Greenport Town Board Meeting Turns into Theater of the Absurd
- Tassilo von Parseval
- Aug 7
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 7
This is the second article on Greenport's August town board meeting which happened on Wednesday, August 5th. We reported on the workshop portion earlier where we hinted at some extraordinary things that would unfold later in that meeting.
Debbie Mausolf One Vote Closer to Town Clerk Appointment
As indicated in the first article, Supervisor Eldridge appeared to have made it through the workshop in one piece. She was relatively quiet throughout and had deferred to James Dolan to run the workshop.
The first major crack appeared when the discussion turned to resolution 48, "to appointed [sic] 2nd Deputy Town Clerk Part-Time and be compensated at the rate of 27.50 per hour not to exceed 20 hours per week with no benefits".
This word salad of a resolution was to appoint Sharon Zempko, who had been filling in after Town Clerk Michele Troy-Ryder resigned her post at the end of May, as second Deputy Town Clerk next to Clarine Kyte who has been acting Town Clerk since June.
James Dolan was not having it: "Debbie Mausolf is cross-endorsed by the Democrats, Republicans, and Conservatives to be the Town Clerk. She will take office on January 1st, whether you like it or you don't. Why are we playing this game every month? We ought to put her in that position now so she can get everything straight."
Dolan had attempted to appoint Debbie to Town Clerk in previous town board meetings but found no support for his motions amongst his peers. This time was different when Clayton Clark in a surprise move jumped to Dolan's side: "I'll second that". A stunned audience let out audible gasps before it broke into applause:
"I feel we need to revisit Debbie Mausolf, bringing her back to the Town Clerk position", Clark stated later in the meeting. He explained how in his view this made the most sense for the Town of Greenport. The appreciative Dolan responded: "I applaud you for that". Not too long ago, at the last board meeting in July, Clayton Clark had different opinions on this matter when he did not second Dolan's motion to appoint Debbie to the Town Clerk's office.
Alas, two votes was all that Debbie was going to get this evening. Supervisor Eldridge had been staunchly against Debbie's appointment from the very beginning and now Guy Apicella attempted to express his opposition to Dolan's and Clark's plans.
He made a hash of it though: "I, myself, even though I am on the board, I don't know...really...what's going on, because there's issues...". The rest of his sentence was unintelligible as the audience burst into laughter. "That's very obvious", Dolan shot back at Apicella.
Another attempt at making Debbie Mausolf Greenport's Town Clerk had thus failed. If Frank Iaccino, who is quite capable of reading the room, didn't have to leave the meeting earlier due to a migraine attack, it is conceivable that Debbie would have received the required third vote after Dolan had made the motion and Clayton Clark seconded it.
Eldridge Fails to Anoint a Town Judge
When the Democratic caucus on July 13th nominated John Porreca Sr. as their candidate for Town Supervisor, Porreca had to step down as Town Judge. Kathy Eldridge hoped she could fill this vacancy by passing resolution 49 which would designate Leann Michael to fill the position of Town Justice throughout the rest of the year.
Although no formal resolution exists to that effect, Michael was hired by the town to help with civil litigation across the various town departments in December 2025. Most of her work was in support of the code enforcement office and by several accounts, she seemed pretty close to code enforcement officer Albert Eldridge.
Before it was time to vote on the resolution, Dolan took offense with the fait accompli that this resolution represented: "Who offered that position to her, and on what authority did they have to offer this because it didn't come before this board?" He went ahead and revealed that Eugene Keeler, who had served one term as county DA beginning in 1984, was going to be the only Town Judge candidate on the ballot in November and would thus be the elected second Town Judge on Jan 1st, 2027. Dolan suggested that Keeler was a more economical choice for Greenport and should be appointed instead of Leann Michael explaining that it would require the town to pay for the requisite judge training course only once.
Dolan went on and reminded Kathy of the last two times she had picked civil servants for the town board to rubber-stamp: "This is not the first time you went off Epcot and hire somebody. We got new building inspectors that we didn't advertise the position open, and then you took it upon yourself to work out, come to the board and get a rubber-spin. You need to be more transparent."
Jim is referring here to former building inspector Cory Birk who was fired in May 2024 after it had come to light that he had stuffed fees collected from businesses into his own pockets and current code enforcement officer Albert Eldridge, Kathy's son, who has been embroiled in a scandal involving multiple driver's licenses (all suspended or revoked) and a strange employment arrangement with Hudson Valley Fisheries. We reported on this in The Greenport Uprising.
Under applause from the audience, Dolan delivered one final broadside on Supervisor Eldridge: "We do not need a supervisor running off in an autocratic way, filling vacancies and then coming to the board for a rubber stamp. That is not the way public business should be handled, and it's going to stop now."
It was clear that Kathy's resolution was dead. When Town Attorney Fitzsimmons asked for a second, it was once again Clayton Clark who delivered a fatal blow: "I am not seconding it, again."
