As noted in an earlier post, Saratoga Springs Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi wrote on her Facebook page that Chuck Marshall, who is running for Commissioner of Public Works, had announced that if elected, he planned to “slash the DPW budget by half a million dollars.” Sanghvi claimed Marshall would cut funds to plow the streets and pick up leaves. None of this is accurate, and it is simply incredible that Sanghvi, who, in effect, acts as the chief financial officer (CFO) of the city, would make such a false accusation.
Now, Sanghvi has gone further.
This is from Sanghvi’s Facebook page.
The question I have is whether Sanghvi is such a poor manager of the city’s finances that she doesn’t understand the city’s revenue or whether she did know but attempted to smear Marshall, knowing her accusation was false.
The revenue from paid parking was not structured to supplement the Department of Public Works’ essential services, as Sanghvi falsely asserts. The money was to go into the general fund for whatever the city needed. In fact, it was earmarked not to offset expenses at DPW but for things like the city’s recreation program and for promoting downtown businesses.
Consider this story from the April 1, 2024, edition of the Times Union:
However, Golub did say the money would be reinvested in the city’s downtown including hiring a marketing professional for the Downtown Business Association, parking structure and downtown improvements and an investment in the city’s recreation department. The proposed reinvestment will be $225,000 for downtown and $40,000 for recreation in year one and will be annual.
From the October 24, 2024 edition of Saratoga Today:
Anticipated seasonal revenue for 2024 expected to be approximately $1.6 million, with expenses estimated at about $450,000, resulting in an estimated first year net gain of over $1.1 million.
Of that, the city says it will invest $100,000 of revenue gained in the DBA (“a dedicated marketing professional for the Downtown Business Association”), $50,000 into Parking Structure Capital Reserve, $75,000 into a Downtown Improvement Reserve, and $40,000 into a Recreation Parking program.
From a story on April 1, 2024 on WAMC:
Golub says one of his priorities is funding initiatives to help them.
I think the revenue will provide us an opportunity to take a bigger swing as a community around the unhoused population and funding a long-term homeless shelter. That is one of the open questions around a shelter; how would we as a community fund that long-term? For me, there aren’t a lot of revenue sources where we can take big swings, where we can create new revenue without raising taxes within our community and this happens to be one of them,” said Golub.
Whether the reader agrees or disagrees with continuing with the paid parking program, it should be evaluated based on a proper analysis of the program’s first year.
The Daily Gazette reported on December 29, 2024, some three months after the paid parking season ended in September:
“Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi had said a review of the program wouid happen, but it has not as of yet.”
It is apparent that Sanghvi has not bothered with the report and has instead weaponized her office for partisan purposes. The city deserves better.
Saratoga Springs Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi’s above attack on Chuck Marshall, candidate for Public Works Commissioner, (note she doesn’t mention his name) on her Facebook page has achieved a level of excess that can only be described as breathtaking. Not only has Chuck Marshall never announced that he plans to radically slash the Department of Public Works budget, her ugly attack lacks any credibility. Does anyone out there really believe that Marshall intends to jeopardize the department’s ability to pick up their leaves or plow their streets?
This kind of shameless behavior has become far too common for the campaigns the local Democratic Committee runs. Why can’t they just talk about the issues and stop making them up?
Our city desperately needs to elect independent, thoughtful, and courteous individuals to serve on our City Council. In addition to his impressive credentials and extensive local government experience, this is one of the major reasons I am supporting Chuck Marshall, not Hank Kuczynski, in the special election to fill the Saratoga Springs Public Works Commissioner vacancy.
If you follow this blog regularly, you know that I am deeply concerned about the ongoing toxic behavior that regularly impedes the Saratoga Springs City Council’s ability to deliberate thoughtfully. You will also know that I am a registered Democrat. Despite this, I consider the Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee to be primarily responsible for the persistent uncivil and divisive behavior that unfortunately continues to erupt at the Council table despite Mayor Safford’s efforts to enforce decorum. The committee has selected people like Dillon Moran and Minita Sanghvi to run for office, and they continue to support them despite the glaring problems with their performance both at the Council table and in the management of their respective departments.
