By Joyce Miles<br><a href="mailto:joyce.miles@lockportjournal.com">E-mail Joyce</a>
PENDLETON — One team of council candidates is making hay off an old land purchase while the other takes aim at partisan politics.
The “elect” signs have grown bigger and the campaign flyers are a-flyin’ in the run-up to Election Day, when residents will elect a supervisor and two council members. Voters are being encouraged to pick a team and, in the process, pass judgment on the political culture at the town hall.
The Republican slate consists of: Council member David Leible running for supervisor; council member Marty Korkuc running for another 4-year term; and Kevin Smigiel, a past council member who wants to return.
They’re up against a Democratic slate consisting of incumbent Supervisor Jim Riester, former councilman Joe Frawley and former town recreation committee chairman Ed Harman.
Leible says Republicans want to restore a sense of unity in town government that’s been missing under Riester’s leadership. He claims Riester and Frawley — who quit the council this past March after a falling-out with other councilmen — are mean-spirited egoists who like to pick fights with other town officials, especially GOP-backed Highway Superintendent Jeff Stowell.
“We need somebody who can work with a team. Mr. Riester is always beating up on (Stowell),” Leible said. “I’ve kept it in long enough, this is disgusting.”
While Riester campaigns on a 14-year record of advancing tax cuts and consolidation, the GOP team believe they’ve found a chink in his armor.
They’re raising questions about a 3-year-old property transaction in which the town purchased 94 acres of vacant land off Beach Ridge Road, to facilitate a deal with Northtown Soccer Club for soccer fields development. After the land was paid for, the town found out it’s officially useless wetland and Northtown backed out of the deal.
Republican-backed candidates point to the involvement of Riester, Frawley and Harman, the then-chairman of the recreation committee, in the purchase and charge they all helped facilitate a taxpayer ripoff.
“They bought swamp land,” Smigiel snarled.
“It took Dave and I almost 2 years to get our hands on a copy of the contract. The clerk’s office didn’t have it on file,” Korkuc claimed. “The supervisor, Ed and Joe haven’t been on the up-and-up.”
“Well, don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story,” Frawley shot back.
He, Riester and Harman all pointed to public records, which show:
The board decision to OK the land purchase was approved unanimously by the council in October 2006. Frawley made the motion, Leible seconded it and all members, including Korkuc, voted in favor. The motion approved the purchase pending a positive phase-one environmental study to ascertain no hazardous conditions/materials were contained in the parcel. There weren’t any.
The contract noted about 18 acres of wetlands in a back corner of the parcel, which had been mapped previously by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Because it involved more than 10 acres, Northtown’s proposed project required site plan approval by the planning board. That triggered environmental impact review and a new DEC wetlands study (“delineation”). DEC’s wetlands maps are never considered final, Harman said; wetlands boundaries are always changing due to land use patterns.
The new DEC study of the Beach Ridge Road parcel showed it had become mostly “upland wetland,” so it called for certain vegetation growing there, since prior mapping. DEC wouldn’t sign off on soccer fields development without “costly mitigation” to preserve the vegetation first, Harman and Riester said.
The town didn’t press Northtown to keep up its end of the deal in light of the finding — and, in the planning process, opposition from residents concerned about the traffic a soccer complex might bring.
“There were too many hurdles. The plan was abandoned,” Riester said. “(Leible) voted for it. If he wants to distance himself from it now, what can you do?”
Korkuc claimed Harman brought the wetlands boondoggle down on the town by pushing for the DEC delineation, “against the recommendations of both the town’s and Northtown’s engineers. He had it done ... and DEC turned around and condemned the property.”
Harman is stunned to hear that “twisted take” on history. There is no lobbying for delineation, it’s the law once a development plan goes to the planning board, he said, and nobody could have foreseen the outcome.
When Harman recommended the land purchase to the council, he added, it had already been approved by the town recreation, conservation and business development committees, which all agreed soccer fields were akin to a green tourist attraction for the town.
“It was all very open and Dave Leible, who says he was unaware, was at all of those meetings,” Harman said. “It’s politics at a whole new low. I didn’t expect it at the town level.”
Is the town doing a time warp?
Leible and Korkuc point out that in 2006, the then-attorney for the town, Andrea Sammarco, did not handle the Beach Ridge Road purchase. Instead, she tapped outside counsel, which they said cost the town an extra $1,400 in legal fees. When the Northtown deal collapsed and the town was left holding “garbage,” Leible added, Sammarco didn’t pursue recompense.
“She dropped the ball. That’s why she’s gone,” he said.
Like hell it is, an outraged Frawley says.
Sammarco was dumped as the town’s attorney this past January, on a 3-2 vote of the council to hire the Seaman Jones Hogan and Brooks law firm instead. Frawley and Riester voted against the hiring, and were outnumbered by Leible, Korkuc and newly elected Republican council member Ron Morrison.
Frawley, who is a registered Republican, charged the appointment was politically motivated. Law firm principal Daniel E. Seaman is influential in the Niagara County GOP establishment — and his firm got the job without the council interviewing any of three attorneys who solicited the town’s legal business.
Frawley quit the council to protest the Seaman hiring. Now he wants the job back because, he said, somebody has to pull the plug on the party machine in town.
“Think back to the night (Seaman) got hired. They blew off a whole room full of people who told them they wanted the (attorney applicants) interviewed first. Who did they do that for?” Frawley said. “Let’s return town government to the taxpayers. Partisan influence has no place in town affairs.”
The Democratic-backed candidates point to an Oct. 6 council vote concerning activities by Stowell, a GOP-backed elected official, and claim it shows the town is being dragged back to the days when affiliation trumped ability.
Riester was absent from the October business meeting and had asked Korkuc to preside as chairman. During the meeting, several business matters that were not listed on the agenda came to a vote, including one to amend the council’s annual “284” contract with Stowell. The contract lists the projects that the highway department will undertake, their estimated costs, and conveys council approval for project vendors to be paid.
Stowell asked the council to amend the contract to show several additional projects this year. Since he calculated he had the money, he commissioned more work, he said. Vendors’ bills can’t be paid unless the council approves them, however.
Leible, Korkuc and Morrison voted to amend the 284 contract.
“That’s the kind of stuff that’s going on,” Frawley said. “It’s classic Three Men In A Room stuff. It’s why I’ve got to get involved again.”
Riester said it’s the council’s job to approve and monitor highway spending; that’s what the 284 contract is all about.
“It’s a culture thing. You spend, then you get the OKs. If you overspend (budget allocations), before long the reserves are screwed up,” he said. “If you’re hell-bent on spending every last penny (in the budget), then you never build reserves.”
Also in the October meeting, Korkuc imposed rules on the public forum. He told observing residents they could have floor time to comment on town affairs but the councilmen would not respond, or answer any questions, immediately. Answers, if they were warranted, would be forthcoming at a later date; that’s the council’s “policy,” he said.
Korkuc embraced the same rules of order that are used by many municipal boards, but they haven’t been the Pendleton board’s rules while Riester runs the meetings, Harman said.
“I’ve attended these meetings for quite a while now and that has not been the policy in the past,” he said. “It’s sad that our Starpoint students were there to witness that. It was embarrassing.”
