On The Beach Blog

OtBB was recently challenged by a reader for taking the three stooges to task over having held up a series of budget transfer items since last August.

Reader Wingman's Comment, read in part:

"...only the Board of Trustees has the authority to authorize expenditures. Mayor Teller and his majority Trustees Birk and Farrell, approved a paid sick leave without bothering to pass a resolution in public or noti­fying Trustees Tucker and DiBenedetto. Instead, it was concealed from everyone. Secret government actions are neither ethical nor legal."

While it would be a tough proposition to argue that Conrad Teller has the most highly developed communication skills, in this instance... apparently too delicate for Wingman to iden­tify by name... he is all wet from the water he is carrying for the Empress of Oneck's shadow government.

1. The person the three stooges are using to attack the Mayor and Village Clerk Rebecca Molinaro is Susan John­son O'Rourke, a full-time Village em­ploy­ee when she was stricken with cancer last year.
2. The three stooges in their zeal to undermine the Mayor and the Village Clerk, completely failed to do their due dil­i­gence and review the "Amended Terms of Em­ployment Agreement" adopted by a resolution of the Village Board dated October 7, 2010...
   

   (This was before the terms of Trustees Pat Dibenedetto and Junior Palmer, but not Hank Tucker!)

   ...the relevant language of which reads:
   

   "If an employee exhausts his/her sick leave ben­e­fits, he/she shall be entitled to a six month medical leave at base pay with no accrual of other benefits. In order to be eligible for this benefit an employee must have completed at lease{sic} three years of service."

   This was signed by then Village Clerk-Treasurer Kathleen McGinnis and Mayor Teller.
3. The non-public resolution Wingman alleges was, in fact, passed at the regular Village Board meeting of October 2010.
4. Susan O'Rourke, at the time she was forced to discontinue her duties, had been a full time Village em­ploy­ee for approximately 15 months. Prior to that, for a number of years in the mid-'90s, she had been a part-time employee.
   

   (Susan used to fill in as Secretary to the var­i­ous Boards when I chaired the ZBA until I stepped down in mid-1996.)

5. The language of the Employee Agreement quoted above reads only "three years of service;" there is no qualification such as "uninterrupted service" or "full" v. "part-time," and after consultation with Village Labor Attorney Richard Zuckerman, it was deemed correct for Ms. O'Rourke to receive the benefit .

(i.e., she had earned the compensated medical leave under the terms of the Em­ployment Agreement authorized by vote of the full Village Board in October 2010.)

If all the grandstanding by Trustees DiBenedetto and Palmer... and babbling by Tucker... about their fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers of Westhampton Beach, were valid, they would have known the substance of the existing Em­ployment Agreement per the Board Resolution.

Smoking gun? Ennnt! Not this time, some­thing the three stooges have known all along, but have persisted in a witch hunt and wasted time, resources and taxpayer money!