While Chuck Marshall is a registered Republican, he has garnered bi-partisan support from Democrats such as former Mayor Meg Kelly and the independent group One Saratoga, whose motto is “city before party.” In addition, as Planning Board Chair, Chuck has demonstrated his ability to work with various individuals with different interests, listen to all sides, and build consensus. You can find out more about Chuck here: Chuck Marshall for Public Works
In contrast, Mr. Kuczynski has garnered public endorsements only from the same old regular Democrats we unfortunately know so well, including current Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran and current Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi. Of particular note is the enthusiastic endorsement of none other than former Mayor Ron Kim.
Kuczynski Is An Extension Of The City’s Democratic Committee
This is from a recent piece on WAMC Kuczynski:
“The Democratic Committee said, ‘we’d like to give the people a choice, would you do a write-in campaign?’ and I [Kuczynski] said, ‘well I’ve never done one, but if you’re willing to do the work, I’m glad to be your candidate [JK:Emphasis added] because I love the job,” said Kuczynski.
In all the years I have observed elections in this city, this is the first time someone running for office has not set up their own campaign organization with a campaign manager and a treasurer. While candidates rely on their political party for support, they usually maintain some modicum of independence to decide how to conduct their campaign and address policy issues as they arise. Kuczynski has totally abrogated that independence.
The Committee’s complete control extends to the total financing of Kuczynski’s campaign with Committee funds.
If you go to the New York State Board of Elections and try to find any records for donations and expenditures for Hank Kuczynski’s campaign, you will find none.
The Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee has commingled Kuczynski’s campaign money with its general funds. Thus, it is impossible to know, for example, which donations were made specifically for Kuczynski’s campaign and which were general donations to the committee, and it is also impossible to know which individuals or groups are backing his candidacy.
Too Intimate A Relationship
Given the hyper-partisanship that has come to define our local Democratic Committee and Kuczynski’s unfounded previously documented attack on the judge who ruled that the special election should proceed, the situation is worrisome.
This community needs someone independent to fill the vacancy on the Council who will exercise courtesy but firmly challenge Moran or Sanghvi when appropriate. I regret that I do not believe that Hank Kuczynski is that person.
Early voting at the Rec Center begins tomorrow, Saturday, January 18. Election day is Tuesday, January 28.
According to the January 14, 2025, Times Union, Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran is under investigation by the New York State Board of Elections (NYSBOE) regarding an obscene entry in the financial report for Joe Seeman’s recent unsuccessful New York State Assembly campaign.
The report (see above) has an entry that records that someone calling themselves Jack Meehoff made a $100.00 contribution. The donor’s address is listed as Dillon Moran’s home. The NYSBOE was able to determine that the payment came from the website ActBlue and was drawn from Moran’s PayPal account.
Moran told the Times Union, “I have never made any such donation…None of it makes any sense… [I] can’t find any logical reason [aside from a hack].”
Seeman defended Moran, claiming that Moran’s PayPal account must have been hacked.
“He was not approaching any limit; it’s not like he needed to be a hidden donor,” Seeman said. “… I can only attest to Dillon being a person of integrity and there is no reason why he would try to hide this.”
The story reports:
According to the state Board of Elections, making a contribution under a false name is a violation of state Election Law 14-120, which states that “no person shall in any name except his own, directly or indirectly, make a payment or a promise of a payment to a candidate or a political committee.”
In a full-throated defense of Moran, Seeman, without any evidence, blamed the Republican Party.
“My only take in this is given the GOP is the party of lying, corruption, Machiavellian attempts to do anything to win, it sounds and smells like another GOP dirty trick,” Seeman said.
To elaborate on the obvious, if someone were to hack Moran’s PayPal account, they would buy Rolex Watches from Amazon and not just make a modest contribution to Joe Seeman’s campaign that few people will even know about.
Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee Chair Person Otis Maxwell
The Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee seems to have decided to take a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook in designing their campaign to fill the Public Works Commissioner vacancy. While happy to condemn Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign and his frequent, often intemperate criticism of judicial actions that go against him, the local Committee and its candidates have no problem sounding the same themes.
I don’t know how else to describe their repeated ongoing allegations that a conspiracy involving the Saratoga Springs Republican Committee, the Saratoga County Republican Committee, the Saratoga County Republican Commissioner of the Board of Elections, and a local Supreme Court Judge all kept the Democrats from having a candidate on the ballot.
The SSDC has not provided any documentation as to how the Republican cabal pulled any of this off.
