split Estates on Wednesday March 31 st on the process of hydrofracking for natural gas in western U.S. More on this topic will be presented on April 15 th at 7:30 p.m. at MVCC, Rome Campus, Plumley Auditorium, sponsored by the Rome Academy of Science. We send speedy recovery wishes to Mary Chapin. Our treasurer, Audrey Sotendahl, is up and about. If you know of any League members who are in need of healing thoughts and get well wishes, please let us know. Remember that Board meetings are generally held on the first Saturday of each month at the New Hartford Library, 10:00 a.m. to noon next meeting is April 10th. Please let us know any agenda items, issues, or concerns that you would like your board to address. -- Donna Gillette and Carole Torok-Huxtable, Co-Presidents WELCOME TO THE LEAGUE Our league is very happy to welcome new member, Lucretia Hunt. Lucretia has been a long time community activist who currently serves on the Utica Charter Revision and Master Plan committees. She describes herself as very political and, over the years, has been especially involved with the Women s Movement. This interest may have come through her mother who was a member of this league years ago when women were finding their voice politically. Lucretia continues to be interested and active in any area that she believes will help the community at large. HELP US WITH THE DIRECTORY Perhaps you ve heard that our league is planning to put out a for members only directory. We are now asking that you check the accuracy of your contact information and, if you wish, indicate an area or areas of interest. You might ask:
What is an area of interest? Must I have expertise in that area? Many league members have an area of interest in general good government issues meaning voter registration and services, candidate nights, transparency in government, redistricting, campaign finance reform, ethics in government, consolidation of services/shared services, judiciary issues and other related issues. Other members have become involved in environmental concerns, e.g., clean air, clean water, the local sewer study and the extraction of natural gas from local shale. There are also areas of health care and health care reform, women s and children s issues, issues of fair pay/pay equity. Some members will choose an area because they have considerable knowledge and experience in an area from their work or study. Others will choose because they would like more education in that area. Indicating an area of interest is not a commitment. The board would like our local league to better serve the needs of its members by linking people with common interests. Please don t hesitate to name several areas of interest. We look forward to your input in compiling our Directory. Please call or e-mail Meg Pfeiffer, Membership Chair, megfish@roadrunner.com (839-5682) to verify your contact information and to identify your area(s) of interest. --Meg Pfeiffer, Membership Chair FAIR PAY/PAY EQUITY TALK WELL ATTENDED At least 30 League members and friends turned out Saturday, March 20 th to hear a panel of five speakers, moderated by Co-President Carole Torok-Huxtable, advocating for fair pay/pay equity in the workplace. The five: Barbara Thomas and Lois Haigner of the NYS League, Debra Hagenbuch of the Central New York Labor Agency, Natalie Brown, Executive Director of the YWCA, and Lisha Thayer, Secretary of the United Mine Workers of America, Local 717, gave some historical background on the issue, along with their personal experiences. Since 1985, the League has been a member of the New York State Committee for Pay Equity, which worked to further the principle of equal pay for jobs of comparable worth and to close the gap of wage discrimination. Since the setasides of 1986-87 and 1987-88, (a funding pool to cover pay equity adjustment for NY state employees), there has been no reexamination of pay equity for those in state service and no extension of pay equity to all those in the private and broader public sectors, including cities, counties, and school districts. The New York State Fair (L. Haigner, B. Thomas, L. Thayer, D. Hagenbuch, N. Brown, C. Torok-Huxtable)
Pay Equity Act, strongly written enforceable legislation, came about in October 2003 through the efforts of the League of Women Voters of NYS and its many NYSPEC (New York State Pay Equity Coalition) partners. If passed, it would provide equal pay for jobs of comparable worth in both the public and private sectors. Comparable worth is also called job title pay equity. Since it is recognized that jobs traditionally done by women and people of color have been systematically undervalued in the marketplace, a gender-neutral job evaluation system is needed where the economic value of the job is key in determining pay. The pay equity reform movement proposes that the same job evaluation system be used to compare all job titles, regardless of the gender and race of those working in them, and pay job titles accordingly. Indeed, most of the western world, including the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, since 1963, has required that salaries be established using gender-neutral job evaluation systems in both the public and private sectors. Now is a good time for us to contact