Surprising lessons learned in tentative budget meeting

Town of Greenport, NY, October 14 — The special town board meeting on Tuesday, October 13th, where the tentative budget was presented and discussed provided some unusual insights previously unknown. Supervisor Eldridge's edict to the town clerk's office to not give out copies of that budget ahead of the meeting made me expect some sort of vindictive budgeting that might drastically cut line items benefiting either Debbie Mausolf (the incoming Town Clerk in January) or the Highway Department, run by Debbie's husband John.

I am relieved to report that at least it didn't come to that. All things considered, the budget is quite reasonable and makes a conscientious effort to minimize the burden on Greenport's residents despite some tricky gaps that emerged in the Water Department, for no fault of their own. A lot of credit here goes to Town Accountant Michael Torchia who had done his homework by compiling the budget and answering every question that came up.

Greenport still as nontransparent as possible

Before the town board even looked at the budget, town board member Jim Dolan wondered why residents were not allowed to obtain a copy of it ahead of the meeting. To make matters worse, audience members who had hoped to find budget copies placed in the board meeting room were disappointed as none had been provided.

Supervisor Eldridge defended the decision by pointing at the law which does indeed not strictly require making copies available, but also does not prohibit it. It seems that Eldridge is always within the law when it benefits here and suppresses transparency. In all other cases, she is considerably more cavalier, notably when it comes to her son Albert, Greenport's code enforcement officer. More on him later.

Dolan wasn't the only one displeased with the Supervisor and the remaining town board members who saw no issue here. Audience member Chip Ball had come armed with a binder full of copies of legal texts advocating transparent governance and was liberally spreading them in the room as Eldridge seriously suggested that residents could always file a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request to get a budget copy—at $0.25 a page.

This is where the debate ended. I had the advantage of sitting next to Michael Grisham who had managed to obtain a copy of the forbidden fruit from Dolan himself and we were thus able to follow along the discussion of the budget. Without a copy, attending this meeting would have felt like a waste of time.

Albert's lack of driver's license now a feature

As Town Accountant Torchia was going through the proposed budget line by line, Jim Dolan questioned the money allocated to personal services in the Code Enforcement Office. Currently, it employs two full-time and one part-time officer and Thomas Burrall has to chauffeur the other full-time officer Albert Eldridge around as Albert had lost both of his two NY State driver's licenses in August of last year.

In Dolan's mind, this was a waste of money and the town ought to consider getting rid of the code enforcement officer who cannot legally drive and thus reduce the budget by a not insignificant amount.

What Dolan could not foresee was that Kathy would spin-doctor this into a safety measure She said that code enforcement officers are increasingly likely to get harassed and attacked while carrying out inspections and it makes therefore perfect sense to have Albert Eldridge buddy up with Thomas Burrall at all times. "This is an interesting response", Dolan remarked with slight sarcasm.

What Kathy is referring to is a real concern—but not one that exists in Greenport. In NYC, the Department of Housing and Development prefers to send multi-disciplinary task forces to inspection sites to deal with uncooperative or outright hostile property owners.

In Greenport however, the real menace is not the property or business owner getting an inspection visit but more likely the code enforcement officer himself. Readers may be reminded of Cory Birk who was fired in 2024 for illegally pocketing fire inspection fees, or of the fact that Albert Eldridge has a criminal record.

There is one more inconsistency in Kathy's argument: If Greenport truly followed the buddy system, why does the town not have an even number of officers on the payroll? It appears that Kathy's son Albert gets to enjoy the heightened security of a bodyguard whereas part-time officer James Dallas is out of luck and has to navigate Greenport's treacherous streets by himself.

Needless to say that Dolan got nowhere with his motion to reduce the number of code enforcement officers from three to two. Eldridge and Deputy Supervisor Clayton Clark eventually urged the board to move on.

Budgetary concerns in the Water and Highway Department

The storm clouds in next year's budget can be found in the Water Department which has to contend with the closure of Hudson Valley Fisheries and thus will see a reduction of around $300,000 in water revenue. Likewise, the Town of Claverack, which is buying water from Greenport, earlier this year discovered a massive water leak and as a result, has dropped its monthly consumption from one and a half million gallons down to 770,000 gallons.

For now, the town will make up that shortage by using the fund balance but water rate increases may eventually have to be discussed unless new sources of revenue can be found.

The situation in the Highway Department is reversed. Here the problems lie on the expenditure side: the unforeseen repair of Mt. Merino Rd. as well as a sharp increase in the price of road salt.

The good news is that Town Accountant Mike Torchia has been a practitioner of defensive budgeting and has over the years squirreled away large sums of money in various fund balances. These will come in very handy right now as it will allow Greenport to bridge some of this hopefully temporary financial stress without having to raise property taxes. To provide some context, the Town of Greenport's unassigned fund balance (money that can be freely moved around as needed) sits at around $4 million while the Town of Lebanon's fund balance is only around $400,000, ten percent of Greenport's.

On October 26, the town board will meet one more time to finalize the preliminary budget.