It is worth noting that Cassandra Bagramian, the Democratic Commissioner of the Board of Elections, could have appealed the judge’s decision that the election go forward after the Dems failed to file to get a candidate on the ballot, but did not. I wrote to Commissioner Bagramian, asking her why she did not initiate an appeal. She has not yet responded, but I will post her answer if she does. I suspect she did not initiate an appeal because she knew such an appeal would be fruitless as the judge had simply followed the law.
As a registered Democrat, I find the behavior of my local party abhorrent. They apparently believe, like Trump, that throwing red meat, no matter how tainted and inedible, will fool and motivate their base to support Kuczynski.
This city will never return to normalcy if the Democrats continue to use these kinds of cynical tactics rather than supporting its candidates on their merits.
At the January 7, 2025, Saratoga Springs City Council meeting, Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran subjected his fellow Council members and the public to an eight minute tirade during which, among other things he claimed Mayor Safford had sent the city attorneys out to “essentially implement the wishes of an on-line bogger” whom he later identifies as me. In a continuous, sometimes stream of consciousness diatribe, he frequently interrupted and talked over Mayor Safford, pronounced vaguely that “you guys don’t know what you are talking about”, and with all seriousness and some pomposity gave the Mayor and City Attorneys “Fs”.
The trigger that set Moran off on this performance was the City Attorneys’ opinion that the Council could not legally extend a contract that expired in December of 2024. The contract was for a consulting firm, Ives-Fenton Consulting and Training Services. These consultants were to assist the Restorative Justice Panel (RJP) established by the city in 2023.
In an earlier post, I documented that the Restorative Justice Panel appeared to have collapsed in December 2023 and that the contract for their services that ended on December 5, 2024, could not be extended. Should the city desire to continue to fund consulting services for RJP, they will have to put it out for bid again.
The following are some excerpts from Moran’s jeremiad. To allow readers to determine whether I have taken these excerpts out of context, I am including the full eight-minute video of the event at the end of this blog. This blogger finds it odd that Moran indulges in this kind of behavior. He must know that the videos will appear on this blog. Does he really think this behavior will endear him to the public?
Moran Berates Mayor Safford As A Puppet Of The Blogger
Mayor Safford is the kindest and most patient of men. In this excerpt, he shows his usual self-control and refuses to respond to Moran in kind.
Moran berates the Mayor for supposedly enlisting the city attorneys in a plot to block the contract at this blogger’s (Moran refers to me by name) direction. Moran likes to wave papers around and, addressing attorney David Harper by name, waves what could be the City Attorneys’ memorandum in the air, announcing that his staff has given the City Attorney’s opinion an F. As Moran does not have any attorneys on his staff, it seems odd that Moran uses their alleged condemnation of the legal opinion as proof that he is right. When the Mayor gently offers that NYCOM, the New York State Conference of Mayors and Municipal Officials, confirmed the City Attorneys’ legal opinion, Moran talks over the Mayor, challenging the Mayor’s motives.
Moran Conveniently Ignores The Language In The Contract That Undermines His Assertions
The language in the contract reads that it will continue “until the work is satisfactorily completed or until December 5, 2024.” In this excerpt he asserts that the contract will continue until the work is complete conveniently ignoring “or until December 5, 2024.” When the Mayor politely interjects the ending date language, Moran ignores him and talks over him.
Moran Resorts To Straight Gibberish
Here, Moran refers to some unexplained uncivil thing that he claims Mayor Safford did a year ago when the Mayor first took office. He accuses the Mayor of putting “him,” which may or may not be a reference to David Harper,
“on some mindless task that this guy (the blogger?) told you to do and now there is some investigation into a bunch of nonsense that you (the mayor) know is not true that he (Harper?) actually admitted that you guys investigated the wrong friggin date. It’s so disgusting what you people are doing. That little foray (?) is going to cost us a quarter million dollars. What are you doing?”
Dillon Moran
This blogger follows politics closely, and I have no idea what he is talking about.
Moran goes on to bully the Mayor, who tries to explain that he just wants to make sure the contract is handled properly.
After asserting that Commissioner Kuczynski supports him in his criticism of the City Attorneys, he finishes with a flourish: “Civility my, ass.” and then pulls the contract from the agenda.
In a disturbing comment to the press, Hank Kuczynski, Democratic candidate for Saratoga Springs Commissioner of Public Works, seemed to imply that Judge James E. Walsh acted improperly in his decision to allow the special election scheduled for January 28, 2025, to proceed. Referring to Walsh, Kuczynski told the Saratogian:
“I believe people should have a choice, that judges shouldn’t pick who can be elected officials,” Kuczynski said.
