I can no longer sit by and watch as the Fredonia mayor gives her one-sided spin on things going on at Village Hall placing blame on me for everything because I led her to believe that I will not respond in kind.

I am currently recovering from a recent surgery so I now have time, as Paul Harvey would say, to tell “the rest of the story.”

I may have inadvertently created a monster by remaining quiet than if I had defended myself from the start regarding the lies coming from the village mayor. Most of what has been said and printed regarding my recent retirement has been misrepresented and in most cases downright lies. I know the mayor well enough to know that she will always want the last word and she will spin everything as though she is a victim of any unfortunate events unfolding when in fact, she is the root cause.

As we all have been brought up to realize from a young age, there are always two sides to every story. Up to now village residents and other readers of the OBSERVER have been fed untruthful information and only part of the story from the desk of the mayor of the village of Fredonia. Everyone who knows me knows that these are just fictional stories the mayor has told. Most of the below information is regarding her most recent comments at the Board of Trustees meetings regarding her letter to the OBSERVER whereby she attempts to justify her elimination of the village administrator’s position, a move I am sure precedes her attempts now to make the mayor’s position full-time so she can get full-time salary and benefits.

I do not have the benefit of having the article and can only go by what was in Sunday’s OBSERVER’s View and what I heard about it.

First the $1.3 million in the capital fund. For the mayor to claim that she was never advised of that is totally false. Every trustee and the mayor were always provided a hard copy of the annual outside audit, management letter, audit letter and auditor’s opinion as a normal course of business. Maybe the mayor should have cracked open that audit document to look at the wealth of information that it provides on each and every fund. There are notes disclosing all the information regarding just about every aspect of the financials of the village as are required under Generally Accepted Accounting Principals. In the audit is a breakdown of all the funds and their respective fund balances along with the Management Discussion and Analysis. I don’t pass out important information like this for nothing.

The next thing to remember about this fund is where the money comes from. My position never had the unilateral right to transfer monies into any account without the approval of the Village Board. This includes everything from the Capital fund to budget transfers within a specific budget. Every dollar in that Capital fund would have a specific project associated with it that the Board approved in the Village annual budget to appropriate funds to complete. This all coming at the request of the various department heads, not the Administrator. The real question that should be asked is, why hasn’t the respective department heads completed the projects they requested and were funded in the annual budgets?

The next thing is that there is a portion of this capital fund balance, which probably has in the range of $200,000 ot $300,000 (estimated) in it, which is an account jointly controlled by the village and the volunteer firefighters called the Capital Special Reserve account. This account was set up prior to my start and is funded from the town of Pomfret fire contract — 17.5 percent of the annual fire contract.

This contributes significantly to the $1.3 million total fund balance in the above dollar amount. The only time this account is used is when there is a purchase of fire equipment that is jointly paid for (50 percent each from the Village and Capital Special Reserve) from this account by resolution of the Volunteers and the Village Board of Trustees.

Next is the statement that this fund balance contributed to excess borrowing is another false and inflammatory statement. The determination on whether to borrow funds is determined by the Village Board at budget time and determined by the dollar amount of the project in question. I would always state at all times that a good use of fund balance is capital expenses (long term assets). Again, I had no unilateral authority to borrow money without the Village Board budget dictating that that is in fact the way the project in question will be paid for and further approval of a bond resolution of the Board of Trustees authorizing the borrowing.

Yes, It is in fact a multi-step process. In fact, it is the total opposite of the mayor’s comments. May I suggest that the reason the village has the exceptional credit rating and preferential interest rates on any and all borrowings is due to the strong village balance sheets that again are included in the annual outside audit and the Annual Update Document filed with the state Comptroller’s office and provided to all the village lenders, village trustees and mayor. Never did the comptroller’s office send a letter or did the annual outside audit ever state anything in the management letter to suggest having too much fund balance. In fact since the financial crash of 2008 the comptroller’s office has gotten away from recommending any specific dollar or percentage amount for a fund balance. They now are recommending having a fund balance policy in place regarding how and for what purpose the fund balance is to be used.

The policy for this fund would be inherent in the projects these dollars were originally set aside to pay for. Yet another thing to keep in mind is that the board always has the right to re-appropriate money within the various funds and has done so many times in the past. Again, more inflammatory statements made by the mayor just to try and discredit my office. I urge people to check the independent Moody’s rating of the village’s financial status. The village has never had a higher rating than during my tenure as administrator. This is the driving force as to why the Village was able to get financing as low as 1.51 percent during my time in office.

