8/28/23 BSpa Trustee Meeting Summary

ICYMI here’s a summary of the 4+ hour Village of Ballston Spa Board of Trustees 8/28 meeting in 19 emojis: ⚠️🍦🎨📖🎪🛝🚌🚚🏫🚧📑🧺⚖️⚙️🇺🇸🏥👮‍♂️🗓️📣

News to know:

⚠️ DPW road paving to be completed by Wed 8/30

🍦BSBPA Free Ice Cream Social in Iron Spring Park 6-8PM this Thursday 8/31

🎨 Plein Air Painting class in Iron Spring Park 9/1 

📖 Book signing and reading with author Matt Witten on 9/9 at 1PM in BSpa Library

🎪 Family Fun Day donations and invoices/bills still coming in; $5k potentially coming to village from Saratoga County; will be a few weeks until final costs to village will be calculated 

🛝 FANS organization is disbanding and will donate fund balance to village to use for playground 

🚌 Northbound 450 bus stop shelter and “bump in” to move forward at village parking lot next to ReShop on Route 50; 450 bus to start making stops at Saratoga Social Services building 

Motions passed (we agree on):

🚚 $6K for DPW tandem dump truck brakes

🏫 Grove and Pine St to be closed on 9/6 from 3:30-5 for Malta Ave’s Back to School Block Party 

🛝 $4k donation from FANS accepted by village to be used exclusively for Kelly Park FANS-built playground maintenance only 

🚧 Zoning Advisory Committee Charter approved with amendments: 11 members total, no automatic appointments, no other board chair will be allowed to chair this committee

📑 2023 Village of Ballston Spa Comprehensive Plan Update approved!!!

🧺 $390 transfer of budgeted funds to help cover cost of picnic table in Wiswall Park (not to exceed $1,589.29) 

⚖️ Revised Ethics law (amended to include pubic officers needing to tell the truth verbiage) public hearing set for Tuesday 9/12

⚙️ $3k approved for emergency work by Hawk Drilling CO. inc. on San Souci Spring on 8/25

🇺🇸 Approved closure of Low St for 9/11 ceremony

🏥 Approved village purchase of 78 Thompson St (Community Emergency Corps building) for future use by the police department

👮‍♂️Approved appointment of two new police officers 

Motions failed (we disagree on):

🗓️ Request for special meeting workshop on Revised Ethics Code for 9/19. (Failed 3-2; Mayor Rossi (R) and Trustee VanDeinse-Perez (R) voted yes for additional meeting; other 3 trustees voted no; multiple attempts had already been made to workshop Ethics code months ago and the board voted to move forward with revised version for public hearing on 9/12). 

Call to action: 

📣 1️⃣ Last night’s meeting displayed some of the best and unfortunately the worst of our village’s political leadership. Good news first: we are happy to see a major milestone achieved last night with the approval of the 2023 Village of Ballston Spa Comprehensive Plan Update! This non-partisan effort has been needed for decades (last plan was done in 1993) and has been in progress since 2021, with many hours dedicated from 20+ community members to draft this plan outlining our village’s future development. We are glad to see our board of trustees unanimously pass the plan and hope to see it put to action right away!

Another positive outcome from last night’s meeting was the approval of the Zoning Advisory Committee Charter. Though the agenda drafted by Mayor Rossi was incorrect and led to unnecessary confusion, ultimately the board compromised to pass the motion unanimously with the following amendments: 11 members total, no automatic appointments, no other board chair will be allowed to chair the Zoning committee. This is an important first step in modernizing our zoning laws and codes that were outlined as a key need in our 2023 Comprehensive Plan. This committee will be crucial in addressing rezoning and development of key areas in our village (like Angelica on Bath St and the vacant fire damaged building the “Beehive” on East High St). If you are interested in serving on this committee, please reach out to any village trustee! 

Call to action pt. 2: 

📣 2️⃣ Now the bad news: we witnessed a return to the dysfunctional dynamic, communication breakdown and overall failure of leadership seen in previous meetings under Mayor Rossi’s tenure. For over 4 hours, the public endured a disastrous display of petty, unprofessional and hostile behavior between the mayor and his equal colleagues on the board. Starting with the purposefully misleading and inaccurate agenda drafted by the mayor: multiple motions/attachments cited incorrectly, with the wrong trustees labeled, with unclear and unnecessary footnotes added by the mayor. Additionally the mayor added motions after the agreed deadline that were clearly copied from and placed ahead of another Trustee’s nearly identical motion which was actually submitted on time. 

We continually saw the mayor failing to lead and failing to follow the Rules of Procedure in the meeting, allowing shouts, insults and threats from the audience (from his own sister no less!) to dictate conversations on motions in progress that were outside of the public comment period. This failure to gavel the chaos coming from his supporters in the audience only escalated tensions leading trustees to talk over each other, speak unkindly and unprofessionally (including an out of line comment from the mayor to Trustee Kormos stating “Let me go ahead and publicly embarrass you!”) displaying the toxic working relationships formed under Mayor Rossi’s leadership. 

Call to action pt. 3: 

📣 3️⃣ It was yet again another painful 4 hour long meeting the public was forced to suffer through, nearly impossible to follow via zoom due to the audio issues and failure of the mayor to follow the Rules of Procedure or even the order of his own agenda. We were hopeful from the previous two short, professional and productive meetings that this pattern of contentious communication, mistrust and disrespect between the mayor and trustees would not continue but this meeting proved otherwise. 

We again ask the mayor to put aside his personal vendettas and listen to his colleagues instead of monologuing as a means to delay and exhaust productive conversation (i.e. reading out loud a long email he had sent prior to the meeting that only blamed his colleagues offering no solutions only complaints). The mayor needs to do his job as the leader of these meetings to maintain order and ensure a professional procedural meeting for all. 

We call on all residents to attend these meetings and see for themselves how this failure of leadership and lack of respect amongst the mayor and board of trustees ultimately hurts ALL of us. We must speak up in support of clear, respectful communication from our elected leaders and insist they put their petty personal issues aside and come together on solutions for our Village of Friends.