Month: January 2025

This blogger doesn’t know where to begin describing the history of the city’s attempt at “restorative justice” as mismanaged by Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran.

On May 4, 2023, the City Council established a panel that was charged with seeking “…to define via community input and dialogue a ‘Saratoga Springs’ Restorative Justice Program.” The panel ended up being called the Restorative Justice Panel (RJP).

This panel met six times from October 11, 2023, to December 13, 2023. The meetings were chaotic and confusing. The RJP appears to have disintegrated because there is no record of them meeting after December, 2023. According to this blogger’s calculation, as of this writing, the committee has not met in thirteen months.

The Council resolution required the RJP to issue a report to the Council by December 19, 2023. There is no record that this report was ever submitted.

Coincidentally, on the date their report was due, the City Council decided to hire a consulting firm to assist the RJP, which was struggling with even defining what restorative justice meant, let alone what a restorative justice program for Saratoga Springs would look like. The Council approved a contract with the consulting firm Ives-Fenton Consulting and Training Services which, confusingly, is sometimes referred to also as Ives-Fenton Counseling Services. The contract was put forward by Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran and he became responsible for overseeing its execution.

In their contract, Ives-Fenton committed to, among other things, forming a “Reinvention Plan Implementation Team” to do some kind of ongoing analysis of the fifty-point plan adopted by the Saratoga Springs Police Reform Task Force in 2021:

…we will work collaboratively with the Reinvention Implemntation Team to design and publish a public and frequently updated “Report Card” detailing actual numerical and qualatiative progress in implementing with fidelity, each of the fifty points.

This blogger can find no record of a Team being formed or of this “report card” ever being published.

According to the consultants’ billing, their last contact with the purported RJP was with its co-chair, Camille Daniels, on August 15, 2024. By this blogger’s calculations, that was approximately five months ago.

Here is a complete list of the activities they have billed the city for. Their last submission was for a September 4 two hour email, text, and phone discussion.

Record Of Billing By Ives-Fenton

A Gross Violation of City Procurement Requirements

Ives-Fenton has only spent $3,851.25 of the $29,340 agreed to in their contract. Their contract expired on December 5, 2024.

Moran has placed on his agenda for Tuesday, January 7, 2025, Council meeting a resolution to “extend” their contract until the end of 2025.

The problem is that you cannot “extend” a contract that has expired. Moran could have done so before the expiration date, but he did not.

In addition, Moran cannot even get his dates right.

There was no contract entered into with Ives-Fenton on December 19, 2024. The agreement was approved on December 19, 2023.

Readers might accuse the blogger of nit-picking, but this is a formal contract with the city and should be accurate.

There is also the question of why the consulting firm signed the document on December 22, 2024.

STOP!!!!!!!

Given the legal issues and troubling record of the RJP, there is no way that the city should approve the extension of this contract at their meeting on January 7, 2025.

The gross failure on Moran’s part to manage this project properly is troubling in and of itself. More scary is what this says about the management of the Accounts Department. This blogger just happened to have this negligence called to his attention. It is reasonable to assume this is just the tip of the iceberg. Who knows what other more serious failures are hidden in Moran’s office that may cost the city in the future?

“I would look at it this way, I am a temporary appointee for the Commissioner of Public Works. I am not a candidate to run in a special election. So, I have no political agenda, I don’t have to do any political posturing and think about getting elected.”

Hank Kuczynski to WAMC October 30, 2024

Hank Kuczynski assured the members of the Saratoga Springs City Council and the public that he would only serve as the city’s Public Works Commissioner on an interim basis until there was an election when the Council was considering him for an appointment to fill the vacancy created when former Commissioner Jason Golub resigned. It now turns out that Kuczynski has accepted the Democratic Committee’s endorsement to be their write-in candidate for the Commissioner of Public Works position in the upcoming special election to fill the post.

