Colonie officials have come back with a 1-inch thick pile of financial reports in response to media reports they used public dollars to benefit private property.
Neighbors of the West Albany Rod and Gun Club began asking questions late last month as town employees and trucks worked eight-hour shifts for 13 days grading the entrance to the club with 2,000 cubic yards of soil, stone and debris.
Several town employees, including Town Attorney Arnis Zilgme and Comptroller Ron Caponera, are members of the club.
The work at the gun club has raised concerns among residents and Democratic challengers in upcoming town elections that Colonie is handing out favors.
Colonie contends that it is doing itself a favor by getting rid of excessive stockpiles of construction debris. Furthermore, they say, it is a practice that countless residents and private agencies have made use of.
Critics of the recent work at the private gun club are calling for an outside committee to review it to see if there is any wrongdoing.
I have turned info over to the district attorney so they can review the misuse of town funds for this private project, said Paula Mahan, a Democrat running against Republican incumbent town Supervisor Mary Brizzell.
`I have received many calls regularly on this case here. People are tired of it, they are tired of the corruption,` said Mahan.
Mahan said she is aware that the town provides free fill to residents who want it as a courtesy. Her father-in-law, Joe Mahan, was one of those residents who signed the necessary release forms to accept fill from the town, according to town records.
But the scope of the work at the West Albany club is `above and beyond` work that has been done for residents, Mahan said. The club is getting a new driveway and parking lot out of it, she said.
There’s more to it than that, town officials contend.
The deal to dump the 2,000 cubic yards of rubble was sweetened with the offer to grade and replace an existing driveway and parking lot in order to get the club’s trustees, who were wary of the project, to agree, said town board and club member Ulderic `UB` Boisvert.
It also helped to get rid of stockpiles of debris left over from past road repair jobs, he said.
`They were very apprehensive, and they asked, ‘Why would we want to do that?’` said Boisvert, who is the town’s liaison to the Highway Department. `I explained to them that they would be doing the town a favor. The town of Colonie has done nothing wrong here. The only thing we’ve done is save money.`
The town’s Highway Department drafted a scope of the work to be done after the club signed off on a general release form, as all residents requesting fill are required to do. According to the document, the town was left with 1,334 cubic yards of debris after construction and cleanup was done is response to damage by heavy rains between April 14 and 18. The town requested Federal Emergency Management Agency money to `rid` the highway department yard of the large pile. It was given $25,879 to move the soil to the town landfill. However, the town was forced to sit on the pile, which grew to 2,000 cubic yards, after learning the soil would not be used as cover material for the landfill. Instead, the department would have to pay to dump the debris on site at $51 per ton.
It has been reported that the town would not have to pay one of its own departments to dump on its own property. That is entirely misinformed, said Joe Stockbridge, director of the town’s environmental services and its landfill.
`The landfill is an enterprise fund. If you use the facility, you pay a fee no matter who you are,` Stockbridge said. `We are not a tax-based entity, we are a user-fee entity.`
The landfill got its $51 per ton figure by dividing last year’s total waste taken in, 168,000 tons, by that year’s revenue, $8.5 million. The landfill could have taken a $100,000 hit if it had taken the waste without charging the town. That wasn’t happening, said Stockbridge. Everyone, residents and town highway, sewer and water, have to pay, he said.
The West Albany Rod and Gun Club was the ideal candidate to make use of the debris that was too muddy to be used by other town departments and so riddled with trash that residents wouldn’t want it either, said Boisvert.
It looked so bad going in that the club wanted the town to stop the project halfway through when it caught a glimpse of the trash in the debris that included hubcaps and toilet seats, Boisvert said. Much of it was taken out as crews worked; the remainder was buried and graded.
The new driveway was done with packed millings, a byproduct of roadwork, which, like the rubble used to grade the club’s entrance, sits on town lots, said Boisvert. It was not paving, which would have cost the town extra to do. It was old asphalt that had been milled to fine gravel that was spread using a paving machine and then packed with a roller.
Crews broke ground Thursday, Aug. 16, on the work. The project was in full operation the following Monday with a crew of 12 town employees, 10 trucks and one backhoe.
The project was finished Friday, Sept. 7, costing the town $38, 216.24.
Colonie records show that the town avoided spending $166,561 in the transportation and dumping of the material at the landfill.
Supervisor Brizzell didn’t know about the work because historically, requests for fill and the scope of the required work doesn’t come through her office or the town board, she said.
It is between the people that sign the consent form and the town department looking to rid itself of fill, she said. Although this project was done under the typical auspices, Brizzell admits that the scope and size of the project may have warranted review by herself or the board because of the potential of public outcry.
`No one bothered to tell me about it. They didn’t feel that it was any wrongdoing. The scope of the work is unordinary. There is this whole perception of public (funds) versus private (property) and even though it’s legal it’s not prudent to follow through with it (without proper review),` said Brizzell.
The proposal, scooping of the work and job was all brokered through Boisvert, from the necessary departments to the club, she said.
Brizzell has formed a committee of board members Frank Mauriello, Kevin Bronner and herself to review the project, she said.
Mahan is calling for an outside audit to be done to confirm or dispel any mismanagement at the hands of the town.
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