To the Editor:
A Berne Town Board discussion about issues with the dog-control officer position was reported in last week’s edition [“Berne DCO appointment delayed yet again as town mulls changes to position,” The Altamont Enterprise, July 22, 2021].

That town board discussion was controlled by the hyper-partisan code enforcement officer and the Albany County GOP chairman. These people are not town board members, and they did not sign up to comment as residents, but, as is usually the case, they were given a continuous platform to control the discussion at a town board meeting.

They should not be seated at tables where they are allowed to dictate the town board discussion. They were not elected to do that.

The board DCO discussion was very important but the code enforcement officer, with complete confidence, made it clear he had no understanding of the duties or function of the dog control officer. The position is very clearly outlined in Article 7 of Agriculture and Markets law.

He said that the town code was deficient because the last DCO had no paperwork to cite town code when confronting residents about problems with their dogs. But the dog regulations are state law, not town code. His comments confused the issue and distracted from the abject failure of the town to comply with the law and appoint a DCO.

The town is mandated by law to appoint a dog control officer to enforce state regulations, not town code. We had a qualified and experienced candidate who should have been appointed months ago. Instead of discussing the actual subject on the agenda, the meeting is hijacked to discuss town code deficiencies? But this is a state law.  

This was a politically motivated distraction to make it appear that the illegally appointed crony who walked away from the DCO position was confronted with a job that was impossible to perform due to town code issues. He suggests there are foundational problems with the town code that need to be addressed before the dog control officer can adequately perform her or his job. That is all ridiculous.

He noted that there was no record of incidents with cats and various farm animals. When I pointed out that the dog control officer position addresses only dog issues, and the law is very specific about this, he advised me that he has heard differently. He is simply wrong again.

The code enforcement officer was allowed to hijack another recent meeting to go on a long tirade, accusing me of not being forthcoming about my safety concerns at the transfer station. He claims I removed features in the plans to save money back then and he could prove I did with the minutes of town board meetings at the time.

This discussion was all nonsense too. I was not employed by the town back when I developed the preliminary plan for the transfer station; I was a volunteer. I was not appointed to any position at the time, and I was not elected to any office at the time.

The preliminary plan I developed as a volunteer was used by the engineer to develop the final plans. Decisions were between the town board and the engineer. I had no responsibility for any project decisions made. The code enforcement officer is simply wrong again — this was just a politically motivated attack at a board meeting.

That discussion was not on the agenda, and he is not a board member. I was cut from the meeting while defending my position. A non-board member dictated a board discussion that was not on the agenda and an actual elected representative was cut from the Zoom meeting and not allowed to defend or explain his position.

If residents want to even comment, they must sign up for pre-approval and are limited to three minutes, but these long-winded, politically motivated “discussions” by non-board members are allowed and without time limit. These people are not elected board members and they should not be controlling our board meetings.

Again, non-board members need to be seated in the gallery with everyone else after they come before the board with their business at the time scheduled on the agenda. They should not be seated at tables where they are allowed to dictate the board discussion.

Any valid conversation about town business is derailed by these ridiculous discussions that bring no legitimate information to the dais and nothing gets accomplished. These meetings are simply dysfunctional.

Joel Willsey

Berne Town Board