Letters & Comments

To the Editor:

With heavy hearts, the current members of the Grafton Trail Riders feel a deep sorrow about the passing on April 12 of Helen Ellett.  Helen, Chet (her husband)  and a few friends were the inspiration in creating the Grafton Trail Riders horse club. Since it was incorporated in 1950, there have been hundreds of members who have enjoyed the camaraderie of horse people. I am sure Helen and the other members who have passed, will be with us in spirit as we trail ride, camp out and tell our stories around the campfire.

Keep the Lord as your riding partner and you will never ride alone.

-Connie Madigan, on behalf of Grafton Trail Riders

To the Editor:

I am writing in response to the attack made upon me by Mrs. Cathy Goyer in her letter to the editor published in last week’s Eastwick Press.

I wish to assure our residents that the allegations & statements made by Mrs. Goyer are false & self serving. She called me a liar & stated that I “con” people with my statements, anyone who knows me or has dealt with me knows this is very far from truthful. Friends have suggested that I file a defamation suit against Mrs. Goyer for these accusations, I want our residents to know that I am not going to do so, if I did I would have to file against the town as well because Mrs. Goyer is an appointed town official, I will not penalize the town for her poor repetitive actions. It was her actions as Deputy Town Supervisor that resulted in our former supervisor Mr. Sawyer suing the town & obtaining a lucrative settlement in Mr. Sawyer’s favor. I believe that the letter was written in an ongoing attempt by Mrs. Goyer to discredit me in any manner available to her. The actions of Mrs. Goyer & her husband during the past year bear this out, Mrs. Goyer went to the town bank & attempted to declare me a forger, her husband has verbally accosted me twice (once during a town board meeting) in the past few months using false accusations, Mrs. Goyer has filed a false report with PESH against me, again using false accusations & now last week’s letter to the editor. I believe the reasons for this to be twofold, first, upon appointment I had to replace one of her family members as town bookkeeper resulting in the vindictive actions she & her family have demonstrated.

The replacement was necessary to improve services to the town & make our vendor payments in a timely manner thus reducing late charges on invoices.

Secondly, I suspect she is party to a small clique of people in town who are attempting to influence our voters, their members are easily identified, just read their nonsense on facebook, watch their actions at the town board meetings & read the letters sent in by their “wives”.

The town clerk’s office issues are many, I listed them publicly during the December town board meeting, the Eastwick published several of them in their article covering that meeting, unfortunately Mrs. Goyer the acting deputy town clerk choose to omit them from the meeting’s minutes even though she was given a copy of them.

The reason for all these issues ? Mrs. Putnam our elected town clerk hasn’t performed her full duties for several years, many of our residents who have had need of the services usually provided by the clerk’s office can attest to this, additionally, sporting license’s are no longer available which places the town in violation of Environmental law.

Mrs. Putnam & Mrs. Goyer do not keep posted hours making it very difficult for resident’s to obtain services. Revenue’s generated by the clerk’s office are down as well resulting in an increased tax burden on our residents.

I have been asked by many residents why the town board hasn’t done something about the lack of service by our Town Clerk.

The answer is the town board cannot take action because the clerk is elected, to have the clerk removed a citizen / resident must file a petition with the State Supreme Court Appellate Division proving misconduct, malfeasance, malversion or maladministration. Unfortunately the law manual further states that the court is reluctant to reverse the will of the electorate so this becomes an expensive time consuming process. Mrs. Putnam is very aware of this, so she continues to fail to perform most of her duties yet she continues to draw her full salary every pay period, a truly sad way for such a beloved long tenured individual to end her lengthy career.

I sincerely hope that both of these women either come to their senses or get whatever help they may need in resolving their issues, our residents deserve much better.

In closing I wish to assure all our residents that I will continue to make the best decisions possible for the benefit of all our residents & I will not allow attacks by vindictive self serving people to sway my actions for our residents.

Frank Higgins

Grafton Town Supervisor

Editor’s Note: This letter is unedited at the request of the writer. It also marks the last time letters about the claims and counterclaims by the Grafton Deputy Town Clerk and the Grafton Town Supervisor will be published in this paper. The squabble is not determinative and serves no useful purpose.

