GUILDERLAND — Four weeks ago, John Adamovich lost his job. 

Two weeks ago, Supervisor Kenneth Runion said that the position was cut to save money in tough economic times. 

Last week, the town sent a memo to that effect, listing other positions that had been changed or eliminated.

Departments within the town have until June to submit cost-cutting measures to his office, Runion said yesterday.  He’d like to reduce spending by several hundred thousand dollars by the end of 2008, Runion said.  He thinks the goal can be reached largely because he has asked that a police officer’s position be eliminated, and that, taken with an additional officer’s post that was budgeted for but won’t be filled, is over $100,000 in salaries.

When Adamovich addressed the town board after he had been told he wouldn’t be hired for the seasonal position at the town’s golf course he’s held for the last four years, Runion said, “We grant preference to town residents for new hires and re-hires.” 

The town bought the course several years ago amid controversy for $6.6 million.  Adamovich, who began working at the 235-acre golf course a year before the town purchased it, lives in Gallupville.

“Well, there are two new members on the board and the board decided on this new policy,” Adamovich recalled Stacia Brigadier telling him when he called the town’s human resources department for an explanation as to why he wouldn’t get his job mowing the golf course this season.  “She made a point of saying two new board members,” he reiterated during an interview recently.  (Two Republicans were elected to the formerly all-Democratic town board and took office Jan. 1)

“That’s absolutely not true,” Brigadier said when asked about the exchange.  “It wasn’t a new policy,” she said of the 2004 resolution stating the town’s preference for hiring residents to fill municipal positions.

The resolution was prompted by the county’s Civil Service department, Runion said yesterday. The town usually requests a list of eligible candidates for a job opening, he said, and Civil Service provides a list of town residents as well as a countywide list.  The department asked for a statement from the town regarding its policy on hiring, so, he said, the board decided it would prefer hiring Guilderland residents, but wouldn’t have a residency requirement.

“The paramedics were the big example,” Runion said yesterday, explaining that some positions are difficult to fill and it wouldn’t benefit the town to restrict the hiring pool.

Asked why the policy had come up now, Runion said, “I’ve got to be proactive.”  With a downturn in the economy, things will be tight, he said, but added that the policy has always been there.

“I had been a good seasonal employee,” Adamovich told the board.  “I’m a little perplexed.”

“We didn’t do this, sir,” councilman Warren Redlich, one of the two new board members told him.  “This appears to be a decision by the supervisor.”

When Redlich then asked Runion whose decision it had been, he answered, “I’ll take responsibility for it.”  He later attributed his authority to make such decisions to the ability granted to him at the Jan. 1 organizational meeting to make provisional appointments.

Yesterday, however, he said that his authority in that capacity was due to Section 52 of the state’s Town Law, which grants the supervisor the ability to transfer employees among town departments and to re-organize departments.  He has moved a permanent employee from the parks department, of which the golf course is a part, to the mowing position that Adamovich had held for the summer, he said.

“Doing a golf course isn’t like doing any old park,” Adamovich said.  “Everything has got to look picture perfect.”

Several other local municipalities are either making cuts or raising the price of services, Runion said, referring to the faltering economy.  If one part of the budget gets out of line, he said, “It’s almost like a domino effect.”  And, ultimately, he said, it’s his responsibility.

“Somebody’s playing games,” Adamovich said of the situation, “and it’s not John,” he added of the golf course superintendent, John Sanchirico.