ALTAMONT — Beginning in June, the village has been welcoming visitors with burgundy banners that cost roughly $2,800. Village officials are at odds about whether the board gave proper approval for their purchase.
The banners were part of an effort towards "village beautification," trustee Kerry Dineen said this week in a written statement to The Enterprise, she declined to comment over the phone. The idea for them came up in discussions with business owners in the village, she said.

Trustee Harvey Vlahos, who just gave up his seat on the village board, brought up the issue at his last board meeting earlier this month in a list of complaints that he had with the board.
"Banner expenditures of $2,800 were not authorized by the board. There were some issues," Vlahos said at the March 6 meeting, to which no board members replied. "There was some discussion beforehand and I thought that, actually, it wasn’t going to be done and then they were going up."

Vlahos said after the meeting, in a phone interview, that there had been some discussion of buying the banners between board members via e-mail, but he thought the money should have been spent on something else. He was surprised when the banners showed up, and he said the money was spent illegally, since the board had not authorized the purchase.
"At the time, it really wasn’t worth making that much of a big deal about," Vlahos said when asked why he made no mention of the issue in June. "It’s just that it ought to be voted on and brought up in a public discussion," he said of why he decided to include it in the list of complaints he went through at his last board meeting.

Mayor James Gaughan, who declined to answer questions over the phone this week, said in a written statement to The Enterprise, "I recall that the discussions were positive and supportive among trustees." He went on to say that the banner purchase was legal because a transfer of funds in the budget was approved at a June board meeting. According to Village Clerk Jean LaCrosse, that meeting was held on June 6. Trustee Kerry Dineen had already placed the order for the banners on June 1, according to the company that produced them.

The banners were hung in the village by the end of June and the voucher to approve payment for them was initialed by three trustees in July. The board approved that voucher as part of an abstract – a group of bills that the village needed to pay – at the August village board meeting.
"You have to get approval," said Eamon Moynihan of New York’s Department of State when asked if it was legal for one trustee to spend municipal funds without board approval. However, since the board later approved the vouchers that allowed for the payment for the banners, it may have become legal retroactively, he said. But he asked, by way of example: If you steal your neighbor’s television, is it still illegal if he gives it to you later"
Although the state comptroller’s office would not comment on a specific case, spokeswoman Jennifer Freeman referred to the office’s fourth opinion of 2003, regarding a fire district in Syosset, which bought Christmas decorations, since it was a similar situation. The opinion says, in part, "A board of fire commissioners of a fire district may ratify a purchase authorized by a single fire commissioner without the prior approval of the board, and audit and approve a claim for such a purchase, but only if the board could have authorized the purchase in the first instance."

Vlahos initialed the voucher for the banners, along with Dineen and Trustee Bill Aylward, in July. The purpose of a voucher is to approve payment from the village to its vendors, Village Treasurer Catherine Hasbrouck said. The banners were hanging from utility poles around the village before the three trustees signed their initials.

Vlahos said that he initialed the voucher at that point because the banners had already been made, delivered, and hung.
If the village hadn’t approved the payment, it would have likely faced a lawsuit from Rileighs Outdoor Décor, the Bethlehem, Pa. company that created the banners. It’s a small operation, said company representative Rick Snyder, so the company doesn’t accept returns on custom-made items like the banners it made for Altamont and it would sue to recover payment, "especially with a municipality," he said.
"We do it all in good faith," said Snyder of the many verbal orders the company handles, like the one he said Dineen placed on June 1 for Altamont’s banners. "We assume the funds have been approved. We expect to collect for the work we’ve done."