BERNE — The highway superintendent wants a raise. The supervisor says he can have one if he forgets about the 10-hour per day 4-day work week the highway chief has his crew work in good-weather months.  The impasse is about to enter its second year, and last week’s town board meeting indicated neither side is about to give.

The 2017 budget hearing that preceded the board meeting was brief, but long enough for Highway Superintendent Randy Bashwinger to have his say.

Bashwinger  objects that the proposed $2.68 million town budget for next year— which was approved unanimously  by the board at the meeting — awards him no raise nor did  the 2016 budget. He has been the highway superintendent since January 2015.  Bashwinger presented a year-by-year breakdown of raises received by other town officials and employees  since 2012.

The 2017 budget calls for a 3-percent raise for  the supervisor, town board members, town clerk, and senior account clerk.  Bashwinger is slated to receive none.

Bashwinger is a Republican and all the town board members are Democrats.

Later, during the board meeting and before the budget gained board approval, Crosier lashed out at Bashwinger who had given his monthly highway report and was still in the audience.

“In the private sector,” said Crosier, “you don’t get a raise by bashing the boss.”  He said Bashwinger had previously turned down an offer of a 5-percent raise, saying — according to Crosier — that he could make more  money building decks on Fridays, the day his 10-4 policy makes a free day for him and his crew-members.

Bashwinger called out, “That is incorrect.”

The raise offer, Crosier later confirmed,  had been tied to Bashwinger returning his department to a five-day schedule year-round.

“I will not give a raise to someone,” Crosier said further, “who drags the town through the mud on social media,” referring to posts on Bashwinger’s Facebook page.

Bashwinger reminded Crosier that he, too, is an elected public official in charge of his own department. “Yes,” replied Crosier, “but we [the town board] hold the money.”

Bashwinger later told The Enterprise, “I love this job.” He said of the highway workers, “These guys are the backbone of the town. All but two of them are volunteer firemen.”

Those employees, too, must go without a raise in 2017, pending successful negotiation of a new contract with the town. They continue to work under a two-year-old contract because of the same impasse that is leaving Bashwinger raise-less.

Another issue that has fueled  animosity between the town’s supervisor and its highway superintendent did not come up.

But sitting  in the front row of the gallery at the board meeting were Tim Lippert, the town’s building and zoning administrator, and his partner, Scott Green. Lippert was videotaping the meeting.

Green had been dismissed  by Crosier this summer from his full-time job as a multi-tasking town employee for reasons that have yet to be disclosed but have been the object of a lot of speculation. Green had been promoted to full-time employee  from part-time employee only weeks before his dismissal.

Bashwinger became an advocate for Green, mobilized town residents on his behalf, and posted signs around town reading, “Equal Rights.”

Seasonal road closing challenged

The board sided with a resident against Bashwinger’s decision to close part of Stage Road in the winter. There are about 12 residences on Stage Road, which can be accessed by the newly paved portion that had been left open last winter when the west end was closed, with the approval of the town board.

Joel  Willsey, who lives on the road, said the decision of the town highway superintendent to close the west end of Stage Road where it meets Route 443, also known as Helderberg Trail, leaves the road’s residents — including his father who lives nearest to the intersection — with no other means of egress onto Route 443 than the eastern end of Stage Road, which Willsey said can be unreachable from the western end because of the severe snow drifts that can occur at the intervening high point of the road. He brought with him a map and photos to illustrate his contention.  

Willsey said, “It is not unusual for drivers to become trapped there in white-out conditions and stuck in dense snowdrifts.” He described two 90-year-old friends of his father who got stuck in a drift there on their way to visit his father.

Although Willsey acknowledged that the western end of the road can also be subject to drifting, he said  drifting there is less severe than along the road’s high middle section.

Wilsey was accompanied by 22 family members and neighbors who applauded after he read his statement and asked  the board to communicate to the state’s Department of Transportation that there should be no closing of the road segment. Willsey presented a petition to DOT, signed by road residents, requesting that it overrule the Berne highway superintendent and keep the road segment open year-round.  

Photos Willsey presented showed the closed segment last winter with barrels across it. He said the closure was ignored during the almost snowless winter, and that the closure remained in effect beyond the April 1 cut-off date that he said is mandated by state highway law.

He said his family has lived near where the two roads meet since 1908.

Bashwinger told the town board  in March  that the closed segment is “the worst drifting road in the town of Berne.” At last week’s meeting he said another problem with the intersection is the danger to snowplow crews that can’t clear Stage Road without “their back end being on the the road [443]” and vulnerable to fast traffic on that road.

In his statement, Willsey declared, “We depend heavily on the access now closed to us particularly in these post-storm conditions and when vehicles are trapped on Stage Road to the east.”

“Why,” he asked, “would they [the highway department] want to make it harder for us?”

The board approved unanimously a resolution to identify “the west end of Stage Road as a seasonal closure that appears to be inconsistent with New York State Highway law” because it “limits access to occupied residents, therefore we recommend that the road not be closed.”

Crosier said that if, after review by the town attorney, “We appear not to be accurate, the resolution can be rescinded.”                                                                     

Tower underway

After the meeting, Crosier confirmed that the long-delayed construction of the Albany County Sheriff Office’s emergency communications tower on the hamlet-facing side of Uhai Mountain is underway and that an access road leading from Jansen Lane to the site of the tower is nearly completed.

The tower’s twin, slated to be erected in Rensselaerville, still awaits a decision in Albany County State Supreme Court on a suit brought by the citizens group Scenic Rensselaerville, challenging the grounds on which the town and its planning board approved the tower and asking for a court order that  the approval be reconsidered on correct grounds.

Other business

Among other business, the board:

— Heard Crosier warn that the “the town is running out of ways to save money” and has to figure out more ways to save through shared services and by other means, especially in the face of increased costs, most notably the cost of health insurance for town employees. The 2017  budget enabled a further reduction in the town tax and stayed under the state property tax cap;

— Authorized the placement of a road sign for the Switzkill Farm recreational and educational  facility. The sign is being donated by Forever Rural and will be installed where Game Farm Road meets Switzkill Road;

— Authorized a  further payment of $56,359 to the contractor building the town’s new salt shed, which is being paid for through a grant of $300,000 secured by State Senator George Amedore. Both Crosier and Bashwinger said work on the shed is on schedule and Crosier said the shed should be completed by Thanksgiving. The grant will compensate the town for this and other payments;

— Approved the expenditure of $418 to purchase concrete for the completion by local Boy Scouts of their Eagle Scout projects at the town senior center.  John Todd McGivern is building an easy-access ramp at the center as well as making a new sign for the center.  Devin Longendyke is converting a former storage room  into an office where representatives from the Albany County Department for Aging can periodically meet with local seniors seeking information or assistance. Crosier said the new office will make it unnecessary for seniors to drive to the department’s Albany office; and

—  Heard councilmember Karen Schimmer report that a $12,000 priority purchase grant secured by Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara is to be used to acquire and install a playground made of cedar with two structures with a suspension bridge between them and  a multi-level fort, among other features.  It will also be compliant with the American with Disabilities Act, meaning it will be accessible to children with handicaps. The playground is made by Bears Playgrounds in Lima, New York. It will be installed in the town park.