Susan Siegel
Susan Siegel, candidate for the open seat on the Yorktown Town Board and a long time community advocate, again accused the Town Board of violating the New York State Open Meetings Law when it apparently discussed spending taxpayer money behind closed doors in executive session meetings.
In two separate resolutions, the Board voted Tuesday to spend $1 million without any prior open session discussion.“ The issue isn’t what the money is being spent on,” Siegel said. “The issue is that decisions to spend taxpayer money must be discussed in an open session meeting. It’s the law.”
A regular attendee at Town Board meetings, Siegel pointed out that once a resolution authorizing an expenditure is on the Board’s agenda, it typically means the Board has already discussed the expenditure and decided to approve it. “That’s not how it’s supposed to be,” she said.
The first resolution was for $478,000 to purchase body cameras for the Police Department and was based on a discussion dating back to 2021. No decision to move forward with the purchase was made at that time. The second resolution for $539,000 modified the initial, and estimated, amount of money the town will contribute towards the improvements to the Route 118/Underhill Avenue intersection that are part of the Underhill Farm development.
Siegel also expressed concern over the Board’s continued failure to discuss how the remaining federal ARPA money will be spent. “There doesn’t seem to be a carefully thought out plan, at least not one that has been shared with residents,” she said. “Instead, spending authorizations simply show up on the agenda and typically there’s no discussion. It appears that the Board is making piecemeal decisions without any coherent plan.”
A third expenditure, this one for only $13,000, appeared to also be based on closed door executive session discussions. The resolution authorizing the expenditure simply stated that it was to update a 2018 Hallocks Mill report without saying why the update was needed.
However, in response to Siegel’s question, Supervisor Lachterman had the town engineer explain that the 2018 report needed to be updated because the town was applying for a new grant for the long-delayed sewer extension project. But instead of the grant being for the 315 houses in the
original sewer district, the town was now planning to sewer 650 houses and so it needed new cost information.
”When did the Board discuss this changed plan for Hallocks Mill sewers?” Siegel asked. “Do Board members have any idea if the remaining 335 unsewered residents actually want to be sewered?
Siegel pledged that if the voters put her on the Town Board in the July special election, she’ll be their independent advocate for open and transparent town government.
This is not the first time Siegel has accused Town Boards of violating the Open Meetings Law.
In 2017, Siegel took the town to court over a closed door executive session that discussed creating a new staff position. In a conference setting, the judge advised the town attorney that because the creation of a new position would increase expenses and had tax implications it needed to be discussed in open session.