At this point, Dolan was pushing Guy Apicella to provide the third voted needed to appoint Eugene Keeler to the position of Town Judge on the spot. Apicella refused to give it because Keeler apparently hadn't called Apicella in eight years. Dolan couldn't resist: "He didn't send you a birthday card?" and thus at least had the laughs of the audience on his side:
Penultimate Stop: Fish Farm
As the agenda had rolled over to the board comment section, Jim Dolan addressed what he called "the elephant in the room, the fish farm pulling out of town."
Jim's concerns revolved around the potential loss of revenue streams to the town. Hudson Valley Fisheries, in addition to contributing significant sales tax proceeds, buys large quantities of water from the Town of Greenport. While Greenport has significant problems with sewage and wastewater, it has no shortage of fresh water and delivers it not only to HVF but also to neighboring municipalities like Claverack.
Stating that "it'd be good if we kept them here" he opened it up to the rest of the board and asked if they had comments. He interrupted the brief silence and directed another jab at Supervisor Eldridge: "You seem to have a hook into that place."
After there was still no response, Dolan instead turned to Deputy Supervisor Clark. Clayton suggested he would give John Ng, president of HVF, a call tomorrow, and propose a meeting along with Water and Wastewater Superintendent James Rutkey and Town Engineer George Schmitt.
Apicella Mounts His Grand Attack
Kathy had at this point turned entirely silent and if she said something in the remaining 26 or so minutes, we couldn't hear it. She would have watched the next minutes in as much disbelief as the audience when the erratic Apicella took the stage.
It started curiously with a story in which Apicella was riding his bike near Berkshire Bike and Board when he spotted an abandoned refrigerator. "Both doors are on it. Thank God, it was empty", he continued before he explained that code enforcement officer Albert Eldridge, when told of the refrigerator crisis, immediately took care of it and had it removed. Apicella thought this was worthy of kudos to the code enforcement office but at this point it seemed he had fully lost the plot.
This story, as it would soon be revealed, was a pretext to get to his real objective which was to show the front page of a Register Star copy from March 15th, 1991—the day when then-DA Paul Czajka pinned two felony convictions onto Dolan during his tenure as chief of the Hudson Police Department, a decision later reversed by the Appellate Court. If Apicella had hoped this would have an effect on the audience, he would not have hoped for the effect it had. An increasingly restless room started voicing their displeasure with the council member's attempt at bringing up a 35-year old story and ended in calls for his resignation. The full episode can be heard here:
Public Comments
It's hard to imagine that after all this breathless insanity, any real town business could still be discussed but things managed to calm down enough that during the public comments section Harris Dorman could bring up the incessant noise coming from the ADM plant on Route 23B.
Dorman cited sections from Greenport's town code that appear pretty unequivocal that 24/7 noise pollution by a business would be a code violation.
Clayton Clark explained that the town had recently met with ADM and said there was now a phone number that residents could call. Matthew Fischer, who was with Harris, questioned the necessity to call a business that is violating town code and instead asked that the town enforce its own code.
Noise emanating from the ADM plant has been a problem for years for home owners living in proximity to the site. Earlier this year, town board member Dolan had attempted to visit the ADM site and talk to the plant manager but had been chased off the property.
Dolan sided with Dorman and Fischer and agreed that it should be the code enforcement office's job to deal with ADM rather than residents calling the plant. He recommended to keep filing complaints with the town to create a paper trail.
Thus ended a tempestuous, raucous, at times also very funny, meeting.
What we learned
Supervisor Kathy is more and more blending into the background, often being entirely invisible—certainly inaudible. The few times she spoke it was her reading documents (Patricia Burt's letter, proposed resolutions) to the public. Beyond that, she did not contribute and barely put up a fight when her two resolutions to appoint a Town Judge and a second Deputy Clerk were defeated by Dolan and Clark.
The Eldridge disappearing act isn't that surprising as we have seen her role in these meetings slowly diminish since June. She clearly does not do well when besieged by an angry crowd and a Jim Dolan who has been firing one broadside after the other at her.
Dolan elevated himself to be the de-facto leader of this town board. While he was under incessant attacks from Guy Apicella, they didn't land and instead harmlessly bounced off Dolan. He effectively steered the workshop and managed to make a motion, passed unanimously, that gives homeowners hope that the town may be on a path towards a real solution to its wastewater issues.
The most interesting, and maybe unexpected, development was the rebirth of Clayton Clark who realized just in the nick of time that he could no longer stand with Supervisor Eldridge without irrevocably harming his chances in the Supervisor election in November.
John Porreca Sr., his Democratic opponent in the November election, was present at Wednesday's meeting and wisely decided to keep quiet throughout most of the chaos. He did speak up several times during the workshop portion and provided useful background information relating to Greenport's wastewater system that he had from his previous one term as Supervisor in 2013 and 2014.
Debbie Mausolf meanwhile may just be one more town board meeting away from finally getting hired as Town Clerk. With Dolan and Clark supporting her appointment, all eyes will be on Frank Iaccino and his tie-breaking vote when a new motion to appoint Debbie will invariably be made at the next board meeting.
The End.
