BK Keramati: Mum On DPW Overtime
The city of Saratoga Springs is in a serious fiscal crisis. Four years of fantasy budgets by the previous Commissioner of Finance, Minita Sanghvi, have continuously underestimated expenditures and overestimated revenues while drawing down the city’s reserves to cover the deficits her budgets created. Sanghvi repeatedly voted for labor contracts, grants, and dubious vanity projects, proposed by predecessors to the current members of our Council, without any plan for how the city was going to cover the costs incurred by these votes along with the other predictable budget increases in insurance, etc.
Incoming Commissioner of Finance JoAnne Kiernan inherited a total financial mess. As reported previously in this blog, the city’s outside auditor found the books in such disarray that he could not perform his audit. Commissioner Kiernan and her crew faced the task of straightening out the records from 2025 so they could be audited while trying to manage her department’s regular record-keeping and begin the planning for 2027, the first budget she would be responsible for.
Kiernan realized that, in addition to fixing the previous mess and maintaining regular operations, something needed to be done as soon as possible to get control of the city’s deficit spending.
To that end, she asked each of her colleagues on the Council to prepare an analysis of the size of their overtime to date and a further analysis regarding why the overtime was required. She asked that they present their findings at the pre-agenda meeting on July 20.
As the videos below will document, each of the departments complied with her request with the exception of the Commissioner of the Department of Public Works, BK Keramati, who never submitted any report prior to the meeting and came completely unprepared.
Most blog readers may not want to get so deep in the weeds, but I have provided videos of three of the Council members’ detailed presentations of how overtime has been used in their departments.
As the Public Safety Department has the most staff and must function 24/7, its presentation by Assistant Police Chief Frederick Warfield (Chief McIntosh is on military leave) was extensive, including detailed spreadsheets drilling down on who gets overtime and why. Warfield also explained steps his department has taken to reduce overtime. Similarly, Fire Chief Joe Dolan gave a detailed report on overtime in his department.
As the Finance and Accounts departments are relatively small, their presentations were briefer but highly informative.
In contrast, Department of Public Works Commissioner BK Keramati had not prepared, as is apparent in the short video below. When Kiernan asked him about employees who had huge overtime for the second quarter of this year, including someone with 189 hours in overtime (that calculates to almost five weeks out of eight for the quarter), he failed to answer.
The Silent BK Keramati
As readers may recall, the previous month, Keramati denounced the charter changes proposed by Mayor Safford’s Charter Commission, then turned around and voted for all of them. At the time, I emailed Commissioner Keramati several times and attended a Council meeting asking the Commissioner to share with the public why he had suddenly changed his position on the charter proposals. He never answered.
At the pre-agenda meeting, Commissioner Kiernan asked Keramati to explain what appeared to be extreme cases of overtime in his department, including an employee who had earned 189 hours during the second quarter (almost five weeks of overtime over eight weeks and outside of snow season). He said he did not know.
Keramati’s lack of a response prompted me to once again attend a regular Council meeting the following evening. As Keramati had previously been asked about the 189 hours of overtime, I courteously asked him during public comment if he could explain this.
As with the previous question about his changed vote, he declined to answer.
Readers may recall that Keramati’s campaign focused on his opponent’s alleged failure to be transparent to the public.
Commissioner Keramati reminds me very much of former Finance Commissioner Sanghvi, who also simply ignored questions that she did not like while routinely claiming her commitment to transparency.
As will become increasingly clear to the public, the city is facing a large deficit. It requires not only good management within the Commissioners’ departments but a willingness to engage publicly and candidly about their departments’ expenses.
Keramati’s behavior is extremely disturbing. It is the kind of unwillingness to engage in difficult discussions that brought us to the current crisis. Commissioner Keramati needs to rise to the occasion and be open to the public about his actions.
An Unprepared Keramati
Commissioner Kiernan Introduces Discussion and Documents The Use Of Overtime In Her Office
In her presentation, Kiernan displays a chart documenting that Sanghvi’s budget arbitrarily set overtime without considering the pattern of need during the previous three years. Kiernan goes on to detail overtime in her own department.