Nyack, April 15 — Nyack’s Village Board unanimously passed a resolution establishing a Village Administrator position in a special meeting today.
“We took this action to formalize into a full-time position the duties that our retiring Treasurer John Cincotta has performed for the past three administrations,” says Mayor Richard Kavesh. Nyack’s trustees are trying to move swiftly to close the knowledge gap which will occur when Cincotta, a 16 year veteran of Village Hall, retires in the next few weeks.
The Journal News reports that 13 candidates have submitted resumes for a job that will pay about $100,000 a year.
The new Village Administrator position would be funded using the current salary of the treasurer. “We will NOT be adding a new person onto our payroll; it will be an in-kind replacement of the outgoing treasurer,” says Deputy Mayor Doug Foster. “If we just hired a new treasurer, we would likely miss critical skill sets including organizational management, grant writing, human resources, and planning and economic development,” he says.
“There is no question that there needs to be an active administrator in the village,” says John Shields, who preceded Kavesh as Nyack’s Mayor. Shields says Cincotta has served the village well acting as a de facto administrator for the past 16 years. Coordinating village events, negotiating with employees, supervising muni-meter operations, overseeing the the DPW, spearheading economic development and writing grants are just a few of the responsibilities this job should include. “We need someone to run the day to day operations,” Shields adds. “The administrator position is extremely common in villages and towns without a full time mayor.”
Kavesh says that Nyack’s dire fiscal condition requires a fulltime administrator to fix what’s broken while creating a staff position with the time to take on bigger projects. “Nyack is in a state of near crisis, the result of years of overestimated revenues, excessive spending, failing infrastructure, and an insufficient tax base to meet our needs,” he says.
Although the board’s vote was unanimous and the Nyack’s business community has voiced their support, not everyone agrees that Nyack’s needs a full time administrator. “While it sounds good to be able to bifurcate the current budget line for Mr. Cincotta into treasurer and administrator positions, I doubt we will realize any real savings when you consider the benefits for two positions,” says Nyack resident JC Brotherhood. “Private sector jobs in this state have declined by historic percentages, but government sector jobs have actually grown by some 20 to 30%. This is the wrong direction for Nyack to be going.”
