MAYVILLE – The public is invited to Mayville to attend a Chautauqua County Shared Services Public Forum Wednesday night, June 7. The event will take place at 6:30 p.m. at the Carlson Community Center, Lakeside Park, 50 W. Lake Rd. in Mayville.
The forum will be hosted by County executive Vince Horrigan and legislator George Borrello, who also chairs the county’s Regional Solutions Commission Chairman.
During the meeting, attendees will learn more about the county’s roughly 10 projects that are being developed for its Municipal Consolidation and Efficiency Competition (MCEC) grant application. Through the competition, the county was awarded $50,000 in February 2017 to further develop its proposed projects. It is competing with five other counties in the state to receive up to $20 million to help facilitate consolidation, shared services, and efficiency proposals throughout the county.
Horrigan said he’s looking forward to getting a plan finalized and submitted to the state.
“The conversation is really growing,” Horrigan told WRFA following the May County Legislature meeting. “We’re seeing more and more interest. In order to be able to successfully share services and merge, you’ve got to have seed money to get that done and that’s what this does.”
Horrigan also offered an example of how the funding could possible be used.
“It would provide the ability to build a new, state-of-the art shared facility, rather than pumping money into separate ones,” Horrigan said. “If you don’t have that, everybody comes up with the same challenge, ‘Where do we get the money to build a new facility?’ So we think it’s a great idea.”
The county executive also said that today’s meeting is important, because the deadline to submit a final plan is later this month.
“June 28 is when the grant application is required. We have resolutions from all the partners now, we just had one passed by the legislature. So that will go in,” Horrigan said. “The department of state has set up a process to evaluate the applications and then the awards will be made. We don’t know the exact time frame but we think September or somewhere around then is a possible time.”
The Wednesday event is free and open to the public. Anyone interested in attending, should register by calling (716) 753-4672.
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