Greenport's sabotage of its own Highway Chief
Town of Greenport, NY, September 26 — Something quite remarkable, and unhealthy, has been unfolding in Greenport the past few months: Greenport's Supervisor Kathy Eldridge, not too dissimilar to an auto-immune disease, has started to subvert Highway Superintendent John Mausolf, another Greenport elected official, who is just trying to do his job.
Under normal circumstances, John would be actively working on fixing Mt Merino Rd which had been split into two disconnected segments after an embankment was washed away during the rain event of July 28th and 29th.
He has been unable to do that because for one, Greenport's Town Engineer George Schmitt has gone AWOL but also, bizarrely, he has had to spend precious cycles on trying to obtain his own department's bills from the town—bills he is expected to review and authorize.
The elusive Town Engineer
Greenport's August town board meeting, the first meeting after the rain, was preceded by a Q&A session where residents were given a chance to address town officials regarding damages to their property. I reported about the Q&A in this article.
Towards the end of this Q&A, where Town Engineer George Schmitt was in attendance, the town board unanimously passed a resolution asking John Mausolf, Water and Wastewater Superintendent Jimmy Rutkey and the Town Engineer to come up with a comprehensive action plan outlining all that was required for a sustainable fix of Greenport's wastewater system.
For the next more than six weeks, this was the last we've heard or seen of George Schmitt.
At the September board meeting, John Mausolf expressed frustration over the inability to get a response from Schmitt: "What's going on with the engineer? Has he been told not to contact me? I got emails, and I got phone calls. And I get no answers. Something's going on".
At that point, Mausolf had already been approached by Mt Merino residents who felt that the washed out embankment which currently bisects Mt Merino Rd into two unconnected segments near 120 Mt Merino Rd were a potential safety concern as it would impede fire and emergency services from reaching residences on Mt Merino.
Mausolf stated that he had a potential plan to reconnect the two segments but that he needed the Town Engineer for review and sign-off.
Initially, I had dismissed Mausolf's suspicion that George Schmitt may have been instructed to ignore any outreach from Greenport's Highway chief. Partially, my skepticism was based on reports I had heard out of Claverack whereby Schmitt was not always responsive to their requests either.
Mausolf submits an update to the town's website
On Thursday, September 24th, Mausolf sent an email to the town clerk asking her to post an update on the Highway Department's page. It reads as follows:
ROAD CLOSURE UPDATE: Mt Merino Road remains closed currently. I have attempted numerous times to contact the Town Engineer George Schmitt by phone and email with limited success. I have had to have both Supervisor Eldridge and Deputy Supervisor Clark contact George to get him to contact me. He has no updates at present.
Tuesday evening, 9/22/26 after the Planning Board meeting, I spoke with Deputy Supervisor Clark. Deputy Supervisor Clark stated that he had talked to George and that he had a plan regarding Mt Merino. I told Mr. Clark it would be nice if he shared his plan with the Highway Department. Mr. Clark then assured me that he would have George get in contact with me.
It is now Thursday, 09/24/26 noon, and I have still not heard from Deputy Supervisor Clark or the Town Engineer. I voiced my concerns at the Town Board meeting on 9/9/26 and again in an email on 9/18/26. The only Board member who even responded was Councilman Dolan.
I cannot believe that Supervisor Eldridge, Deputy Supervisor Clark, and Councilman Apicella fail to see the urgency of the situation. I contacted NYSDOT about possibly sending an engineer out to assess the site and I am waiting to hear back.
It may seem unusual that an elected Highway Superintendent calls out other elected officials the way Mausolf did but it has to be kept in mind that it's Mausolf who is being hounded by irate residents of Mt Merino who demand action and don't understand why nothing appears to get done.
No matter if appropriate or not, Mausolf's request to the town clerk to publish the update on the website had the miraculous effect that a George Schmitt email to Mausolf surfaced within only four hours:
The requested update to the Highway Department's website has meanwhile still not been made.
Mausolf FOILs his own bills, gets rejected by town
Stranger even have been Mausolf's tribulations obtaining, reviewing and approving his own department's bills. Some time after May of this year, invoices that used to be sent to the Highway Department's address stopped coming in and instead emerged directly at town hall. This change appears to have been effected on behalf of Supervisor Kathy Eldridge.
