Board members quit, government suspended in N.Y. town

[August 27, 2008]  ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Only eight months on the job as supervisor of the small town of Ancram, Thomas Dias finds himself faced not with a crisis in government but no government at all.

That's because three of the town's five board members abruptly resigned last week, leaving the town with a government unable to hold its scheduled monthly meeting Thursday or take any action, including paying its bill.

Dias has asked Gov. David Paterson to appoint at least one councilman so the board has a quorum and can conduct business until replacements are chosen by voters in the fall.

Ancram is a rural Hudson Valley town of 1,500 people once known for its lead mines. Located 90 miles north of New York City, it and other Columbia County towns are experiencing gentrification that is causing friction between families who have lived there for generations and Manhattanites buying weekend and vacation homes.

Dias won election last fall as an independent after losing a GOP primary. He acknowledged he has shaken things up in the solidly Republican town.

"I'm a person who likes contention," Dias said. "I think that to get good information you need a little contention ... and I'm told, `That's not the way we've always done it.'"

Still, the first resignation caught him off-guard.

"I said, `Wow!' I was really surprised," Dias recalled Tuesday.

Then the supervisor received two more letters of resignation.

"Some people say it's about the new people coming," said Dias, a retired IBM Corp. executive who moved to Ancram in 1989 and figures he's considered a new resident. "They see how nice the town looks and they want to lock the door and not let anyone else in."

Tension was evident in two of the resignation letters.

James Bryant, a Democrat, wrote that he hopes "the board will be objective in meeting the needs of both the old and new residents, as this town belongs to everyone that calls Ancram their home."

He resigned Aug. 18 after 20 years of public service.

"There are still several tasks to which I would have liked to contribute," Republican Gerald Roberts wrote in his Aug. 19 resignation letter after nearly 11 years on the board. "The momentum process and protocol that have evolved almost assuredly do not seem to embrace those challenges."

Neither Bryant nor Roberts returned phone calls from The Associated Press seeking comment. The third board member, Democrat Robert Podris, cited health reasons in his Aug. 20 resignation letter.

Town law dictates that vacancies are filled by the town board, which is impossible because the board needs a majority for a quorum. State law then kicks in and empowers the governor to fill one or all vacancies until an election.

Paterson is at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, which runs through Thursday night.

"We're going as quickly as we can and the town is not facing emergency services being cut or anything like that," Paterson spokesman Morgan Hook said.

Still, Dias expressed impatience at the pace of an appointment. "Golly, this is just a small town in the Hudson Valley," he said. "Heaven help us if it were something major."

[Associated Press; By MICHAEL GORMLEY]

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