RENSSELAERVILLE — Under new leadership, the Rensselaerville Town Board struggled to approve minutes from its last five meetings at its Jan. 11 meeting — being challenged by a defeated candidate and long-time board watcher — deciding instead to table all but one set of minutes.

For the Dec. 12 town board workshop meeting, only two current town board members were present, Marion Cooke and John Dolce; Margaret Seidlemeir was absent, and the newly elected councilman, Jason Rauf, and newly elected supervisor, Steve Pfleging, were not yet sworn in. After tabling these minutes, the board approved the Dec. 14 public hearing minutes.

While Supervisor Pfleging was making a motion to approve the minutes for the Dec. 14 regular meeting, Marie Dermody, a former town supervisor who had run unsuccessfully for town council alongside Pfleging in November, said there was an error in an item on Dec. 14 regular-meeting minutes. Dermody, who sends out a monthly electronic newsletter recounting town meetings, said that a motion to authorize the former supervisor, Valerie Lounsbury, to renew the Blue Shield of Northeastern New York Medicare Advantage Plan for retired town employees included the benefit being reimbursed once they turned in their receipts over $450.

“I don’t think this is what you intended,” she said. Dermody said that, in the minutes from a December 2016 meeting, the board approved a motion that stated that the insurance would include the compensation of $500 to reimburse the retirees for costs and copays once they had turned in their receipts. She said that the current approval of  the insurance reimburses the retirees only up to $450 rather than letting them meet their full deductible.

Minutes from the Dec. 30, 2016, meeting, which Pfleging read out loud at the January meeting, state that the insurance was renewed and would “include the $500 which the Town will reimburse the seniors for their out-of-pocket co-pays for prescription drugs once they have submitted proof of expenditures of the initial $3,000.”

The board rescinded its initial motion and approved changing the meeting minutes to read that the insurance will “include the $500 which the Town will reimburse the seniors for their out-of-pocket co-pays for prescription drugs once they have submitted proof of expenditures of the initial $3,000.”

“If you know this, why do you blindside us?” Dolce asked Dermody, of the mistakes made at the December meeting. He asked her why she didn’t mention such mistakes during audience comments. Dermody said that she has been told, when bringing mistakes up previously during audience comments, to wait until the board gets to the minutes.

“We’re not going to have an argument here,” said Pfleging, as the exchange grew heated. “We’re going to continue our meeting.”

“But Steve, I want to make a point,” continued Dolce. “Audience comments is audience comments in the middle of our discussion — run for town council, win that position, and then sit up here and you can discuss it.”

“There’s another mistake in the meeting minutes and I’m not saying a word,” replied Dermody. “Suffer the consequences.”

Pfleging then made a motion to table the Dec. 14 regular-meeting minutes, and then made a motion to approve the Dec. 28 meeting minutes. Cooke asked about whether there was a mistake in those minutes, and asked if all the rest of the minutes should be tabled, to which Pfleging agreed.

The board later corrected minutes from its Jan. 2 reorganizational meeting. Dermody had said at the reorganizational meeting that the board had approved the deputy water and sewer officer for $10 an hour when he should have seen a raise to $15; the board corrected his wages to $17 an hour at the Jan. 11 meeting. The board also removed the title of “assistant” from the bookkeeper and the clerk to the supervisor and changed the salary for the seasonal winter help to $19.61 an hour.

Earlier in the meeting, Dermody criticized the board for appointing Lounsbury as an assistant to the bookkeeper and clerk to the supervisor and for increasing the clerk’s hours. Dermody said she has an audio recording from a budget workshop meeting in November in which Lounsbury requested a new position in the supervisor’s office because “she was concerned about the incoming supervisor’s ability to do the job for which he was elected,” she said.

“Does an elected official need a full year of tutoring … ?” asked Dermody.

In a recording of the Oct. 17 budget workshop provided by Dermody, Lounsbury is heard saying that it would be necessary to change Linda MacCormick’s one part-time position into two and pay her for 30 hours a week, because Lounsbury, who is retired, had the free time to do the extra clerical work.

“The new supervisor has a family to support and I don’t think the man will have the time,” Lounsbury said on the recording. She also said MacCormick needed more time as a bookkeeper.

Pfleging ran unopposed for supervisor, and owns his own construction company. He has never before held elected office, although he had been appointed as clerk to the planning and zoning board.

Dolce on the recording asked Lounsbury if she’s saying Pfleging is not capable.

“I’m not saying he’s not capable,” Lounsbury replied. “I’m saying it takes a lot of time, and I don’t know, for $12,005, how much time he can afford while he has a family.”

She said that, as a contractor, Pfleging can make a lot of money choosing to work more hours in that role rather than putting in extra work as a supervisor.

“You should just make her the supervisor,” Dolce said of MacCormick in jest.

“We can just forget it; I was just trying to make it easier,” Lounsbury said on the recording.

Speed limit

After recent crashes, the board approved a resolution requesting the state to look into reducing the speed limit on Route 353 from 55 to 35 miles per hour. The road has been the site of several accidents where it runs through the Rensselaerville hamlet. Pfleging said that the New York State Department of Transportation must still review a proposal to reduce the speed limit, but that the resolution will allow the state to complete their investigation.

“It’s a great step forward on getting that achieved,” said Pfleging.

In the last six months, two accidents have occurred in the Rensselaerville hamlet along that road. In July 2017, a dump truck overturned, narrowly missing a house on Route 353 located near the intersection of Pond Hill Road. In December, a county snow-plow truck hit that same home and, in August 2001, a truck hit the porch of the home adjacent to that house.

Other business

In addition, the board also:

— Transferred $142,853 from the Federal Emergency Management Fund to the town’s highway department to pay for a new loader;

— Heard from Thomas Fallati, an attorney from the law firm  Tabner, Ryan and Keniry, which represents the town. Fallati said that the local law to make the tax exemption for Cold War veterans was ready, which the town board accepted unanimously, as well as the new fee schedule. Fallati also said the town would have to begin the process of transferring the property from the now-defunct Rensselaerville Volunteer Ambulance to the town; and

— Ratified the union contract for the town’s highway workers. Highway Superintendent Randall Bates said that in the future the highway superintendent should be involved in the contract negotiations.