The Montgomery village board held an intense discussion at its Oct. 20 meeting about a directive that Mayor Mike Hembury sent to village staff on Oct. 13. Under the directive, department heads and employees may not “discuss or conduct village business” with a trustee without first getting the mayor’s approval.

Nokland, Picarello want financial reports before meetings.

Early in the meeting, trustees Cynthia Nokland and Randi Picarello said they had asked the village treasurer to send them financial reports ahead of meetings but had not received them. The two said board members should review the reports beforehand so they can ask questions and make informed decisions.

“Before you go up, Brian, I had requested for you to email the board the information you’d be reading tonight. Can you tell me why that wasn’t done?” Nokland asked. “We asked for the information prior so that we could be prepared to ask questions on anything. And now, we’re going to hear a report that we know nothing about.”

“For the record, I’ve been asking for financial reports since April of 2023, and I’ve never had one until now. We’ve not had any treasurer attend the meeting and we’ve not had any financial reporting done,” Picarello said. “I’m just wondering why, if we’re trying to work together as a team and not look like a ‘circus’ that everybody views this board as, when we’re asking for information that’s readily ahead of time so we can thoughtfully review it, the employees are being directed by the mayor not to do it?”

Village Treasurer Brian McDowell said Hembury had instructed him not to send financial reports to the trustees. Hembury said he wants McDowell to stay on the agenda and present his reports at meetings.

“I don’t want Brian to be left off the agenda. The board could say, ‘We don’t want him on the agenda,’ and I don’t want that,” Hembury said. “I want him to come up here and say, ‘Mayor, you’re doing the wrong thing.’ That’s what we need, because for so many years, stuff happened and put us in predicaments.”
McDowell then gave a financial report and described two issues that arose this month:

• The U.S. Postal Service filed a claim over the Town of Montgomery assessor’s valuation of the village post office. The village must refund $28,840 to the federal government for the excess valuation, which McDowell said would deplete 97 percent of the village’s contingency funds for the rest of the fiscal year.

• On Nov. 18, 2025, the board approved collecting water and sewer improvement fees from village residents. McDowell said he recently learned the board improperly approved the fee collection based on “bad advice” from its previous legal counsel. He advised the board to rescind its motion and approve the fees again under New York’s General Municipal Law and Village Law.

Nokland and Picarello asked why McDowell had not told the board about the issues before the meeting. Nokland said she spoke with the treasurer the day before, but he mentioned neither issue.

Village attorney Lino Sciarretta said McDowell brought the fee question to him and his office. Hembury said the treasurer must research an issue before informing the board. McDowell said the issues are village business that should be handled in public.

“Brian did ask me and my office this question specifically about the water rates utility fees,” Sciarretta said. “It was addressed to me and my office, we looked at it, and we advised Brian that this has to happen.”

“Brian is giving us the information as he gets it. He doesn’t have to send it out to everybody right away, he does research first. He got this stuff on Friday,” Hembury said. “There’s no hotline that goes out immediately that we have to find out about.”

“This is village business, this can’t be conducted through email and I can’t just forward everybody this information,” McDowell said. “That’s why it’s brought up to the public.”

The mayor and trustees then rescinded the November 2025 motion ending the fee collection. They also authorized the treasurer to audit utility billing records from June 2026, calculate the amount of water and sewer improvement fees improperly collected from each property, and issue billing credits. The credits will appear on the affected properties’ December 2026 water and sewer bills.

Later in the meeting, Picarello read the directive Hembury emailed to all village department heads and employees on Oct. 13. According to the email, department heads and employees may not conduct or discuss village business with a trustee without first notifying the mayor and receiving his approval. If a trustee requests a meeting, the employee must tell the mayor who the trustee is, the proposed purpose and the proposed time and location. The email also says department heads and employees answer to the mayor and are not subordinate to any individual trustee or the board.

“The only place for a village trustee to conduct business is a properly noticed meeting with the board of trustees, effective immediately. No department head or employee shall meet with any village trustee to conduct or discuss village business without first notifying the mayor and obtaining the mayor’s approval,” Picarello said, reading Hembury’s email. “If any village department head or employee receives a request or solicitation from a trustee for such a meeting shall notify the mayor forthwith. The notification shall identify the trustee requesting the meeting, the proposed purpose or subject matter, the proposed date and time, and location if known. Notification alone does not constitute approval; the mayor’s approval must be obtained before the meeting takes place.”

“All village department heads and employees are reminded that they answer to the mayor and are not subordinate to any individual village trustee or to the board of trustees,” she continued. “All village department heads and employees are directly to comply with this directive.”

Picarello said the directive conflicts with trustees’ responsibility to taxpayers and makes communicating with village staff much harder.

“As your subordinate, if I wanted to communicate with a department head, can you clearly identify how I can do that?” Picarello asked. “Because I have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers that elected me to serve them in this village, and I cannot do that if I cannot speak to any department head without approval from you. But now you won’t answer me, and now neither will they. So I need you to clearly outline, for the record, how communication works.”

Hembury said he issued the directive in response to an incident earlier this month involving a trustee and an employee, which he described as “a serious breach in public trustee and ethical conduct.” He did not identify those involved or elaborate, but said the matter has been referred to the Orange County Board of Ethics. He said he spoke with Sciarretta, who he said told him, “that’s pretty serious, I have to investigate it.”

Sciarretta said he cannot conduct an investigation without authorization from the board. He said the mayor’s account was mostly accurate but left out important details and misconstrued their conversation. He said he could not provide further details.

“I’m not going to sit here and have my words misconstrued. I know what I said, and let’s leave it at that. You’ve asked me questions, and some of those things that you’re saying are not entirely accurate,” Sciarretta said. “Most of what you’re saying is correct, but I will say there was another whole discussion that followed about the context of that discussion, which I can’t get into here. That’s the part that’s being left out.”

During public comment, residents Don Berger and Mark Palczewski criticized the mayor over the directive and his treatment of the trustees.

“I was able to obtain that email that everyone was talking about, pertaining to what you guys talked about earlier. What occurred to me was that we have liaisons to each department, so I guess you better not talk to them right? Darlene can’t talk to the police, right?” Berger said. “I think that’s disgusting, and I think that every one of you trustees should be outraged that this mayor would put out an email like that. I think it’s disgusting and it doesn’t solve anything here.”

“I just want to say it’s a sad state of affairs when I see an email go out from the CEO to the board members saying that they can’t talk. It’s really sad, and it’s such a dysfunctional way to run a village,” Palczewski said. “Mike, you’re the CEO, and everything falls on your shoulders. If you can’t run a village, then you shouldn’t be up there. You’ve been sitting on that board since 2009; I voted for you because I thought you had the most experience, and that was a mistake.”