No. Castle Clerk Impropriety Allegations Rebuked By Town Board
A request to refer a letter outlining alleged improprieties by North Castle Town Clerk Anne Curran to the municipality’s Board of Ethics was rejected last week by the town board.
Board members issued a strong rebuke of Armonk resident Mario Ruggiero’s claims that Curran lacked integrity and sought to undermine then-supervisor Howard Arden during the planning stages for the funeral of the late former councilwoman Becky Kittredge. Kittredge, a 32-year councilwoman, died on Aug. 25, 2013 and had requested that her funeral be held at Town Hall.
Ruggiero, a supporter of Arden and former council members Diane DiDonato-Roth and John Cronin, said that Curran had sought to embarrass the three by making officials’ internal discussions public in a townwide e-mail blast over whether the funeral should be televised on the town’s public access channel.
Arden and DiDonato-Roth had opposed televising the funeral, in part because it was uncertain how it would be paid for. Cronin suggested that a video tribute to Kittredge could be done instead.
Ruggiero said Cronin’s idea was never included in Curran’s mass e-mail, making the three former officials look bad.
“Her behavior qualifies her for a suspension and for removal as one of the town’s computer administrators,” his letter stated.
At its Sept. 23 meeting, the board emphatically dismissed Ruggiero’s charges, unanimously voting against referring his request to the Board of Ethics. Supervisor Michael Schiliro called the letter and its contents “indecent at best” and said he counted at least 16 falsehoods and inaccuracies.
“Anne Curran has and continues to serve this town with grace and dignity and I’m not even going to give respect to some of the things that were said in here about her because they’re so far from the truth,” Schiliro said. “She carries herself professionally, she does her job professionally and with skill and she runs the office, which is the gateway to our community, and she runs it as well as all of her predecessors have.”
In a letter read at last week’s meeting, town resident Sue Miller, who carried out Kittredge’s funeral arrangements, wrote to the board saying Ruggiero’s letter was “full of lies.” While chiding him for taking a year to lodge the complaint, she said the letter makes Curran look like a co-conspirator in some sort of wrongdoing but is another effort to divide the town and its residents.
“Mario is so wrong,” Miller stated. “He’s using the memory of a great lady to help him and his buddies on their latest effort to tear our town apart.”
Ruggiero denied allegations that he was attacking Kittredge and her reputation or that his motivations were political.
He said he waited nearly 13 months before bringing the matter forward because he knew he would be harshly criticized and he also didn’t want the move to be construed as political, as it likely would have been had it been done soon after the funeral.
After the vote, Ruggiero maintained that with the funeral just a couple of weeks before a hotly contested town primary, Kittredge was used as a political pawn.
“I knew Becky for 34 years and I disagreed with a lot of things she said in (Town Hall) but I loved her to death,” said Ruggiero, who attended mentioned that he attended her funeral. “We always talked.”
Schiliro said he had offered to pay to televise the ceremony if finding the money was an issue.
“It was a simple decision then to have the ceremony and to air it and it’s a simple decision now not to refer this to the Ethics Board,” he said. “I’m not going to waste their time on this.”
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/
