The Hurley Town Board has unanimously appointed Tim Kelly to a ten-month position on the town board, appointed Tracy Kellogg town clerk to replace Annie Reed, who resigned effective January 1, and placed public information officer Jeremy Schiffres’ position on the line because according to town supervisor Mike Boms the job didn’t have a civil-service title.
“Notwithstanding a history of bitterly fought political battles,” noted Hurley political observer Raleigh Green, “Thursday evening’s changing of the guard at the Hurley Town Board meeting was businesslike and civil.”
It was Schiffres’ job that attracted the most discussion at the January 4 organizational meeting. Councilmember Gregory Simpson made a motion to issue a request for proposals for a communications consultant. Schiffres has held the part-time position since late 2022 and was paid $35,000 per year,
“According to civil service, the public information officer which is being held now is not in compliance,” Boms said. “That does not exist in civil service at all, and that position has to be terminated almost immediately.”
Boms proposed a temporary professional contract with Schiffres through the end of January, to be renewed until an RFP respondent was chosen.
Schiffres thought his position was on the up-and-up.
Kellogg is town clerk
Boms called an emergency meeting January 2 to appoint Tracy Kellogg town clerk to replace Annie Reed, who resigned effective January 1.
Kellogg ran for clerk in the November election, but was narrowly defeated by Reed.
Boms said the emergency meeting was necessary because the county had told him the clerk’s office couldn’t be open without a town clerk. But the office had to be closed anyway because Kellogg fired the remaining deputies in the office; deputy clerk Donna Cudney had already submitted her resignation effective January 12.
Lynne Bailey, the other deputy terminated, said the office was then without a registrar, so if someone dies they couldn’t get buried because nobody could issue a death certificate. Bailey had been recommended by Reed to take over as clerk.
Unmailed are the town’s 6000 property-tax bills.
“They also told people that they wouldn’t have to pay a penalty if they paid the bill within 30 days of when it was mailed,” Bailey said. “And they don’t have the authority to do that. I don’t think anybody called the finance department in the County of Ulster.”
Bailey plans to file a grievance since the town hall workers recently unionized and she was terminated without any process. “We still have rights.” she said. “And they didn’t go through any of the customary procedures to terminate somebody.”
Tim Kelly joins town board
The town board unanimously voted on January 4 to appoint Tim Kelly to fill the seat vacated by Boms when he became town supervisor.
Kelly, who has a degree in agricultural management, has spent most of the last decade working in ground transportation for Colorado Mountain Express, a ski area transportation company affiliated with Vail Resorts.
“So I think that translates a lot to some of the different things that we have going on here. We have agriculture and outdoor recreation, so I think I can I can bring those two things to the table, a perspective on that, and I grew up here,” Kelly said.
He said he understood “the land challenges that go on here in the town.”
His appointment is in effect until a special election in November.
Schiffres presents his case
Schiffres has been criticized by Boms and others for being not a public information officer for the town government but a public-relations defender of the highly partisan McKnight administration. In response, she has charged her opponents with being hyperpartisan.
The absence of civil-service protection for his position would make his removal much easier.
“It was my understanding when the board voted for the creation of my position in late October of 2022, that this was done with the county’s approval,” Schiffres said to the board.
There is no civil-service position for public information officer in Hurley, so Boms said a way around that was to open the position up to competitive bid, like any other contract for services.
Boms said the issue had came to light as a result of the town-hall employees’ decision to unionize. The union inquired about which employees had civil-service protection,
“So we went back and we corrected a few things to make it legitimate. With the public information officer, there is none,” Boms said. “They said immediately it has to be terminated. They don’t even have your name at all at civil service. If it was done in compliance, they would have had your name.”
“I was told by the previous town board, which included you — and you voted for my appointment — that this was in compliance with county standards,” Schiffres replied.
Schiffres said he knew that Peter Humphries and Melinda McKnight, who initiated the process, needed county approval. “And I was told that the approval was received. I assume you were told that, too, because you voted for my appointment in the fall of 2022,” he said.
Was this a real problem or just a clerical oversight on the county’s part?
Schiffres thought that perhaps “somebody is misleading somebody” and that “something doesn’t make sense.”
Here ever since
Rather than the town board vote to retain him on a contractual basis, Schiffres suggested it simply petition the county to include a job that already existed.
Simpson replied that would take too long. “You would be out of here in a minute. It wouldn’t happen at all,” Simpson said.
Boms told Schiffres he was welcome to respond to the RFP for the competitive position.
“This is up to the town,” Schiffres said after the meeting. “It’s a contractual job. It is not my purpose to suggest to the town who they don’t hire. It is that if I apply for the contract, it is up to me to make the case for hiring me. I’m not going to go in and badmouth other candidates.”
It was up to him, he said, “to make the case for me.” He’d have “no problem making the case for me.” He had “a rather lengthy thing written out that makes the case for me.”
Schiffres said he knew something was up when he saw his name was not the list of 60-plus resolutions making appointments.
Schiffres was laid off from the Daily Freeman in early 2022 when the parent company eliminated the city-editor position he had held in early 2022. He had worked for the newspaper since 1988.
Schiffres said he was thinking was that might be the beginning of retirement. Then, in the fall of 2022, he posted something on Facebook about being restless and interested in getting back into maybe PR, journalism or public information.
Humphries contacted him because he knew him through his wife, Rhona, who he knew from Onteora High School.
“He said, Hey, we were talking about this kind of thing anyway,” Schiffres said. “Why don’t you come in and talk to Melinda [McKnight] and me? So I did. We had a couple of very nice discussions, and I was told at that point by one of them that this had to get approved from the county before the board could move on it.”
His understanding had been that the county had approved it. “I don’t have it in writing. I’ve always assumed that the town did, and they hired me and I’ve been here ever since.”
Schiffres said he can make the case for being the best person for the job, for continuity at the very least.
“There’s never been a better informed town population in Ulster County than there has been in Hurley for the last 14 months. If you look at the website and emails, and the Facebook page, and the media contacts and the calendar and whatever. This stuff used to be shared by multiple people, and it was an issue of whoever had the time. And the problem was the reason they created my job was because nobody had the time, and there was no organizational paradigm for how to handle public information.”
Schiffres said if it doesn’t pan out, then what was supposed to be early retirement in January 2022 will be early retirement in January 2024.
Join the family! 
