By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- The mayor wants the village and town board to look at some form of local government consolidation.

“Given the current economic conditions and various challenges local governments are facing, in my view it’s the perfect time to look further down the road for what we’re going to do in this community,” he said at the Tuesday village board meeting. “The size of the local government is too big in my view for the current fiscal climate and where this community is heading.”

He suggested as one option a “coterminous form of government.”

“The village limits are expanded to the town limits and the voters have a number of options at their disposal,” he said, adding that they could choose to have one municipal government or keep two.

More information about coterminous government is at https://www.dos.ny.gov/cnsl/lg06.htm.

Deputy Mayor Matt Lebire said he also thinks they should explore the idea.

“I’m in favor of exploring any idea that’s going to be good for the village and now, in terms of fiscally and size,” he said. “We have two separate boards doing their jobs … but in reality we’re one community, so the inefficiencies are glaring … there are definite gains we can have in some way … I would not be terribly sad if I was out of a job here someday.”

The consolidation talk came up during a discussion on what to do about their DPW bulk storage. The village is selling their current storage lot to St. Lawrence Soyway, who plans to open a soybean processor there and create about 35 jobs.

Currier said he believes there is a public perception that the two boards don’t work together.

“The perception out there is village and town boards aren’t working together … we’re working on a number of initiatives with them,” he said, pointing to examples such as the shared code office and recreation commission.

There has been discussion about the town and village possibly going in a shared highway garage, but the village’s need is immediate and the town’s, not so much.

Trustee Tim Ahlfeld at last week’s Town Council meeting asked that board to lease to the village a lot on Pontoon Bridge Road. The town didn’t seem keen to take action on that proposal. Ahlfeld said the town did offer temporary storage on South Raquette Road.

“We were offered, potentially, a temporary site at their South Raquette facility. We have the railroad track issue we’re trying to avoid. We may not be able to avoid that issue,” he said.