As a life-long resident of the town of Windsor, I have been only too happy to become involved with the Windsor Partnership, an energetic and focused group of Windsorites.

The Windsor Partnership, which includes both "old timers" such as myself, as well as "newer arrivals" who have been drawn to the physical beauty of Eastern Broome, and to the strong sense of community in our area.

The Windsor Partnership is working hard to develop and facilitate ideas they hope will economically invigorate the Village and Town of Windsor.

Its further initiatives are discussed below but the Partnership already has two accomplishments to its credit :

• a brochure that highlights the historical richness of our area
• the Arts Festival described at left
  

With the invaluable assistance of Town of Sanford Supervisor, Dewey Decker, I was able to finalize a long unresolved issue involving the duly negotiated payment in lieu of taxes from the Central New York Railroad Corporation to municipalities in our district.

The CNYRC had been in arrears on these payments, and had been unresponsive to the inquiries of local officials, for some time. In response to pressures I was able to apply, the CNYRC has produced the following overdue payments:

• Town of Windsor: $1,460.09
  
• Town of Kirkwood: $1,315.91
  
• Village of Deposit: $2,196.51
  
• Town of Sanford: $16,742.10

Steve chats with U.S.Representative Tim Arcuri at the Small Business Seminar held in Eastern Broome at Farm Family Insurance in Harpursville.

Discussing Eastern Broome issues with the fifty attendees at a Talk of the Town event at the Windsor Community House.

The Broome County Legislature approved a partnership with New York State for an emergency notification system which has the ability to call, text message, or email people in a targeted geographical area during emergencies. Broome County is one of the first counties in the state to install such a system. Given our county's recent experiences with flooding, in eastern Broome in June of 2006 and western Broome in November of 2006, the legislature was keenly aware of the uses of such a system in our area.

Please visit
https://users.nyalert.gov/login.aspx
to register for this service.

In order to be certain that I am well-informed of issues of importance to each of the communities within my district, I formed an advisory group consisting of citizens from each of the municipalities I serve.

This group provided me with a great deal of valuable perspective and information, and in addition, this forum facilitated a valuable exchange of ideas between the communities within our district.

I very much appreciated these citizens giving freely of their valuable time to share their insights and concerns with me. This group has continued as an on-going, email-based "virtual" community, thus continuing to provide the benefits of shared ideas--just as the old folk wisdom always had it: two heads are often better than one and many hands make light work.

When I took office in January of 2007, the universal concern of each and every local elected board in our district was to maintain the sales tax distribution formula.

I am pleased to report that no changes have been made in the formula. The combination of holding the line on this formula and increased sales revenue in Broome County has resulted in a substantial amount of additional funds flowing to your local municipality, thereby preventing any significant property tax increases.

Assuring the continued flow of sales tax revenue to local municipalities to encourage those local entities to hold the line on property taxes presented challenges to balancing the budget at the county level but with creativity and prudence, Broome County has passed a very responsible budget for 2008.