To Merge or Not to Merge

Two interesting merger votes will happen today. In the one that most directly involves us, Spencer-Van Etten (already a merged district) and Candor will hear the results of the report they commissioned and will vote on whether to pass this on to the public for a straw vote. Meanwhile, in Romulus and South Seneca, the straw vote happens today. If both mergers go through, TST BOCES ends up with something like a wash—they lose South Seneca but gain SVE.

The state has virtually guaranteed that a merger is impossible by insisting that each district have a majority vote for merging rather than requiring a plurality of yes votes over both districts. There's always a loser in these mergers; either one district ends up paying more in taxes than before, or one district loses a building, or in the SVE case, they lose their current BOCES, etc. So I'm not holding my breath, although Romulus/South Seneca looks like a surprisingly good bet.

LATER: It was close in Romulus, but it passed both districts. South Seneca: 473-86, Romulus: 268-242. I guess we know which district expects to lose out. Now it moves to the referendum later this fall.

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