RENSSELAERVILLE  —   Someone arguing  that New York State is a tad over-regulated might use an item on the Dec. 6 town board meeting agenda as a talking point.

Town Attorney Tom Fallati explained that a law proposed and passed that evening —  it added an alternate member to the town planning board and the zoning board of appeals in the interest of conducting business when a regular member may be absent — required that a State Environmental Quality Review be completed before such a law could be enacted.

The reason: The work of each of the boards may have environmental impact.  Although a full-blown SEQR  for something like a communications tower, for example, can demand deep-dive review, analysis, and data collection, the proposed law required only that the town make a negative declaration that the addition of a backup member would have no adverse impact on the environment. No one could think of any it would have, and a pro forma SEQR  negative declaration was passed unanimously.

Corrections made

Two other matters came up in the meeting that might also be considered eyebrow raising.

One was an issue raised by one of only two persons in the audience,  former town supervisor Marie Dermody. Dermody, a Democrat, resigned the position in 2012 and was succeeded by the current town supervisor, Valerie Lounsbury, a Republican, in the post.  Dermody  attends all town board meetings, both regular and workshop, and can be relied upon for comment when public comment is invited.

She also electronically publishes the R’ville Community Newsletter, reproducing both draft and final minutes of town board meetings, offering her viewpoint, and listing town events.

Dermody challenged the minutes of an Oct. 11  budget workshop meeting of the board as incomplete and stated again an objection she says she made  at that meeting and that went  unrecorded.

At the Oct. 11 meeting, the board went into executive session for the purpose , Lounsbury said, of discussing a “budget line item.”

Dermody said at Thursday’s meeting that she objected to this action at the time but was “ignored. “ Her objection: the reason given was not among those established by the state’s Open Meetings Law as legitimate reasons for a public body to confer privately in executive session.

In fact, budgetary matters are not among those reasons the law defines as legitimate.

“You can’t discuss in private,” Dermody told the board, “what should have been discussed in public.”

“Going into executive session,” she told the board, again,” was illegitimate.”

As for her original objection not being recorded, Lounsbury  told Dermody, “Minutes don’t have to be verbatim and the minutes have been approved.”

“Minutes should reflect what happened,” Dermody rejoined.

The New York State Open Meetings Law specifies only that  “Minutes shall be taken at all open meetings of a public body which shall consist of a record or summary of all motions, proposals, resolutions and any other matter formally voted upon and the vote thereon. “

Council member Marion Cooke joined the discussion, “I don’t think it is a major issue either way.”

But the board, in a unusual move, decided to amend the approved minutes and retroactively change the reason for entering executive session to read, “discuss personnel history.”  

Asked to comment, Robert Freeman, chairman of the State’s Committee on Open Government said, “Minutes cannot be changed in a  way that changes history.”

He dismissed both the original and amended reasons for going into executive session as illegitimate and not allowed by the Open Meetings law.

“We hear all the time that ‘personnel reasons’  are given to explain the need for an executive session,” he says, “but the word ‘personnel’ appears nowhere in the law.”

The  Open Meeting Law  authorizes  six reasons for conducting a non-public session; one of them is is for the board to discuss “the medical, financial, credit or employment history of a particular person or corporation, or matters leading to the appointment, employment, promotions, demotion, discipline, suspension, dismissal or removal of a particular person or corporation.”

Lounsbury said, “I misspoke,” referring to the original reason offered and now replaced.

Trying to clarify the knotty issue, newly elected Democratic member John Dolce, appealed to Dermody, “You have so much knowledge, Marie. Help us.”

Freeman said knowledge of the Open Meetings Law is spotty across the 2,000 public bodies in the state. He said that one problem is that “the cast of characters is always changing. “ A board that knew the law well and adhered to it may change to a board that doesn’t, as its members change.

Fixed in time

 Another correction was made in the meeting.

Lounsbury offered her  “deepest apologies” for having made an error in preparing the now-approved  budget.

She said the number entered on the summary page for highway-department machinery was too low and therefore the tax rate for highway lines 2, 3, and 4 combined was too low as well.

“But fortunately the tax bills had not yet gone out when the error was caught,” Lounsbury said.  

The machinery  line was corrected from $125,700 to $136,496 and the tax rate for lines 2,3 and 4 (bridges, snow removal, and machinery) was corrected from $2.70 to $2.78.

Other business

Among other business, the board:

    — Learned that Jeannette Rice, whose term on the town Zoning Board of Appeals expires at the end of the year, does not wish to be reappointed;

   — Approved the transfer of $10,494 from the checking account to the water and sewer district to cover the replacement of the water system’s sand filter and of another $1,101 to cover the cost of hooking up the new filter;

  — Approved the transfer from the contingency fund of $3,669 to cover city of Albany charges for dumping and a total of $5,719 for truck repairs;

— Approved, as required by state law though no financial obligation or liability is incurred by the town, the financing for the renovation of the Medusa firehouse;

— Authorized the highway department to participate in online bidding for equipment, up to $10,000,

— Approved the 2017 contract with the town’s accounting firm, Pattison, Koskey, Howe & Bucci;

— Scheduled the final town board meeting of the year for Dec. 30 at 7 p.m.; and,

— Scheduled the 2017 re-organizational meeting for Jan. 3 at 7 p.m.