Friday, September 26, 2025

Piermont NYSDOS Grant Money: How NOT To Write An Invoice.





These images provide a textbook illustration of how not to write an invoice. This is particularly so when the invoice is subject to strict government oversight like that of the New York State Department of State (NYSDOS) and the Office of the New York State Comptroller (OSC) as it is here. At least the latter of those two agencies (OSC) can be fairly said to have law enforcement power:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/08/other-guests-may-be-coming.html

Sylvia Welch is referenced in NYSDOS records as Piermont’s “Grant Writer”, “Grants Administrator”, “Oversight Individual”, “Consultant”, or whatever other titular shard she wants to self-anoint upon today. 

From the below “.jpeg” documents, you will see that Sylvia Welch billed the “Inc. Village of Piermont”[sic] for “Consulting services”, pursuant to a written invoice (“Invoice”) dated “01/22/2024”, in the four-figure dollar-amount of US$1,110. This reflects but one of multiple payments from Piermont that Sylvia Welch has sought for her work relating to grants, the Piermont “Zoning And Building Code Update”:
... and the Bruce Tucker canard known as the “Piermont Comprehensive Plan”. You will be reading about other such grant-related invoices and payments on this Blog as the days further progress.
 
Just like all invoices for services calculated on the basis of an hourly rate should do, the below Sylvia Welch Invoice indicated, on its face within its four corners, a Sylvia Welch rate (or, as she wrote it for some inexplicable reason, “Unit Price”) of US$60 per hour. That US$60/hour number is consistent with the one-page services agreement that Welch previously executed with the Village of Piermont circa December 20, 2021:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/piermont-volunteerism-at-its-finest.html
Yet on its face, Welch’s Invoice then proceeded to purport to calculate “11.5 hours” of work at that same US$60/hour rate, as totaling US$1,110.
 
“But wait”, sayeth you mathematicians. “That CAN'T be right. US$60/hour times 11.5 hours of work equals the significantly lesser number of US$690, only. Why isn’t the Sylvia Welch Invoice limited to US$690 instead? Where does the other US$420 come from? That additional US$420 is not explained on the face of the Invoice.”
 
You'd be right. The answer lies in the curious textual legend Sylvia Welch added to her Invoice, reading “See invoice attached:” [emphasis added].

Huh... 

A derivative... 

Sorta like a mirror looking into a mirror, maybe.

“See invoice for invoice”.

In any event, that inartful added “See invoice attached:” reference appears to be a Sylvia Welch citation to a New York State Department of State form called “Attachment F – Other (Volunteer Services by Individual)”. [Bold-face emphasis added].

“But wait”, you ask. “How in the world could that be? How could Sylvia Welch act as both a volunteer’, and also as a for-profit services-provider, at the same time, on the same project, on the same tasks?”.
 
And YYR. You would be right again. That’s a beyond-sloppy (and, in this case, dangerous) way to invoice. Yet maybe “Attachment F” provides some guidance on what would otherwise look like a botched and inflated calculation on the face of the Invoice. Let
s look at the numbers.
 
It appears that some back-dating took place here - no surprise to those that follow the activities of Piermont government over the past 8 years. On the “Attachment F” form - oddly-enough dated “5/03/2024” which is over 3 months after the corresponding Invoice date – Sylvia Welch appears to be putting-in for a chunky 27.5 hours of work at a nominal “volunteer” rate of US$15/hour, totaling US$412.50

In other words, it appears that Welch almost made it to the US$420 differential by fusing the two parallel-universe invoices together. Not quite, but almost. She must have rounded-up the second one, thereby ignoring the US$7.50 disparity. And hey, speaking of “rounding-up”, you will probably also notice that, of the 13 separate hour-increments that Welch indicated on her signed and certified “Attachment F”, 12 of those 13 are indicated as perfect integers “1”, “2”, or “4” sans any following decimal whatsoever. That looks like some serious rounding-up, too, doesn’t it? The statistical odds of that happening in the real-world probably asymptotically approach the integer known as “zero”.
 
