Report on the “Special Town Board Meeting”
By Ray Mooney and Don
Johnson
Taxpayers
got mugged again yesterday afternoon.
In
the face of junk bond ratings, no financial turnaround plan, a non functioning
CFAC, our lack of money to properly upgrade the waste treatment plant, our
inability to legally pay back our inter fund borrowing, our inability to
account for the savings associated with blowing $500,000 of taxpayer’s money,
our deceiving taxpayers with paying fines and all the rest of the mess OBrien,
Mangold and Malone pretend is governing, we added two new and additional
patronage and nepotism jobs to town payroll yesterday.
There
is not a taxpayer in our town, who, faced with similar family or personal
financial problems, would do what OBrien, Mangold and Malone are doing to us
and to our town.
There
is not a business, in our town or anywhere else, that would make the moves that
OBrien, Mangold and Malone keep making. In the private sector business world
these three individuals would be fired for incompetence and malfeasance.
Special
Meetings, as responsible taxpayers have come to learn, usually means the Town
Board majority wants to slip something by citizens and keep things as under the
radar as possible.
This
was certainly true for yesterday afternoon’s meeting.
Yesterday
afternoon’s Special Meeting was for OBrien, Mangold and Malone to make two (2)
new and additional patronage and nepotism appointments to the DPW in the
Highway Department.
There
was no public comment portion of the meeting and no opportunity to ask
questions. Ray had submitted an e-mail note to the Town Board earlier this week
but that e-mail, and its list of questions, went unanswered. There was no
indication that the CFAC had provided any input to the Board in making this decision.
There was no indication that the staffing, work requirements and work load of
the DPW staff was analyzed in any business-like way.
Voters
are left to wonder why these two new and additional patronage and nepotism
appointments were left off of last week’s full Town Board meeting, but if you
are thinking that deceiving taxpayers and avoiding having to answer obvious
questions is a factor you are very probably correct.
Supervisor
Langley, in his
legal role as the town’s Chief Financial Officer, spoke to our town’s overall
poor financial condition and our debt. He voted against the resolution to add
two additional patronage and nepotism appointments. Thank you, Mr. Supervisor.
Board
Member Matters spoke to our illegal status in re-paying back inter fund
borrowing and our inability to meet the legal requirements of last year’s early
retirement resolution that cost taxpayers a cool $500,000. We cannot account
for the legally required savings from that expenditure of taxpayer money and by
constantly adding staff we are blowing any possibility of ever meeting the
legally required savings requirements. Board Member Matters voted against the
two additional patronage and nepotism appointments.
Supervisor
Langley and Mr.
Matters are to be commended for thoughtfully approaching this issue. They both made it very clear that their
decisions had nothing to do with the persons involved, but with what they knew
to be the financial realities facing the Town.
We’ve had no evidence of a miraculous financial turn-around.
In
his remarks supporting the hiring, Mr. Malone addressed the need to upgrade the
sewer infrastructure. He remarked that
since the EPA was now involved, the fines would be getting higher. Ms. Obrien mentioned MS-4 obligations. We thought it strange that sewer and storm
water issues would be used to support Personal Service positions in the Highway
Department. Don’t the Sewer and Water
Departments have their own Personal Service Rosters? Ms. Mangold advised that these two permanent
positions would mean less seasonal hiring this Summer. HUH???
What’s the bottom-line financial saving in that?
Bottom
line – the Board majority was unable to make a sound business and financially
clear case for hiring two new permanent employees in the Highway Department. This is the same kind of “thinking” that was
behind the cool half million spent on the “retirement incentive.” What we got out of that was the cost of the
incentive, the retirement bill and the cost of some of the newly retired hired
back as “consultants.”
The
last Certified Audit look at the financial position of the Town was the UHY
audit for 2009. And it wasn’t good. We haven’t seen balance sheets for 2010 or
2011 yet. The majority of Malone, OBrien
and Mangold make no reference to necessary resources like these for their
business decisions. This is not
competent municipal leadership. No
recovery plan, no knowledge of financial position, no workload analysis……Good
Grief.
