Who's That In The Middle?

Thursday's remarkably brief Town Board meeting featured a non board member in the presiding officer's chair. With the Town Supervisor recovering from surgery, her Deputy Supervisor becomes her surrogate at board meetings meaning in this case, a non board member runs the meeting sitting in the Supervisor's chair.

That slightly balding figure is non other than Highway Superintendent Mark Premo and all agreed he did quite a good job of running the meeting and following the protocols.

In case you were wondering, as a non board member, the Deputy Supervisor cannot vote. All of the resolutions passed unanimously and there was nothing controversial on the agenda. There was one area of public comment that may have made some wince however. The police chief noted the problem associated with checking the possible criminal conviction records of vendors seeking permits to sell products within the town. Typically of concern are the ice cream trucks which have been known to have convicted felons behind the wheel and of concern are those convicted of crimes against kids.

The chief had a suggestion as to how the town could check the criminal backgrounds of such applicants for permits to ensure that officials are not unknowingly giving a child molester etc a permit to sell ice creme in town from a truck. Of course all this talk about checking to see if we are giving permits to folks with criminal records had to make one board member skirmish since his past arrests have been well documented here and in the local media.

We guess the lesson is we should check the criminal backgrounds of vendors seeking permits but not board members who represent us in elected offices.