On March 26 the Village of Ellenville will finally hold their "Mountain Money" referendum. The special election will decide whether to grant or deny permission to withdraw $1.1 million from the $4.5 million reserve fund to pay down a budget deficit that's dogged the Village for two years.

To Village officials, voting 'yes' is a no-brainer, as it will erase the deficit and allow them to manage the municipality's finances with a clean slate. After all, they reason, we've got the money just sitting in a fund, doing little else than collecting interest. Taking some cash out now will solve all of our budget problems (at least for this year), fix our past mistakes and allow us to put off to a later date some really hard choices.

While not so black and white, to the voters, a "yes" vote is still very seductive, as spending money that isn't really yours often is. There is no question that voting "yes" will protect a typical voter from some immediate pain, either in the form of reduced services or a tax increase. The prospect of paying more taxes, even a nominal amount, in such trying economic times is justification enough for many voters to vote "yes," regardless of any consequences.

But despite the immediate benefits of accessing this money, the downsides far outweigh those benefits. If the measure passes, the fund will be reduced by nearly a quarter, seriously degrading one of the best opportunities Ellenville has to invest in its future. After decades of decline in manufacturing and the Borscht Belt, the community desperately needs to re-invent itself, and that will take resources. Spending those precious resources for the day-to-day operation of the municipality is wasteful and short-sighted, and only serves to delay addressing budget imbalances that need to be dealt with today.

Moreover, a 'yes' vote sends a terrible message about accountability, or the lack thereof. Consider for a moment the fact that three of the people who sit on the board of trustees — Efrain Lopez, Ray Younger, and Mayor Jeff Kaplan — were all on the board during the 2007-2008 fiscal year when the budget that created the deficit was approved. Likewise with Village Treasurer Linda Polkoski, who has kept her position to this day. In the case of former Village Manager Elliott Auerbach, who managed the budgets with the overestimated revenues and misplaced decimal points, he was elected to a county position, enabling him to leave the village without any repercussions for his role in creating the mess. Voting 'no' on the referendum would force many of the architects of this two-year disaster to take some accountability for this mess, force them to govern and fix it the way it should be fixed — with a hard-nosed look at expenses and revenue.

Another question worth examining is the urgency of this vote. The village has been carrying this deficit for two years now — if it's been managed thus far, where's the sudden need to access the fund now? Village officials haven't done much in the way of establishing a dialogue about the matter with residents. Simply reserving a portion of the rarely-attended village board meeting to discuss the referendum is not nearly enough to educate their constituents about why this is the best course of action. To our knowledge there have been no mailings to residents, we can find no detailed information on the village's website, in fact, there's seems to have been very little outreach whatsoever. While not a reason to vote one way or another, the lack of advocacy on the part of the village makes us question how important passage of the referendum really is.

As it stands now, the case for withdrawing the Mountain Money has not been made, and the referendum should be voted down. But the process doesn't end there. The Village has a real and worsening financial picture that needs to be addressed. With the quick fix of raiding the fund no longer an option, perhaps the real work of getting Ellenville back on track will finally begin.