Town board disputes weekend revision to capital budget, agrees to correct with slip sheet

The Greenburgh Town Board spent the bulk of a Nov. 25 work session debating whether an updated capital budget had been posted and publicly noticed before a scheduled public hearing, and agreed to correct the record with a slip sheet so the public and board members see any changes.

Paul, a board member who said he had requested two additions before the Oct. 30 deadline, told colleagues he had directed controller Kimberly to add $500,000 for sidewalks and funds for trucks for a curbside food-scrap recycling program and that he had emailed department heads and the controller before the deadline. "I sent an email to Kimberly, you know, over the weekend, and both said that the revisions that I wanted would be included in the budget," he said.

Kimberly, the town controller, told the board the capital budget file had been updated after the weekend, uploaded to the meeting packet and printed for the public hearing. "It was updated yesterday," she said. "At the end of the day, it was adjusted and put in ... it was uploaded by Joe LeCacy." Several board members said the document posted to the agenda before the hearing reflected an earlier version and that any late changes should have been flagged for the public with a slip sheet or other notation.

Sam Singer, a member who raised the discrepancy at the meeting, said the board had held a public hearing on a different version of the capital budget and described the late change as potentially misleading. "You tried to deceive us, Paul," Singer said in a heated exchange; Paul and other board members pushed back, and the board debated whether the change was inadvertent or the result of unclear process.

Board members agreed on a remedy: create a slip sheet that lists the two changes (sidewalk funding and the food-scrap truck line) and make that slip sheet the subject of the continued public hearing so the record shows the revision and the public has an opportunity to comment. "Let's do it the proper way," Singer said, urging adherence to procedure so the public and board know when a document has been revised.

The session also covered several other budget questions: recent proposals for a "community center without walls" ($15,000) and for a farmers market allocation that staff said was already included in recreation lines; a larger-than-expected variance in the insurance fund line year-to-year; an approximately $500,000 increase in projected building-department revenue; and a Regeneron-related revenue estimate Paul said had been confirmed in discussion with the company’s attorney, Mr. Weingarten.

Members discussed labeling choices in the packet, recommending that a line described as "sundry" be relabeled (for example, "employee appreciation" or "special events") to avoid the appearance of an opaque slush fund. A resident in the audience identified themselves as a former member of the Greenberg Health Center and asked whether that center’s meetings were open to the public; staff said they would follow up after the session.

Near the end of the work session Paul moved to go into executive session to discuss personnel matters related to a possible appointment, collective negotiations and to seek legal advice on pending and current litigation. The motion was seconded and the board called the vote in favor.

The board directed staff to prepare a slip sheet documenting the two capital-budget changes and to include that slip sheet in the continued public hearing packet; staff also agreed to follow up on the specific line-item questions and on public-access information for the health center.