Next is the mayor’s statement regarding the Pomfret, Portland, Dunkirk sewer district. She made the statement that I recommended the contract.

Really?

The mayor should check her timeline so she can realize that I was no longer in the building (retired) when this contract may have been suggested. I only attended two meetings of this negotiating group with the PPD who were in fact charged with the task of coming up with an easier, more equitable way to charge for sewer service since the people in this district are the only entity paying for inflow and infiltration. Due to this fact they are paying over $12 per 1,000 gallons for sewer service with the village since the loss of the Carriage House in the current methodology of billing. The board definitely should have been brought up to speed on the progress of the negotiations because again, there is no unilateral right of the administrator or anyone else in village governance to implement such a contract without the approval by the entire Board of Trustees by resolution.

I may have said that the progress of the group should be shared with the board to get their thoughts but never that I am recommending the contract be signed, sealed and delivered. Everyone at the negotiating table knows that as a fact. So to suggest I somehow had a hand in the potential diminutive impact on PPD revenue is absurd !

As for the SUNY billing error in calculation I have to apologize to both the rate payers and the College if this is true. I can only go by what it states since I do not have access to the numbers. But to suggest that I somehow did this intentionally is ludicrous.

One thing to remember is that I am a taxpayer and ratepayer in the village of Fredonia. I personally do not want to subside any other person or entity’s water, sewer or any other bills they may be required to pay. I would obviously want the same for all the village ratepayers and taxpayers.

I realize this is a lot of complex information that may be difficult for the average person to follow without an intimate understanding of how the Village budget works and the checks and balances that are in fact already in place and entrusted to the Village Board of Trustees as stated in the village charter. I never made any unilateral decisions that were outside my authority and always kept the Board in the loop on any and all important matters. I always understood that as administrator I served at the pleasure of the board. By charter, the board controls everything that goes on in the village.

I will be writing in the future (as time permits) to further explore some of the other past inflammatory and incorrect statements coming out of the village of Fredonia’s mayor’s office and put them to the truth test.

Lastly, I will state that I really don’t care if the OBSERVER agrees with my claim of a hostile work environment. For you to opine on such a matter is improper at best since you were not part of this toxic environment that existed in this administration at the time and never once tried to find out the truth behind unsupported statements being made by this administration. You have no basis for your comments other than to draw conclusions from one side of a story which should never happen in a free and honest press.

Finally, I do not hate anyone or wish any ill will on anyone associated with this matter unlike this mayor, who obviously “hates” me because of my exposure of the inside workings of the village mayor’s office. As was stated so simply and eloquently at the recent funeral of George H.W. Bush by former Sen. Alan Simpson: “Hatred corrodes the container it is carried in.”

Something to ponder about the current administration.

As I finished writing the above I see the mayor on TV on Monday evening again blaming me for something else. The delay in getting the replacement waterlines in the ground in the north end of the Village apparently in her mind was again my fault. I could not believe what I was hearing since it would be a simple process to go through emails that I sent to the village attorney back in May and June requesting that he contact the engineers because they needed easements on railroad property in two places to complete the bidding process.

This is not something that is in my wheelhouse and is a legal matter not something I ever dealt with. After four weeks of doing nothing about it the engineers called me again to ask where the attorney was on securing the easements. I again contacted him and told him in no uncertain terms that the engineers needed those easements and that he needs to get that going ASAP.

These easements with the railroad from what I understand are not something that happens overnight. They apparently have a very complex process before they authorize an easement on their property. So here we are over six months later and the final touches are finally in place to start the project. Really, this is my fault?

Sorry Mayor, yet another fairy tale. Just check out her face on TV and you can tell she is not being truthful. It’s obvious in your face. Blame the correct person please if at all necessary to place blame on anyone, which seems to be your method of operation.

I retired of my own free will and have not regretted that decision for a second since doing so. I do not need anyone else to approve the decision to do so.

I am in a much better place both mentally and physically without this condescending, divisive behavior of the village mayor. I hope someday she finds it in herself to start telling the truth instead of one fairy tale after the other. She certainly is not fit for the office of the village of Fredonia mayor.

Richard St. George, a Fredonia resident, retired at the end of July from the office of village administrator in Fredonia.