Throughout September, the Montgomery Senior Center has been a highly divisive talking point following the village board’s decision to not renew the MSC advisory board’s contract. Since the September 17 board meeting, the parties involved have released additional statements on the matter, During the village’s September 17 meeting, several MSC members presented criticisms of Mayor Mike Hembury’s statements against them, expanding upon their rebuttals from the previous week. Bibi Latiff, the MSC’s treasurer, introduced her board and detailed her qualifications as its treasurer, emphasizing her 26 years working for the Union Bank of Switzerland. She asserted that she submitted all the proper paperwork to Ron Clum, the village’s accountant, who would have alerted the village board if the MSC truly misused the senior center’s funds.

“Ron Clum is our accountant and the village accountant. At the end of every year, I presented to him all the details of all the transactions for the senior center. He prepares an annual report, a credit report, and a New York State report,” Latiff said. “Not once has he ever come back to me or any member of the board to say there is misappropriation or misuse of funds.”

Immediately following Latiff, Trustee Randi Picarello raised an unsigned letter that the MSC received from the village on September 10, which demanded the advisory board to furnish the village with seven years’ worth of bank and credit card statements. When Picarello asked the mayor and trustees who sent this letter, no one responded.

MSC member Margaret Bussigel continued where Latiff left off and assured that the advisory board discussed the senior center’s budget during routine meetings. She noted that Deputy Mayor Darlene Andolsek, who was a liaison to the MSC, was seldom present at these budget meetings.

“The MSC treasurer reports on MSC finances at every board meeting. If the village’s liaison to the MSC board, the deputy mayor, would come to these meetings, she would be provided with this report. However, she is rarely present,” Bussigel said. “In addition, these reports are filed with MSC board meeting minutes and can be had for the asking.”

MSC member Rita Santo asserted that Hembury was “distressed” by the advisory board’s Town of Montgomery volunteers. She argued that the town volunteers were just as qualified to serve the senior center as the village volunteers, especially considering the town’s annual donation to the senior center.

“The town contributes to the senior center. Also, it is often quite difficult to find people who will volunteer the considerable amounts of time being on the MSC board requires,” she said. Santo added that the mayor promised to give seniors many opportunities for bus trips, including trips to casinos, and she pointed out that the village board previously ruled against casino trips.

“Hembury declared his intention to run multiple trips for seniors to casinos. However, this directly conflicts with a previous village board decision that made village support for Senior Center bus trips contingent on their not going to casinos,” she continued.

Near the end of public comment, MSC member Theresa Gabrynowicz mentioned that Hembury took all paperwork from the advisory’s safe and refused to return it.

“We have only requested access to our safe, which was opened and had its contents removed, and the files that document the MSC’s history. The mayor continues to deny us access to these,” Gabrynowicz said.

Post-Meeting Comments
On September 30, Hembury stated that he authorized Andolsek to send the letter to the MSC, as he and the board still wanted to see the advisory board’s financial records. He added that “to this day, we still have no records.” Hembury also denied Santo’s comment regarding casino trips and asserted that casinos will be one of many “probable” destinations for the village’s seniors.

Regarding the MSC’s safe, Hembury recounted the details of the situation. Tom Taylor, the former senior activities director, started working at the senior center on September 4. The next day, he found the advisory board’s safe, containing personal records and “envelopes with numbers.” Hembury arrived at the senior center that evening and wanted to take the findings back to the village; at the same time, MSC members arrived and accused Hembury of stealing their paperwork and money, calling the police in the process. The police deemed the citation a false report and Hembury handed everything back to the advisory board.

“I walked into the office and I found an open safe; there was money in there. I didn’t know what to do with it so I called Mike. He came down, and so did the women,” Taylor said on September 30. “It was a situation that I did not want to be in and I hope I forget about it.”

After witnessing this situation, Taylor resigned from his position the following morning. Hembury speculated that the village would hire a new director within a month and asserted that all village boards would be run by village residents only.

Diane Karsten, a village senior and president of the senior center’s New Horizons club, also shared her feelings about the MSC after the September 17 meeting. Over the last several years, she and other club members have grown unhappy with the advisory board’s services; they felt that the MSC gradually focused more on younger seniors, providing them with more programs, day trips, and funding than the older group. Karsten noted that the advisory board hosted more trips before the COVID-19 pandemic but did not bring them back after the quarantine was lifted.

“I’ve been part of the advisory board for 10 years because I represented New Horizons. And as part of that, I’ve watched them lower the age where it used to be. Seniors were 60+, they’ve taken it down to 55 because they wanted to fill in the pickleball agenda. Pickleball is a good thing, but it’s become the focus,” Karsten said on September 27. “At one point, we were the focus of the funding. Those day trips were usually six a year to a wide variety of venues, but they said that they’re not spending money for these trips anymore, for whatever reason.”

Karsten asserted that two of MSC’s trips from this year, the Yankees Stadium game and the Manhattan harbor cruise, were not very accessible for seniors, especially those with mobility issues.

“For the Yankees Stadium, you walked a quarter mile from the parking lot where the bus was to the stadium, stood in line, and went upstairs to the second floor. Then you went down some very steep stairs to your seats; this is not a trip that you plan for a true senior with mobility problems,” she said. “We’d love to go somewhere, but we need to be somewhere appropriate and safe for people who use walkers, who have canes, who have bad knees, etcetera.

Karsten also stressed that the MSC had $134,000 in its bank account, which she felt was not being used to the fullest for the senior center’s programs.

“The village gives $19,000 and the town gives $15,000 a year, and that money was intended to go to senior programming. It has not,” she said. “They’ve just kind of kept it and accumulated it, and that’s the crux of the problem there. I’m asking them to spend the money that was allocated to senior programming, and they refused to.”

Since February of this year, Karsten and members of New Horizons have submitted complaints about the advisory board to Hembury. She thanked the mayor and board for taking over the senior center and hopes that the new activities director will offer day trips more suitable for older seniors.

In response to Karsten’s statements, Santo assured that the MSC always accommodated seniors of all ages when designing programs and planning trips. She asserted that she and her board tailor at least one trip for New Horizon members annually and the other trips they planned, such as the baseball game and harbor cruise, had accessibility for mobility issues.

“Our former director made it a practice to attend New Horizons meetings and solicit their input on bus trips and, in recent years, with Diane Karsten’s participation, advice, and approval, the Advisory Board has always targeted at least one of our three annual bus trips specifically for New Horizons members,” Santo said. “Despite these efforts, it was often the case that few New Horizons members would take advantage of these opportunities. When this happened, we would have to fill the trips with other seniors or cancel the trips.”

“The Yankee Stadium trip was a senior center favorite and was repeated this year. Diane herself attended this trip,” she added. “The Yankee Stadium has many accessibility features for people with disabilities.”