By Brendan G. Coyne
The city council members listened to a number of speakers who criticized the budget and the choice for acting city manager.
The 150 people attending the Newburgh City Council meeting Monday night in the Activity Center were angry long before the 2011 preliminary budget revealed their taxes would rise dramatically. The status of acting city manager Richard Herbek, who introduced the budget, was on the minds of the residents who sniped at the council all evening. The catcalls prompted a frustrated Mayor Nicholas Valentine to respond to the unrelenting attendees: “This is my meeting, not yours.”
“The economic realities facing the city have made this a most difficult and painful budget to present,” Herbek said.
The budget calls for spending just over $39 million, nearly 10% less than this year. The real property tax levy will increase 41%. The city will employ 210 full- and part-time employees, down 60 from this year, the smallest proposed city workforce since the early 1980s. Herbek noted that three union contracts expired at the end of 2009 and the fourth expires at the end of this year. He said the unions could take measures that would substantially lessen the impact on Newburgh’s citizens and workers who could lose their jobs.
Herbek said the council must adopt a budget within six weeks. He said the Newburgh Fiscal Recovery Act requires the New York State Comptroller to examine the proposed budget before it is adopted.
The city council members on Monday night. From left: deputy city clerk Kristen Cotten, councilwoman Christine Bello, councilwoman Regina Angelo, mayor Nicholas Valentine, councilman Curlie Dillard, councilwoman Marge Bell and acting city manager Richard Herbek.
The controversy over Herbek’s future equaled that of the budget. In an effort to defuse the debate over whether Herbek should continue as acting city manager, Valentine started to respond to the media reports that he and fellow council members Regina Angelo and Curlie Dillard had already decided that Herbek should stay on. But the audience wouldn’t hear him, taunting him throughout his remarks, and he often reacted to the taunts. And even before the mayor finished, each of the four council people felt obligated to state their positions.
Valentine tried to explain that with budget preparation underway, this was not the time to end the services of Herbek.
“If we don’t keep Richard Herbek, we might as well close,” Valentine said.
But councilwomen Marge Bell and Christine Bello maintained that Herbek had agreed to help to find a city manager, not end the search and become a candidate himself.
In the parade of residents who complained about the budget, crime, drugs and sanitation following the meeting, a resident of Grand Street berated the council. “I am sorry for the way you talked to one another. You’re good people,” the man said. “You all have got to get together. The city’s employees’ morale is in the toilet. Our morale is in the toilet.”
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