KNOX — Two little words: “suggested changes.”

Last week, the Knox Town Board was divided — with the supervisor on one side and the four councilmen on the other —  disputing a motion passed at an Aug. 3 special town board meeting. The supervisor told the Sept. 13 board meeting that the clerk’s draft rendering of the motion was ‘in error”  because  the  words “suggested changes” were not part of the motion, which had been made by him.

These two words can be be plainly heard, however, on the meeting’s audio tape, which The Enterprise has reviewed.  But they are uttered not by the supervisor but by the clerk, Tara Murphy, in the course of prompting the motion-making by the supervisor, Vasilios Lefkaditis.

The draft minutes, including the disputed motion, were approved by a vote of 4 to 1, Lefkaditis dissenting.  The question then becomes, exactly what do these words mean? And why are they  in the minutes’ statement of  the motion?

Surrounding those questions are still more questions. How should motions be made to avoid later confusion or misunderstanding?  Should discussion precede the making of a motion rather than follow? Should motions always be restated by the clerk before a vote is taken?

And, when the supervisor disagrees with the other town board members and clerk on the meaning of key words, or even their inclusion in a motion, who is to say who is right?

On Aug. 3, the board was reviewing, for approval, a first-issue draft of a new newsletter to be mailed to town residents twice yearly. A newsletter had long been advocated by Councilman Dennis Barber and the idea had been enthusiastically embraced by Lefkaditis who believes communication with town residents needs to be improved.

Lefkaditis was blunt at last week’s meeting in claiming the clerk had erred. He did not allow Murphy to explain, but in later conversation with The Enterprise she maintained that the minutes she wrote, and that the town board approved, were an accurate reflection of the “board’s intentions.”

The draft newsletter that was under review at the Aug. 3 meeting began with a letter to residents  from Lefkaditis, extolling recent progress made in the town. He became town supervisor on Jan. 1.

The transcript

Feelings ran high at that meeting on Aug. 3 as town board members argued that the newsletter letter should come from the board, not the supervisor. Lefkaditis accused the board members of once again demonstrating their entrenched opposition to him:

“When the letter from the supervisor was on the website for 40 years did anyone bring this up, Amy [Deputy Supervisor Amy Pokorny]?  Do you remember at any board meetings anyone saying well it should come from the town board; do you, Dennis [Councilman Dennis Barber]?”

Lefkaditis was referring to a letter to residents from Michael Hammond, who served as town supervisor for 42 years before Lefkaditis ousted him in November. That letter is still on the town website but now it is unsigned, and “I” has been changed to “we.” Murphy told the board that had been her call, once Hammond was no longer in office; Murphy maintains the town website.

Eventually, a motion was made by Councilman Eric Kuck that “the newsletter come from the town board.” It was seconded by Pokorny. But no vote was  taken until the accusations and counter-accusations ran their course.

Lefkaditis said, “Even if I go to a 8.5 you guys don’t budge, you stay at 10.”

Barber asked, “So is working with you agreeing with everything you say?”

Striking a conciliatory note, Earl Barcomb said, “I think you [Lefkaditis] have a lot of good ideas and I agree with a lot of your ideas. Our goal is to work toward unity.”

At the end of the sometimes angry discussion, the four board members passed a motion to make the newsletter come from the town board. Only Lefkaditis dissented.

That done, the board turned to the first issue of the newsletter, containing the letter from Lefkaditis, and to approving it for mailing.

Lefkaditis made a motion “to approve the existing newsletter with the addition of the phone number for CDTA as well as the email…”  No one seconded the motion and the discussion continued.

Murphy introduced  the words “suggested changes.” Here is their context, as transcribed by her from the audio tape:

“Tara: So I’m just going to say approve existing newsletter with suggested changes or do you want the specific changes listed…

Vas: Ahh…with the addition of the CDTA phone number and the reference to email updates and email vs. paper distribution. Did someone make that motion or did we just talk it through?

Tara: You just talked it through…nobody’s made a motion

Vas: Okay then I’ll make it, Earl seconded it, all in favor – aye.”

The motion passed unanimously, without being restated or even fully stated.

The process

What did Murphy mean by the words “suggested changes?”  She told The Enterprise Sunday she meant the prior resolution that directrf that the newsletter come from the town board. To make that intent clear — Murphy says it is not uncommon for clerks to clarify the language of a resolution when preparing  draft minutes — she says she added the word “above.”

She told The Enterprise that in some cases, “I take the motion and write the motion as I understand it and to capture the intent of the board.”

