Trailer Park Issue Dominates Meeting
By Thaddeus Flint
Generally, as a rule of thumb, nothing good can be expected when you walk into a room and find an unexpected stenographer. Even when one does expect a stenographer in the room, someone is probably not going to be having such a great day. The same usually goes with unexpected men in suits. So, to walk into the January meeting of the Town Board of Stephentown and find both last Monday night, didn’t exactly foretell a happy night from the get-go and that turned out, in the end, to be a reality.
The man in the suit was William Better, an attorney from Kinderhook. He is representing resident Tom Hanson in the ongoing dispute with resident and attorney Brian Baker regarding Hanson’s desire to expand a trailer park located more-or-less in the backyard of Baker’s Stephentown office, as well as other properties owned by him, at the corner of Route 22 and Brown’s Road. Readers unfamiliar with the matter might want to brush up on the subject (there are two articles online at the Eastwick Press, one from October 6 and another from December 15) because this probably isn’t going to go away any time soon.
Stephentown’s Board meetings lately have been rather quick and strife-free. Council members read the bills, approve the minutes, maybe pass a resolution or two and less than an hour later the folding chairs are back on the rack. At the January 15 meeting, that normal train of events went off the rails pretty much from the get-go at the approval of the minutes.
The problematic minutes in question were those from the Organizational Meeting of January 1. The first discussion was whether to amend the minutes to reflect that it was agreed that the Tax Collector and the Deputy Tax Collector’s pay schedule would be reconciled to a simpler system. Nobody had a problem with that. The problem came about with the appointment of David Cass to the Zoning Board of Appeals for a 5 year term. The minutes as written state under a column heading titled “Comment Prior To Vote”: “P.R. [Councilman P.J. Roder) should recuse himself from anything going on.” However, the next column of the minute shows the final vote tally to appoint Cass to be unanimous; this includes Councilman Roder’s vote of yes. What the actual discussion at that time regarding why Roder should have recused himself from that vote, if in fact he should have, was somewhat murky. The Town Clerk, Stephanie Wagar, said she recorded the discussion correctly and stands by them. “You guys can do what you want,” said Wagar, “my minutes are my minutes.”
Normally, problems with minutes are easily resolved, but in this case, with a new appointment to the Zoning Board of Appeals at a time when the Town’s zoning is currently being discussed in a case that most likely will continue into a courtroom, the discrepancy (if there was one) was conspicuous and as such pounced on by the Man in the Suit. “This is a subject that is kind of close to our heart,” interrupted Better, who decided it was an opportune opportunity to take over the meeting for a while. Better said he discussed the Cass vote with the Town’s attorney for the Baker-Hanson case, Christopher Langlois, and had come to his own conclusion. “I believe that what the Town Clerk recorded is what the minutes reflect from January 1st,” said Better, now at the front of the room, his stenographer cheerfully tapping out his words. “I’m becoming very concerned there is an effort here to change history.”
“The minutes aren’t the minutes until the Board approves them,” Councilman William Jennings tried to interject into Better’s interruption. Better, however, wasn’t yielding the floor, even though it wasn’t his floor. He noted that he informed Langlois that he wanted a copy of “all your emails and text messages” regarding the matter. “I believe there is going to be a dispute over this,” said Better.
Councilman Gerald Robinson wanted to know if the minutes could be corrected. “We correct minutes all the time.”
“Yes, we can,” said Town Supervisor Larry Eckhardt.
“But the thing is,” said the Town Clerk, “They are correct. They are correct in what you guys had stated.” What was stated and the exact way it was stated will most likely be transcribed and argued over as the trailer park case moves along, as Better told Wagar he would like a copy of her recording of the Organizational Meeting.
Had that been all of the problems with the Organizational Meeting, it would have been enough, but 2018 wasn’t starting off well and it looks like it might get worse. At that same Organizational Meeting, the re-appointment of the Town’s Code Enforcement Officer of over 30 years, Dean Herrick, didn’t quite happen. The vote to re-appoint Herrick was 2 to 2 with Supervisor Eckhardt and Councilman Roder in favor, Councilman Robinson against, newly-elected Councilwoman Pam Kueppers also against, and Councilman Jennings abstaining, with the reason in the minutes stated as being “an ongoing building project.” With a tied vote, Herrick, who has been named in the Baker-Hanson dispute, was not reappointed, however he is still CEO because nobody was appointed instead of him.
Baker, who was in attendance, wasn’t about to let Better have all the words. However he waited quietly until privilege of the floor to make his case while Better circled the back of the room. Baker said Better was making “threats” against the Board. In one example quoted by Baker, in a letter “sent to everyone in the Town government,” Better wrote “perhaps the Board members are concerned about the makeup of the ZBA, and are attempting…to influence the outcome of the matter pending before it.” In the same letter Better also, according to Baker, advised Board members that “no personal emails are destroyed in an effort to avoid review…I suggest all guide themselves accordingly.”
“What is he Mr. Mueller? Is he the Watergate prosecutor?” asked Baker. “He’s accusing everyone here of possibly destroying emails so he can’t have them.”
Another issue Baker noted was that Better was implying that Cass had probably read the Baker-Hanson articles in the Eastwick Press and as such “couldn’t be fair.” Baker scoffed at this, saying Better would have everyone in the County thrown off a jury trial because they had seen a paper. “I think his whole David Cass thing is a red herring to create a procedural nightmare for this Town so they can have something else to theoretically appeal at some later time should they lose,” said Baker.
At the close of the meeting, each side of the dispute appeared, if anything, even more firmly entrenched to do battle. And, as often happens in battle, a vacuum is being opened up and starting to pull even more sides into it.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Town Supervisor Eckhardt, “this may be my last two years of doing this and it’s probably going to be my most difficult.”
“No good deed goes unpunished,” replied Better with a smile.