To the Editor:

This, word for word, is how I started a letter to the editor [“With the Westerlo budget: Why is it always too little, too late?,” Nov. 2, 2017] published last year:

Westerlo’s 2018 tentative budget, available for the first time at the Oct. 3 meeting, is once again an 11th-hour mystery that lacks the detail needed to make allocation decisions. It’s basically the supervisor’s business-as-usual copy of the current year’s budget.

The budget was not developed in public. Judging from the reactions of town board members, they had little or no input into it. They apparently received it that day “from the accountant” and had little chance to look at it. We’ve heard all this before. Changes that were supposed to provide more detail, much-needed financial transparency, and a readable format, didn’t happen.

Now, a year later, I could have written the same letter about the Westerlo 2019 budget. Except for larger print, the tentative budget and the entire budget process was actually worse this year.

The tentative budget, due by state law on Oct. 5 , was again an 11th-hour mystery. Developed in stubborn isolation by Supervisor Richard Rapp with no input from the public, he said, at the Oct. 2 town board meeting, that he had submitted it to the board.

This was in answer to a direct question by a member of the public when the meeting was nearly over and no mention of the budget had been made. There was no discussion of the budget after the question either.

The tentative budget was a mess. It didn’t add up. It was $156,219 over the 2-percent tax cap. The reason? Major math errors.

At the Oct. 16 town board workshop, Mr. Rapp went over the line items for the first time, briefly telling the board what he had done. It turns out that the $156, 219 overage was due to “clerical error.” At a later meeting I asked, and was assured by Mr. Rapp, that the accountants had signed off on the tentative budget despite its glaring errors. If so, they should be fired.

At the Nov. 5 town board meeting, the public had to ask for copies of the revised tentative budget. The town clerk said she was told “not to put them out.” By whom?

State law requires a public hearing on the preliminary budget by Nov. 8. That did not happen. The town board seemed to be either unaware of this date or to ignore it.

A public hearing was held on Nov. 14 and continued on Nov. 19, one day before the state-mandated final budget deadline.

At the Nov. 14 public hearing, Councilwoman Amie Burnside said that the town board had agreed to reduce two “Workman’s Compensation” line items from $45,000 each to $30,000 each, saving a total of $30,000. However, at the Nov. 19 continuation hearing, each line item was still $45,000.

When asked by a citizen why this was so, Mr. Rapp said he wanted the money there. He was not overridden.

He had opened this hearing without giving copies of the revised preliminary budget to the public. I had to ask. The deputy clerk left the hearing to make copies for the few people who showed up.

I did not get an answer to how much the water district still owes the town. Does anybody know? There is nothing in the 2019 budget, not even a token amount, to make good on this debt.

According to an April 2014 New York State Office of the State Comptroller audit of selected financial activities, the water district owed the town $66,388 at the end of 2013. Nearly five years have passed.

One of the state comptroller’s recommendations was, “The Board and Town officials should develop a comprehensive plan to ensure that all outstanding interfund advances are repaid, and future interfund advances should be repaid no later than the close of the fiscal year in which the advance was made. In addition, future interfund advances should be authorized by the Board.”

There is no such plan.

In the end, with as much scrutiny as the public could provide given the lack of detail, and the “clerical error” correction, the final budget is under the tax cap by $5,782.

In response to the first version of the tentative budget, the town attorney drafted a local law to allow the town to exceed the tax cap. Further mention of this law was quietly avoided after the math errors were corrected.

To add even more absurdity to this process, at the end of the Nov. 19 special town board meeting, Councilman Anthony Sherman praised the board for working so well together and gave them all a big atta-boy for working the budget down below the tax cap!

That change was really the result of correcting the enormous math errors. If the errors had been caught, as they should have been, before the budget was printed, it never would have looked as if it was above the tax cap.

I know there are people on the board who want to see things improve. When Councilman Richard Filkins introduced the idea of a budget committee many months ago to work with Mr. Rapp, the supervisor ignored him.

Mr. Rapp often responds to questions about the budget and spending with hostility, sometimes accusing people of saying that he’s stealing, as The Altamont Enterprise recently reported. He has never been accused of stealing in my presence, but he acts as if he is answerable to no one and his behavior shuts down communication.

Patience, normally considered a virtue, is not so in this case. Year after year, it’s the same.

Improvement must be done in spite of the supervisor and others in town government who want things just as they are: controlled by a few, hidden as much as possible, and with disrespect for open government and the public it’s supposed to serve.

These are our tax dollars. We have a right to see how every penny is allocated and spent and a responsibility to hold Mr. Rapp and everyone else accountable.

Dianne Sefcik

Westerlo

Editor’s note: Jim Amell, the managing director of Marvin and Company, the accounting firm used by the town of Westerlo for its budget, responded that his firm’s role with Westerlo’s budget is to key in last year’s budget to an Excel spreadsheet. Morgan and Company, Amell said, is not responsible for the budget. “It’s the responsibility of the town,” he said, stressing his firm is not reworking the prior year’s budget or rewriting it.