Rotterdam officials react to monument’s expenses

PHOTOGRAPHER: Justin Mason

Parts of the veterans memorial outside Rotterdam Town Hall appear to have been paid for with taxpayer money, despite outgoing town Supervisor Frank Del Gallo’s past assertions that the project was funded entirely through donations.

Del Gallo has already paid out $10,543 in town money for itemized invoices for the memorial, even though none of them were approved by members of the Town Board. Another sizeable invoice — for $4,330 — came from Bradshaw Construction shortly after November’s election, but board members declined to pay it Monday because they hadn’t authorized it.

“We didn’t authorize the payment for any memorial,” said board member Nicola DiLeva. “We didn’t approve him to pay for that.”

Del Gallo signed off on sizeable invoices from Grandview Concrete and Suhrada Construction and Kenneth Maguire, a stone carver from Florida the supervisor enlisted to create the images on the two massive slabs of limestone. Del Gallo even reimbursed himself for purchases totalling more than $2,000.

Bradshaw Construction is a company owned by James Bradshaw, who ran for town justice as a Republican and on Del Gallo’s Rotterdam First party line in last month’s elections. Both Bradshaw and Del Gallo were handily defeated at the polls.

DiLeva said she and her fellow board members likely would have supported building the monument even if they knew it was going to cost money. But she said the way Del Gallo went about funding the memorial without bids or authorization from the board wasn’t right.

“How many times did he tell us everything was donated?” she asked during the board’s agenda meeting Monday. “How many times did he tell us it would not cost a penny?”

Del Gallo did not show up for the meeting to respond to questions about the monument. He could not be reached Monday for comment for this story.

When construction first began on the monument in July 2010, Del Gallo insisted all of the materials and labor would be donated. A pool builder by trade, he agreed to provide the bulk of construction.

“It’s not going to cost the taxpayers anything,” he told The Gazette in an interview at the time.

Shortly before the monument was unveiled this past May, Del Gallo said it was the product of nearly two dozen volunteers and countless hours of unpaid labor. He indicated that roughly $50,000 was donated to the cause, including his own $13,000 salary for 2011 as supervisor.

Town officials weren’t certain whether Del Gallo’s salary was used for construction costs. Deputy Supervisor Robert Godlewski suggested Del Gallo might be operating under the assumption that his salary was paying for the invoices because he never collected a paycheck this year. “In his mind, he’s donating his salary,” he said during the meeting. “That’s what that means to him.”

Godlewski also noted that the monument would have never been constructed were it not for a large sum of donations.

But Godlewski’s suggestion didn’t pacify DiLeva. She accused Del Gallo of misleading the board and the public during his campaign, when he claimed the memorial was built solely on donations.

“He ran on this,” she said. “And we’re getting all these bills now.”