The judge, of course, did not “pick who can be elected officials.” He simply ruled that once the date for an election has been set, it cannot be changed. This decision is not complicated and clearly supported by statute and legal precedent. Even the Democrats’ previous candidate for Public Works Commissioner, Sarah Burger, told the Gazette that “…as an attorney, I don’t see any good-faith basis…to try to appeal.”
The political parties controlled who would be on the ballot in the election, not the judge. Quite simply, the Republicans filed the correct papers at the proper time, and the Democrats did not.
So did Mr. Kuczynski truly not understand the judge’s decision or did he deliberately misrepresent it falling into line with what appears to be a major Democratic strategy in this campaign.
The Spin Machine In Overdrive To Misinform Voters
With no line on the ballot, the local Democratic Committee has launched a write-in campaign to elect Hank Kuczynski.
They have launched a media campaign that attempts to portray themselves as victims and the city Republican Party as somehow manipulating the system to freeze them out.
This line of attack does not stand up under the most casual scrutiny. There are a set of procedures for getting on the ballot. They are not complicated. The Republicans adhered to these. The Democrats did not.
Here is a sample of the Democrats’ conspiracy theory.
“There’s been a process which is basically marked by underhanded maneuvering on the part of Saratoga County Republicans including the Saratoga County Committee chair who is also an election commissioner and a judge who is a Republican, to create a ballot with only one candidate on it. And that is—basically we have a Democratic majority in Saratoga and the Republicans are trying to get something done with a power grab they can’t do in a straight-up election. So, I think Hank’s feeling is that this was just not fair, not democratic and he decided to do something,” said [Otis] Maxwell [Chair of the city Democratic Committee].
WAMC
“They continue to obstruct our ability,” Moran said on Thursday. “I filed the documents with the Board of Elections. We have not gotten approvals. We are well past any sort of dates. I’m done fighting with these people. They only want an election that is rigged for their candidate.”
Times Union November 9, 2024
“I can’t emphasize more how deviant the Republicans have been through this whole process,” [Otis] Maxwell [Chair of Democratic Committee] said.
Times Union January 6, 2025
These sentiments have been amplified by Democratic Committee members commenting on this blog and at City Council meetings. James Thompson addressed the Council last night (1/7/25) describing the City Republicans as engaging in “shenanigans” and trying to “cook the books” and stating that Judge Walsh had “suspect credentials.” Likewise committee member David Morency commented on this blog that the Republicans had decided to “bull through the election” and that the Republican committee is “attempting to hijack this election”.
Kuczynski Campaign Echos Misinformation
It is unfortunate that the Democrats, including their candidate Hank Kuczynski, are now resorting to falsely accusing the Republicans of some kind of misconduct rather than admitting that they themselves intentionally or unintentionally are the ones who failed to follow legal election procedures.
Some will say that this Democratic campaign is “just politics.” This blogger thinks that Kuczynski, Moran, and Maxwell badly underestimate the voters in our city. Many earnest and informed voters are looking for candidates who will be straight with them. If Kuczynski wants to win, he needs to concede his party’s failure in the ballot fiasco and run a campaign that focuses on his credentials and ideas rather than taint himself by making unfounded accusations.
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.
There is simply no gentle way of putting it. Saratoga Springs Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi has grossly mismanaged the city’s Finance Department for the past three years that she has been in office. Most people are unaware of it because Sanghvi has managed so far to avoid serious scrutiny.
In many ways, the Commissioner of Finance is the most demanding elected office in city government. The difficult truth is that the current Commissioner, Minita Sanghvi, has been unwilling to devote the time required to fulfill her responsibility as the city’s chief financial officer and the head of a department that includes IT. As we shall see, her inability to keep the IT Department properly staffed and supervised has had a problematic ripple effect on the ability of other departments in city hall to carry out their responsibilities and on the ability of the public to have the required access to government information. Those who closely observe her actions have found that she is drawn to the drama and celebrity of public office while she appears to be uninterested in the tough challenges of managing the city’s finances and her department.
In addition Commissioner Sanghvi’s rude and arrogant behavior at the Council table (routinely in support of her ally, Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran) contributes to the poisonous atmosphere that continues to invade city deliberations.
