Those Other Sidney Warriors

Happy New Year!

Now that 2011 is well underway, it’s time to introduce the main topic of conversation for the year: local elections.

This year, there will be four major town offices up for grabs in November. There will be two seats on the Town Board (currently occupied by John Schaeffer and Paul Hamilton), plus Town Clerk (currently, Lisa French) and Superintendent of Highways (currently, Jamie Roberts).

I’ll just mention here that nobody intends to oppose Jaime Roberts. Everybody loves him and he does a very good job.

If we can find a candidate for Town Clerk, that would be spiffy (and, just so you know, Town Clerk is a full time job with a full time salary). But the most important thing for us to do is to run a couple of strong candidates for the Town Board.

It’s important because, until 2013, the only way we have available to de-fang Bob McCarthy is to take away his majority on the Board. We won’t be able to stop him from continuing to be an embarrassment at the county level but we can at least stop him from destroying the town.

So, in the interests of the preservation of the Town of Sidney from further stupidity, malfeasance, and general foot-in-mouth disease, let me know if there are any Democrats here in town who you think would make really good candidates for local office. That includes you, by the way; if you’re thinking about running for office, by all means, please get in touch.

Let’s stop letting Sidney Republicans win by default, m-kay?

And the beat goes on.

At the moment, the town of Sidney seems to be dividing itself between McCarthy apologists, who appear to have bought into his “poor, victimized me” rhetoric, and the louder and much more irate McCarthy detractors, who would like to see the Town Supervisor removed or pressured to resign.

There have been two meetings around the McCarthy issue, both of which I’m afraid I had to miss.

The first meeting took place at the Trackside Diner and it was a relatively informal gathering that allowed frustrated citizens to gather, vent, bond with like-minded Sidney-ites and perhaps consider additional action.

One thing that came out of the meeting was that Toby Whitaker is writing a letter to the editor, to be submitted to the Daily Star. The “Impeach Bob McCarthy” Facebook group is still urging people to sign onto that letter, so far as I can tell.

Then there was the Budget Workshop meeting of the Town Board, which took place last Friday and was open to the public. Again, according to our friends at the “Impeach Bob McCarthy” Facebook page, highlights include:

- When Bob McCarthy complained about all the checking account fees, another supervisor and the bookkeeper pointed out that they were actually all fees from bounced checks.

- There are several hundred thousand dollars missing in accounts – not……actually gone, but all the separate accounts have gotten so mixed up that they’re being told the only way to figure this out is to hire another accounting agency for $15,000 to spend weeks going through the books since McCarthy came to office.

- Property taxes are projected to go up 6-9%.

In short, the Town of Sidney’s books are a mess.

No doubt there are some who would argue that this isn’t King Bob’s fault, since he does not do the bookkeeping himself. I beg to differ. The ultimate responsibility for everything having to do with the administration of the Town of Sidney belongs with Mr. McCarthy. That’s why the call the position “Supervisor.”

Every time I think I want to get the SDC’s monthly update out, something else happens, but I’ll be sending that update to subscribers sometime within the next couple of days.

Meanwhile, I would just remind everybody that Election Day is one week from Tuesday. And what does Election Day have to do with any of this?

It’s very simple (and you will hear me say this many times over the next year, I promise you): BOB McCARTHY IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN DEMOCRATS DON’T VOTE.

Please, folks. Make sure you go vote on November 2nd.