It wasn't the stress of last minute holiday shopping or the impending visit with in-laws that got Trustees Robert Rothschild and Nick Episcopia fired up at the Dec. 20 board meeting. It was fellow Trustee Tom Lamberti's criticism of several topics that led them to abruptly leave the dais and storm off.

Often times, and those who regularly attend village board meetings know, Trustee Lamberti voices his disappointment in how certain issues are handled and the short notice trustees sometimes receive to absorb important information needed to make informed decisions.

At the last board meeting, it was Village Administrator Robert Schoelle's handling of the lease agreement between the village and Town of Hempstead Sanitary District No. 6 that first came under fire.

"This is very painful. We're a very sophisticated, intelligent village. We have $50 million in a budget. We have staff. We have counsel. We're supposed to be intelligent, prudent and knowledgeable and exercise our judgment in a rational manner," Trustee Lamberti said. "This is irrational. You cannot approve a lease if you do not have it in front of you. We are making this up as we go along. It is to me so fundamentally flawed in terms of how we proceed. I am embarrassed. You should have a lease in front of you..."

Village Counsel Gary Fishberg told Trustee Lamberti that he thought the details would be better left to staff and counsel while trustees should make the business decision.

"Since you essentially have the lease agreement in front of you, every last detail of it is probably better left to staff and counsel to work out than your need to analyze every last portion of that lease agreement," he said. "The business decision I think is yours. The business decision being should you rent this property for the one year for $60,000 and rely on staff and counsel to prepare a lease that will essentially be protective of the village and get the job done?"

Trustee Lamberti further disagreed with how Village Counsel Fishberg handled the CSEA contract. His issue with the contract first came to light at the Dec. 6 meeting in which he and fellow trustee, John Watras, voted against a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the CSEA that called for salary increases he thought too high.

"I'm not as concerned or troubled by this as is my friend Trustee Lamberti," Deputy Mayor John Mauk, who was acting as mayor for an absent Peter Bee, said. "We have four lawyers on the board and I guess if we decided that we were all going to be lawyers we would feel that we all had to go through each one of the contracts item by item and make sure we felt that Mr. Fishberg was doing a good job. I don't think that's my role. That's what we pay counsel for and I do look to Mr. Fishberg to do that."

Deputy Mayor Mauk, did, however, agree with Trustee Lamberti in that he felt the board should've gotten a little more information in a little more timely fashion and that the information should've been laid out in a manner that made it a little easier for trustees to digest rather than making them read it quickly the night before.

Deputy Mayor Mauk at one point attempted to move the conversation to St. Paul's, quickly changing the subject to the ongoing negotiations between the village and chosen developer AvalonBay.

Trustee Lamberti took issue with this topic as well, voicing his disappointment with the recently mailed Village Facts that residents received just prior to the Christmas holiday.

He argued that wording originally found in the draft RFP stating one of the primary objectives included "no cost to village taxpayers" had been changed in the Village Facts copy to "minimal cost to taxpayers."

Trustee Lamberti thought the difference in wording was blatantly inaccurate and misleading.

It was at this point that Trustees Robert Rothschild and Nick Episcopia had heard enough. They abruptly got up from their seats and quickly left the boardroom in the middle of Trustee Lamberti's comments. Both trustees returned once Trustee Lamberti finished speaking.

Hilton Avenue resident Kevin Curtin, who has been vocal at past board meetings, couldn't understand why both trustees couldn't have the same patience as the community has. "We sat here tonight very, very patiently and listened to disagreements and I think learned a little bit but I don't understand two board members not having the same patience to sit down and listen as we do as a community," Curtin said.

Mort Yuter of Dover Avenue added, "I found this meeting very, very interesting. It's very unusual for a trustee to voice the thoughts that Mr. Lamberti has. We would say he's a carmudgeon and one that's a stickler to what he believes to be true. This is good. When the board all agrees and the board doesn't discuss things we in the audience never get the full story. But now the full story is coming out..."