June 1, 2017
HARTSVILLE, NY – The Hartsville town board conducted a special meeting Wednesday evening to decide on a new town clerk and the meeting was adjourned without any decisions being made. The first dilemma that was left unresolved was the approval of minutes from previous meetings. Apparently, officials seemed to believe that the minutes were improperly labeled and edited by the former clerk and thus failed to get approval by the three present board members. The board finally agreed to listen to the audio recordings from the previous meetings and go back and correct the minutes in a future meeting.
Then it was the issue of electing a new town clerk. The board has elected a temporary clerk for the last two meetings to replace Jessica Henderson who resigned after five months on the job. After a lengthy executive session, Supervisor John Bowles emerged and abruptly adjourned the meeting after announcing no clerk has been appointed.
Kay Miles filled in as temporary clerk this month and Pat Mullen filled the duties last month. Many in the crowd were in favor of reappointing Miles who held the post for 10 years previously but it seemed that Bowles was dead set against that.
Things were so bad toward the end of the meeting that board member Tom Dobell stated, “If it’s going to continue to be like this in the future, I’m not coming back.” Bowles took intensive heckling at the conclusion of the meeting from people calling him a dictator among many other things.
