According to Fredonia Mayor Doug Essek, the village needs a deputy clerk.

According to Evadawn Bashaw, the position has already been advertised. At the Fredonia Village Board meeting held Tuesday, the fact that the position was already posted fell under fire.

“So we advertise for a deputy clerk?” trustee Roger Pacos asked.

“We did, yes,” Bashaw responded.

“I was told that was pulled,” Pacos said.

“No,” Bashaw explained. “We did advertise, we advertised it in the paper and we advertised it on the board. We set aside the money in the budget for a minimal deputy clerk position.”

“I don’t remember talking about this recently.” Pacos seemed irritated as he stated that the board had not discussed it, to which trustee Kara Christina also mentioned that it hadn’t been discussed since the budget meetings.

Bashaw seemed to remember a discussion last month regarding it, but mentioned that she did speak about it with others and thought it was with the board.

“So you went ahead and advertised this without having a board discussion?” Pacos asked.

“It’s her call,” Bashaw countered. “The deputy clerk serves at the pleasure of the village clerk.”

Pacos went on to say that at a town level that’s true, but not at village level.

“It does at the village as well,” Bashaw responded.

“In the town the clerk hires, in the village the village board hires,” Pacos explained.

Bashaw said interviews had already been setup for the position, to which Pacos said being on the personnel committee it’d would have been nice to be made aware of this.

“I know, there’s a lot of things that happen like that,” Bashaw said. “This is my fault, I was going to speak with you about this tonight, but it is setup for next week.”

Lack of communication was mentioned and the presentation of the commendations held earlier in the day came up.

“I think it would have been nice if we were informed about it,” Bashaw said “The two trustees were invited, that’s true, when Roger Britz was unable to attend it would have been nice to inform the other person who is assigned to the police department and we didn’t even receive a notification that it was happening.”

“Trustee Bashaw I was never notified that trustee Britz was not attending,” Essek said. “He never responded back and I didn’t know I was under the purview of the board that I had to notify you when I did that.”

“Usually when we do things like that it’s at a meeting so we’re all present,” Christina said.

Essek felt that giving the awards in person was more prudent and opted to tape the ceremony for the other board members to see. The board still felt that being more a part of it would have been better.