Has the South Windsor Town Council Raided the open space fund as publicized in Tuesday's Journal Inquirer and as seen on WFSB 6:00pm news last night?
The referendum to build the new Fire House was passed in November of 2005! This project, delayed now two years and seven months Can Not be built for the 8 million dollars as passed in the referendum. Estimated budget to complete this project if started now, on the original site, have shot up to 9.5 to 10 million Dollars! Now add cost to purchase more land!
Town Manager says only 11 acres of the 1.8 million dollar property are usable, = $163,000/ ac. but only 3 to 4 acres are needed for Fire House. Hmmm?
The Town Council can not sell the 625 Sullivan Avenue Sedge property with out another referendum. We will be lucky to get 1/4 of what we paid for this property if we can get anyone to buy it at all.
How could this project be delayed for so long with No Action by our Town Council?
2 1/2 years of No Action by Town Council, Why the need to Rush Now?
Can we, The Taxpayers of South Windsor, afford proceeding with another mismanaged proposal from this Town Council?
When does the Run Away Spending end?
These and many other questions, will not be answered unless you speak out and demand accountability.
Speak out and be Heard!
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Why raid the Open Space Fund? Why betray those who voted yes, erroneously thinking the Open Space money would be spent wisely?
To be sure the Volunteer Fire Fighters of our community deserve the tools of the trade and places to house them, especially when they save us Millions of Tax Dollars every year! They place their lives on the line to make our town a better place to live. The Town Council did the right thing abandoning the piece of property they were steered to select.
To use Open Space Funds makes no sense when you look at how business is done on the South Windsor Town Council. The key method of covering up any and all mistakes and unpopular items is the lease purchase. This method of "Doing Business" is simple. To subvert the will of the people all you have to do is structure any "Bad Deal" into a Lease Purchase, over say 5 - 10 years. The people never get a vote and the yearly payments become the baseline of the Capitol budget. The bad decisions and yearly payment are soon forgotten. It is amazing how such a well-intentioned concept, the lease purchase, has been so subverted. The lease purchase had been intended to create a means to purchase items such as fire trucks, not to build Lawrence Road Park or buy the Old Post Office. The lease purchase of the property for the new firehouse would have been a palatable way of securing property for the needed new firehouse. It would have been a reasonable means to an end.
The Capitol Project fund and Capitol Lease funds have become a “Slush Fund” that can be taped by the Town Council to support any and all bad decisions they make. Think back to the Town Council meeting this spring where the build out of the Old Post Office was discussed, Town Manager Galigan piped up that he could find $400,000 in cold cash from the Capitol Project Slush Fund to put towards the White Elephant. I wonder just how much Slush there is in the Capitol Project Fund. Perhaps a civic-minded person like Don Gonsolvis could audit the fund.
The bottom line is simple to understand, New property had to be secured for the fire house and quickly, the use of Open Space funds was a betrayal of everyone that supported that referendum and the Lease Purchase of the land would have been a more palatable approach. The purchase of new property should have been done a year ago, using the lease-purchase method.
There are some questions that no one on the Town Council wants answered:
Who authorized the Logging of the worthless property that we purchased 2 + years ago for the Fire House?
Why wasn’t there language in the contract that protected the interests of the taxpayer should any defects be found on the property?
Who steered the Town Council to the Sedge weed infested property and why?
Will anyone be held accountable for the above mistakes?
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