The Issues
The most unambiguous expression of her mismanagement was seen in her handling of the on-call fiasco of 2023. As the city’s chief fiscal officer, it is her job to scrutinize all payment requests. In the case of on-call pay, she not only allowed inappropriate payments for deputies, but worse, she indulged her own deputy with a payment. The details of this oversight failure were published in an earlier post. Her refusal to take responsibility for her role in that mess has been most galling. When pressed by the media, she has dismissed the blatant corruption by either belittling it or denying that anything untoward occurred. At the time of this post, the New York State Police are investigating these payments.
It has come as no surprise then that there is an extensive history of this maladministration which this post will explore in depth.
Issues include:
A budget that fails to provide the resources for essential city needs
An intemperate attack in the media on her colleagues on the Council
An inability to adequately staff the city’s IT department with problematic ripple effects on other key city operations and expenditures
Her role in the city’s crisis in dealing with FOIL requests
Expensive and essential software allowed to languish unused while the city continues to pay for this
A cynical and cruel abuse of a city employee to hide her own failures
A flawed city website that compromises the ability of citizens to navigate it
Audits that revealed failures in the city’s fiscal management (This will be explored in more depth in a coming post)
An Imperious Sanghvi Simply Ignores The Problems With Her Budget For 2025
In a previous post, I documented that her proposed 2025 budget was thrown together with very little in the way of research and analysis of the city departments. Cuts in spending she proposed had to be restored because they would have violated existing contracts and state laws. Her final budget denies funding to critical needs that will hamper the ability of the city to effectively carry out essential responsibilities. Rather than seriously engage in defending her cuts, she routinely imperiously dismissed concerns raised to her, reminiscent of the Queen of Hearts from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
Sanghvi’s final 2025 budget is notable for the money she obstinately cut for critical needs in the Public Safety and Mayor’s Department (coincidentally headed by the two people on the Council endorsed by the Republican party).
The following are a few of the budget requests from Safford and Coll that she refused to fund.
ASECOND RECORDS CLERK FOR THE POLICE DEPARTMENT
“Discovery” is a term that describes the responsibility of the city’s police department to provide persons charged with crimes with all relevant documents associated with their cases. Failure to do so can be grounds for dismissing the charges. After the state passed bail reform, the number of days to provide the documents was reduced to fifteen.
The Public Safety Department has had two “records clerks” responsible for this critical activity. One of the employees retired. Given the small window for discovery, only having one employee threatens the city’s ability to prosecute criminals effectively.
CERTIFICATION FOR CODE ENFORCERS
Code enforcement staff must attend training sessions to maintain their required certification. Sanghvi zeroed out the money for this and refused to restore it.
FIRE TRUCK MAINTENANCE
Sanghvi cut maintenance for the city’s fire engines from $160,000.00 to $60,000.00. According to the acting Fire Chief, this will not cover anticipated repairs.
POLICE CAR
The Police Department staggers the replacements for its twenty-five cars. Public Safety did not receive money to replace any vehicles this year; there is no money for next year. Sanghvi told Coll to take the money needed out of overtime. When she originally approved the overtime budget for 2025, she acknowledged the amount as appropriate given the plans to host the Belmont again, along with other special events in the city. To tell Coll to take money out of overtime now makes no sense.
A FULL-TIME CITY ATTORNEY
The city used to have a full-time and a part-time city attorney. In this litigious age, our legal department must be able to scrutinize contracts, respond to the many legal questions generated by the departments, and oversee the defense of the city when it is sued. Currently, the city has two part-time attorneys. Sanghvi has arrogantly refused to engage in serious discussion about why a full-time attorney is needed. “No” is not an analysis.
REPLACEMENT CAR FOR THE BUILDING INSPECTOR
The building department has a 2007 Impala. It is eighteen years old and, not surprisingly, has many miles on it. Sanghvi refuses to provide funds to replace it.
A MODEST RAISE FOR A LONG-TIME CITY EMPLOYEE
One of the mayor’s office positions is that of a part-time employee who has not had a raise in years. The mayor requested that the employee receive a $1.25 per hour raise, which was denied.
Sanghvi’s New Found Austerity
At a City Council budget discussion, Commissioner Sanghvi imperiously lectured Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll and Mayor John Safford, telling them the money was not there to help them and that they should do a better job managing their departments’ budgets. When Coll took the politically difficult position of suggesting she should consider increasing the city’s taxes if necessary to fund these needs, she summarily dismissed the idea.
