The Greenport Uprising

Less than a year ago, the Town of Greenport appeared to be thriving. Like any other municipality in the county, it had its share of infrastructure challenges—a water and sewage system in need of investment or the demand for a new Highway Department garage—but residents rested assured that Town Supervisor Kathy Eldridge and the town board were actively managing these issues. Because there appeared to be no cause for alarm, town meetings were routinely sparse and poorly attended.

Within the past six months, however, that deep-seated public trust has entirely eroded. Board meetings since June have consistently drawn packed houses, with one even exceeding the town hall’s maximum capacity, forcing officials to turn residents away at the door.

An Entirely Ordinary Election

By all outward appearances, Greenport’s 2025 general election was an unremarkable non-partisan affair. Not a single seat on the ballot was contested. Longtime Council Member Janice Brodowski was stepping down, seamlessly replaced on the ticket by fellow Democrat James Dolan Jr. In a display of small-town political consensus so absolute it would have embarrassed Joseph Stalin, every candidate on the ballot carried the cross-endorsement of the Democratic, Republican, and Conservative parties. Incumbent Town Supervisor Kathy Eldridge sailed to re-election with a Soviet-esque 98.31% of the vote.

Two days before the election, the always gregarious Dolan decided to make a phone call. He dialed the retiring Brodowski just to catch up on the latest town news and what Supervisor Eldridge had been up to lately. He expected little more than a routine social chat; what he instead got was quite different.

Janice revealed that Eldridge was in the process of facilitating a $5,000 donation from the Hudson Valley Fish Farm (HVFF) to her church in Hudson—marking the third such contribution since 2023. Dumbfounded, Jim suggested Kathy should not be dealing with donations from a business with which the town was and had been in litigation in the past. He asked Janice if she thought this was a large amount to donate, to which she responded that this was one of the largest donations she had ever seen.

Dolan immediately went to work. He reached out to Debbie Mausolf, who had been serving as Kathy’s Confidential Secretary since 2019. Debbie told him she wasn't at liberty to discuss the matter and referred him to her husband, John Mausolf, the town's Highway Superintendent.

What Jim  learned from John is what provided the initial spark for the Greenport insurgency and what would quickly uncover a convoluted affair involving the town’s Supervisor, the code enforcement office, a local business, cash in a paper bag, a fired secretary and multiple driver’s licenses.

Hudson Valley Fish Farm: No Ordinary Constituent

The timeline traces back to 2023, when Kathy received a call from the Hudson Valley Fish Farm (HVFF). The caller’s message was peculiar: check inside her car, parked in her driveway, for a little something she might enjoy.

Searching the vehicle, Kathy soon discovered a small paper bag stuffed with $100 bills. Unnerved and unsure of her next move, she drove to town hall and called her confidential secretary, Debbie Mausolf, to come out to the car. Kathy handed over the bag for Debbie to count. Debbie finished counting the cash: it totaled $5,000. Then Kathy called town attorney Genevieve Trigg. Kathy told her she wanted to return the money to the fish farm. Genevieve said Kathy could return it if she liked. Remarkably, Trigg never advised her to hand the tainted cash over to law enforcement instead.

Kathy took Debbie along to the Greenport Highway Department to consult John Mausolf—the Highway Superintendent and Debbie’s husband. Known as a straight-shooter who rarely minced words, John didn't hold back. Appalled by the story and the cash, he told her unequivocally in his booming voice: “This is a bribe. Bring it to the police. Now.”

Kathy said the town attorney told her that she could just simply give the money back. She asked John for a manila envelope to transfer the cash, as the paper bag was now badly ripped. She had decided to return the money to the fish farm.

Kathy’s next stop was the HVFF site on Route 9. An employee there stubbornly refused to take back the cash. During that tedious back-and-forth, Kathy received her third—and worst—piece of advice that day: “Give the money to whoever you want; You can give it to your church”. The exchange eventually concluded with Kathy leaving the cash at the fish farm and driving off.

Her immediate problem was solved. What began as a clear-cut attempt to buy influence was now, at least in her mind, transformed into a donation. Now she needed a recipient.

Next, Kathy called Greenport councilmember Janice Brodowski to ask if the church still held their annual fundraiser. When Janice confirmed they did, Kathy explained the fish farm wanted to donate $5,000 to them. She omitted the money's true origins, leaving Janice with no reason to suspect anything amiss. Janice offered to talk to the church, but Kathy insisted on arranging the "donation" herself.

The church accepted the money with no inkling of its source, believing it was simply a generous gift from HVFF. This soon became an annual rite, with Eldridge arranging additional $5,000 donations to the church in both 2024 and 2025.

Yet, as compromising as this arrangement was, it pales in comparison to what would happen next, where the Hudson Valley Fish Farm once again emerged as a key player.

Code Enforcement and Cronyism

On April 6th, 2022, the Town of Greenport hired Cory Birk as a building inspector/code enforcement officer. Eldridge knew him from her former career as a nurse in Greene County. The town never publicly advertised the vacancy, relying solely on Eldridge’s personal recommendation when the town board passed resolution #39 to hire Birk.

