Village looking for new treasurer

Resignation came after state audit

BALLSTON SPA, N.Y. » At the Sept. 10 meeting of the Village Board, Mayor John Romano and members of the board discussed steps they plan to initiate following the resignation of the Village Treasurer and Deputy Treasurer on Sept. 5, which became effective on Monday.

Village Treasurer and Budget Officer Christopher Hickey and Deputy Treasurer Daryl Purinton resigned soon after the NYS Comptroller’s Office sent a draft of a state audit to the village offices. The draft, which has been viewed by the mayor and members of the village board, will be made available to the pubic within the next month.

In the interim, neither the Mayor nor the Villages trustees were willing to speculate on the reason for the abrupt resignations of the two village officials, other than to say that there may be a correlation between the issuance of the report and their resignations. Purinton, who held three different positions in the village, will remain on in one, as Internal Control Officer.

Hickey had come under fire by Village residents throughout the first four months of 2018, when it was reported that the Village had been forced to take out a $600,000 bridge loan to cover a shortfall in the 2017-18 budget.

To make matters worse, the 2019-2020 budget included a 17.9 percent tax increase for village residents, which many of the residents blamed on Hickey.

At a March 2018 Village meeting, village resident Liz Kormos, whose company provides market and financial planning development services, said that, after reviewing Village budgets for the past several years, she found that village expenditures had exceeded revenues every year since 2014 by as much as $334,000 a year.

During that same meeting, other residents voiced their disapproval of the village officials’ handling of the village’s finances and bristled at the idea of being burdened with a tax increase because of what they saw as poor fiscal management and lack of oversight on the part of Village officials.

At Monday’s meeting, Mayor Romano said he was more interested in looking forward to the next steps the Village will take to fill the vacant positions and

move the Village forward. He outlined steps the board planned to take to immediately begin advertising for a new Treasurer.

The board also plans to interview and hire an accounting firm to fill the void left by the Treasurer and Deputy Treasurer and “keep the trains running,” as Village Trustee Noah Shaw put it.

The board also plans to look into hiring a payroll firm to take the burden off of administrative staff and to update the existing way of generating payroll, which is antiquated.

The board also approved a motion to move forward with the formation of an informal budget advisory committee, which will be comprised of qualified residents of the Village who are willing to volunteer their time to review village finances that are part of the public record and make budgetary recommendations for next year’s budget process.