The
eyes of Monroe County are on Mendon these days, and the town is unaccustomed to
the glare.
           “People in this nice little town are
not accustomed to having government get this much attention,” says Councilwoman
Pat Freeman. “It’s been a real smooth-sailing ship for a long time.”
           Piloting the good ship Mendon is
Supervisor Moe Bickwheat — would-be savior to some, spoiler to others who
liked the S.S. Jeanne Loberg just fine.
           Mendon mutinied last November and
tossed Republican Supervisor Loberg overboard after eight years at sea in favor
of a neophyte captain — Democrat Bickwheat.
           God! Enough with the marine
metaphors!
           Resentment
from a bitter, bare-knuckled supervisor’s race has taken root, and the stench
now saturates the town and its residents. That resentment was on display at a
recent town board meeting.
           “You are absolutely the epitome of
non thinking!” sputtered resident Neal McNabb, searching for a crusher after a
quick-and-dirty exchange with fellow resident Chris Holliday.
           McNabb accused Freeman, a
Republican, of leaking inside information to Holliday — an active player in
the town GOP. Holliday interrupted McNabb’s virulent cross-examination of the
councilwoman — who was demonstrably taken aback by the attack.
           “I was stunned,” she says. “I’ve
never been treated like that at a board meeting in my life.”
           The points of contention in Mendon
— appointments, alleged computer tampering, and so on — are the result of a
massive communications breakdown, according to Freeman. But Bickwheat insists
that nothing short of control of the town is at stake.
It started out
badly. Breaking
with tradition, swearing-in ceremonies for Bickwheat and town board members
Freeman and Marvin Vahue were held separately.
           Such ceremonies, according to Mendon
Democratic leader Joan Clawson, “are normally done with a bipartisan spirit,
symbolically unifying towns for the start of a new year and a new town
government.”
The Mendon Town Board, except for
Bickwheat, is all Republican.
           Bickwheat says the slight was
deliberate. But Republicans claim the supervisor was unavailable on the
scheduled date and then griped about being left out in the cold.
           “When the folks who are being sworn
in went ahead and made their own plans, all of a sudden Mr. Bickwheat said, ‘Oh
gee, I wasn’t invited,'” says former supervisor Loberg. “He said he wasn’t
available. You can’t have it both ways.”
           Freeman and Vahue’s ceremony took
place at the home of board member Paul Tichenor.
           Tichenor hung up on City when called for comment on this
story.
           “I’m not answering any questions,
thank you!” Slam!
Bickwheat was sworn in beside the
Honeoye Creek waterfalls.
           Then, in what Bickwheat terms a
“grossly inappropriate” action, Freeman brought her own agenda to the town’s
yearly organizational meeting.
           “Town law states that the supervisor
is responsible for establishing the agenda,” Bickwheat says.
           Freeman insists she only brought a
list of items she felt had been left off the agenda.
           “I’m trying to help a new supervisor
get in the saddle and get things going,” she says.
The bad times
kept on rolling. His computer at town hall has been totally erased, Bickwheat
says. Not a single document was on the hard drive. He has contacted the
district attorney about possible courses of action.
           “There was nothing on the hard drive
that represented any kind of official records or anything else,” he says,
adding that there was some kind of massive delete that took place on one single
day before he took office.
           He called in a specialist, but by
that time, it was too late.
           “Unfortunately, I don’t know enough
about computers and what I did was, apparently I overrode what was ever on
there,” he says.
           Loberg thought she was doing her
successor a favor.
           “I thought he would want to come in
and set it all up for himself. He should have a clean slate,” she says.
           Everything previously on her
computer was copied to the town attorney, the town clerk, and there are hard
copies, too, explains Loberg.
           “There are three copies of
everything. Every single thing,” she says. “Why would he want my letters on the
hard drive? Can’t he type his own? Every single piece of correspondence that is
in his files, he can scan right back into his hard drive if he wants to.”
           “If we have a hard copy, we really
don’t need an electronic copy,” she adds. “There’s no reason for that.”
           Loberg also left Bickwheat 15 or 20
computer disks full of information, she says.
