The winds of dissolution are blowing strong in the Village of Corfu.
There's been a committee formed, consultants are advising, documents are being prepared and trustees are talking the talk.
If the wind doesn't change direction, inside of two years, there will be no Village of Corfu, just a Town of Pembroke with a quaint little hamlet centered around the intersection of routes 33 and 77.
We'll still call it Corfu, but life will be different, but how different are among the details to be worked out.
Right now, it looks like the property taxes paid by village residents to maintain their current small government will vanish. Whether special districts need to be formed for sidewalks and lighting is an open question. Some village employees would be out of work, others positions would be shifted to the Town of Pembroke.
What Corfu would do for part-time police service is still under study, but committee members and the few residents who attended the committee's meeting last night seem to favor a contract with the Sheriff's Office for extra patrols.
The four trustees in Corfu (there is currently no mayor) are unanimously behind the dissolution effort, said Trustee and Deputy Mayor Dave Bielec.
"The population of the village is reducing tremendously," Bielec said. "We lost 100 people roughly since the last census. We've lost some businesses. We don't have much in the village anymore at all. Plus, the state is kind of pushing this a little bit, so there's some benefits for us there."
The committee was formed in April and has been meeting monthly. The Department of State has been providing a staff member as a free-to-the-village consultant.
The list of considerations is long. It's no simple matter dissolving a village. There are laws that need to be changed or taken off the books, planning and zoning boards to wind down, decisions to be made about dealing with village records and documents, issues to be resolved around any existing village debt, plans to be made for maintenance issues and property to transfer.
The committee is in the midst of drafting a dissolution plan to present to village residents.
The residents would need to vote at some point on whether to eliminate their local government.
The plan probably will not be ready for a vote prior to the regular village election in March, so the vote would come at a later date.
The earliest the village could be dissolved would be Dec. 31, 2016.
Pembroke Town Councilman Ed Arnold, who is a member of the dissolution committee, said so far his fellow board members have been supportive of dissolution, but it's not like the town has a lot of choice in the matter.
The decision to dissolve or not is entirely a village decision, and if voters choose that route, the jurisdiction becomes part of the town regardless.
The town's participation at this point is about ensuring an orderly transition.
"If the village says this is what it wants to do, really from our end, that's what we need to follow through with," Arnold said. "What we're trying to do is be involved with it, seeing what are the concerns of the residents of the village and then seeing how we an incorporate that into the town side of it. But really, if the village says yes, we want to dissolve, we have to pick it up one way or the other."
