Chuck Hage wants to unearth the idea of burying utility wires in the village.

Hage spearheaded a ten-member committee that looked into the idea of putting utility lines underground and produced a report that was presented to the board of trustees in January 2004, but it received little support and since then has been gathering dust.

Last Thursday, Hage made a request to the village planning committee that it take a look at the report and move the idea forward.

The report the committee produced looked at the technology and mechanics of running wires underground and how it was done in other small cities and villages like Cooperstown.

The next step, he said, was to develop a plan.

"It would be easy to garner support for a plan, if you had a plan," Hage said.

When Hage first approached the village about burying the lines, it was about to embark on a program of street rebuilding and he suggested it would be the perfect time to do it while streets are torn up.

"The proposal was to lay conduit while work was being done on water and sewer lines. The idea was to piggyback on that," he said.

It would be easy to focus on the cost and assume it would be a burden to the taxpayers, but if the village owned the infrastructure it may produce a significant revenue stream, he said.

"It's something to investigate," Hage said. "The cost is not the bottom line."

Trustee Jeff Katz, who chairs the planning committee, said he had read the plan over a year ago and "it certainly sounded like an idea that is worth pursuing."

Katz said he would include it in his report to the trustees during the June 19 board meeting.

"I think he's right, you do get lost in the cost," Katz said.

Trustee Paul Kuhn, who was a member of the committee while still chairman of the planning board, said the primary concern trustees had two years ago about damaging trees to bury wires was addressed in the report. The technology exists to run the lines without doing damage to trees.

"It [the report] obviously fell through the cracks and shouldn't have," Kuhn said.