ORANGE — A decision on whether Leisure Woods Estates can raise its monthly lot fees by 43% was delayed for a second time Wednesday night, as the Mobile Rent Control Board requested the company’s invoices from this year and last, in an effort to ensure its proposed budget aligns with its actual expenses.

Leisure Woods Estates Inc. is petitioning the board to be allowed to charge tenants $588 per month, which attorney John Kuzinevich said would allow the 72-acre mobile home park at 519 East River St. to keep up with inflation and the economic climate.

The board’s last public meeting with Leisure Woods on July 16 — which was continued from June — focused heavily on the park’s budget and ended with members requesting that owners return to Town Hall in August with full budget expenses from 2023. Leisure Woods had previously provided expenses for 2021 and 2022, but only a partial report for last year.

The town’s Mobile Rent Control Board bylaw was adopted at a 1986 Special Town Meeting and allows the board to regulate rents “so as to remove hardships or correct inequities for both the owner and tenant of such mobile home accommodations.” Additionally, the bylaw states adjustments may be made — either upward or downward — to levels that “yield to owners a fair net operating income for such units.”

In an Aug. 8 letter addressed to Mobile Rent Control Board Chair Jane Peirce and members of the board, Kuzinevich announced that he would be seeking retroactive payments for Leisure Woods Estates to account for a delay in the hearing process. Attached to the letter was an income statement for the 2023 year and a breakdown of the company’s expenses.

“There were significant delays in the hearing process and [Leisure Woods Estates] seeks the increase be made retroactive. As long as the board awards LWE substantially what it has requested,” Kuzinevich wrote, the plan would be “to spread the retroactive portion over two years and further, not come in for a further increase for two years unless there are material unanticipated spikes in expenses such as substantially increased taxes, emergencies or natural disasters.

“Although the budget uses different categories, it is clear that the actual expenses serve as extremely strong information on which to base a budget,” Kuzinevich continued in the letter. “The board should not look to find reductions in the expense calculation in light of these modest increases.”

Discussing the expenses at Wednesday’s meeting, Peirce noted a number of alleged discrepancies between Leisure Woods’ reported expenses and its proposed budget. She noted that Leisure Woods’ $170,000 requested payroll budget showed a larger increase in 2023 than in previous years.

“I do not find sufficient backup for a lot of these requests. There are no estimates or invoices. … I can see what is claimed to have been spent, but I don’t see any invoices, so this is a trust, but verify, process. I’d just like to have the documentation because it’s a public process,” Peirce said. “I’m still troubled by the payroll number, which is requested this year to be $170,000. The trouble is, it’s never been $170,000 or even close to that number.”

Outlining the company’s payroll requests, which over the last five years had steadily increased from $70,000, to $92,000, to $94,000, and eventually $141,000, Peirce asked if the increase accounted for the addition of a new employee.

In response, Glenn Gidley, principal owner of Leisure Woods Estates, said the increase accounted for his son Adam’s salary for his role as a park manager, stating that the business did not have funds to pay him. In response, Peirce jokingly said to Adam “you need a different job.”

“It’s not like we’ve been putting $50,000 a year in my pocket, and [Adam] wasn’t doing anything, and we suddenly created a job for him,” Gidley said. “This has been going on for a long time where he’s been augmented and supplementing what [the other park manager] does with no compensation.”

When the meeting was opened to public comment, some residents, such as Al Henderson, expressed concern that the park’s requested increases for maintenance were not warranted given a rumored lack of upkeep. He referenced supposed unfinished paving jobs and incomplete tree removals as examples of alleged maintenance shortcomings.

After Glenn and Adam Gidley left the meeting early, expressing grievances with the amount of time the process has taken, Kuzinevich scheduled the next hearing for Wednesday, Sept. 11.

“We’ve had this application in for a long time, and I feel somewhat like at this point, you’re asking for a tremendous amount of detail that we’re happy to give, but I’m also concerned with the amount of time this whole process is taking,” Gidley said. “You’re looking at us copying hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of documents.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.