To the Editor:

I have correspondence and documents to show proof of just about everything I will be addressing in this letter to the Editor. I will be more than happy to share it with anyone.

The [Grafton] Town Supervisor has stated that he has removed the Town Clerk personnel from the voucher process because there are too many late bills. First I will state that we are not incurring late charges. The bill paying process of a municipality is very lengthy and bills/checks do cross in the mail many times due to the process not any one person.

When I took over the bill paying some time in July an email was sent to the Town’s attorney on 8/4/14 describing how as of July 4 different independent companies had bills dating back to 3/14 which I was working on getting paid. One vendor no longer allowed the Town to charge. The Supervisor’s response was “I didn’t get the bill.” This vendor faxed their bill to us each week. One of our County Waste accounts is billed through their website. I had to email the Town Supervisor 4 times asking him to either open up and print out the bill or give me the information so I could. Finally I gave up and called County Waste, explained the situation and reset the contact information so I was able to access the bill myself. Is this cooperation?

He [the Supervisor] stated that he receives no cooperation from the Deputy Town Clerk. I have asked him a question on a certain voucher and his response was “You are handling the bills, do whatever you want.” Is that cooperation from him? That is just one example. He states I posted the Standard Work Day resolution for 120 days. Actually he tried to get me to sign an affidavit stating the resolution had already been posted. No one had recollection of when so I chose to post the resolution. I dated it when I posted it (9-29). I removed it when I returned from vacation in early November which means it was not posted for 120 days as the Supervisor stated.

I was accused of changing vouchers after they were signed by the Board. One voucher was signed by the Supervisor and Councilwoman Messenger. The other Board members questioned one of the charges on the bill. The vendor agreed to drop that charge. Now the Supervisor and Councilwoman Messenger refuse to sign the lower bill. They prefer to spend more of our tax dollars just because it was I who got the bill lowered.

Yes, when Joe Allain told me he now had to count the recycle cash before it could be given to the Clerk’s office, I did use profanity in making the comment “This is bull s—-.” Then I picked up the money on the table that he had just taken out of an envelope. Is that “attacking Mr. Allain?” Joe Allain made a complaint that I used profanity; odd that a highway employee said exactly the same thing in the conference room in Joe’s presence a few days earlier. Joe made no complaint about that. That leads me to believe that it is alright for a man to use profanity at the Town Hall but not a woman! I never “attacked” Joe Allain nor did I rip money from his hand. Another lie told by our Town Supervisor. I will no longer take the recycle cash from the Supervisor’s office because it has gone through too many hands before I would see it. That is not a “proper procedure” as he put it.

There is a limited amount of petty cash in the Town Clerk’s office. I can’t always reimburse every receipt he gives me. He turned in 2 receipts, and I wanted to pay out the one but was told “if you aren’t going to fill both then you can’t do any”.

He complained that I haven’t gone for the DEC training. I do not get paid for this job. I choose to spend as much time with my family as I can. Before he complains a deputy clerk isn’t spending enough time or going for training maybe he should look at the pay scale. I consider myself as doing as much as I can when I can.

As far as threatening the Supervisor, he is right on that count. I threatened to seek legal action against him if he didn’t stop harassing me.

The Supervisor is very good at conning people into believing he is a victim in all these situations, that he hasn’t had a functioning Town Clerk since he started. The Town Clerk has many job functions and has to almost daily keep the Town Supervisor at bay because he is constantly trying to undermine everything coming from the Clerk’s office. He fails to admit he has bullied our Town Clerk to the point of tears, stood in the Clerk’s office yelling, “I don’t care about the law” and on occasion has said, “I have Barbara right where I want her, I knew exactly what I was doing when I made her Deputy Supervisor.”

I could go on and on with more underhanded deeds and comments, but I stand with the law which is why I have won every battle I have had with the Supervisor. Again he fails to talk about that!

The Eastwick Press keeps interviewing the Supervisor after each meeting and puts in print all these negative things, but no one from the Press has ever asked for the other side of the story.

