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Massena town supervisor candidate and incumbent trade barbs as election heats up

Posted 9/28/17

MASSENA -- The two town supervisor candidates are trading barbs over their perceptions of the supervisor’s leadership and role in the Town Council. He opposes incumbent Joseph Gray, a two-term …

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Massena town supervisor candidate and incumbent trade barbs as election heats up

Posted

MASSENA -- The two town supervisor candidates are trading barbs over their perceptions of the supervisor’s leadership and role in the Town Council.

He opposes incumbent Joseph Gray, a two-term Republican vying for another four years who says he does exactly what the job requires.

In a letter to the editor from O’Shaughnessy, which appeared on North Country Now on Sept. 22, he says new councilmen are not given much help in getting their bearings.

[img_assist|nid=218134|title=Gray|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=150|height=212]“I had hoped that the town council would work together, led by the town supervisor, identify problems and develop solutions, get what we needed, people and materials and go out get it done in an orderly, well designed manner. I soon found that was missing. I discovered that there was no orientation plan for new council members. That they are were [sic] left to figure things on their own,” he wrote.

In a Facebook post on Gray’s re-election page, he says O’Shaughnessy is wrong in his assertion of the supervisor’s job.

“It is important to point out that the Town Supervisor by definition is not the ‘leader’ of the Town Council. He is one of five votes who has the responsibility to prepare a budget and be the Town's Chief Fiscal Officer,” Gray wrote.

On the heels of the Facebook post, O’Shaughnessy released a second letter, which ran on North Country Now on Sept. 27, where he offers rebuttals to Gray’s criticisms.

“You can imagine my surprise when I read a post dated September 23 where my opponent, Joe Gray states, ‘It is important to point out that the Town Supervisor by definition is not the “leader” of the Town Council.’ I strongly disagree with this perspective, and this likely pinpoints the reason why I have been frustrated as a Town Councilman,” he wrote in the Sept. 26 statement.

Gray’s Facebook post questions if O’Shaughnessy has taken advantage of training and programs available to municipal lawmakers.

“Has he availed himself of the many training sessions held by the Association of Towns of New York State other than the annual three-day trip to Manhattan, which he has attended twice?” Gray wrote in the Facebook post. “Has he ever completed any of the dozens of online workshops, webinars and training for new council members, or sessions by the New York State Comptroller's Office that involve Town finances, human resources, debt management, budget planning, etc.?”

The two also traded shots over how much time Gray has spent in the town offices.

“I will develop an orientation program for new members so that they will be ready to hit the ground running, before they take the oath of office. This will include written policies and one on one orientation sessions. This can’t be done by a supervisor that is in the office for an hour or so a day,” O’Shaughnessy wrote in the Sept. 22 letter.

Gray says he spends more time than that on the job, but maybe not earlier in the year when he was recovering from a health issue.

“The Supervisor's job entails much more than ‘an hour or so a day’ in the office. First, that is a gross misstatement of the time I spend in the office. There is no doubt I spent less time in the office after major surgery in March but I'm not sure how my opponent knows when I'm there because he is definitely not,” Gray wrote on Facebook. “The Supervisor attends meetings outside the office many times each month, morning, noon and night. If you don't know what the job entails, it's hard to understand the actual time requirements involve. Let's just say they are significant.”

O’Shaughnessy in his Sept. 26 letter goes on to say he felt Gray insulted other members of the Town Council in a post the supervisor made on his campaign website, which is separate from his Facebook page.

“This is the second time that my opponent has taken pot shots at the town council, the first time alleging that all four councilmen owe allegiance to ‘Albany’ and not Massena due to where their retirement check emanates. Now he alleges that only one out of four councilmen has the ability to lead initiatives. I believe that if my opponent wants to pick and snipe during an election, he should do it to me and not the other town councilmen, who are certainly hardworking councilmen for the town and most certainly loyal to Massena and not some phantom group at the state capital,” O’Shaughnessy said in the statement.