This wouldn't ordinarily be much of an issue if they were subsequently submitted to Mausolf's department; but they aren't. They remain somewhere else, out of Mausolf's sight. Mausolf questioned the legality of this at the September board meeting since it is a department head's duty to review bills and issue signed vouchers which get passed to the confidential secretary for her to write a check which the Supervisor reviews and signs. Town Attorney Rob Fitzsimmons at that meeting confirmed that this is the procedure to follow.
Any Highway Department bill that gets paid without an accompanying voucher signed by Mausolf is a violation of New York State Town Law § 118(1) which stipulates that
"no claim against a town, [...], shall be paid unless an itemized voucher therefor, in such form as the town board or the town comptroller shall prescribe, shall have been presented to the town board or town comptroller and shall have been audited and allowed. Such voucher shall be accompanied by a statement by the officer whose action gave rise or origin to the claim that he approves the claim and that the service was actually rendered or supplies or equipment actually delivered."
In August, Mausolf approached Kathy Eldridge's confidential secretary Lisa Pierro and asked her for a copy of invoices for this Highway Department. What he got in return were two bills: one from Lowe's which was the Highway Department's and the other from W.B. Mason which wasn't.
As Mausolf persisted and returned to Pierro to ask for the remaining bills, Pierro's response suddenly had changed: she wasn't authorized anymore to give Mausolf any copies. When Mausolf complained about his inability to review his bills at the town board meeting in September, Clayton Clark asked him to send him a list of vendors with potential bills and promised he would "look into this".
On September 11, Mausolf provided the requested information to Clayton in the following email:
Mausolf reiterated that providing him with the bills is not merely a courtesy towards him but a procedural requirement. Clayton responded with his usual catchphrase, then the curtains closed and Clayton was never heard of again in this matter.
On September 17th, surely tired of waiting for Deputy Supervisor Clayton's follow-up, Mausolf took matters into his own hands and filed a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request with the town clerk's office asking for "[v]ouchers and bills for National Grid, Repeat Business, Cintas, WB Mason and J&R Contracting, and all bills paid without knowledge".
He received this response four days later:
It seems hard to imagine that this was the outcome of a discussion with Town Attorney Fitzsimmons because it is legally gibberish, and Rob Fitzsimmons surely knows this. The FOIL process does not concern itself with who is requesting the information. Anyone can, including elected officials of the same municipality.
Secondly, the alternative "direct avenues to obtain information" the response suggests do not appear to exist for John Mausolf. He attempted these avenues in August and was denied by Supervisor Eldridge via her confidential secretary Lisa Pierro.
As of now, bills for the Highway Department are either not paid or are paid without the required signature of the Highway Superintendent.
Supervisor likely guilty of official misconduct
It's not a stretch to say that Kathy Eldridge is on extremely thin ice here. While her actions may not yet constitute obstructing governmental administration (OGA) as defined by New York Penal Law § 195.05, the bar is a lot lower for official misconduct (New York Penal Law § 195.00) which as a class A misdemeanor is punishable with imprisonment of up to one year.
Furthermore, NY State Public Officers Law § 36 prescribes potential removal from office for maladministration.
Where is Clayton Clark in all of this?
Deputy Supervisor Clark isn't currently making a strong argument for his run for Supervisor in this year's November election.
He is fully aware of what is going on. When Mausolf complained about his department's bills being withheld from him at the September town board meeting, Clayton said he was going to "look into this". He said the same thing when Mausolf asked for the bills via email.
Clayton hasn't looked into this, and he hasn't followed up with Mausolf. He most certainly hasn't confronted Kathy Eldridge and her deliberate malfeasance either.
When News10 ABC contacted Clayton earlier this week regarding Greenport's purchase agreement with Flock, his only response was "Talk to the town attorney". He is beginning to sound more like a mobster in front of a Grand Jury pleading the fifth than an elected official who has the best of Greenport at heart.
In his political campaign, he cites loyalty, honesty and integrity as the three pillars of his platform. He is clearly not honest and I can't discern any integrity either.
However, he undoubtedly has loyalty. Unfortunately, it's the wrong type of loyalty: He is loyal to Kathy Eldridge and not to the Town of Greenport whose supervisor he aspires to become. In this quest, he is not doing himself any favors with his timid ducking away every time someone approaches him with a request. He has made no indication that he can right Greenport's ship once Eldridge is gone in January 2027.
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