This was a curious position for her to take as she has raised taxes every year she has been in office. In fact, her 2024 budget illegally exceeded the New York State tax cap due to an error in her calculations. She was required to work with the Comptroller’s Office to resolve the violation.
As Sanghvi has never resisted raising taxes until this most recent budget, I don’t think it is a coincidence that her sudden unexplained turn to austerity occurred while she was engaged in a failed run for the New York State Senate.
Sanghvi Competes With Moran For Toxicity
Commissioner Sanghvi has noted repeatedly that budgets are about priorities and values. This was never more evident than in the conflicts over this year’s budget.
When Sanghvi came into office in 2022, one of the first things she focused on was creating a program called “participatory budgeting.” Citizens submit ideas for community projects to a panel. The city then maintains a web option for people to vote on which ones to fund. After the public votes, the Council approves the funding for the winners. This year, Sanghvi budgeted $100,000 to be spent on these projects.
The many proposals under this program were all laudable, so voting against funding them was politically problematic. The easy way would have been to just vote yes to fund them all.
Both Coll and Safford, though, acting on principle, voted against funding the items in the “participatory budget.”
Commissioner Coll explained his no vote, stating, “In my view, the Department of Public Safety should be the No.1 priority of the city. I believe it was underfunded, so I’m not going to vote for the participatory budget because I think it’s a much, much, much lower priority.” Sanghvi, as stated earlier, spent $100,000 on participatory budgeting. Interestingly, this was the same amount she cut from a request for funds to maintain the city’s fire engines.
Likewise, Mayor Safford explained that he was in the midst of negotiating contracts with the city’s unions. He told his colleagues that it was problematic to say to employees there was not enough money for raises or healthcare benefits they were asking for while spending $100,000.00 for proposals that, while laudable, were not critical to the operation of the city. “One of the first things that (the union) brings up in my meetings is things like the participatory budgeting,” he told the Times Union. Likewise, Safford pointed out that requests from his department for more funding for the legal department, including money for a full-time attorney, had been denied by Sanghvi.
So, for Safford and Coll, it was not a matter of not funding projects such as community composting, a pollinator garden, or an outdoor learning center. The problem was, as Sanghvi herself so imperiously told them, everything can’t be funded, and while Coll had taken the politically risky position of supporting a 2% tax increase that would have gone a long way towards covering many of these competing needs, Sanghvi oddly for the first time since she took office refused to consider this.
Instead, Sanghvi’s response was to go to the media and personally attack her two colleagues. She made the following attacks in an article in the December 19, 2024, Times Union.
“A few days before Christmas, (Commissioner of Public Safety Tim) Coll and (Mayor John) Safford have shown us their true values,” Commissioner of Finance Minita Sanghvi said. “Adults who were upset that we had to have a level-funded budget and couldn’t fund every single thing on their wish list, decided to take that out on our children. … It’s cruelty for cruelty’s sake.”
Times Union December 19, 2024
“We can’t fund everything,” Sanghvi said. “In an ideal world, everyone would get a car. … But I wonder what kind of angry adult takes out their frustration with the budget on children a week before Christmas.”
What an incredible set of character attacks! How cavalierly Sanghvi accused Safford and Coll of being guilty of “…cruelty for cruelty’s sake” or that these two men had taken “out their frustration with the budget on children a week before Christmas.” Unfortunately, this kind of intemperate attack by her is all too common.
Sanghvi had a choice. She could have raised taxes to the 2% limit and funded most of the needs. She decided not to, which is her prerogative. It is sad for the city that she chose to attack fellow Council members in the media rather than simply acknowledge that they indeed had different priorities.
Sanghvi is fortunate that Safford and Coll demonstrated their professionalism and character by putting the need for tempered behavior to serve the city before responding to her in kind and descending themselves into this kind of shrill attack.
Sanghvi appears uninterested or oblivious to the problems her poorly crafted budgets have created. She would prefer to focus on her “participatory budgeting.” This is understandable. Its attraction is its simplicity. The proposals for this program are appealing and non-controversial. It is easy to give away money to worthy causes and to associate yourself with this kind of beneficence.
