The Village of Cobleskill has a new clerk.
A new old clerk.
Following an executive session last Tuesday, Mayor Linda Holmes and trustees named Sheila Wilday to the position, which has been vacant since late last year, when they didn’t reappoint Samantha Moyster as clerk.
Ms. Wilday was clerk from 1987 until 2013, when she left to take a job with the state.
Ms. Moyster came under fire a year ago amidst charges that her office was never open; she said she was understaffed and trying to get up to speed on a new computer billing system and that she had inherited a six-month backlog from Ms. Wilday—then Sheila Hay-Gillespie--when she took over.
Ms. Wilday vehemently disputed that last charge and last Tuesday, a half-dozen department heads and village employees waited outside the executive session hoping for good news: That she’d be coming back.
Beginning April 5, she will be.
Ms. Wilday will be returning to a financial mess, according to an independent 2016 audit released in January that found a “major breakdown,” “material errors,” and overspending among a long list of concerns over the village’s spending.
Not true, Mayor Holmes said at the time, blaming the faults the audit revealed on specifics and circumstances, including a software system that crashed the last quarter of ’16—about the same time that both Ms. Moyster and her deputy were on maternity leave.

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The village will hold an informational meeting on Tuesday, April 3, 7pm at the Codes Office on Mineral Springs Road to explain its Railroad Avenue Neighborhood Project to the public and especially, businesses that will be impacted by the extensive utility and road and sidewalk restoration on tap for this summer.
All are invited to share questions and concerns before bids for the project are awarded.



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