A couple more odds ‘n’ ends from the Gov

As promised, a couple more details from Governor Paterson’s town hall in Watertown that didn’t make the on-air broadcast…

– on the “rooftop highway”: it’s “something we would like to do”, but it’s “a future intention”, far from shovel-ready projects that will be recommended for implementation under the federal stimulus package.

– on merging school districts: there are already 90% fewer districts than in the 1960s. Paterson says we can reduce the existing 286 districts by another 30%. But he added that would be unlikely to happen in the North Country, where distances are so great. He said the merging would happen first in places where districts are “right on top of one another”.

– he said he believed $5 billion of the deficit was our own doing – ie – the result of profligate spending over the last decade. The other $10 billion the result of the Wall Street meltdown.

– Paterson said the biggest thing he learned from the Watertown town hall was that the proposal to allow wine to be sold in supermarkets could force small liquor stores out of business. [David’s take: really? He never thought of that?]

— David Sommerstein