Water Vote, Board Vote, What Vote?

It should be clear by now to anyone who has followed the public record of Mark Evers that he will do just about anything to get his way, including lie and break laws. So it should come as no surprise that today when confronted with his own budget estimate on the costs of town elections, he spins like a top to defend his reprehensible and misleading statement to the Troy Record that he's trying to stop the public's right to vote on HIS plan to bail out his favorite Conservative contractor with $830,000 of our borrowed money by preventing us from voting on it in order to save us $60,000. That's the absurd cost estimate he and Town Clerk Kathryn Connolly concocted to justify Evers again breaking the law and denying voting rights on his proposal.Evers states today that Connolly provided him the number after consulting with a lawyer. What lawyer? Certainly not anyone on the town's legal staff. So what lawyer Mr. Evers or is this just another lie thrown at the press to deceive people. Better yet, try to imagine a lawyer who spent all kinds of time calculating the cost of a town election in order to provide that number to the town clerk of North Greenbush. How dedicated that lawyer must be!

Here is the today's Troy Record article that sets forth the arguments very concisely.

Opponents, who really are Democrats, confronted the press and Evers with his own town budget in which he lists the costs of holding elections in a given year at around $4,000. That's a far cry from a simple Yes or No single proposition on borrowing $830,000 to pay Evers allies in the Conservative Party who hold the contract in the over spent Water District 14, still uncompleted and no end in sight to the cost or completion date which are long overdue.And it's a far cry from the $60,000 cost estimate Evers concocted to justify breaking the law.

Let's face it, the real reason for Evers opposition to a vote on his plan to borrow and spend all that money is the huge political defeat and embarrassment the result will cause. Imagine, an election in which Evers and his alliance of Republican, Democrat and Conservative operatives can't manipulate the ballot by for example, getting the word YES as the only option on the voting machine. That's essentially how they manipulated the town election by endorsing the same slate of candidates on all four major party lines.

This time a judge is watching Evers actions because this case is already in front of a State Supreme Court Judge who has been told that without court intervention, Evers and his new town board majority will act to again thwart the right to vote demanded by petitions duly filed with the town a year ago. Evers actions last week prove the assertion and it is likely Evers will break the law once again next week by attempting to stop the vote again. Stay tuned, for the man who received all four major party endorsements has more opposition than he can handle.

Special Town Board Meeting

As with the water vote Evers is trying to prevent, he has also pulled another fast one by refusing to call a special meeting of the town board so that the majority can approve the town's Comprehensive Plan. Two years of work, $51,000 in grant money invested by Rensselaer County and all of that in the trash can to sooth Evers ego.Town Law S62-2 requires the Supervisor to call such a meeting within 10 days of the filed request with two days written notice to board members. So unless Mr. Evers tries to call the meeting for a Saturday, he again violates the law and perhaps any semblance of decency since this Saturday is Councilman Mihalko's wedding day.

Evers has done everything possible to screw up the work of the volunteers who devoted so much time and energy to the project and the Rensselaer County Planning Office.Just peak at the town website in which Evers has listed all the political flunkies he tried to appoint without a board vote to this committee in an effort to stall it.

This one will surely come back to haunt him and those on the town board who refuse to grant the plan the quick passage it deserves.The delay also jeopardizes the funding for the proposed I-90 connector which needs this official boost to move forward. Now expect Evers to spin out how much he really supports it even though he voted against the passage last week, even though he tried to stack the committee, block meetings with specious accusations of failed public notice, refused to sign contracts until embarrassed to do so or pay bills until forced to do so. Yes, like the audit by the State Comptroller of Water 14 which Evers also voted against but claims he supports, Evers will continue to claim support for the Comprehensive Plan and refuse to adopt it.

For duck hunters, this guy requires no scope.