The evening of 2026-10-26 was a meeting of the Mendon Town Board.
Before the regular meeting was a budget workshop, and it was appropriately uneventful. Like all budget workshops should be.
Total budget is a bit over $7 million, with a flat tax rate. While using ~$1 million from reserves. It wasn’t immediately obvious to me how the reserve usage compares to past years. A quick look at the provided documents has me thinking reserve usage is similar to last year. So they might be doing the same sort of juggling act the school does. But I didn’t hear anything about refunding reserve with unused fund balance. Which is a necessary step if we aren’t burning through reserves to pay current expenses. To mangle an analogy: If we use our rainy day funds on a sunny day, we won’t have them for the blizzard. And winter is always coming.
Was a decent crowd for the budget workshop, and it only increased for the regular meeting. Wasn’t quiet ‘standing room only’, but it was close. Audience numbers have seemed to be climbing, we’ll see if that continues next meeting.
Public comment was odd. Had I heard the message on TV I would have expected it to close with ‘paid for by [candidate]’. I can’t say I’ve heard such a campaigning like comment before. Am I misremembering? Or is this different? Either way, there was a similar comment at the end of the meeting too.
I did find some of the details in the comment of note. The resident said this was his first Town board meeting to be at, despite living in the Town for a number of years. Fair enough, that’s hardly unusual. But what stood out was how the Board was thanked for recent actions. In particular a sidewalk and retaining wall. Which amused me, as I’m pretty sure these were approved last year, when 4 of the 5 Board members were different. I think that illustrates one of the important features (it’s not a bug, it’s by design) of our governmental system: It’s slow.
One group of Board members moves an action along, doing their part. Eventually it gets approved. Then an election happens, and a new group of Board members sees the project to completion. Same thing happened with the Library, when the current building was built. While it was long enough back memory can do funny things, I recall a field trip in the middle of a meeting where a previous Supervisor took a group around the site. Later it was a different Supervisor to oversee the actual building.
Every batch of elected officials is always inheriting a situation from the previous one, for good and bad. The question becomes what they do with it. And the answer to that says more about them then the situation itself.
But I digress.
The Clerk read a long written comment. Long enough I think it would have been better summarized and passed out to the Board. In any case, she didn’t say who wrote it, but it had the same sort of tone and focus as one of the commenters at the previous meeting. If so, good of her to follow up.
There was talk about the apparent negative balance being on paper, and not actual in banks. How the money was there, just moved into CD’s and similar to gain interest until it’s needed. Which makes sense as a practice, but not as an explanation. I would think the budget lines are an abstraction anyways, I wouldn’t expect the Town to have hundreds of bank accounts. Thus any moving of money in the bank shouldn’t directly impact the budget lines as reported. Or maybe not, I’m not an accountant so what do I know.
Following up on last meeting, there was an interesting discussion around the soccer fields at Dreisbach park. It sounds like the Board approved ~$50k for the project last year. So the Highway Superintendent went and did the project, under the apparent belief he had his go ahead. But now, since the Board is different people, they thought they needed to approve again. Which had me thinking, a Board is kind of like a schizophrenic. They do things, that make sense to them at the time. But when asked later, they have no idea why they did what they did. The named entity is the Town Board of Mendon. It’s just that 80% of it’s component parts were swapped out January 1. Yet it’s still the Town Board of Mendon.
Makes you wonder how anything ever gets done. But as a wise man once said: Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. And some of those ‘others’ can get real bad.
There was a budget adjustment to cover attorney payment. At this point, nothing unusual there. But, I did hear a Town Board member ask if the adjustment could be raised, so as to avoid having to do this again next month. Good to hear they noticed, we’ll see how well that goes.
There was a resolution (which was tabled) to move 2025’s unspent funds into the 2026 budget. Which surprised me. I would have expected this to be handled at the start of the year. Maybe not January, because sometimes these things take time. But by March or April. To have made it to October tells me someone (or multiple someones) dropped the ball. Still, better late then never. Although, if they can manage to wait just a few more months, the motion could be to move it into 2027‘s budget.
On a happier financial note, the snow and ice agreement with NYSDOT was adjusted. Which means more income for the Town. Or more reimbursement for work done? Either way, sounds good for us.
A Public Hearing was set for the emergency service contracts with the Village. Of note, the formula used to evaluate who pays what is being changed. The population component is being removed, so the formula now looks at call volume and assessed value. Some sort of change has been talked about for a number of years. Good to see something being tried. Even if we switch right back next year, I applaud the attempt and willingness to explore options.
Peter Carosa was approved to the Planning Board. He’ll certainly be busy, already chairing both the Environmental Conservation Board and the Climate Smart Communities Task Force. I hope someone else chairs the Planning Board. No criticism of Peter, but he shouldn’t grab all the hats. Someone else might want one.
A Public Hearing was set for a local law to exempt ‘seriously disabled veterans’ from some (all?) of their Town property taxes. While I have mixed thoughts on the topic, I have no objections to it. But they did change the verbiage. The ‘seriously disabled veteran’ is from the statute, while the Assessor (and veterans themselves) use the term ‘permanently and totally disabled’. Which has me wondering, how much of language is interchangeable? Versus how much is necessary and exact for the situation? By making this change, are we no longer covered by the authorizing statute?
The roof situation at the Mendon Youth Center (former Library) was discussed. For a minute I was hopeful that finally the problem would be fixed. That the Board would, this time, go for the more expensive but more permanent solution of putting on a sloped (gabled?) roof. Alas, by the end of the discussion, I was left with the expectation it will be more patch work. Meaning we’ll be back here again in a few years. And as mold issues were raised, maybe the MYC still won’t open even after the repairs.
And the meeting ended with checking calendars for having a meeting on November 23. I didn’t hear it actually set for that date, but the date seems to work for the Board. So I would expect it to be formally announced soon enough. In case you want to join the crowd, I’ll try to save you a seat. But no promises.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the October 26, 2026 meeting of the Mendon Town Board.