Birk proved to be a poor choice. By April 2024, the town discovered that Birk had been soliciting off-the-books cash payments from local residents and businesses for fire inspections and code violations he never formally documented. Greenport promptly fired him and notified the State Police in May 2024. It took another ten months for the investigation to culminate in his arrest on March 7, 2025.

While this is the official account provided by Supervisor Eldridge, a conflicting version suggests it was actually one of the defrauded business owners—not the town—who reported Corey Birk to the State Police.

Regardless of who blew the whistle, the disastrous experience with an Eldridge-endorsed civil servant did not change the town's hiring practices. When the position became vacant once more, the replacement was this time kept within the family. In October 2024, Kathy Eldridge’s son, Albert, submitted this application:

It was an extraordinary document. By any reasonable professional standards, the application was thin. The only training Albert Eldridge listed was a "BSI certification"; we believe it most likely refers to the American Red Cross's Basic Swim Instructor certification. The second page, intended for applicants to highlight professional skills, was left almost entirely blank.

Attached to the above town application was a page from an application for the civil service test which is normally filed with the county. There is no obvious reason for why this page exists as part of the Greenport record of Albert’s application. Furthermore, the difference in hand writing suggests that the third page was filled out by Kathy and not by her son Albert.

One would have to speculate about the purpose of the additional page from a different application form. One hypothesis is that Kathy thought that Albert’s application to the town–the first two pages–didn’t make an especially strong case for his hiring. She subsequently added a page from an unrelated form to make it look more substantial. If anything, she achieved the opposite as the extraneous page revealed that Albert Eldridge, in addition to being unqualified, had a criminal record.

Not that anyone was looking too closely. This sham of an application was only handled by Kathy Eldridge herself and Deputy Supervisor Clayton Clark. No other town board member saw it.

While most municipalities run routine background checks on prospective civil servants, no such check was performed on the Supervisor's son. Eldridge, through the town’s labor attorney Elena Keane, justified this lack of due diligence later by claiming each background check would cost the town more than a thousand dollars.

In reality, the cost to the town would have been zero. James Rutkey, Water and Wastewater Superintendent of the town, later confirmed that all applicants for his department are vetted by the Greenport Police Department, which possesses full, free access to nationwide law enforcement databases.

Unchecked, the town board passed Resolution #59 in November 2024, appointing Albert Eldridge, initially part-time, as the new Building Inspector.

By September 2025, less than a year into his tenure, Greenport residents began noticing a strange routine: Supervisor Eldridge was personally driving her son to local inspection sites. The underlying reason soon came to light: the New York State DMV had permanently revoked Albert’s driver’s license in August 2025.

On May 28, the Register Star cited a spokesperson for the New York State DMV who revealed that Albert Eldridge had in fact two different driver’s licenses using variant spellings of his name. His alternate license had been suspended since 2016.

Most of the above is what Jim Dolan had learned simply by chatting to people in or around town. What was still missing were more corroborating documents.

The Letter to Clayton Clark

On January 2, 2026, freshly elected Council Member Jim Dolan decided to review Albert Eldridge’s employment application in his personnel file at Town Hall after news had broken of Albert’s–multiple–suspended driver’s licenses. What he uncovered was an entirely new hole that warranted digging deeper: a formal recusal letter.

A number of things are off here. The recusal “from any matters the Town has with the Hudson Valley Fish Farm” is something that a town board must be made aware of. The recipient of the letter, Deputy Supervisor Clayton Clark, instead discreetly squirreled the letter away in Albert Eldridge’s personnel file where it would never be found if Jim Dolan had not gone looking into the discrepancies in Albert’s employment application. When Dolan discovered this letter over eight months after it had been submitted, only two members of the townboard–Supervisor Eldridge and Deputy Supervisor Clark–knew about it. It’s hard to imagine that this was not by design.

Furthermore, because Albert by this time had been promoted to head of the Code Enforcement office, a personal recusal effectively nullifies the entire department's oversight capabilities regarding that business.

The arrangement points to a highly symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship between the Eldridge family and the fish farm. Hudson Valley Fish Farm need not worry about unannounced inspections, while Supervisor Eldridge secured a reliable secondary source of income for her son — all to the direct detriment of Greenport taxpayers.

"Debbiegate" and the Firing of the Confidential Secretary

Jim Dolan’s widening investigation into the Eldridges' entanglement with the fish farm ultimately triggered the Supervisor’s most catastrophic political miscalculation.

In the 2025 general election, Debbie Mausolf—Kathy’s long-serving confidential secretary—ran uncontested for the position of Town Clerk, securing 99.59% of the vote. Debbie however already knew she could not accept the office. Though Kathy and Clayton had previously assured her she could perform  both roles simultaneously, Debbie learned in October that state regulations barred her from serving as Town Clerk while retaining parts of her role as the Supervisor's confidential secretary. By the time she realized she had to choose, the statutory deadline to withdraw from the ballot had passed. Consequently, when the new year arrived, the town board appointed Michele Troy-Ryder to fill the Town Clerk vacancy.

