There was an election for Mayor last night in East Aurora, and the whole thing came down to a de facto referendum on dissolving the village government of East Aurora.
Village Trustee Allan A. Kasprzak, who often butted heads with Mayor Clark W. Crook over the last few months over Crook’s push for dissolution, won a tight race in Tuesday’s village election, topping Crook by 46 votes. Kasprzak, who has served on the Village Board for two years, received 701 votes to Crook’s 655.
This is the first sort-of-kind-of defeat for the Kevin Gaughan-fueled push to consolidate and reduce the number and size of local governments in Erie County. 46 votes is a tight margin indeed, and I don’t know what benefits the residents of the village of East Aurora receive that residents of the town of Aurora don’t, but I think that there’s an exclusivity associated with the villages of East Aurora and Williamsville – an exclusivity that its residents bought into, pay for, and want to maintain. I picture a gated community, sans gates.