Cathy Goyer

Deputy Town Clerk

To the Editor:

Recently a flyer was circulated around our town by handout and mail that contained a derogatory likeness and comments about a Town Board candidate. This flyer indicated that research for this flyer was done by “Town of Grafton Board Member Rick.”

Please be aware that I had nothing to do with this despicable flyer, research or otherwise. I understand politics can be a nasty business, but this flyer sinks to new lows, never before seen in our community.

I am sure all residents of Grafton join me in condemning this sort of politics and demand that it stop, now and in future elections.

Sincerely,

Rick Ungaro, Grafton Town Councilman

To the Editor:

I had the eye opening experience of attending the Public Hearing on Grafton’s proposed budget for 2015 on Monday evening, October 27. The first thing I noticed was the budget put out on the table for public inspection, contained higher spending totals in the General Fund portion and a proposed tax hike of 3.39 %. This was different from the budget that was available for public inspection the prior week, which contained a tax hike of 1.5%. This is because the Supervisor discovered his preliminary budget had a $12,500 error in the appropriations side of the document. It would have been nice if this error had been discovered earlier so any who wished to view the budget could have availed themselves to the true numbers, but I thank the Supervisor for at least catching and correcting the document prior to the start of the hearing.

During the hearing I made the point that I was not in favor of such a tax hike for a number of reasons, the strongest being I don’t feel the majority of the residents of Grafton have seen their yearly income rise by 3.39% or better. I also pointed out that such an increase exceeded the NYS property tax cap, and further identified some areas that I thought some spending cuts could be made.

Immediately after the closing of the hearing, the Town Board held a special meeting, at which Supervisor Higgins proposed a resolution making four changes to his preliminary budget, chief of which was to move $12,500 dollars from the Town’s unexpended fund balance into the revenue side of the budget, to restore the 1.5 tax hike. It is here where my eyes were opened to some interesting points – one, that at least two of the Board members were unaware of this resolution prior to its introduction and two, that not all members of the Board were kept up to date periodically as to what the level of the fund balance was, as Councilman Crandall had to ask the Town’s bookkeeper for that figure. She informed the councilman that the Town started 2014 with $214,000 left over from last year, and that the Town had gained another $33,000 so far this year. I then asked Supervisor Higgins how much more would be needed from that fund balance to at least bring the tax hike down to under 1%. I was disappointed that in response he defended his spending levels as the result of inflation, increases in utility costs and unfunded State mandates. He never answered or offered to research the issue, said he was “not going to nickel and dime the budget” and cut off the discussion.

Now let me say that I am very fiscally conservative and would never advocate destroying the Town’s fund balance. I was simply looking for a number to see if such a further transfer of funds would be prudent. Since I was denied this answer, I researched the issue with the NYS Comptroller’s Office. They advocate that any funds in excess of 10% of the annual budget be used to reduce the amount of real property taxes and that this excess also be used to pay down any long term debts, such as our bonds on the Senior Center. Our fund balance is currently running north of 20% of our budget.

Supervisor Higgins has indicated that the budget with the changes approved by the Board will be brought to a vote at the next regular Town Board meeting date, which I believe is November 10. If you believe as I do, that we at least need an answer to the question of how much fund balance usage would be required to further lower the tax rate, please attend this meeting. Yes, inflation cost are a burden on the Town. But for those who are seeing a 1% increase or less in their household income this coming year, a tax hike above that is also a burden. They, unlike a government, cannot simply vote to increase their income like a government can increase taxes. So let’s use some common sense. NO, I do not want to drain our rainy day fund down to unreasonable levels. That would be foolhardy. But since it is in excess of recommended levels, and if using a very small portion of it can give those living on a reduced or stagnant income level a break this year, then bring those numbers forth at the next meeting. Let the Board have a open and real discussion on the pros and cons, make sure the spending and revenue estimates are legitimate and, above all, remember its OUR MONEY you’re spending. Please be informed, transparent and wise guardians of it.

Doug La Rocque, 34 Richmond Road, Grafton