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Southampton Village Administrator Russell Kratoville DANA SHAW
Russell Kratoville on Election Night 2020 DANA SHAW
Russell Kratoville knew his days as the Southampton Village administrator were numbered.
Twice since Mayor Jesse Warren was elected in June 2019, he had tried to oust Mr. Kratoville. But, the mayor’s authority does not permit him to fire a public officer. He could only introduce a measure appointing someone else for the position, affecting a de facto termination, but for the last 16 months lacked support on the Village Board to do so. That changed this week, prompting Mr. Kratoville’s resignation.
Mr. Kratoville was appointed to the position by former Mayor Michael Irving and has been serving as a “holdover,” neither officially re-appointed when Mr. Warren took office, nor dismissed.
But with new, supportive board members Joseph McLoughlin and Gina Arresta, who were elected September 15, the mayor would have finally had the political support to remove Mr. Kratoville. He plans to install Charlene Kagel-Betts to the position, he announced Thursday.
In a letter to village staff announcing upcoming staffing changes, Mr. Warren expressed plans to ask the board to hire Ms. Kagel-Betts to the position of administrator/treasurer. He plans to nominate Mimi Michel-Guerra as village clerk, splitting the duties Mr. Kratoville had.
“We wanted to thank Russell for his service to the Village and for his offer to help with the transition,” Mr. Warren said in an email on Friday. “We are also looking forward to the next chapter with Charlene as administrator. Charlene brings significant financial acumen to the village and will help us adopt a capital budget for the first time, as well as implement budgetary management software.”
Aware of that the political climate had changed and following a meeting with the mayor Thursday morning, Mr. Kratoville opted to remove himself.
He was called into the mayor’s office at about 11 a.m., Mr. Kratoville said.
“I go into his office and Village Attorney Brian Egan is there and Dane Neller (a member of the village financial advisory committee) is there. Jesse tried to explain, ‘Russell, I wanted to go in a different direction and I think the sooner we do this, the better it would be. We’d like it if you would consider giving your resignation.’”
Barring the resignation, the Village Board would have had to either wait until its scheduled October 1 meeting to appoint someone else, or hold a special meeting. Mr. Kratoville agreed to resign and said the mayor then offered him a temporary consulting position to assist with the transition of a new appointee, and he offered to consider it.
Mr. Kratoville asked to be given until 2 p.m. to leave, to afford him the opportunity to tell staff and “set up piles of paper” of pending projects and tasks to be divvied up among remaining staff. He said he was glad he got to meet with staff in a lot of the village’s departments to thank them. “I told them it was an honor to work with all of them,” Mr. Kratoville said.
“In Southampton Village,” he continued, “the experience and the quality of people you get is unparalleled. Everyone has a lot of pride in their work … I was glad I was able to show gratitude to everyone for being so professional and easy to work with during what I’d call a pretty stressful time.”
Reached for comment Thursday night, Village Board member Andrew Pilaro echoed Mr. Kratoville’s comments about staff, but aimed them at the outgoing employee.
“I’m very sad to see Russell go,” he said. “In light of his circumstance over the past year or more, of being a holdover from the last administration, he served the village with grace, poise, and dignity and conducted himself very professionally. I can’t thank him enough for all he brought to the village and all he taught me as a new trustee coming in.”
Prior to his appointment as village administrator, which includes the titles village clerk and village treasurer, Mr. Kratoville served as Southampton Town’s management services administrator, a position he held for nine years. Before that, he was a deputy comptroller for OTB, and also served as deputy supervisor in the Town of Riverhead. During that time, and true to the small town atmosphere of the East End, he worked with the woman who will likely take his place in Village Hall, Ms. Kagel-Betts.
Ms. Kagel-Betts will leave the position of chief auditor for the Town of East Hampton, where she’s worked since 2012, and where she, along with Budget Officer Len Bernard, received the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA). Ms. Kagel-Betts is a past president of the New York State Government Finance Officers Association.
Prior to her service in East Hampton, her resume includes working as the Southampton Town comptroller, treasurer for the Village of Greenport and Brookhaven Town’s chief financial officer.
She said that she’ll be splitting her time between East Hampton Town and the village for the next two weeks until her official appointment.
The move will likely mean a significant salary boost. In East Hampton, her annual pay is listed as approximately $105,000. Mr. Kratoville leaves a salary of $175,000 for the three titles. How the village will divide the funding for the splitting of the roles between Ms. Kagel-Betts and Ms. Michel-Guerra has yet to be revealed.
