The recent statements of Ellenville Mayor Jeff Kaplan regarding the future of the village's governmental structure and inner-workings have us puzzled. On the surface, many of the ideas he put forward — such as changing the village manager's position from full-time to part-time, and the dissolution of the treasurer's position in favor of a village comptroller — seem truly geared toward greater efficiency. It's certainly true that the change will likely save the government some money, but the more one thinks about the proposed shift, the more questions start to bubble to the surface.

For instance, what will become of our current Village Treasurer Linda Polkoski? Mayor Kaplan said that the change from a treasurer to a comptroller has nothing to do with personnel, and rather it is a structurally-based decision.

What's really going on here? It's no secret that the village has suffered two major budgetary crises in 2008, spanning two fiscal years. It's common wisdom that the people responsible for the village's finances are the treasurer and the village manager — and now our manager has been elected to a higher office in county government hot on the heels of this most recent budgetary blunder forcing the expenditure of the village's $75,000 contingency budget. With his convenient exit, that leaves our treasurer, whom Mayor Kaplan assures would be welcome to apply for the new, more in-depth comptroller position.

Is this disingenuous? We don't know. We haven't been able to speak with Ms. Polkoski about the matter since it came to light earlier this week, and she was not present at the most recent village board meeting on Monday, where the board voted to advertise for the comptroller and part-time manager positions — not present, also, to deliver her treasurer's report.

The question is this: have the jobs done by the manager and the treasurer passed muster? Mayor Kaplan would have us believe that they have, but that the structure of the government's set-up is at fault. But if that were the case, why does it seem an awful lot like Ms. Polkoski is being forced to re-apply for her job all over again? It's true that the scope of the proposed comptroller's position as outlined by the mayor would require more fiscal advice and management of the budget and the village's finances than was in the purview of the treasurer. As such, Polkoski may not be the right person for the job. In fact, she may not actually be interested in the job — we simply don't know.

Current manager Elliott Auerbach's election to the county comptroller position may have provided the village board with the opportunity to try out something new, but it has denied us a chance to see what would have happened to our village government had he remained here. Would Mayor Kaplan be proposing the diminished manager's role? Would disciplinary action for this year's aforementioned fiscal crises have been taken? Now that Auerbach is leaving of his own accord, the village board is spared the difficulty of having to make an example of him…and it would seem that the treasurer-to-comptroller shift is a similar evasive maneuver to save face and avoid airing the village's possible dirty laundry.

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