Webb’s link to county gov’t seat in Herkimer worth strengthening
Most are familiar with our national, state, and town governments, and how the systems work on each level—more or less. And we understand the powers of each body.
A fourth level that tends to be more obscure, yet is still extremely important to our country’s inner workings, is that of county government.
Most in the Town of Webb, including myself until just a few weeks ago, are shaded from the activity of county government. The media covers the other three levels of government, but with Old Forge being so far from the Herkimer County seat we can feel disconnected from our county legislature.
Recently I was invited to attend an internship put on by Cornell Cooperative Extension in Herkimer for four different sessions over two months.
I had the good fortune of participating in this opportunity and, two months later, I can say the program successfully cured my case of mild apathy for county government.There were 14 government students involved and the 9-to-3 sessions bombarded us with speakers, tours, meetings, and even a murder trial.
Everything was very informative and Wendy Richardson, of the Cornell Cooperative Extension, did a fantastic job leading four fun sessions.
We learned the duties and responsibilities of the DMV, the Hall of Records, the County Court, the Social Services Department, the County Legislature, the PINS Depart-ment, and other departments and agencies.
The people we met were friendly and welcoming and the elected representatives were supportive of our internship.
Our county legislators stressed how important citizens’ involvement in our government is to the county.
Apathy is to be avoided at all costs.
If we, as a represented body, do not care about the job our elected leaders are doing, things can go wrong fast.
This is especially true for Webb, being so far from the county seat.
The legislature’s efforts to properly allocate funds to the area is concerning already. Many in our town feel we get little in return for the tax dollars we contribute to the county.
If we were to stop caring, it would be easy for our far-off legislature to ignore us and target more money to the county’s 16 other districts.
So we must keep a hand in the operations to ensure any benefits.
Programs like the Cooper-ative Extension Internship help maintain that connection. The next step is to increase the strength of that link between Webb and Herkimer County.
—You can follow Colin Criss on Twitter @ADKCurrent