She said that “70 percent of the time the attitude, is ‘we’ll clean that up later’...There’s no much back and forth. I work to make the language more professional.”

Here is how the clerk’s first draft of Resolution 149  read: “That the town newsletter will come from the town rather than from the supervisor.”

And here’s  Resolution 150 in first-draft form: “Approve the newsletter with the addition of the suggested changes: change I’s to we’s to make the front page letter from the town board, include CDTA’s phone number  and add a line to solicit email addresses from interested citizens.”

Lefkaditis told The Enterprise Monday that both drafts demonstrated bias against him.

In fact, the audio and the audio transcript, provided by the town clerk, show that the motion for Resolution 149, as stated by councilman Eric Kuck and seconded by Amy Pokorny, was:

“I’ll make a resolution the newsletter come from the town board.”

One of the changes Lefkaditis asked Murphy to make was to  delete from her draft the words, “rather than from the supervisor.” This was done.

But Lefkaditis says  that not all the changes he asked for in Resolution 150 were  made.

Everything about Resolution 150 is far murkier than with Resolution 149: the framing of the resolution in the course of  dialogue between the clerk and supervisor; the lack of any definitive statement of the resolution before the vote; the edits made and not made; and, even in its final and now approved form, its openness to being interpreted in more than one way.

Here is how the resolution is worded in the draft Aug. 3 minutes approved unanimously at the Aug. 13 meeting.

“Approve existing newsletter with the suggested changes above and addition of CDTA’s

phone number and reference to email address from interested residents.”

But “suggested changes” — especially without the word “above”  — can be interpreted to mean only the changes mentioned in the relevant discussion: the addition of a phone number and an email address.

Lefkaditis told The Enterprise that “I took it from the word ‘with,’”  meaning that he thought he was replacing “suggested changes”  with specific changes: the phone number and email additions in finalizing his motion.

Murphy says that in the weeks following the Aug. 3 meeting, Lefkaditis “badgered me” to make changes to both resolutions as drafted, including to remove the words “suggested changes.”

According to his account, in an email to The Enterprise, Lefkaditis said, “From 8/15 to the 9/13 meeting I asked her many times if she considered the additional changes [to Resolution 150]  and each time in one form or  another I was told she hadn’t gotten to it yet but it was on her list.”

Murphy says that, prior to the Sept. 13 meeting, she sent an email to town board members asking them to affirm that her final drafts of both resolutions were accurate. “Four out of five board members agreed with me,” she said.

Lefkaditis says he never got Murphy’d  email. His exclusion, he says, is typical of how town board members confer among themselves and with the town attorney, leaving him out. Murphy says she sent the email to him.

“Lack of communication, deliberate or otherwise, is the problem,”  Lefkaditis says. “The clerk always put me off with ‘I don’t have time; but if she had said, We’re not seeing eye-to-eye, we would have worked it out….She never communicated she disagreed with me [about Resolution 150}.”

Both the clerk and the supervisor say they felt blindsided by what transpired near the beginning of the Sept. 13 meeting: Murphy by the public accusation made by the supervisor that there was an error in the Aug. 3 minutes, and Lefkaditis by learning that the change he requested  had still not been made and that the board was already united in affirming  that Murphy’s  final-draft version of Resolution 150 was correct.

“He threw me under the bus,” she told The Enterprise Sunday, “with a roomful of residents before me.”

In an email tp The Enterprise, Lefkaditis said the problem is “the lack of communication”  between the clerk, the four town board members,  and the supervisor, and “the deliberate private and exclusionary communication between them.”

Politics

Just politics? Both Murphy and Lefkaditis are enrolled Democrats. So are all  the town board members, although Eric Kuck recently  started his own party, Unify Knox. Murphy is the secretary of the Albany County Democratic Committee.

Lefkaditis has made it clear that he is ambitious for the town and wants to shake things up.  The clerk and town board have made it equally clear that they think they deserve more respect from him.

Murphy, who has a bachelor’s degree in public communications from The College of Saint Rose, wrote in a letter to the Enterprise editor last week that she is an elected official in her own right, not an employee of the the supervisor. She said in later conversation with The Enterprise, that the supervisor and she had had no previous disagreement over her meeting minutes.

In the meantime, the link on the town website  to the first issue of a newsletter that everyone seemed to think a great idea was no longer live on Monday and no longer there on Wednesday, pending changes, Murphy said.

When the printed newsletter was finally mailed on Aug. 20, the opening letter — which at least one town board member thought was overtly political while at least one other saw “nothing to object to” — was from the supervisor alone. But it seems almost certain that future issues will come from  the town board, as required by vote of the board.