Now here’s the real kicker. You are probably wondering why the document called “Attachment F – Other (Volunteer Services by Individual)” even exists at all. In this case, the reason appears to relate to the 
matching of grant funds. 

You see, the New York State Department of State would not have parted with the subject corresponding US$43,106.25+ in grant money for the Piermont “Zoning And Building Code Update” and ultimately, for the farkakte Piermont Comprehensive Plan, unless the Village agreed to contribute some “matching” to the same enterprise - no, not on a 50/50 basis, but on the basis of a 75/25 percentage in favor of the Village:
In this fashion, state government assures that the municipality receiving the grant truly has a stake in the outcome. At least that is what is intended.
 
NYSDOS produced voluminous records to me pursuant to FOIL regarding Piermont, 
the Piermont “Zoning And Building Code Update”, grants, Bruce Tucker, and Sylvia Welch. From a cursory initial review of those records, it appears that the Village of Piermont did not kick much if any money into the kitty as “matching” funds. 

Rather, NYSDOS appears to have instead allowed Piermont to simply identify committee volunteers and then put-in for their time with time-sheets - “certified” and signed-off on by Sylvia Welch or in some cases by outgoing Garmento Mayor Bruce Tucker himself - in lieu of requiring Piermont to “match” New York State’s financial grant contribution. You heard that right. Bruce Tucker, the scam Mayor of Piermont who tried to brag to the media that he was over three million dollars in the black last year, was actually too cheap to pitch-in real money:

In any event, this alternative services-in-lieu-of-money approach was apparently intended by both NYSDOS and Piermont, to discharge the municipality’s otherwise-mandated obligation to “match” grant monies:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/piermont-fakes-us7935-in-matching-funds.html
 
If you have been following the analysis thusfar, you are now wondering whether Sylvia Welch, Bruce Tucker, or the Village Piermont could have possibly “double-counted”. That is, did Sylvia Welch, Bruce Tucker, or Piermont Village Hall endeavor to submit Welch
s claimed 27.5 hours of “volunteer” work to apply it against Piermont’s “matching” commitment – only to see Welch also add the same US$412.50, as a rounded-up “US$420” instead, to her “01/22/2024” US$1,110 Invoice? Intentionally?
 
If so, would NYSDOS have knowingly allowed the “double-counting” as an accommodation to a Piermont village government already so well-known in Albany to be so hopelessly hapless?
 
Alternatively, did Sylvia Welch, Bruce Tucker, or other Piermont Village Hall operatives catch any “double-counting” before it happened and then pull the 27.5 incremental “volunteer” hours out of the ultimate “Attachment F” back-up submitted to the New York State Department of State?
 
Oh weary reckoning. I don’t know the answer yet.
 
But I bet that I know two New York State agencies that will:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/unfinished-business-with-piermont.html
 
And hey. The Piermont Check Registers from 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 - each unearthed by my FOIL and the ongoing New York State Comptroller Audit - show a total Village of Piermont payout to Sylvia Welch of at least US$16,170:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/08/curious-yellow-part-1.html
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/08/curious-yellow-part-2-2024-2025.html
 
And now we’re finding out that’s not probably even all of it. Conceptually, you can add US$16,170 to any monies that Sylvia Welch collected prior, and any monies that Sylvia Welch collected thereafter. Maybe a US$1,110 here. Maybe a US$3,930 there. Maybe a US$1,500 somewhere else. When it all totals-out, you bet Sylvia Welch cashed-out on this deal:

Therefore, after clearing-up this nagging invoice question, maybe the New York State Comptroller will then want to re-train sights on the bigger Welch numbers next and see if they check-out.
 
After all, as between Sylvia Welch, Garmento Mayor Bruce Tucker, and the fetid abscess that is Piermont Village Hall these days, what’s a thousand between friends, right? Fuggedaboudit.