MY VIEW: Responding to Strevell’s senior center charges

" Mayor Strevell's statement concerning the Valatie Senior Center is, respectfully, ridiculous. Putting aside the obviously strained attempt at blaming Supervisor McGivney for the Village's foiled attempt at misappropriating grant money, Strevell tries to rationalize the Village's actions using childlike logic – if the Village of Catskill can break the law then why can't we? Really? This is the best he can come up with? Telling the people of the Village "sorry, I thought we could get away with it – like the Village of Catskill does." Excuse me, I should not have included the word "sorry" because Mayor Strevell has never apologized or accepted any responsibility for putting the village residents at risk of inheriting a $400,000 bill for his, at best, reckless and irresponsible "governing". If Mayor Strevell's statement "assuring" the residents of the Village that the "Valatie Senior Center has been used consistently with the terms of the state grant" was entirely true, then why was it necessary to enter into the Memorandum of Understanding in the first instance?

There are still so many unanswered questions concerning the Village's actions that need answers. What was the Village attorney's role in this mess? Ostensibly, he was advising the Village at the time the grant application was submitted? Did he advise the Village that the Senior Center could or could not be used for other municipal purposes? I would like to believe that he was competently advising the Village of the associated risks of using the facility in a manner outside the terms of the grant. Answers to these question are obviously time sensitive, as Mr. Grattan presently seeks election as Town Supervisor. Other questions deserving of answers include how much taxpayer money was used on hiring outside legal counsel to try to get the Village out of this mess? Did the grant application contain truths or was it merely the product of sloppy work? This is not to say that village officials can never make mistakes or require more sophisticated or specialized legal counsel from time to time. Village residents, like myself, do not demand perfection from our public officials. At the very least, however, we deserve to be served by public officials who seek to understand and follow the law not "under duress" as Mr. Strevell does, but in "good faith" with the best interests of Village residents at the forefront. "

" I'd like to see a copy of the invoices. I don't see how they spent $520,000 on that building. "

" I find Doug McGivney’s editorial response to Mayor Strevell’s recent press release almost laughable if it wasn’t loaded with so much misinformation and inaccuracies. His statement 2, “I did not demand that Valatie remove may name.” (his grammatical error, not mine) is I believe a reference to the project sign that has been posted on the Senior Center Building since work began on the facility. Mr. McGivney contradicts himself later in the letter when he says in a later paragraph that he in fact did contact the State to have his name removed from the sign. In fact, Mr. Rabito himself called a village official to have the name removed at the request of the Kinderhook Supervisor.
Later in that same paragraph Mr. McGivney implies that there was no need for a Village Senior as the Town was already running a senior center for the Tri Village Seniors Club. Ms. Ostrowski could not have made that statement in April of 2006 because the Town Senior Center (and in Doug’s own words, not a true senior center, but a place where folks can meet) didn’t exists at the time. It seems Mr. McGivney and his supporters are confused about the timing of the Village’s application and subsequent approval of the grant and the establishment of the Town’s gathering place for seniors. For Doug to continue to respond that his center was already up and running at the time the Village applied for its grant is clearly false.
For the record, Mayor Strevell has never made a statement, publicly or privately that the Village never intended to run this facility as a senior center. To the contrary, he and other local officials have always stressed that this building would always serve as a senior center and area seniors can be assured that this building will always be maintained as such. That sentiment is expressed in numerous mailings, letters and discussions at local Board meetings. One needs to only visit the Valatie Senior Center to understand that it is a fully dedicated Senior Center with dozens of visitors everyday. I guess at this point, Doug feels that if he says anything people will believe him, regardless if those statements don’t include a shed of truth.
Mr. McGivney also implies that local funds used on the building will impose a significant strain on Village taxpayers. Yes, any expenditure made by a Village puts a strain on local taxpayers. But for the investment of $120,000, the Village leveraged $400,000 in grant funds. The Village also took a vacant building that had a blighting influence on the neighborhood and transformed it into a beautiful facility that meets the needs of the senior population in Valatie. To me and a lot of other people, that makes good sense.
As for the misuse of the building, again, the Village only held three meetings in that facility, almost immediately after the building was completed. When contacted by the Office of Community Renewal, the Village discontinued the practice immediately. By using the facility in the evenings, ensuring that no senior activity was interrupted, the Village was only trying to use the facility in the way the applicable Federal Regulations allow. For some reason, the Office of Community Renewal has decided to interpret those regulations differently for Valatie then they have for any other community in the state that has been fortunate enough to secure a Small Cities grant for the construction of a senior center.
Readers ought to do some research on their own before buying into whatever Mr. McGivney chooses to spew as fact. "

" Ok, Mayor Strevell, er, "Slammer," we get it. You think that Valatie was treated unfairly by the State because other municipalities were allowed to violate the terms of their grants, but Valatie was not. We know you're not a lawyer, and the attorney paid to advise you on Village affairs is apparently busy, so let's try and simplify this for you. As any parent of a teenager will tell you, the fact that someone else does something wrong does not make it ok for you to do so. The mysterious reason why the Office of Community Renewal has chosen to treat Valatie differently? I think it's pretty clear that the prior Republican administration in Albany was perfectly happy to divvy out grant money to its political allies with no strings attached. Unfortunately for you, when the Republican hegemony ended, so did the days of free money. The simple explanation for the disparate treatment that you complain about is that there is now an administration in Albany that is interested in enforcement. Call that politics if you will, but I'm fairly certain that most people will agree that enforcing the law is a good thing.

As for your claim that the Village only held three meetings in the Senior Center facility, even if true, this contention amounts to a "we only violated the law a little" defense. Moreover, "only three" meetings were held because you were busted by the State before you could hold more; the fact that street signs were erected directing people to the Senior Center for "Village Court" would tend to indicate that municipal uses of the Center were part of the plan all along.
It's perfectly clear what has transpired here. Valatie needed a new space for municipal business and someone came up with the hairbrained scheme of getting a grant for a Senior Center and using it for Village purposes. Then, when your Republican benefactors were tossed at the end of '06, you could no longer ignore the obligations placed upon you by the terms of the grant. The irony is that, only thanks to the aggressive enforcement of the grant terms by the Office of Community Renewal, the Center can now be used exclusively for senior purposes, as it should have been all along. "