By Jared Castañeda
The Montgomery Village Hall stirred with several discussions and announcements during the board’s January 7 meeting, including the celebration of an outstanding volunteer, and an intense discourse over old business items.
Mayor Mike Hembury opened the meeting by recognizing Tracey Kazie, a resident and active volunteer who raised over a thousand dollars during the village’s “Breakfast with Santa” event on December 22 at the Montgomery Senior Center. After hearing Kazie would donate the money to the Montgomery Food Pantry, Hembury requested that she present the check to Robin McPhillips, a food pantry administrator, during Tuesday’s meeting. Both Hembury and McPhillips thanked Kazie for the generous donation.
“Folks, we have a lady here named Tracey Kazie. She has done so much for this village as a volunteer, and recently she hosted ‘Breakfast with Santa’ down at the senior center with volunteers from this board, the staff, and a lot of other people. It happened on December 22,” Hembury said. “Not only was this a tremendous success but she raised $1,140; she told me she was going to donate it to the food pantry, and I said that was cool. But if you’re going to do it, you’re doing it in front of the public here to see what you did. You weren’t looking for praise, but you need praise.”
Cameras
During the mayor’s report, Hembury announced that cameras would be installed on the inside and outside of the village hall and his staff would receive emergency buttons. He asserted that these cameras would fortify the village hall’s security, emphasizing that he did not want to risk residents’ and staff members’ safety if an emergency did occur.
“Cameras will be installed in and around the village hall for the safety of our employees. Look right there (points at the meeting camera) that’s what you see when you walk in here,” Hembury said. “Cameras around here will be able to spot possible trouble before it appears inside here at the front of the window. And I’ll be providing emergency buttons for our staff in the event of an emergency.”
The meeting agendas
Later in the meeting, Randi Picarello proposed that the board reinstate the item “old business” on every meeting agenda moving forward, noting that she has accumulated of list of numerous items since April 2024 that have not been fully addressed or answered. She specified several of these items that the board should address in old business, including inventory, written procedures like the village handbook, employee training requirements, conditions to host meetings at the Montgomery Senior Center, the senior center’s procedures, and unanswered questions from residents.
“I would like to make a motion that we formally add old business to every agenda, I’m wondering if I could get a second on that. There seems to be a list of things that we have touched on, whether one of the trustees has brought it up or it’s an idea that shot around with a different department or one of the residents brought it up. They seem to get lost and don’t always get solved,” Picarello said. “I think it’s the best practice and a good policy that most other boards always have on the agenda. It keeps things clean, it keeps everyone on the same page, and we always had it prior to this, so I’m hoping that we can add it back.”
Trustee Randy Wilbur questioned if discussing old business items would be a good use of time during a given meeting, especially if the board addresses them outside of the meeting, such as on Facebook, or cannot answer them right away. He proposed that the board develop a procedure first for handling old business before further discussion.
“How do we determine what old business is relevant and worthy of being reconsidered? My concern would be that don’t bog the board down with rehashing the same things that we all know are there that we’d love to solve but just don’t have answers to. What would be the policy and procedure for establishing that?”
In response to Wilbur, Picarello stated that unanswered questions or ideas would become action items that the board would research and either answer or discuss during the following meeting. She added that all information shared during and outside of meetings should be the same.
“If a resident brings up a question or if a trustee brings up an idea, it would be an action item for them as a deliverable prior to the next meeting, to either answer that resident satisfactorily or do the research and present it in their report at the next meeting,” Picarello said. “For updates outside of meetings, personally, I would share the same information at this meeting that I do when people ask me the phone, in private, or on my personal Facebook page for my trustee position, which is separate from my personal page.”
The discussion eventually turned into a commotion between board members, with most of the board unsure if old business would be necessary on every agenda. Frustrated with her board’s responses, Picarello asserted that Hembury has declined most of the items that she requested for the agenda for the past several months. Hembury denied this and stated that Picarello would need to speak with Village Clerk Tina Murphy to add items to the agenda. Picarello stressed that she has spoken to both Murphy and Hembury about the agenda without much success.
“I’ve asked to table very important, very serious safety discussions and things that will leave the village liable for different things that I have more questions on and have consistently been told no,” Picarello said. “The thing that you, Mr. Mayor, say every time is ‘I want to handle this now, I don’t want to kick the can down the road, I want a decision, I don’t want to talk about it next time’ for way more serious things than we’re discussing right now.”
After a few more minutes of quarreling, Village Attorney William Frank proposed a solution: he would prepare a memo with recommendations for topics that the board should address, including recommendations for addressing old business during future meetings. The board agreed with Frank’s idea and tabled the discussion for the time being.