our legislators for the passage of the Fair Pay Act A3911/S955. One visible way to do this is to attend the Fair Pay Summit and Advocacy Day, sponsored by NYSPEC, and being held TUESDAY, APRIL 20 th (9:30 a.m. Noon) in the Well of Albany s Legislative Office Building (LOB). For more information, contact either of our Co-Presidents or call (518)464-0991. Let s keep advocating and get this bill passed! Karen McBride, Voter Service Committee BOARD MEETING SUMMARY March 6, 2010 Meeting called to order at 10:16 a.m. by co-president Donna Gillette. Present: Johanna Albrecht, Donna Gillette, Lori Wasielewski, Ibby Chiquoine, Karen McBride, Audrey Sotendahl, Meg Pfeiffer, Barbara Brookes Excused: S. Barboza, T. Kennedy, C. Torok-Huxtable, L. Argenzia, L. Ostrander MINUTES: Minutes of Feb. 6, 2010 corrected as follows: Audrey Sotendahl excused and MLK School (not JFK) under Community Coalition on Healthy Foods. Minutes accepted as corrected. TREASURER S REPORT: Audrey distributed the monthly financial report for January-February 2010. Per member payments have been sent to state and National. MEMBERSHIP: 55 members; no change. VOTER SERVICES: League will be represented by Karen McBride and Kathleen Seiselmyer at a voter registration booth at a Mohawk Valley Community Action agency event at MLK School on March 11, 2010 from 6:00 8:00 p.m. Co-sponsors for voter registration drives include NAACP and the Latino American Assn. Karen shared a March Mohawk Valley Event Calendar (www.eventcalendarcny.com) as a possible source of sites and events for voter registration efforts. The Voter Services committee needs to meet soon to start planning for Fall 2010 election activities. At the present time we are waiting for a meeting date with the Oneida Co. Election Commissioners in mid-late March. OLD BUSINESS: Special committee status update: Sewage No update; mtg not held, inclement weather. Citizen Transparency Public Documents Audit Grant Update: defer to April. Consolidation proposal from LWVNY consensus questions/discussion: Barbara and Karen reported on this hot topic discussion meeting on Government Modernization. 14 League members attended the meeting on February 27 th and reached consensus on criteria for judging standards for consolidation proposals or constitutional amendements. Group discussed relevance of this study to the Oneida Co. 911 consolidation proposal as well as methods of funding proposed consolidation, dissolution or shared services. Report will be prepared for next newsletter. NEW BUSINESS: Program planning March 20th General Membership meeting: Panel will present information on Fair Pay/Pay Equity. Johanna emphasized having an experienced Moderator to guide the discussion. Also this meeting provides a good opportunity to honor women in our community. Donna & Carole will try to find unsung heroines in the Mohawk Valley Community Action agency.
Donna would like to coordinate our meeting with the Mohawk Valley Women s History meeting on the same day at the Oneida Co. Historical Society (Men s Reader s Theatre at 1:30 p.m.). Other Women s History Month events: March 13 at 1:30 p.m.: film Seneca Falls ; March 27 at 1:00 p.m.: video about Victoria Woodhull, first Presidential candidate. Students Inside Albany, April 11 14, 2010. Board members should contact Donna with names of students who are interested in this program. Newsletter: Deadline for April issue: March 19, 2010. 501-C-3 tax exempt status: Committee plans to meet soon. Audrey would like to serve on the committee. Anyone interested in being on this committee should let Donna know. State Board Report Items: LWVUS plans to increase PMP by $.60 per member in 2011 and $.40 increase in 2010. Audrey proposed increasing household membership to $90.00 instead of $85.00. Dues may have to be increased next year. National LWV Update: Carole & Donna plan to write to the editor of the Observer-Dispatch regarding transparency study/visibility in government for Sunshine Week (Mar 14-20, 2010). Geneva LWV held an educational forum on hydrofracking the Marcellus Shale on March 8, 2010 at the Finger Lakes Institute at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY. OTHER BUSINESS: Audrey suggested that our League make a monetary contribution to the New Hartford Public Library for use of the meeting room. The board voted to send the library a donation of $50.00. Also approved was a $25.00 ad in the Oneida Co. Historical Society auction booklet. Audrey asked whether payment should be made to Print Pack n Post for photocopying the newsletter. Meg will distribute a membership roster at the next meeting. Members will verify information and add areas of interest. Resolution on Health Care to be presented at National Convention. National LWV is asking state and local leagues to consider a single payer system of providing health care. A health care group, Nationalhealthcare4us, drafted the petition. This resolution will be discussed at our next board meeting. Come to a luncheon on March 26 th to celebrate League s 90 th anniversary and women s history month at the Radisson in Syracuse. Karen DeCrow will be the featured speaker. Cost for League members is $21.00. Anyone interested should call Barbara Shuck. Since there was no further business to