Attorney’s report on Ancram women treated disrespectfully due April 21

ANCRAM — It’s been almost four months since Ethics Board Chairman Jack Lindsey shed light on a problem that has lurked in the shadows of the Ancram Town Hall for what seems like years.

Lindsey reported to the Town Board at its Jan. 20 meeting he had received 15 calls in the past year-and-a-half from residents of both sexes, complaining that women who work or volunteer for the town or who go to the Town Hall for services are often treated disrespectfully, according to Town Board member Bonnie Hundt.

“Well it was brought to light by Jack Lindsey,” said Hundt on Sunday, March 20, following this Thursday’s, March 17, Town Board meeting.

Lindsey, when contacted for comment, stated via email “the Town of Ancram has responded proactively to the concerns of a number of Ancram women and men that had been conveyed to me as chair of the Ethics Board, and as it was my role just to convey the concerns as expressed to me.”

He added that he prefers to refrain from further comment “until the Ancram Town Board has developed a game plan to answer those concerns.”

Hundt, meanwhile, has been actively tackling the issue. She openly acknowledged disrespectful treatment toward women is “a larger issue” that reaches far beyond the walls of the Ancram Town Hall.

“I do think it’s a wider problem. I don’t know if a little bit of it is age related, and the behavior of older people? There is some of that,” she said. “It seems younger people are more aware of thinking in terms of equality.”

She acknowledged it’s a sad irony at the mention that this is Women’s History Month.

Yet inequalities remain. For instance, according to www.payscale.com, the average working woman still earns only 82 cents to every $1 a man earns. According to U.S. Census Bureau, the average working woman is paid roughly 83% of what a man is paid.

“We don’t want special treatment, we just want to be treated equally. Any civil rights movement is like that: Whether you’re Black, a woman, whatever, we just want to be treated equally. It seems to be a difficult thing to achieve. We don’t evolve very quickly. But I have great hope in the younger generations coming up, I do.”

The councilwoman said she is also encouraged by the fact that both men and women were courageous enough to register their complaints with the Ancram Ethics Board. It wasn’t easy to do as many feared retaliation, she said.

“It kind of turns into a bigger investigation if you file a complaint, but Jack was getting so many calls over the last year or two he decided to bring it up to the Town Board,” said Hundt. “It sort of went under the radar for quite a while. Some people would say it was just a couple of people who are over-sensitive complaining all time, or whiners or something like that, but that’s clearly not the case. It kind of picked up steam from there.”

The issue of disrespectful behavior in Ancram has been festering for a while, said Hundt, who is just relieved it’s finally been exposed.

“I tell you now that we’re talking about it and it’s out in open, it feels so good that it’s not under the rug anymore,” she said. “I think a lot of people feel like that. A couple of people were upset by these things for years and felt they didn’t have anywhere to go.”

Hundt said she is only aware of incidents of inappropriate behavior toward women.

“I think the biggest, most obvious place that people noticed it was on the Planning Board, which is mostly men,” she said. “There was a real sort of obvious split in opinions, sometimes it would come down to environmental issues; there seemed to be a big gender split.”

Hundt added one problem is numerous female volunteers who feel they’ve been maltreated don’t necessarily want to keep donating their services.

“This town is so lucky to have incredibly talented and willing volunteers that serve on all the boards and committee, who put in lots of time for nothing and do really amazing work,” she said. “Some women in particular were dropping off these positions because they felt they were putting in their time and effort and felt they were not being taken seriously or their work was being dismissed.”

The difficulty is that much of the disrespectful behavior hasn’t quite risen to the level of harassment, said Hundt. She said it’s more like the way some men have treated some women in Ancram has created “a toxic work environment.”

Town Supervisor Art Bassin said the town hired attorney Elena DeFio Kean from the Albany law firm of Hinman Straub to investigate the allegations and write a report. Bassin made the announce at the Feb. 17 Town Board meeting.

“What I am hoping is that she will be able to share with us are some of the specifics people are alluding to but not mentioning,” said Bassin on Friday, March 18. “It’s very hard to deal with a situation when people are complaining but not specifying. It’s hard to investigate, and I’m hoping she can pinpoint the facts, so we can know [more]. Once we get the facts we can deal with the problems and change our policies to correct the environment and change the future so these things don’t happen.”

Bassin expects a written report from DeFio Kean on April 21. He acknowledged the board may have to “deal with the matter in executive session if specific complaints need to be dealt with in confidence,” but added he “hopes to deal with it in public so everyone can hear the facts.”

In the meantime, Hundt and her colleague, Councilwoman Amy Gold, formed an ad-hoc committee of women in town — none of whom registered complaints of being mistreated, as Hundt said she didn’t want anyone on the committee with “an axe to grind.” The group hopes to come up with some solutions for the town’s code of conduct.

Hundt said, “I think this is going to be a nice positive way to go [so] the Town Board… can approve [it] or not and… figure out how to go forward with something positive. We have to figure out, do we add another policy to the employee manual or to the ethics law or make a separate committee to deal with this specifically?”

She noted much “will hinge on what the attorney says.”