(CAUTION: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE IN THIS STORY)
WALLKILL – Former Wallkill Town Comptroller Toni Tracy has filed formal charges with the State Division of Human Rights against the town and Frank DenDanto, the former town supervisor.
The state agency has determined it has jurisdiction in the matter and that probable cause exists to believe that they engaged in unlawful discriminatory practice.
Tracy filed her complaint in August 2021 with a hearing to be scheduled before an administrative law judge, probably in 2024.
While that has yet to occur, she has filed a demand for a pre-trial settlement of $925,000, according to documents obtained by Mid-Hudson News.
According to Tracy’s complaint, DenDanto used vulgar language and had conversations in front of her and another employee “regarding sex with his wife.”
She charges the former supervisor called her a “motherfucker” and spoke condescendingly toward her in front of others.
In a formal case document, DenDanto denied that claim saying he did not call her that, but rather in frustration over an issue, “pounded the table in front of him and uttered ‘mother fucker’.”
Tracy maintains that after she told him his comments were offensive, “he looked angry” and made another sexually offensive comment against her a few months later.
She told the state investigator who interviewed her that DenDanto told her she “should get a big bucket of KY Jelly because when you fuck me, you fuck me hard” and at a subsequent meeting told her, “get out the KY Jelly were about to get fucked.”
Tracy’s complaint also alleges he cut her staff from four to one but required the same amount of work. She stated that DenDanto “undermined her with much of the staff that she works with daily to the point that they are harassing her, attacking her with emails all day and creating such a hostile environment that it has been affecting her health, sleep and family.”
DenDanto denied the claim that he cut her staff and maintains he never publicly discredited her by name “not at work, during open meetings, or in the newspaper.”
In an October 23, 2023 letter from Tracy’s attorney, he pointed to councilman and former deputy supervisor Neil Meyer’s “palpable hostility toward (her).”
Meyer is currently challenging current Town Supervisor George Serrano for the town’s top post in the November election.