discuss, meeting was adjourned at 11:42 a.m. NEXT MEETING: Saturday, April 10, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. -- Barbara Brookes, Secretary LWVNYS Consolidation/Shared Services Study and Consensus Questions As our League met on Saturday February 27 th at a pot-luck lunch at The Dorothy Smith Advocacy Center of RCIL in Utica to discuss the issue of Consolidating Local Government and Shared Services for the State Study, we referred to the report, Consolidating Local Government, prepared by Noreen Fisher, Chair of the LWVNYS Government Consolidation Committee. We also used the Discussion Guide/Consensus Questions, Government Consolidation/Shared Services State Study dated January 26, 2010. Carole Torok-Huxtable, Co-President, served as Discussion Leader and Barbara Brookes, Secretary, served as Recorder for this meeting. After explanation and discussion among League members, we were able to arrive at consensus for many of the Consensus Questions posed to us from the LWVNYS Study. To refresh everyone on what is meant by Consensus, we iterated that consensus is not a vote, not a percentage of members, but a sense of the group member agreement. We also reviewed the main terms and their inter-relationships relevant to this study: Governmental Entities, Standards, Dissolution, Consolidation, and Major Shared Services, to enable us to better understand the questions presented. Our responses will be sent to LWVNYS prior to June 1. For those of you who were unable to join us, we wanted to keep you informed of what this study is about. Government Consolidation and Shared Services is a complicated topic and involves the intricacies of state and municipal law as the state and local government deal with Government Modernization. Those of us living in New York State know that we have some of the highest property
taxes in the nation and that we have some of the largest number of governmental entities spread over counties, cities, towns, villages, districts, and authorities. At the 53 rd Biennial LWVNYS Convention, the delegates adopted a new study of up to two years on the topics of government modernization through dissolution, consolidation, or the pursuit of shared services to reduce costs and taxes. The League currently has no comprehensive position that would enable it to lobby for or against recommendations to consolidate governmental entities or services, nor to comment on current or future legislation at the state level which impacts the consolidation or dissolution of governmental entities and/or pursuit of major shared services proposals. To be able to deal with these issues at both the state and local levels, the League must first reach some understanding of what common standards should be employed by state and local Leagues in assessing the wisdom of various initiatives to rearrange how governmental services are provided. Hence, all local Leagues have been asked to come to consensus on the questions that were developed by the state League s Government Modernization Committee. The Consensus Questions focus on two main areas to determine what standards should apply (1) when the League evaluates current and future legislation or constitutional amendments that apply to the dissolution/consolidation of government units or pursuit of major shared services, and (2) when local Leagues evaluate a specific consolidation or dissolution of a governmental entity or a major shared services proposal. Stated below are the Consensus Questions. If you have any comments or want more information, please contact Carole Torok-Huxtable at 822-5283 or dchuxtable@windstream.net. I also refer you to the following websites for more in-depth information: http://www.lwvny.org/consolidation/discguide011010.pdf Consensus Questions and Discussion http://www.lwvny.org/consolidation/fisher_fullreport1109.pdf Consolidating State Government UPCOMING EVENTS Utica/Rome LWV Board meeting: Annual Membership Meeting: Oneida County Board of Legislators*: Rome Common Council: Utica City School District Board: Rome City School District Board**: Oneida County Naturalization Ceremonies: Federal Naturalization Ceremonies: 10 a.m., Saturday, April 10 th New Hartford Public Library, New Hartford Noon, Saturday, May 1 st RCIL 1607 Genesee St., Utica Oneida Cty Off Bldg., 800 Park Ave, 10 th Fl., Utica Apr. 14 th 2:00 p.m., Apr. 28 th 7:00 p.m. May 12 th 2:00 p.m., May 26 th 7:00 p.m. 7:30 p.m., Rome City Hall Wed., Apr. 14 th, Apr 28 th, May 12 th, May 26 th 6:00p.m. Conkling Building, 1115 Mohawk St. Tues., Apr. 13 th, Apr. 27 th, May 11 th, May 25 th 7:00 p.m., Wednesdays Apr. 7 th /May 5 th District Office (Business Meeting) Apr. 21 st Strough M.S./May 19 th RFA H.S. 10:30a.m., Oneida County Office Bldg, Utica Fridays, April 16 th, September 24 th, November 5 th 11am, Alexander Pirnie Bldg, 10 Broad St. Utica Thurs. May 13 th, June 24 th, Dec 2 nd 11am Fort Stanwix, Rome Thurs, Sept. 16 th * Meetings can be seen on cable TV: Utica area - Channel 3 on the following Tues at 1:00 p.m., Wed. at 8:00 p.m. and Sat at 2:00 p.m.; Rome area - Channel 99 on the following Wed at 8:00 p.m. ** Meetings are televised on Channel 99, on Tues at 9:00 p.m. and on Thurs at 7:30 p.m. ***
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