Suprise Agenda!

You can only imagine what town board members were thinking as they were forced to read the Supervisor's agenda for the first time while sitting on the dias. No time to cross check, to think about corrections, omissions etc. That's the way Mark Evers shows respect for those who sit on the town board with him and that's a major reason why no political party will again re-endorse him in 2009.

Evers attempted to sandbag Planning Board member Mary Jude Foley who wanted to be reappointed, this time to a full 7 year term. Evers, however, wanted to put a pal in the job so he kept her name off the list of appointments, trying to buy time to pressure other board members.

Al Spain would have none of it and when the agenda was complete, he motioned to appoint Foley. No one could say a bad word about her work ethic. Unlike some Planning Board members who never open their packets, never read or examine issues in front of the board, Foley works and comes well prepared for meetings. That however, is not good enough for Evers. The comments on her behalf were strong enough that even Evers and sidekick Kern voted to appoint her. It was 5-0.

The larger issue behind this meeting remains Evers conduct in springing the agenda on the board members. It looks like his effort failed since they seemed to recover quickly and equally important, they amended the rules to strip Evers of his agenda control pertaining to amending or adding items by removing the requirement that 4 votes be cast to add an item to the agenda. With Kern always acting as a ditto for Evers wishes, the Supervisor was able to forestall adding items to the agenda he did not want by placing this 4 vote super-majority provision in the board's rules. Spain and Desso apparently wised up by changing those rules to a simple majority, knowing that Michaels sides with them more often than not.

Last but not least, we would be remiss if we did not point out that our favorite deputy town attorney, Latham resident Josh Ehrlich, was reappointed to prosecute cases in town court. As town court continues to be our little rehab facility for attorneys with either criminal records, such as Ehrlich or tarnished ethics after being removed from the bench for judicial misconduct. This will certainly not be on the future list of reasons to vote for Lou Desso for the county legislature in 2009, but it will rank high on the Democratic list of reasons not to.