By CRAIG FREILICH

RICHVILLE – People in the Village of Richville are considering dissolving the village government and have set a meeting at the firehouse for 5:30 p.m. Monday to learn more.

The director of engineering at the Development Authority of the North Country (DANC), Carrie Tuttle, will be there to provide information on the process and will answer questions to try to help people there decide if cost saving s can be realized by dissolving village government and leaving administration to the DeKalb Town Council.

“The first step is applying for a Local Government Citizens Re-Organization Empowerment Grant,” Tuttle said, for which the state will pay half the cost of a study of the issue for Richville, if the village board wants to look further into the possible consequences.

“It is a comprehensive study of all services delivered to the taxpayers by the village and town, and their cost,” Tuttle said. It would examine the consequences of cutting existing services. It would also includes alternatives, such as ways the study found that village government could realize cost savings without dissolution.

DANC and Tuttle have been providing reserach support to the neighboring Village of Hermon, which decided in a vote by citizens last October to give up its village government, and the towns of Clifton and Fine, which are now looking hard at the idea of consolidating the two town governments.

“We are seeing decreases in populations, some greater than 40 percent,” which translates in lower tax bases in some municipalities, making it hard for them to maintain services. The Clifton-Fine area, Tuttle said, lost 2,000 jobs in the last 40 years largely due to a decline in mining and manufacturing there.

Things like that can make a huge change in a community, and the community has to “find more effective ways to make up for the loss in tax revenue. Lots of communities are facing those challenges, and struggling to find better ways” to survive.

About 35 years ago, when U.S. Rt. 11 was reconfigured through St. Lawrence County, one of the changes made was building a bypass around Richville.