On Tuesday, village residents will decide on two candidates for the board of trustees.

The candidates include incumbents Madalyn Cimino and Milo Stewat, Jr. and challlengers Jeff Katz and Paul Kuhn.

Madalyn Cimino, 72, is one of the two candidates born and raised in Cooperstown. She spent 35 years working at the Dartmouth College Medical School and moved back to the village in 1997 following her retirement.

"I felt it was my home so I came back," she said.

Two years after her return, she decided she wanted feel more a part of the village and decided to run for the board of trustees. She is now at the end of her first term and is seeking reelection, in part, because she finds it difficult to disengage herself once having been involved in village government.

Cimino believes the administrative skills she developed in her professional life, the knowledge she has gained serving on committees and the board and her village heritage make her a good choice for trustee.

The biggest issues facing the village, she said, are familiar ones - parking and finances.

"Today, tomorrow and forever it's parking and finances," she said.

Parking is a problem that may be addressed by plans for a visitor center and lot in the Linden Avenue area that will be financed by $5 million federal appropriation, but she is not certain it will be the entire answer.

The visitor center, she said, will also relieve some congestion in the village by encouraging tourists to leave their cars at the edge of the village and take a trolley into the village and the Hall of Fame.

Cimino has credited Mayor Waller for her attempts to realize a more equitable division of the sales tax revenues collected by the county. With a greater share of the revenue, it would allow the village to remove some of the cost of tourism that is currently paid for through village property taxes.

She also pointed to the recent success the village has had obtaining grants as one way to help with village finances.

Cimino said she believes bringing together municipal leaders in the area to seek cooperative efforts to solve area-wide problems is a good idea. That concept, she pointed out, was one of the recommendations contained in the Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) and one she would support.

Jeff Katz, 42, is challenging the incumbents for a seat on the board. He is a native New Yorker who moved with his wife and three children to the village in June of 2003 from the northern suburbs of Chicago. He is a self-employed stock and options trader.

Katz said when he was asked if he would run for the board his decision was influenced by being a political science major in college and wanting to get involved in his community.

As a relative newcomer to the village, he believes he would bring to the board a fresh outlook and ideas about some of the same problems the village has been facing for years.

He said he does his homework and is also accustomed to making many financial decisions in his career and living with the consequences.

The village, he said, is faced with many issues, including, but not limited to the lake, streets and parking. The village must also realize that the Hall of Fame is here; the Dreams Park is here and come to terms with it because everything is inter-related.

"It's time to figure out where we want to be in 20 years and work toward that," he said.

In campaigning door-to-door throughout the village, he has gotten a good sense of things and come to believe that residents want to feel more included in the decision making process.

"We have to reach out to people. As a world, we're better off with people knowing more," he said.

Katz said he believes an entertainment tax on tickets at attractions in the village may be one way to help pay for the cost of tourism.

"An entertainment tax would be paid by the people we want to pay it," he said.

He also singled out sales tax revenue as another opportunity for the village to recoup some of its tourist costs.

He credited the village for its efforts to try and convince the county to change the way sales tax revenue is allocated.

"It's hard to get the county to address it when the county as a whole benefits. To change it we may have to work from the top down," he said. "We have to figure out how to come from the top down. Carol (mayor Waller) has brought this up more than her predecessors to her credit, but we should be talking to someone every two weeks."

Katz is also a supporter of the idea of bringing together area leaders to to discuss problems that cross municipal boundaries.

"We are still part of the county and everybody needs to help each other out," he said.

Paul Kuhn, 66, is the other challenger in this election, although he is no stranger to village government having been on the planning board for seven years; serving as chairman for the last five years.

Kuhn retired in 1994 following a 30-year career with SIGNA Coporation, an employee benefits company. He and his wife Mary Margaret moved to Cooperstown in 1996.

After seven years on the planning board, Kuhn said he believed it was time for him to step up from his role of carrying out policy to one of establishing policy.

He said his long career in business clearly demonstrates his leadership qualities, integrity and problem solving abilities which would be an asset on the board.

"Because of my very significant involvement in the village since I have been here, I have a very thorough perspective of Coperstown. It's often a balancing act between the residents and visitors," he said.

Kuhn said one of the greatest threats to the village is the homogenization of America.

"You can see it on route 28," he said. "There is a great tendency to bring things from all over America to our border. It's in conflict with our way of life."

Kuhn said he is happy that the village is now ringed by property owned by either one of the Clark entities or property that can not be developed because of conservation easements held by the Otsego Land Trust.

Before you know it, he said, there will be a commercial corridor between our buffer area and Oneonta.

The focus of his campaign is on the children of the village and "preserving this wonderful, safe nurturing and caring community" so that future generations will have the opportunity to live and raise their families here.

Kuhn said one way to lessen the impact of tourism on the village is to continue to try and attract visitors in the shoulder season rather than lumping it all into the summer.

The visitor center and parking lot proposed for the Linden Avenue area should help relieve some of the traffic and parking problems in the village.

"If done well, it would be a way to make the quality of life better." he said.

He also said some consideration needs to be given to the village's vending laws because some of the displays of merchandise are getting out of hand.

"It's starting to look like a flea market and we have to stop way short of that," he said.

Changing the way sales tax revenue is distributed by the county is a key to relieving some of the cost of tourism currently being borne by village taxpayers, Kuhn said. The formula should not be based on assessed value, but set up to give back to those communities that generate the sales tax.

Kuhn said he would favor bringing together area leaders to discuss issues affect the entire area.

Milo Stewart, Jr., 37, is the other candidate who was born and raised in the village. He is a photographer at the Baseball Hall of Fame and is married with two sons.

Stewart began in village government as a member of the zoning board of appeals which, he said, spurred a desire to stay involved when the opportunity to run for the board came along three years ago.

With is first term almost complete, Stewart says there is much work he would like to continue, including the new park master plan. Stewart is the chairman of the Parks Board which is about to submit a grant for the development of the new plan for the five village parks.

His communication skills are one of the attributes he brings to the board that he believes it is important because communication between board members and residents need to be improved. Improvements could also be made in communications between the trustees themselves, he said.

His relative youth, compared to other board members, puts him in the position to address some of the concerns of the younger families in the village, he said.

Stewart said streets and sidewalks are a huge issue for the village and are going to be for a long time.

Otsego Lake, which is the village's water supply, is another issue which demands continued attention. The zebra mussel committee, which he chairs, has been successful so far in keeping the invasive species out of the lake.

Like the other candidates, Stewart sees the Linden Avenue project as one way to reduce the impact of tourism on the village.

"It will relieve some of the strain on the infrastructure. I think it will work out really well," he said.

It will be important to keep an eye on the proliferation of motels and hotels following the approval of the Landmark Inn last year, he said.

Stewart also looks to a greater share of sales tax revenue as one of the ways to reduce the burden of tourism on taxpayers. He, too, gave credit to the mayor for efforts to bring more sales tax revenue to the village. He suggested that perhaps if the county board began to feel more pressure from residents, they would be more open to revisiting the formula used to allocate the funds to local municipalities.

He also favors considering the possibility of the village establishing an entertainment tax on tickets to museums and other attractions as a way for the village to tap into tourism revenue.

"It is something we could seriously look at," he said.

Stewart said he believes greater communication between village officials and other area municipal leaders is a good idea.

The election is Tuesday, March 15, from noon to 9 p.m. in the village fire hall.