The current Town officials and their telephone numbers are on this page. Look there to find the current contacts for things like building permits, tax assessments, Town water service, and the like.
The Town Clerk, Ellen Estes, 518-576-4444 is the person to call (or email using town@kvvi.net) for many things including these:
Many of the Town's elected positions (there are a lot of them) are paid in some form, including valuable health insurance benefits. Some, like Supervisor and Superintendent of Highways are paid quite well. Many people in these positions run unopposed for years.
Town Board Meetings: The public Town Board meeting is bimonthly at 7pm on the second Tuesday of each month. The minutes of the meetings can be found in Town Board Minutes Archive.
Running for Town Board or the other elected positions is easy: All you need is a petition signed by 5% of the registered voters in your party, 17 for Republican and 14 for Democrat. You can even invent your own party. The info is at: www.co.essex.ny.us/elect.asp.
The Town Planning Board meetings are the first Tuesday of each month at 9:00 AM at One Gristmill Lane. Planning Board members are appointed by the Town Board and serve for 6 years. Anyone interested can submit a letter of interest to the Town Board. There is no compensation. The members of the Planning Board are not posted on the web.
Town Budget: Road maintenance, the two fire departments and the Keene Public Library are the larger items in the town budget of about $2.5 million. The biggest single item is road maintenance at about $750,000. The General Fund is the largest item at 47% of the total (I don't know how this is spent). Here is a summary of the 2007 Town Budget. I found this article about the 2008 budget. The Keene Fire Dept budget is about $129,000, Keene Valley $176,000 and the KV Library is $42,000. The Town is currently spending about $45,000 to defend itself against a lawsuit over taxes from the Ausable Club.
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