To the Editor:
As Election Day approaches, we would like to thank the taxpayers in the town of Knox for their support over the past couple of years. We still miss seeing all of you at the transfer station and would like to bring you up to date with the final outcome of our illegal firing.

After we were fired at the January 2019 reorganizational meeting, we filed a complaint with the Albany County Department of Labor. Their determination that our Civil Service rights were violated allowed us to file an Article 78 proceeding. 

This process is used to ask a state court to review a decision or action of a state or local agency — in this case the 3-to-2 majority vote of the Knox Town Board members to remove us from our positions. The three votes were cast by Supervisor Vasilios Lefkaditis and councilmen Karl Pritchard and Ken Saddlemire.

Our proceeding demanded three things from the town — our return to work, the new rate of pay that had been approved at the reorganization meeting, and back pay for all hours of work missed up to the date of our return.

In late April of that year, two of the conditions stated in the proceeding were met — we were reinstated at the transfer station and paid the new hourly rate. At that time, the town continued to refuse to give us the back pay that we lost due to their actions, approximately $3,500 each. At one point, indicating their belief of a fair offer, we received notification through our attorney that the town was willing to pay us each $1,000 — which we promptly refused.

At the direction of the majority board members, the attorneys representing the town spent many hours attempting to delay, dismiss, and defend against our proceeding for back pay. Multiple times, the courts chastised the town for not responding in a timely manner and repeatedly denied their attempts to have the Article 78 dismissed.

Due to COVID, our case was put on hold for almost one year. This past spring, the judge appointed a mediator and demanded that the town attempt to settle with us to avoid having to go before her for a ruling. We, through our attorney, offered to settle for $3,000 each; the town board accepted our offer (although we are confident it wasn’t a unanimous vote) — we were finally paid and the case was closed.

Why are we telling you all of this? We believe it’s important that you all be aware, as you prepare to vote, how the town of Knox is wasting your taxpayer dollars. Although we do not know exactly how much time and money was spent by the town’s attorneys defending against our Article 78, we do know that it was your money.

We are confident that every single dollar of your hard-earned money spent trying to defend their actions at that reorganizational meeting wasn’t done because they believed that they were legally within their rights.  It was due to the arrogance and stubbornness of our town supervisor and his unwillingness to ever admit that he is wrong.

Unfortunately for all of you, the taxpayers, the Knox town board members follow his lead and rarely disagree or vote against him. They will tell you that it wasn’t personal — but believe us, it was personal. 

There is not time nor space in this letter to inform you of the things that we endured while under the employ of the town. Ours is one of many stories; sadly most people are not willing to go public with the abuse they were subjected to by the “leaders” of our town. We wouldn’t tolerate this bullying in our schools; why do we tolerate it in our town?

Although we spent more for our attorney than we recovered from the town, for us it was never about the money. For us, it was about standing up for what was right; it was about not being bullied by our town government; specifically our town supervisor, Mr. Lefkaditis.

Although Mr. Lefkaditis is not running again, it appears that he is endorsing both Mr. Pritchard and Mr. Saddlemire as well as a candidate for town supervisor who, according to the article published in the Sept. 3, 2021 issue of The Enterprise, “has a history of professional and personal financial mismanagement.”   Is this really the kind of person that you want to be responsible for managing your hard-earned money?

If you’ve wondered where we’ve been for the past year and a half, here’s a final update on our employment with the town of Knox. In March of 2020, we received a text from Supervisor Lefkaditis that, in accordance with the governor’s then 50-percent reduction in staff due to COVID, we were not to report to work.

Either the supervisor wasn’t aware, or didn’t care, that, as essential workers, we were exempt from that executive order — we’re pretty confident that the latter is true. Even though the town has received in excess of $250,000 from the federal COVID relief fund (which can be used to pay employees) as well as increased tax revenues, a couple of months ago we received letters in the mail advising us that, due to the “financial strains and uncertainty resulting from COVID-19,” our positions had been eliminated (we were the only two employees with the title “transfer station attendant”).

We are left to wonder how the town board could be so uninformed that its members would think that our annual pay of about $7,900 each is a financial risk to the taxpayers. We wonder how our jobs pose a financial risk when the transfer station supervisor was given a $1/hour raise to fill out a monthly report; it must be very complicated to warrant another $780 annually to complete.

The $10,000 ice-skating rink that sits unused (and which the supervisor promised to buy if it was not used) would more than pay for one of our salaries. When you go to the transfer station on Tuesday or Thursday, ask yourself if it’s safe there — if one person can effectively supervise all the stations, what people are disposing of in them, and check for permits to dump there.

When we go, we often observe the lone employee sitting in the office on the computer while the transfer station is completely unsupervised. When you go there on Saturday, ask yourself why the transfer-station alternate (sub) is working every Saturday instead of one of us.

As for us, we miss all of you. We enjoyed the time we spent getting to know you, having a cup of coffee with you, and helping you. Thank you for supporting us through our fight against the town — we know who you are and appreciate you.

We made our voices heard, now you can do the same at the voting booth in November. Our votes will go to Russ Pokorny and Brigitte McAuliffe and we hope that yours will too.

Joe Adriance

Dick Dexter

Knox

Editor’s note: In an email, Supervisor Vasilios Lefkaditis told the Enterprise, when asked about the settlement, “Your [sic] asking the wrong question … The question is how much has the Town saved by eliminating the patronage jobs of the Hammond/Pokorny era? The answer is approximately $35k to date at the transfer station alone.”

However, at an Oct. 19 town board meeting, Councilman Dennis Cyr stated that the transfer station is understaffed, to which Lefkaditis agreed. 

When asked about the status of the rink, Lefkaditis said, “The rink was purchased as a back-up plan in case the indoor facility [the town wants for the park] doesn’t come to fruition. If the Board decides to sell the rink, yes I would love to take a shot at it.”

Town board members Karl Pritchard and Ken Saddlemire, both of whom voted in favor of the motion to replace the transfer station workers in 2019, and both of whom are seeking re-election, declined to explain in detail why they voted the way they did. 

“There was a reason I voted in favor, yes,” Pritchard said, “but I’m not supposed to comment on that.” When asked why he’s not supposed to comment, he said, “That’s getting into some things I’m not supposed to comment on. That’s one thing I hate about town government: There’s certain things I can talk about and certain things I can’t.” When asked if this was a directive from a lawyer, he said no. 

Saddlemire also said he couldn’t get into specifics, but that there “a series of events and comments, which led to complaints, prompted meetings to address [the] issues. The board decided to replace the transfer-station employees after a pattern of behavior kept repeating.”

When asked what the issues relate to, Saddlemire said, “I don’t think I should comment on exactly what the complaint was. I don’t think that would be appropriate.” He said that the “developing pattern wasn’t conducive to the town or the other employees.”

The positions eliminated by the town board in the spring of 2021 were park laborer and transfer-station attendant. The duties of those positions were picked up by a full-time employee. The town board had been discussing the consolidation of several part-time positions since at least January of 2020, though the motion ultimately voted on was purportedly related to COVID-19.