The monthly letter to constituents from Lakewood Village Trustee Ken Santowski:

Greetings-

Now that everyone is enjoying this unusually mild weather I just wanted to take the time to give you a snapshot of what happened at the last village board meeting.

Again this meeting was held at Turnberry Country Club because we are still in “shutdown mode” over at Redtail.

While I am thankful that we have such a nice place to hold our board meetings, it makes me want to build a nice clubhouse at Redtail more than ever. But enough about that.

This meeting unfortunately did not have any monumental decisions or agenda items.

The one financial item was renewal of the benefits program for village employees.

While there were increases in the Humana program, those increases were kept under control by varying the plans slightly. As most know health insurance can be a “touchy” subject when it comes to governmental workers. Staff did a great amount of work to get the best deal possible.

At the end of each meeting there is a section where the staff and board are allowed to make comments, suggestions, questions or toot their own horn.

One idea floated around was if the village wanted to sell advertising space in its newsletter. The thought process was that if enough people “paid” for advertising the village could save the approximate $3500 annually to produce and mail out the newsletters. Each board member was asked for his/her opinions.

I personally did not want to sell space on the newsletter because I enjoyed reading the short, distinct and very local newsletter.

Comparisons were made to the “church bulletin” style of production and ad space.

I wanted to keep it crisp and clean.

In a very special and rare moment, Gene Furey actually agreed with me. This resulted in a warm and symbolic embrace between Gene and myself.

Perhaps he has decided to come over to my side or simply wanted to be seen with the “good looking” guy on the village board. Either way it was a touching moment that I shall remember until I forget.

Budget talks are right around the corner as is the election. The next few meetings shall involve every line item of each department; and their ability to provide services in a continued depressed market.

So this was another short and sweet meeting. I hope to see many of you at the upcoming meetings, voicing your opinions.

Yours

Kenneth M Santowski