Earlier this year, I had a telephone conversation with Kuczynski. I had learned that Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran planned to put his name forward to serve as the temporary appointment. He assured me, as he had others, that he was offering his name with the understanding that he would only be a placeholder to fill in. He emphasized this with a grandiloquent statement that he simply wanted to serve the city, but only briefly.

The October 29, 2024, a Times Union subheading read, “Democrat and former deputy mayor joined City Council on Tuesday, but said he won’t run in the special election Jan. 28.”

Mayor Safford offered this in the October 29, 2024, edition of the Saratogian.

“I’m not here for politics, I’m here for the city. We have been discussing Mr. Kaczynski (sic) status as someone who can come in do that job until we can get the election done, which is something that we have finally agreed on, and I’m hoping that we can solidify the that election is going to be on January 28 so that Mr. Kaczynski (sic) knows how much time he’s going to have to commit to this.”[JK: emphasis added]

Granted, people have a right to change their minds, but in Kuczynski’s case, when he sought the appointment, he assured people he would not be “political” and use the appointment as a jumping off base for a run for office. It’s fair to assume that this promise was instrumental in getting support for his appointment.

Having known Mr. Kuczynski for many years, none of this was a surprise. Kuczynski prides himself as being a skilled poker player, and, regrettably, he brings this same attitude and ethics to politics.

From the beginning, the entire process of his appointment was tainted with intrigue.

Moran and Kuczynski’s Tainted Appointment

On August 4, 2024, Sarah Burger was officially endorsed by the Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee to be appointed to fill the DPW Commissioner vacancy and to be their candidate in the special election. Due to technical issues, the endorsement was reaffirmed at a later meeting. It was assumed that there would be a special election, and with the enrollment advantages enjoyed by the Democrats, she would have an easy path to victory.

Unfortunately, for Burger, loyalty, fairness, and transparency are rare commodities in the ugly world that constitutes the inner workings of those who lead the committee.

It was necessary to fill the DPW vacancy until a special election could be held. Reliable sources have informed this blogger that Moran and Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi, working with Democratic Chair Otis Maxwell, decided to jettison Burger and get Kuczynski appointed instead. In a classic example of closed-door dealing, the three shut out the other city committee members. In fact, reflecting the cynicism of this whole business, they did not even have the courtesy to inform Sarah Burger of their decision to make this move. Remember, the committee had officially endorsed her to be appointed.

Moran’s desire to sideline Burger is not surprising. As well documented by this blog, Moran relies on aggression and bullying. Sarah Burger, who is on the New York State Democratic Committee’s executive board and who had previously served as chair of the city’s Democratic Committee, was not one to be intimidated. I expect that Moran viewed Burger as a rival who needed to be eliminated.

Having engineered Kuczynski’s appointment, neither Moran nor Maxwell submitted Burger’s nomination papers to the Saratoga County Board of Elections to get her on the ballot for the special election.

When Burger discovered that her nominating papers had not been delivered to the Board of Elections, she sent urgent messages to Maxwell and Moran that the papers needed to be delivered. Unfortunately for Burger, her messages were ignored. So, in the end, only Burger’s Republican opponent, Chuck Marshall, would have his name on the ballot.

In a bizarre twist that ignored reality, Moran, who had not bothered to do any legal research, announced at a December Council meeting that the special election would not be happening and that his friend, Kuczynski, would now serve out the vacancy through the end of 2025.

When a judge ruled that there would be an election and that only one candidate would appear, Moran’s fantasies were exposed and the embarrassing truth was revealed.

Kuczynski now cloaks himself as the defender of Democracy. Kuczynski, having assured everyone that he earnestly was not interested in anything but a brief interlude as Commissioner, is now willing to “sacrifice” by running for DPW Commissioner as a write-in because he claims “this is not Russia” and voters should have choices. Aside from the unfortunate fact that many elections in the US are uncontested, I believe if a Democrat were the only candidate on the ballot, Kuczynski, who sees himself as a seasoned political operative, would not be going out to recruit a Republican to be a write-in candidate.

For those of us familiar with both Moran and Kuczynski, none of this is a surprise. The ordeal of this city continues.