NAPANOCH – Over 40 community members made their way to the Napanoch Senior Center on Main Street this past Tuesday for a Meet the Candidates Night hosted by the Napanoch Public Interest Group. While the candidates for Wawarsing and Ulster County positions mostly presented information on their backgrounds and qualifications, the race between incumbent Highway Superintendent Gil Davis and challenger Tony Paes heated up, as accusations about highway department spending began to fly.

During his allotted time, Paes pulled out Davis's campaign flyer, and quoted it as saying, "Getting it all done within budget." He then proceeded to read from budget information he obtained from town hall, and said that there was about $160,000 of a deficit between the money that was raised by the highway department through taxes, and what was spent.

"That's within budget?" asked Paes. "It's not within budget. You're missing $162,000 of budget right here. I hate to see what this year's budget is. Buying all these new trucks and equipment — who's going to pay these bills?"

Davis responded by saying that the town's comptroller, Pat Althouse, had told him that there was about $250,000 left in the department's budget this year.

When Davis spoke about the ways in which he's cutting down on the department's overtime by doing plow-work himself before calling in workers from home, Paes shot back by saying how he's taking money away from union employees.

All in all, the conflict and disagreement between Paes and Davis was seemingly the only such incident during an evening where the candidates introduced themselves to voters — and Paes's accusations seemed to cause a ripple of murmurs through some in the gathered audience, illustrating a degree of discomfort with the argumentative tone on an otherwise cordial night.

Also appearing before the voting public were town clerk candidates Sue Cummings and Roxanne Shamro; tax collector candidates Robin Andersen and Tom Stack; town council candidates Richard 'Doc' Craft, Dan Johnson, Steve Bradley, and incumbent John Gavaris; and town supervisor candidates Lenny Distel and incumbent Ed Jennings. Some of the candidates for Ulster County Legislature's District 1 representatives were also on hand, including incumbents T.J. Briggs and Joe Stoeckeler, as well as Terry Bernardo. Incumbent Mary Sheeley couldn't appear at the event due to the evening's village board meeting, and her role as village manager, and Manuela Mihailescu was absent from the event.

Fact Check
A call to Town Comptroller Pat Althouse on Wednesday morning shed a bit more light on Paes's allegations of fiscal irresponsibility on the part of Superintendent Davis.

Althouse did concede that, yes, the department had gone over the adopted 2009 budget that was passed at the end of 2008 by the town board, but Paes did not take into account the income the department generated aside from taxes.

According to Althouse, Davis raised money for the department to cover expenses by selling off old equipment during 2009. Additionally, in August the department also received $37,145.02 in taxes collected by Ulster County from undistributed PILOT payments from the Nevele Grande Resort.

Althouse assured that there was no deficit within the highway department despite the large payment that was made on leasing a new truck for the fleet. She said that the budget for the department had increased by $192,818 from the adopted figure of $3,306,379 to 3,499,197, and that the department still had "a great fund balance."