To the Editor:

It’s interesting that the long letter about Bill Bichteman is signed by a relatively new and junior town employee who is unlikely to have personal knowledge of a lot of what’s in that letter, both matters of history (“Truly, it was the most exacting and detailed budget the town has seen in decades”) and statements of Bill’s motives and inclinations. 

If Karla did in fact write this letter, she managed not to mention that Bill spent nearly $100,000 of taxpayer money on poor and incomplete plans for unnecessary and unaffordable building projects expected to cost 20 times that, then griped when his pet project was opposed, slurring town residents as uninformed and looking for ways to push and fund his project by avoiding legal public oversight.

Bill showed this same stubborn “my way or else” attitude in selling NYCLASS [New York Cooperative Liquid Assets Securities System] to the town board. In public meetings, he played up the higher rate of return compared to safe and guaranteed CDs [certificates of deposit] and dismissed clear risks resulting from NYCLASS increasingly depending on investments, which are not guaranteed, then crowed about the town having received several hundred dollars from investing hundreds of thousands.

Now Bill is revealing, through the letter signed by Karla, his intention to bet the town’s money on investments that do in fact have risk, not just to make a little more than CDs but to make more than the tens of thousands of real revenue coming to the town from businesses already operating. The numbers don’t work, the risk is great, and his opposition to clear revenue streams hurts the town. Another poor pet project Bill has determined to inflict on Westerlo.

The letter signed by Karla also presents Bill’s vision for what the comprehensive plan should say, along with his patronizing, autocratic notion that development of this plan “will require nurturing and guidance by the supervisor” even though that plan is the responsibility of the impressive and supposedly independent committee actually charged with developing it.

Bill works hard and does like order and organization, but Bill does what makes sense to him, and on the big issues that’s not what makes sense for Westerlo. It will not serve Westerlo well to put him in a position to run the show.

Leonard Laub

Westerlo

Editor’s note: Leonare Laub served on the town’s broadband committee.