Berne’s best interest are not a priority for GOP leadership

To the Editor:

Transparency is a continuing issue with the Berne Town Board Republicans. There has been no public comment allowed at meetings since last summer.

It certainly appears they have just appointed an unelected lockstep loyalist to help ensure that the people have no access to their representatives at town board meetings. Mr. Leo Vane elaborated on his rationale for his opinion of the circumstances where he feels public comment should be allowed.

The current policy allows for three minute comments and he stated his opinion that, as long as the time was limited, he was in favor. I advised him that the time limits were in place and he voted nay. Did someone kick him under the table to change his mind by the time he finished his rationale to vote yes? 

Mr. Sean Lyons, the Republican supervisor, said he needs to avoid being blindsided by questions he doesn’t know how to answer. He should allow public comment and just admit when he doesn’t know the answer. Does he want to hide the fact that he is not engaged in the people’s business enough to answer questions spontaneously or is he engaged in more politically motivated, sinister nonsense he is trying to hide? I think the answer is yes to both.

Mr. Dennis Palow, “number two in command,” says that they can’t control the meetings as people don’t respect the three-minute limit while Mr. Lyons says we can’t have a “free for all” allowing people to “grandstand and attack.” They simply don’t want to be criticized. This is all absolute nonsense.

I have seen nothing in meetings that comes close to the nonsense and very vicious personal attacks and lies Supervisor Kevin Crosier endured in the meetings he conducted. We established better meeting controls early in my term and they work. They are not perfect to control every person, but I see the limits nearly always respected by our residents.

Mr. Palow says they don’t and, as I have proven repeatedly with audio clips from our meetings, there is often no integrity to his statements in meetings. As an incredibly important example, he justified a motion to derail an initiative to address public and employee safety based on absolute lies and this is well documented with audio clips.

We have had two very serious accidents directly attributable to noncompliance with safety standards and he lied to protect the GOP chairman from scrutiny and enabled the dangerous noncompliance to continue.

When the meeting agenda indicated it was time to consider the appointment of candidates for jobs the town advertised, the decision was made to put off the appointments until next month. I called and interviewed everyone on the candidate list the town clerk provided with the exception of one person who has not returned my call or text.

I specifically asked each candidate if other board members had called to interview them within a day or two of the March meeting. Only one said she received a short call from Mr. Palow. One said Bonnie Conklin had attempted but they played phone tag and never talked. Otherwise, it appears nobody received a call from any board member.

So, let’s consider the scenario. We have a group of candidates for jobs who have submitted résumés, some as far back as January. We have appointments for these jobs on the agenda for the March meeting. They are all good candidates (based on my phone interviews).

We desperately need to replace the administrative assistant for continuity in secretarial coverage of the planning board for instance. Mr. Palow claims to have talked to these people, but I got a different message when I talked to them.

It’s all politically motivated in my opinion. The supervisor and deputy supervisor are looking for more Bashwinger cronies to fill town positions. It’s as simple as that.

It is incredibly disrespectful to the taxpayers to use their money to advertise for jobs and board positions and then not interview anyone unless they are party cronies. It’s incredibly disrespectful to blow off good candidates who have applied to fill positions we urgently need to fill simply because they haven’t sworn allegiance to “the party.”

I talked to some very good candidates. The best interests of the town are clearly not a priority with the current Republican leadership in Berne. 

Joel Willsey

Berne Town Board

Editor’s note: See related story on the appointment of Leo Vane Jr.

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