Del Gallo says veterans’ memorial costs covered by his donated salary

Outgoing town Supervisor Frank Del Gallo said his donated salary funded nearly all of the costs incurred by the veterans’ memorial and rebuffed claims that he spent any taxpayer money on the project.

Del Gallo said the money to pay $10,543 in itemized invoices for the memorial came from the budgetary line item for his $13,000 salary. He said now-retired comptroller Pat Aragosa didn’t raise any issues when he asked to transfer the money to purchase materials for the monument.

“I earned it,” he said of the salary. “I have the right to give it to whoever I want.”

Del Gallo said an additional $2,500 was available for the project through a budgetary line item for the town veterans. He blasted members of the Town Board for suggesting the project was furtively funded using tax dollars.

“All these people did a nice job,” he said of the workers who helped build the monument near Town Hall. “[The memorial] came from the heart, and [critics] want to make it look like thievery.”

Del Gallo said he never collected a salary during his two-year term. He said his 2010 salary was donated to help fund reconstruction of the kitchen at the Rotterdam Senior Center on Hamburg Street, after a $10,000 grant from state Sen. Hugh Farley didn’t materialize during the project.

But board member Nicola DiLeva viewed Del Gallo’s apparent charity differently. She said Del Gallo didn’t have the right to direct where his salary went because it went back into the town’s general fund after he chose not to accept it.

“He should have taken his paycheck and paid for it out of his own pocket or let the board know what he was doing,” she said.

Instead, DiLeva said board members only found out about the money being spent on the memorial when Del Gallo submitted a flurry of invoices.

She said the board was unaware of the memorial costing anything outside of donations until the budgetary transfers appeared last month.

“How do you submit purchase orders, sign them and then pay yourself?” she asked.

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.

Shortly before the monument was unveiled in 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 as supervisor.

Del Gallo insists he did nothing wrong in using money equivalent to his salary for the monument. He said he actually spent more than his annual stipend in out-of-pocket expenses and labor during the construction.

“They’re trying to make me look bad any way they can,” he said. “But there’s one thing you can’t change, and that’s the truth.”

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