By CRAIG FREILICH

POTSDAM –Nearly 59 percent of the population in the Town of Potsdam resides in the village, but only 41 percent of the registered voters live there.

As a result, the landscape of services in the what is now the village could change significantly if voters approve village dissolution on Nov. 8 and Town of Potsdam councilors rely on the input of registered voters.

The total town population is 16,041 and Village of Potsdam population is 9,428, according to the 2010 census.

But the number of registered voters in the entire Town of Potsdam stood at 6,262 last week, according to the county Board of Elections. Village registration was 2,303.

So while the village has 59 percent of the town’s population, only 37 percent of the town’s registered voters are in the village. Looked at from the other side, 41 percent of the town’s population is outside the village, but 63 percent of the registered voters live there.

The disparity in the numbers is because of college students.

About 7,650 students are enrolled at SUNY Potsdam and Clarkson University, according to the Dissolution Committee’s tally. While most of them show up as living in Potsdam, the vast majority inside the village, many of the students aren’t registered to vote here. The Census defines a person’s place of residence as where they were living on April 1 and where they live more than six months of the year.

If dissolution is approved Nov. 8, administration of village services will be turned over to the town, and the town board will decide what services in the town and former village to provide based on input from nearly twice as many voters outside the village as are in it.

After dissolution, if it happens, the town board will have to decide what level of police service to provide, and whether to continue operating Damon Field Airport and the village Community Development office.

The town board would also decide whether to continue village codes on keeping grass cut, prohibiting cars parked on front lawns, and mandating inspection of all apartments, measures some see as important to how the community views itself and how it is seen in the eyes of prospective students, physicians and staff at the colleges and hospital.

The town board would also need to vote whether to continue contracted trash pickup, brush pickup and sidewalk plowing in what is now the village.