A $7,200 Rip Off of Taxpayers

After last week's sad explanation of damage done to sewer lines by the water contractor which went unreimbursed to either the town or the resident affected by the damage inflicted on the lines, we thought you'd enjoy seeing the same thing happening on Streamview Lane.

Above is the vendor claim approved to a private company which was called in by the town to find and fix a sewer problem on Streamview Lane. The problem, documented here last October 1st, was caused when the water contractor broke through a sewer pipe while putting in his water main. How the town's on site Utilities Inspector allowed it to go un-repaired at the time is any one's guess. But town officials clearly knew about the damage when it was fixed by a private contractor and easily assessed its cause via the repair work done.

So above you will see the taxpayers of the Sewer District were charged more than $7,200 to fix the mess but what is shocking is that town officials never instructed that the bill be charged back to the water contractor they seem to think they work for instead of town taxpayers.

To date, the town has made no effort to bill back the contractor because building department officials have not officially informed anyone that the water contractor caused the damage.

Here's a look at the big fix before it was covered up and the story detailing what is in the picture. But the question remains, why haven't building department employees or the town board done anything to charge this repair back to the water contractor that caused all the damage in the first place?

Spain & Connolly Interview with GOP

Last night, both of these long identified Democrats went to the town GOP meeting at St. Timothy's to pitch themselves as GOP nominees. We can only imagine the reasoning used to convince Republicans to endorse two people long identified as Democrats. Since neither has any apparent loyalty to the Democratic Party or its platform, it had to be easy to pitch themselves to the Republicans who only want to win an election and frankly appear to have no platform whatsoever.

Only a party that stands for nothing can endorse people who spent most of their political lives opposing them. If the Republicans take the bait, these "Democrats" will attempt to render the November election meaningless by entering the Democratic Caucus as endorsed Republican candidates. If they were to win, the November election would be meaningless.

Let's hope town Democrats are smarter than that, that they understand the need for voter choice based upon political parties with values they are willing to promote and defend to the voting public. Oh, by the way, we hope you enjoyed the show Mrs. Parsons.

Pipeline Radio Gets a Thumbs Up!

We appreciate the emails on the new digital Pipeline Radio Public Channel which allows us to bring you audio of all kinds, including public meetings. If we could, we would bring you all the meetings of significance but that requires more resources than we currently have available. These town board meetings are recorded by the town clerk for anyone to hear and are public records under the freedom of information law. But since this town board quietly stopped broadcasting town meetings on Public Assess cable, the vast majority of residents who cannot attend these meetings are being left in the dark by the blackout of public airings despite all of the money spent on equipment to record them. We'll at least you can listen and yes, those of you who asked, you can even download the audio files to your IPODS. Just right click the file and hit "save target as" and the audio will instantly download to your computer or other device depending on where you direct the file to be saved.

Best of all, people who make crazy comments will find themselves immortalized on the internet, which might just cause a measure of civility too often absent in the comments of certain residents and board members .

We'll try to offer you as much as possible, especially matters of importance, as they occur.