KNOX — Five years after a tropical storm ripped through the Helderbergs, and at the end of the long and contentious April town board meeting, the Knox highway superintendent got approval for the equipment he wanted.

“This has been swept under the rug,” said Gary Salisbury. “Now we’re down to crunch time.”

He made his request at 10 p.m. on April 12 and, after an hour of talk that involved threats of “taking it out back,” the board in a 3-to-2 vote approved buying equipment from Milton CAT to be paid for from roughly $608,000 of funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“When Irene hit, we had all kinds of damage,” Salisbury told the board. “All the small projects, we got paid for. Line Road was extensive.”

The town board at the time agreed it didn’t make sense to spend over $700,000 in FEMA funds to fix the road but settled instead for about $608,000 for equipment.

“We spent months looking at equipment and getting prices,” said Salisbury. I had to give FEMA a list…They said they wouldn’t hold us to it,” said Salisbury. But, as it turned out, he went on, “We’re stuck with these five pieces. If we don’t spend $608,000, we don’t get it back. The deadline on this is December 31 of this year.”

Knox already purchased a John Deere tractor with a mower and has a trailer on order.  That left three pieces of equipment: a backhoe, a roller, and a wheeled excavator.

“I prefer Caterpillar,” said Salisbury. “They’re expensive,” he said but he went on, “We have the money. Why not spend it to get the best?”

“I do not believe all parties involved here have been treated equally,” said Joan Adriance, a Knox resident and school board president, from the gallery. She sat with John Finke who lives in Knox and sells highway equipment.

Adriance asserted that the town board buys equipment not the highway department. She urged the board to postpone the vote until Finke had a chance to present his options.

Highway workers then clashed with residents in a verbal free-for-all. One man in the gallery called a wheeled excavator “a dinosaur” and said the town had no need for one.

“Two-thirds of our roads are blacktop,” responded Loren Shafer, the deputy highway superintendent, who said he’d been an operator for 37 years. “Wake up!” he admonished.

“Each machine has its pros and cons,” said Supervisor Vasilios Lefkaditis. “It’s too late to change the FEMA project….It’s better we spend it than someone else spends it.”

“We’re not here to torpedo this project,” said Finke. “We have nothing but the utmost respect for our competition….I live in Knox…I would like the opportunity to bid this. This is my town…I would just like it opened up.”

Later, as the exchange heated up, Finke said of the federal funds, “This really is tax dollars; you can pretend it isn’t.”

“We should spend what we have to spend,” said Salisbury.

Finally, from the back row of the gallery, Ken Saddlemire, a local farmer, had a question. “Do you trust Gary as superintendent of highways?” he asked the board. “If you do, this is when you support him….He’s been elected by the people of the town.”

Salisbury, last fall, ran unopposed, endorsed by five parties.

The town’s attorney, John Dorfman, echoed that sentiment. “By law, he comes to the board and says this is what he wants,” Dorfman said of a highway superintendent. Dorfman noted the purchases were from state contract. “The legislature decided these are fair prices,” said Dorfman.

“You also elected these officials,” returned Adriance, sitting in the front row of the gallery as she gestured to the board members seated at the dais.

“This is not a personal thing,” said Salisbury. “Caterpillar comes to our building all the time.”

“We need to let our highway superintendent do his job,” shouted Robert Stock, a Knox native and farmer, rising to his feet. “We don’t want to end up like Berne…Let him have what he wants.”

Matthew Schanz, an operator who services highway equipment, said Caterpillar had superior products and that it is “good to have a bunch of equipment all the same.” For example, they use the same filters, he said. “It makes it cheaper….Everything’s interchangeable.”

“I’d like to demo all these things,” said John Weldon, the representative from Milton CAT.

“Me, too,” said Finke.

“The way I see it, we go out to bid or we take the superintendent’s recommendation,” said Lefkaditis.

“I think we have to go with Gary on this one,” said Councilman Earl Barcomb.

Ultimately, Barcomb, Lefkaditis, and Deputy Supervisor Amy Pokorny voted for Salisbury’s proposal and Councilmen Dennis Barber and Eric Kuck voted against it.

Later, Randy Bashwinger, the Berne highway superintendent, who has stood strong against the Berne supervisor on a four-day workweek for his crew, told the Knox Town Board, “I’m from Berne. We have our own battles there.”

He went on to say, “I grew up in Knox. My family’s been on the Bozenkill for a hundred years…I’ve learned a lot from Gary. I would back that guy in a heartbeat…You’ve got a good guy there and you need to stay with him….He’s got a great shop. The floors are so clean, you could eat of off them.”

“He gets almost everything they look for,” said Barber.