To the Editor:

Two critical issues for the consideration of Berne residents regarding the town board were brought to light by recent Enterprise reporting: an absolute authoritarian refusal for transparency [“Berne Town Board rides again,” March 13, 2025] and a hyper-partisan candidate that was almost intentionally slipped onto the board under the radar [“Misunderstanding leads to minor controversy in Berne,” March 14].

First, in the first Berne Town Board meeting in half a year, a perfectly logical, polite motion was put on the table. Why not a little transparency? How about making public comments addressed to the supervisor part of each meeting? 

At the first meeting since three board members resigned (after tolerating his secrecy, irrational anger and disrespect), Supervisor Dennis Palow’s authoritarian tendencies began to emerge. He stated that he had the authority as a supervisor to refuse to ever allow public comment and made it clear he had no intention of allowing public comment because people get “nasty.” So much for knowing about or asking questions about your potential representative!

That’s rich coming from this guy who is an angry, red-faced disrespectful tirade waiting to explode at any second if anything he says or believes is challenged. 

Someone simply asked, “who made you king” and that is over the line for him? That’s his example of how “nasty” comments can be? He can’t take that after all the nasty tirades and threats he subjected me to in his “executive sessions” that, as reported, were called for illegitimate purposes and then used for an opportunity to threaten and harass me in repeated attempts to drive me off the board?  

That all clearly illustrates the problem here. He is not up to the task of being town supervisor. That question was not even delivered in anger. His perspective is totally warped. 

Rational, objective discussion as a town board is sometimes impossible with this guy as a board member, let alone as the supervisor! He needs to step down as supervisor so an open, transparent, and representative government can be restored. 

Second, Supervisor Palow claimed in the meeting that the board dysfunction due to the missing board members for six months was not his fault, disrespectfully implying the mess was their fault. He does not recognize that his secrecy, and unpredictable, disrespectful tirades made the board so dysfunctional that there may as well be no board at all! That is why they walked away: to make that point!.

Then he disrespected our recently appointed board member making unsubstantiated accusations that she made public the information submitted by an applicant for a board seat. He has an extensive history of such disrespectful accusations. 

This brings to mind his very disrespectful public attacks on a farmer. He declared in a public meeting that she was guilty of code violations she had not even been cited for! Complete disrespect for her and due process! 

He wanted her removed from the planning board as a result of this falsehood and they portrayed her young, female agricultural intern (who was actively serving the town as an alternate on the planning board and being considered for voting membership) as being in a homosexual relationship with her!

His disrespectful attempts to drive them from the board got rid of the alternate, but not the voting member. So, he and his comrades disrespectfully and illegally removed her as a voting member. 

There are many publicly reported and documented examples of unquestionably disrespectful actions by Mr. Palow, like the First Amendment violations he brainstormed, but there is a 1,000-word limit here.

So, the second critical issue is the need to keep hyper-partisan candidates from sitting on the Berne Town Board whether elected, appointed, Democrat, Republican, Conservative, etc. It is clear to anyone paying any attention at all that this board is already dysfunctional because of absolute blind, hyper-partisanship.

I think it’s also very important to at least know something about anyone, appointed or elected, to be your representative on the town board. The governor’s appointment was well covered in The Enterprise. Did she attack and disparage Republicans? Sneaking someone on the board without the electorate knowing it’s happening or anything about them at all should be criminal in my estimation. 

The process of electing someone educates the electors regarding what policies and actions a candidate may support. Mr. Palow’s toxicity and secrecy, which drove members of his own party off the board, has created a situation where the benefit of the electoral process has been taken away from the residents of the town of Berne. 

I wholeheartedly appreciate that The Enterprise enlightened us about the apparent hyper-political nature of the candidate that Mr. Palow didn’t want anyone to know about. This is about that candidate, and it was published recently in The Enterprise:

She told The Enterprise that she is “not very political” and is still learning how the whole system works, but that she wanted to find out how to get involved after attending a couple of meetings and finding that Democrats in the town are “extremely vocal and angry and disrespectful.”

A hyper-partisan message. So, what does she want to do for you as your representative? Attack and blame Democrats for the widely reported, toxic, dysfunctional mess clearly created by two prior, chaotic GOP administrations!

Here is a candidate who is reported as declaring she is “not very political.” But then she goes on to portray all the Democrats as a bunch of disrespectful loudmouths contrary to all the reporting (and all my personal experience). 

Who is she talking about and when did this happen? What meetings? Did she look up the enrollment of these people? We are a little thin on the facts here and she could have been a board member without the prior knowledge of the electorate and without any means of public comment to inform the board at all, let alone an election process.

I think this Enterprise reporting disqualified this candidate as another hyper-partisan person who is apparently unwilling or unable to recognize the facts. That’s the last thing the town of Berne needs; another blindly partisan lockstep board member.

Joel Willsey

East Berne