Crafting the city budget is highly complex and challenging. It requires many, many hours of meetings and analysis and involves conflicting demands for finite resources. When it is done right, a well-run city is achieved, but such success does not lend itself to dramatic headlines.
Sanghvi Has Utterly Failed To Properly Manage and Support The City’s IT Department
Besides crafting the city’s budgets, the Finance Commissioner is also responsible for running the Finance Department, which includes IT. Needless to say, how well the IT department is staffed and runs has a massive impact on the rest of city hall. This city has outstanding staff in our IT department. Jeff Cornick, the director of the IT department, is widely respected, and so are his people.
The problem is that the IT department has been badly understaffed for most of 2024. I understand that there are seven staff members in the department and that there are currently five vacancies.
This is a video of Mr. Cornick from July of this year. Only three positions were filled then, and one had just been hired. Mr. Cornick shares with the Public Service Commission the stress of being understaffed.
With so many vacancies, the city has depended on expensive outside consultants to support Mr. Cornick.
This situation should have been addressed long ago. The responsibility for addressing this crisis lies squarely with Commissioner Sanghvi. A chronic staff shortage in IT is inexcusable and has a profound impact on the ability of employees in other departments to properly do their work.
Sanghvi’s Responsibility for the Chronic Problems with FOIL
The Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requires municipalities to provide citizens with the requested documents. Beginning with the Kim administration, the city’s inability to meet this obligation has been chronic. In their defense, the demand for documents has risen exponentially. This has been no secret, yet the problems have been allowed to mushroom for the three years that Sanghvi has been the city’s Finance Director.
Under Sanghvi’s budgets, the city has had only one staff member, Robin McFee, buried beneath a blizzard of FOIL requests.
A number of the FOIL requests are for emails and texts.
The city has functioning software for searching its emails. It does not have a way of effectively capturing and archiving cell phone texts. This means that Ms. McFee has been reduced to requesting city officials and staff to take screenshots of texts on their phones relevant to FOIL requests. McFee cannot digitally search the city’s cell phones’ texts. She has no way of independently confirming that what, if anything, that they give her is accurate.
McFee has had to deal with two significant problems. First, officials and city employees are often slow to respond to her requests. This has necessitated her spending precious time chasing recalcitrant people. Worse, it is an honor system. There is no way to be sure that her requests are honestly handled.
This problem became acutely apparent when the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department charged Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran with falsely signing certifications, claiming there were no texts relevant to a request from McFee.
Under Sanghvi, not only has the need for more staff to deal with FOIL requests not been addressed, but the understaffing in her IT department has made the situation even more acute.
SMARSH to the RESCUE?
For a while, the city appeared to have taken action to facilitate FOIL requests for texts.
On October 18, 2023, Mayor Ron Kim issued a press release announcing that the city had purchased a software service called SMARSH. In cooperation with Verizon, the city’s cell service provider, the software would capture all texts from city cell phones and index them to make them easy to search.
This software service would significantly improve the city’s ability to respond to FOIL requests and address one of the concerns raised in the New York State Attorney General’s report.
The cost to the city for SMARSH for the first year was $12,942.21.
At a City Council meeting on September 3, 2024, Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran told the Council that Sanghvi had implemented SMARSH. Sanghvi was sitting next to him and said nothing to contradict him.
As of the date of this blog, December 28, 2024, over a year later, I have confirmed that SMARSH has never been implemented. That is over a year after the city purchased SMARSH. Sanghvi and Moran’s cavalier lying is stunning. They assume that no one will fact-check them, I guess.
The city paid $12,942.21 for the first of the software’s annual costs. SMARSH has virtually sat on the shelf unused, which is $12,942.21, thrown away uselessly. We are now into the second year during which the city is paying for SMARSH, which is still not operational.
In the meantime, the number of FOIL requests has continued to escalate.
When Guilty, Go On The Offensive
So, how has Sanghvi addressed the ongoing FOIL problem? By joining Dillon Moran in attacking Robin McFee, the person struggling to deal with the mess and provide the public with documents as best she can.
In the City Council video below, Mayor Safford attempts to get Sanghvi to come to his office to discuss her concerns about FOIL handling rather than carry on at the public meeting. He is trying to protect Ms. McFee from Sanghvi’s public attacks. Sanghvi will have none of it. Instead, to add to the theatrics, she warns the Mayor that she will audit the FOIL office if he refuses to discuss the issue publicly at the meeting. I find her behavior particularly disingenuous when Sanghvi goes on about the public importance of FOIL when she bears much of the responsibility for the problems.