On May 19, Jeffrey Yeh made a post on Facebook according to which Debbie Mausolf had been fired as Confidential Secretary and escorted out of the town hall by the Sheriff’s department. It was otherwise sparse on details but once the veracity of the post had been confirmed, it quickly set the town on fire.

Debbie later detailed her firing to the Register Star:

Monday I worked and did payroll. I come in on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m., she [Eldridge] calls me in, she gives me a slip of paper and says 'your services are no longer needed,' turns her back to me and never looks at me again. And then she called the police to have me escorted out.

The move was ill-advised for two reasons: Debbie is one of the best liked and respected public servants in Greenport, having dedicated more than a decade to various town administrative roles. Her aggressive public ouster galvanized the community against their supervisor; the "Supervisor Eldridge Must Go" signs that rapidly appeared on lawns across town were a direct reaction to Debbie’s firing.

Second, her termination was in all likelihood retaliatory. Eldridge had incorrectly assumed that Debbie was the source who leaked to Jim Dolan the details of the fish farm's cash payments. Beyond exposing the Supervisor and the town to potential wrongful termination litigation, the firing only succeeded in drawing scrutiny to the $5,000 cash handoffs.

Michele Troy-Ryder, who had been appointed Town Clerk in Debbie's stead, resigned her post just days after Debbie was fired, pointing at a work environment increasingly made toxic by Kathy.

Throughout all of the above, Jim Dolan confided that what his investigations uncovered troubled him so much that he felt he had the obligation to contact federal, state and local law enforcement. These criminal investigations are believed to be still on-going.

What Comes Next

What remains certain is that this is Kathy Eldridge's last term as Supervisor. On the Republican ticket, she has been replaced by current Deputy Supervisor Clayton Clark. Clayton’s at times erratic and outright complicit behavior in concealing Albert Eldridge’s involvement with the fish farm means that Clayton will not enjoy a cross-endorsement from the Democrats.

On June 18, the Greenport Democrats posted in the Register Star that they were “looking for an honest and ethical resident with integrity to run for the office of Greenport Town Supervisor”. Almost a month later, the Democratic caucus nominated John Porreca Sr., who had been Greenport’s Supervisor from 2012 through 2015 and who had served as one of the two Town Judges from 2017 till his caucus nomination on July 14. Earlier this year, Porreca was elected President of the Columbia County Magistrates Association.

Porreca, formerly a registered Republican, is a noteworthy choice, since he had butted heads with the Hudson Valley Fish Farm before and is not someone HVFF should be comfortable trying to pay off. 

Debbie Mausolf, now freed from her role in the Supervisor's office, is running once again for Town Clerk, while her husband John is running unopposed for Highway Superintendent. Both Mausolfs have secured full, multi-party cross-endorsements.

Meanwhile, Albert Eldridge’s tenure as Code Enforcement Officer will likely come to a close by the end of this year. With his mother exiting office, his termination in January 2027 seems a foregone conclusion, compounded by an active DMV investigation into his dual driver's licenses that carries potential criminal ramifications.

Three very basic questions are currently on everyone’s mind:

Why did the Hudson Valley Fish Farm feel comfortable enough to deposit a paper bag stuffed with $5,000 in Kathy Eldridge’s car?

Why did Greenport’s Supervisor Kathy Eldridge not report this blatant attempt to compromise and corrupt the Supervisor’s office to law enforcement?

Why did Supervisor Eldridge and Deputy Supervisor Clayton Clark hide code enforcement officer Albert Eldridge’s letter declaring his employment with the Hudson Valley Fish Farm in his personnel file and not notify all other members of the town board?

In the interim, municipal governance in Greenport has ground to a halt. While town board meetings are now heavily attended by an angry public, actual legislative progress has stalled. Since June, Eldridge has barred all public comment during meetings and stopped responding to residents’ emails.

The Town Clerk’s office remains in disarray, held together solely by Town Clerk Clarine Kyte and interim deputy clerk Sharon Zemko. The dysfunction has reached the point where Town Hall has been locked during business hours, leaving residents unable to perform basic tasks such as purchasing municipal garbage bags.

With the exception of Jim Dolan, the town board has shown little urgency to resolve the crisis. Dolan’s last two motions to reinstate Debbie Mausolf to the Town Clerk's office went nowhere and weren’t seconded. Notably, not even Clayton Clark, Debbie’s running mate on the Republican ticket, supported it.

Because Kathy Eldridge seems intent on remaining glued to the Supervisor's chair until her term expires at the end of the year, residents can expect a highly volatile atmosphere at Town Hall. Since June, every town board meeting has featured the physical presence of a Greenport Police officer. Just a few months ago, this would have been entirely unimaginable.

Then again, so was a Town Supervisor handling bags of cash from a local business, or the code enforcement officer operating without a valid driver's license, or the chief code enforcement officer being on the payroll of one of town’s biggest businesses: In Greenport, the unimaginable has become the norm.