Gray said he deleted the post from his website and did not have a copy of it.

“I don’t have it. I deleted it and redid the page,” Gray said in a Sept. 27 phone call.

He said Councilman Tom Miller approached him and was concerned it made board members look like “they’re not loyal to Massena,” which led to taking it down.

“As it turns out, some people who read the page drew conclusions about my point that I had not intended. One Town Councilman came to me privately and said he felt the page questioned his and other members of the board’s allegiance to Massena. Certainly not my intent but when I re-read the page and considered his opinion, I could see that different conclusions could be drawn from the content. I spoke to a second councilman who shared the concerns of the first. I rewrote the page with the Councilmen’s concerns in mind and posted the new page instead. So you won’t find the first instance, nor will anyone else,” Gray wrote in a Sept. 26 email.

The two candidates also traded shots over O’Shaughnessy’s perception that Gray’s Facebook post accuses three of four councilmen of not leading initiatives during their time in office.

“Any Town Councilman can ‘lead’ any initiative he/she sees fit to organize. In fact, we have seen that from Councilman Tom Miller several times during his tenure on the Town Council,” Gray wrote on his Facebook page.

“Finally, I would like to address my opponent’s disparaging remarks about the Town Councilmen in the post earlier referenced (09/23/2017). He writes that there is only one out of four councilmen (the only one who is not running for office this year) who takes initiative to get projects done,” O’Shaughnessy wrote in his Sept. 26 statement.

“My latest comments about Miller taking the lead are merely statements of fact, as we saw when he headed up the Open House and car show at the Airport. Perhaps Mr. O’Shaughnessy can enumerate any initiatives he has undertaken in his 21 months on the Town Council,” Gray responded in his Sept. 26 email.

Their back-and-forth also included some proposals from O’Shaughnessy that Gray says are vague.

O’Shaughnessy in his original letter that ran Sept. 22 says he wants to “develop an orientation program for new [town board] members,” “encourage a younger group of people to serve” on various town boards and “make sure that Massena has specific plans with goals clearly identified by measurable results.”

Gray’s Facebook post questions how he will accomplish that.

“Lastly, what are the specific details of his ‘plan’ for Massena's future and how will he motivate, recruit and engage ‘a younger group of people’ to get involved with various boards and eventually run for Town Council?” Gray wrote.

In O’Shaughnessy’s Sept. 26 letter, he comes out with a new proposal, where he says he wants to establish a “a private work station for Town Councilmen. This will allow the councilmen the opportunity to get official work done while also offering the public and Town employees the opportunity to meet with them, express concerns and learn more about the Town’s goals and progress. I firmly believe that more interaction will lead to increased public participation and accountability.”

Gray questions how often his opponent would actually occupy the space.

“Perhaps he can explain when he would occupy his ‘private work station’ in the Town Hall. It would be even better for him to explain why he feels qualified to be Supervisor after less than 2 years on the Council. He readily admits that he has much to learn,” Gray wrote in his Sept. 26 email. “Here is a summary of when I see councilmen in the Town Hall: Nicola, briefly nearly every day; Miller, probably every other day for an hour or two; O’Shaughnessy, a few times a week for 15-20 minutes; Carbone, once a month for Town Council meetings and occasionally a second time if he is there to attend another meeting, i.e. BDC.”

In that email, Gray pointed out that he “explored and executed” getting Mircosoft Office 365 software for all council and staff members to use for town business correspondences. He said before, they were using personal emails for town business, which could sweep up family members’ emails in Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests.

“Before that, we on the Council all used our personal email for Town business – not a good practice that is blatantly unfair to our families who may use the same email,” Gray said.

O’Shaughnessy’s first letter is at goo.gl/hvLU54.

Gray’s Sept. 23 Facebook post is at goo.gl/HDkQCD.

O’Shaughnessy’s second letter is at goo.gl/HHRca9.