The Loss Of Robin McFee
I cannot express enough my respect for Robin McFee. She is the city’s only employee who screens and responds to FOIL requests. She has soldiered through a challenging situation. The number of FOIL requests has been overwhelming. Each document must be reviewed to determine if it contains text exempt from the requirements of FOIL, and if so, it must be redacted. Some requests she has received were extensive and involved hundreds of documents.
This problem has been no secret. Past Mayor Ron Kim acknowledged the issue on numerous occasions. Despite Ms. McFee’s best efforts, it has been impossible to comply with the required response dates. I can speak from experience about delays. I always did my best to limit my requests as much as possible, and I always knew that Ms. McFee was doing her best.
As demonstrated by Dillon Moran in the following video of the Council meeting, some frustrated people seeking FOILs have not been as patient. Mayor Safford references Moran’s abusive behavior in the video clip. There was an incident in a corridor in city hall where Moran accosted Ms. McFee over a late FOIL.
I will admit to the readers of this blog the fury I have felt listening to Sanghvi and Moran publicly attack McFee’s work. The lack of respect and courtesy is terrible, but knowing that Sanghvi has failed to get SMARSH up or provide additional help for Ms. McFee makes Sanghvi’s attacks incredibly cynical and cruel.
When viewing this video, remember Sanghvi’s failure to implement SMARSH and her indifference to the staff shortage to meet the city’s FOIL obligations.
The stress on Ms. McFee was exacerbated by the cruel behavior of both Dillon Moran and Minita Sanghvi. Moran used the platform of City Council meetings to accuse Ms. McFee of incompetence and even implied political interference. Sanghvi piled on to support Moran and his narrative. When Mayor Safford intervened, suggesting that Moran and Sanghvi should not be attacking a city employee during the City Council meeting and that this discussion would best be carried out in his office, Sanghvi upped the ante. She told the Mayor that if he refused to discuss the issue at the Council table, she would use her authority to audit McFee’s work. It should be no surprise to readers then that Sanghvi did not bring this resolution forward at the next meeting. It’s all about theater.
Given the long history of the lack of resources in that department, this call for an audit has more to do with public relations than a genuine interest in the problem. This cynicism is best revealed by the fact that Sanghvi has never spoken to McFee in the three years she has been Commissioner. If she had, she would have known that Ms. McFee had kept extensive detailed documentation of the FOIL requests received and when and how they were answered. But Commissioner Sanghvi preferred to engage in public theatrics at Ms. McFee’s expense.
This feels like the lynching Marilyn Rivers, the previous director of Risk and Safety, was subjected to. It then came as no surprise to learn last week that Ms. McFee has resigned, effective December 31, 2024. This city will again have lost an extraordinarily valuable employee, leaving it with no dedicated staff to handle FOILs.
Now, another vital employee has joined Marilyn Rivers, Tina Carton, Vince DeLeonardis, and Lisa Ribis, among others, in the exodus from our city that began with the Ron Kim administration, two of whom from that unfortunate period still remain on the Council-Moran and Sanghvi.
More Mismanagement by Sanghvi
The city’s website is supposed to provide the public with easy access to records. Readers following this blog will be aware that I write software and that during the previous administration, I repeatedly wrote to Commissioner Sanghvi that there were significant flaws in the design of the city’s website. These problems have continued into her second term in office.
For the last three years, I have received emails and calls from people asking for help, for instance, in finding past Council meeting records. Four places on the site supposedly have links to the city’s Council meeting archives.
The following is just one of the four pages on the city’s website that are all supposed to take you to the archive. In this case, here is the page where the link is supposed to be.
Here is the page it brings you to. Notice that this page has no links to city council meetings after June 2024.
This is symptomatic of her “management.” She is simply uninterested in the unsexy aspects of being the Commissioner of Finance. How else can one explain how this fault has been allowed to exist during her tenure without correction?
The Future for Sanghvi
Sources tell us that, fortunately, Sanghvi may not run again for Finance Commissioner but instead turn her attention to a run for County Supervisor. If that proves to be the case, there will be one of two outcomes: she loses and no longer holds a public office, or she wins and becomes the county’s problem. In the meantime, the city must endure another year of her mismanagement.
Saratoga Springs Politics 