Democratic Wallkill Councilman Neil Meyer said he’s running for town supervisor to improve town financial practices for more informed decision-making and better stewardship of taxpayer money.
He faces incumbent Republican Supervisor George Serrano in November.
As an accounting professional, Meyer says he has the expertise to guide the town as its financial practices are being audited by the New York State Comptroller’s Office.
While Meyer acknowledges the progress made under Serrano, he deems it insufficient.
Proper internal controls, he said, are about putting sound policies in place and making sure they are adequately followed to guard against potential mismanagement of taxpayer money.
“At the end of the day, it is the taxpayers’ money, and it is your money,” Meyer told The Epoch Times.
Serrano disputes Meyer’s claims, arguing that town finances are in good shape.
Since he came into office in January 2022, he has improved several town financial practices, based on a third-party report, and more changes are on the way, Serrano told The Epoch Times.
Accounting Background
Born and raised in Scotchtown, Meyer attended the Middletown School District and fell in love with accounting as a high school student.Once, his teacher handed out an accounting assignment to be worked on over the semester, but Meyer stayed up all night and completed it in one sitting.
“Numbers tell a story, and I like reading that story,” Meyer said. “If you read the story correctly, it can provide a lot of predictive measures about the future of a business and where that business could go.”
He studied accounting at Pace University and worked at big accounting and investment firms, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and Goldman Sachs, before going into consulting and executive search work.
About 10 years ago, Meyer moved back to Scotchtown and soon got on a town committee administering the New York Rising Community Reconstruction Program.
Town Board Work
In 2015, he ran for town councilman in the Third Ward and won.“I liked being involved with my community, and I thought I could do a lot of good,” Meyer said. “I didn’t have a lot of ideas as to what a councilman did at the time. I ran, and ever since, I’ve just been learning.”
As a councilman, he worked with the town police department to start the Wallkill Cares program, where officers sent people struggling with addictions to care centers for help.
“I would get calls: ‘My loved one has a substance abuse problem. What resources are available?’” Meyer said. “In fact, we have a lot of resources in the Hudson Valley, but a lot of people just don’t know.”
Later, the town police department partnered with the nonprofit Tri-County Community Partnership to run a similar program called Hopes Not Handcuffs.
Meyer also supported converting the former Holiday Inn hotel on Crystal Run to an inpatient detoxification and rehabilitation center.
“There was some hesitation with bringing a rehab in town and a lot of stigmas associated with that,” he said. “I rallied the public to go to the planning board meetings so that we could bring that to town.”
In December 2019, the Resource Recovery Center opened the door on the former hotel site.
On a lighter note, Meyer said he was pleased to have brought the fireworks to Orange County Fairgrounds for a few years so that residents in his ward could watch them in their own backyards.
Town Finance and Supervisor Run
When Meyer first became a councilman in 2016, he said he received almost no town financial reports.Several years in, he began to receive monthly budget-to-actual reports, which compared town spending to budgeted amounts, but they fell short of revealing underlying town financial practices, he said.
In 2021, former Supervisor Frank DenDanto, a Democrat, pushed for a risk assessment of town financial practices by the third-party accounting firm PKF O’Conner Davis—a move supported by Meyer.
The report identified nine substantial internal control weaknesses, including lack of segregation of duties, untimely bank account reconciliations, and financial reports that lack details and are hard to read, such that they affect the town board’s ability to spot trends and correct wrongs before they become big problems.
Several accounting mishaps were also observed during the risk assessment, including a part-time employee being paid at full-time rates and two employees getting onto payroll without the town board’s approval.
The firm offered 13 recommendations to improve the town’s financial practices.
As a result, new invoice review and payroll policies were enacted by the town board under DenDanto.
After Serrano, a former police officer, became the supervisor, the town board passed several new policies governing practices in procurement, credit cards, and fund balance.
Another cash management policy is still in the works, Serrano said.
He said that he and the town board managed to do all this despite the sudden departure of the former comptroller at the beginning of the budget season last year.
However, Meyer argued that more policies and procedures must be implemented, and more must be done to ensure they are being followed adequately.
“That is why I am running for supervisor,” he told The Epoch Times.
He said he wants to follow through on all recommendations in the O’Conner Davis report and tackle additional problems identified by the State Comptroller’s Office.
A spokesperson for the State Comptroller’s Office declined to give details about the audit.
Meyer said he also wants to improve the town’s hiring policy, encourage more public participation in town affairs, and enhance town communications on social media.
