Rotterdam board spars again over monument

Incoming town Supervisor Harry Buffardi will ask for a state audit of the Del Gallo administration’s finances, following a revelation that the outgoing supervisor may have violated the town’s procurement policy in building a veteran’s memorial.

Buffardi said he likely would have asked for the state Comptroller’s Office to review the town’s finances anyway, to gain a better understanding of how the administration conducted business over the past two years. But given how material was purchased for the monument outside Town Hall, he said a full audit seems called for prior to the new administration taking office.

Buffardi said invoices from the project appear to show Supervisor Frank Del Gallo reimbursing his friends for materials that he originally characterized as donated. Del Gallo did not collect his $13,000 salary this year and claims he transferred money to pay for the monument from his salary line in the budget.

“It smacks of impropriety,” Buffardi said Thursday. “It’s highly inappropriate to bill back for services that have already been completed.”

Buffardi’s comments came a day after members of the Town Board met for the last time this year. Like many before it, Wednesday’s meeting was characterized by verbal sparring between Del Gallo and board member Nicola DiLeva.

Del Gallo blasted the board for making an issue of a benevolent project that was only partially built with his donated salary. He said those board members claiming the monument cost tax dollars are spreading lies and sullying the contributions of all the people who made the project possible.

“I don’t know if someone is being dishonest,” he growled during the meeting. “If they are, they’re all wet.”

DiLeva said Del Gallo’s salary was not his to donate. Once he didn’t accept the money, she said it had to go back into the town’s general fund and couldn’t have been allocated without board approval.

Board member Wayne Calder said Del Gallo appeared to have spent his entire salary on the project before he even received the pay. Rotterdam supervisors who accept their salaries receive pay on a bi-weekly basis, meaning Del Gallo wouldn’t have been able to use his accrued salary money to cover the bulk of the invoices received by the town until the last week of his term.

“You spent it before you got it,” Calder said.

Calder stressed that he doesn’t believe Del Gallo intended to do anything wrong or stole from the town.

He said Del Gallo built the monument as though he was doing the project as a private business.

“Well obviously, this is not a private business,” he said. “This is a governmental agency.”

And due to the expenses incurred, the monument was likely subject to the town’s purchasing policy, Calder said. None of the work or the materials used in the monument were bid out; Del Gallo even acknowledged that he had no accounting of project.

“Nobody counted,” he said. “We weren’t keeping track.”

So far, Del Gallo has approved payments of $10,543 in expenses from the monument, including roughly $2,000 to himself. Board members opted to table three pages of budget transfers in order to forestall paying a $4,330 invoice from Bradshaw Construction until the new administration takes office in January.

Company owner Jim Bradshaw said the money was inconsequential, but blasted the board and media accounts for insinuating he only billed the town after losing the election. Bradshaw had an unsuccessful run for town justice on Del Gallo’s Rotterdam First line last month.

The invoice from his company was processed in the town comptroller’s office just five days after the election, though Bradshaw insists he submitted it in July.

“It is really disgusting what is going on here is,” he said. “What is being said in the paper is not true.”

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