Appointments
have been another
hot issue since Bickwheat took office. The supervisor, his critics say, tries
to conduct business unilaterally.
The way Bickwheat went about selecting
a firm to do engineering and planning work for the town illustrates his
management style, Freeman says. Bickwheat, she says, fancies himself Mendon’s
CEO.
           “The supervisor took it upon himself
to advertise and evidently make contacts with engineering firms without town
board approval and interviewed without full town board participation,” she
says. “Mr. Bickwheat doesn’t understand that he [is] one of a five-member board
and no member has any more authority than the other. You just don’t break out
on your own.”
           The town board gave approval to
advertise, Bickwheat says by way of counterargument, and he told members of the
board that interviews were going to be taking place. Only two — Roy Cluff and
Vahue — contacted him about participating.
           Bickwheat’s motion to select a firm
was tabled by unanimous vote at the last board meeting, following clashes
between board members and the audience.
           “I was disappointed and angry that
we were again getting into that kind of conflict. But I personally had a sense
of relief [too],” he says. “At least stop the nonsense for the evening and
let’s figure out a different way to approach this.”
           “It was clearly motivated by reasons
far different than the selection of an engineer.”
           Bickwheat asked Cluff how firms had
been chosen in the past, the supervisor says, and the councilman said that the
supervisor brought a recommendation into the town board meeting, offered a
resolution, and it was voted on by the town board.
           “Which was precisely what I did,”
Bickwheat says.
           In a gesture of good will, Bickwheat
says he will re-interview the firms so everyone can participate.
           “I hope that some of these
engineering firms are still going to be interested,” he says.
What is really
going on,
Bickwheat says, is that two board members — Freeman and Tichenor — are
trying to hijack the town.
           “They want to diminish the authority
of the supervisor and make it difficult for me to do the job that the
electorate has asked me to do,” he says. “I have a collaborative and
cooperative relationship with two members of the board [and not] with the other
two. And it’s not because I haven’t tried. Basically, they’re seeking control
of the town. Their loyalties are to my predecessor.”
           But others say board members are
just fighting to be included in a town where its supervisor considers himself
king.
           “It’s really a joke. It’s awful,”
says former supervisor Loberg. “My town board is very used to being involved in
everything. Never do I say to them, ‘I’m going to do it, and then I’ll let you
know.’ It was always the other way around. They could be out in the community
and have people ask them questions and know what’s going on and be able to
answer them.”
           Peter Loberg — Mendon Republican
leader and, incidentally, Jeanne Loberg’s husband — is hopeful that a newly
adopted communications plan will bridge the breach between Bickwheat and the
board.
           The policy states that all written
correspondence affecting governance of the town will be available for review by
appropriate parties in a timely manner.
           “I think the board’s starting to
settle down,” Peter Loberg says. “If you’re not aware of what’s going on, it
may appear contentious. But I think they’re starting to find the common ground
they’ve been looking for, and they need to quit sniping at one another.”
The sniping is
keeping important town business back-burnered, Bickwheat says, citing a much-needed
update to the town’s comprehensive plan.
           “It’s huge,” he says. “What you’re
talking about really is the whole issue of growth and development in the town
of Mendon.”
           Bickwheat has a supporter in
resident Dennis Moriarty. The resistance Bickwheat is facing, Moriarty says, is
just hard feelings left over from the election.
           “A new supervisor came in with new
ideas and there were a lot of sour grapes and that carried over into the
political arena,” he says. “It’s most unfortunate for the community. This is a
small town. We need to put political differences aside and move forward.” Â Â Â Â
           Bickwheat
believes things can improve.
           “I’m going to continue to maintain
that the values of the town are more important than the individual wishes of
some of the board members,” he says. “That those of us who live in this
community and want to be part of this community are far stronger than the
individual desires of any one person.”
           But peace and bipartisanship might
be a long ways off for Mendon. The bickering continued throughout the last
board meeting, despite pleas from residents to stop.
           “I’m getting sick about this. This
hurts. It hurts and I don’t know what to do about it,” said a woman who spoke
at the last town board meeting. “I just can’t stand this. We have to stop. We have
to stop. We have to stop.”
This article appears in Feb 18-24, 2004.
