Ray Cramer's Aug. 26 letter was mean, spiteful and misleading. Colleen Woolley does much more than raise sheep. She is the manager of a branch office for MidCountry Bank and served well as my bookkeeper when I was supervisor.

I left office Dec. 31, 2007, with the bills all paid and current and 300 tons of salt. I also left a $200,000 fund balance, a reduction in the tax rate and a 30 percent increase in the snow removal (salt, sand and fuel) budget for 2008. The snow removal budget has been decimated, yet our bookkeeper wants to transfer an additional $70,000 doubling the snow removal budget from 2007. Costs have increased, but surely haven't doubled. It is nonsense like running three shifts (no other town in the whole of Northern New York runs three shifts) that results in the plows running on bare roads at night because the men have nothing else to do. That wastes a lot of salt, sand and fuel, as does the practice of taking the town pickup truck to Watertown on lunch hours.

Gary Eddy insisted on hiring the Yuhas to keep the town books. He would accept none of the other qualified municipal bookkeepers Doug Main or Mike Gillette suggested. Supervisor Eddy doesn't even read his own supervisor's report at the meetings. Jim Yuhas reads, writes and stamps Gary's signature to the report. I suspect that Gary doesn't even see his report until meeting night when the other board members see it for the first time too. Messrs. Eddy and Cramer wouldn't be in a position to be outvoted if Gary had understood the town finances.

With respect to $700 for software upgrades, the Yuhas abruptly resigned Dec. 31, 2005, leaving us in a lurch. The town invested $8,000 in our own computer bookkeeping system which Ray and Gary both approved. The $700 was for mandated upgrades and telephone support to avoid the town having to make a similar large expenditure in the future should the Yuhas quit again like they did in Henderson.

The delay in the highway superintendent's health insurance was because Claude Phelps was insistent on getting the town to pay for his Cobra through New York state. He wasn't satisfied with the Excellus EPO plan the town had for his predecessor.

There are more examples, but suffice it to say that Colleen, Mike and Doug are looking out for our interests, not their own. Vote for Colleen Woolley Sept. 9.

Neil F. Parks

Watertown