To the Editor:
I am often criticized by the Albany County GOP Chairman for abstaining from votes at Berne Town Board meetings as if I do it to avoid my responsibility. This while he has worked at a GOP job in downtown Albany and town highway operations have gone unsupervised. In his absence, serious incidents took place due to documented unsafe non-compliant operations.

His sloppy work and inability to comprehend his responsibilities makes abstaining from or derailing votes my responsibility. In major purchases, the information necessary to make an informed decision is seldom provided by Mr. [Randy] Bashwinger. He is just not doing his job.

His request at the July meeting that we vote to purchase a new truck to serve the transfer station needs is a good example of why I need to derail or abstain from votes. He could not articulate why this purchase is necessary. That, in my opinion, is step one. He provided the age and mileage of the truck to be replaced. The mileage is low. He can’t say what the problem is?

Mr. Bashwinger proposed we “piggyback” Onondaga County contract bid #8996 for this replacement truck. My first issue with this purchase is that the base price I see on the Onondaga bid for this truck is around $90,000 and, according to the quotation he provided, he proposes we enter a contract to pay $122,000 for that truck (without considering the accessories necessary for the transfer station).

Mr. Bashwinger could not explain what the extra $32,000 was for. One would assume factory options. But there is no itemization, so we would be voting to blindly spend $32,000. This type of lazy paperwork makes the town vulnerable to theft and makes it my responsibility to derail votes or abstain in such situations. This kind of paperwork clearly sets up a situation that could be taken advantage of for kickbacks.

If this cost is for factory options on the bare truck, we should see a table on the quotation of the options, the list price for each, and the price we are actually paying for each option. You could buy a nicely equipped new car with this amount of money, but we have no breakdown of what we would even get.

The contract cited on the quotation requires that options be discounted about 40 percent. If this $32,000 is indeed the cost to the town for factory options, does $32,000 represent the discounted cost? We don’t know what we are buying or what the $32,000 represents. Mr Bashwinger didn’t know either. Listen to the meeting recording.

Then we have to mount accessories necessary for the transfer station operation listed in the quotation that amount to more than $56,000 in costs to the town, but the list price and mandated discount of the box hoist and tarp system are not indicated. Does the quotation represent the discounted price? Of course, Mr. Bashwinger didn’t know.

The costs to mount the accessories and set up the power take-off were not provided to the board either. We simply did not know what the actual costs were or what the costs shown represent.

Then the available grant money for this purchase was not even considered. This truck, being used for the delivery of recyclables, appears to be eligible for a 50-percent grant from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. We utilized DEC grants for the existing truck and the recycling building.

It was simple. Sign up and wait in line. This is a very big and important purchase in my opinion. It is negligent to ignore available funding in my opinion.

Sadly, it appears Mr. Bashwinger is not capable of understanding the complexities of a purchase like this and the town is left vulnerable to theft.  The cost appears to be double what is necessary.

He is paid nearly $4,000 as transfer station manager. But there are no performance expectations documented for this position and he was handed this job. There was no competition to find the best candidate. Personally, I think this no-show job for an unqualified very political crony is criminal and this episode illustrates why we shouldn’t appoint political cronies.

His work here consisted of asking a dealer for a quote and handing it to the board. He didn’t understand the information on the quote or why I thought it was deficient. Listen to the meeting recording.

Mr. Bashwinger, who spends much of his time at his GOP job downtown or posting sophomoric, ignorant, inappropriate nonsense on various Facebook pages, is handed nearly $4,000 as transfer station manager, roughly the amount budgeted for the dog-control officer. The supervisor and deputy supervisor have no problem handing Mr. Bashwinger that amount with no job expectations documented and no performance expectations documented or discussed, yet they say we are paying the dog-control officer too much and need to resolve that cost before we appoint a dog-control officer. Ridiculous.

The best interests of the town are clearly not being served by these people. I would like to ask the residents of Berne to please address this deficiency in November.

Joel Willsey


Berne Town Board

Editor’s note: Randy Bashwinger responded via email that a packet he gave to the Berne Town Board ahead of the meeting provided the information that Joel Willsey, a member of the town board, is seeking. “If Mr. Willsey read the packet it shows base price and you pay for accessories separate. I sent over the packet to all of the board to look at before and Joel was the only one to not understand it … Just another crap article on nothing. It is a state contract [and I’m] not sure what the issue is.”