LETTER: Enfield's Million Dollar Blunder

ENFIELD, CT — March 24 marks the anniversary of a massive fire that destroyed the casket building that was located at 33 North River Street in Thompsonville. Town officials had visions how this would be the gem of the Connecticut River waterfront and revitalize the area. You wouldn’t know that these days because town officials don’t even talk about it, and probably for good reason.

The waterfront building proved to be an excellent example of mismanagement by Enfield town officials and Enfield Community Development Corporation, ECDC. The ECDC being the quasi governmental agency working on the town’s behalf with monies from pass-through grants from the state of Connecticut, to the town of Enfield, to the ECDC.

A Brownfield grant of $350,000 was to originally purchase and remediate the building. The purchase price was $165,000, the remaining money to be used for remediation. Apparently, little remediation was ever done with all the hazardous debris that had to be disposed of after the fire at a cost of $484,873.56. It’s not surprising only limited remediation was done because the executive director of ECDC and his town co-conspirator were bilking those taxpayer funds.

Let’s not forget our local tax money the town used to purchase the building back from ECDC at a cost of $146,760. Yes, the town originally gave ECDC the money it received from the state to purchase and remediate the building, then bought it back from ECDC. I think it’s fair to say the town bought and paid for the building twice, unequivocally, the taxpayers did.

I can also document an agreement without hard numbers between the original owners of the casket building and the town, for the purpose of allowing the town to have first option to bid the property. I was verbally told by an official in Economic Development at the time, the town paid approximately $12,000 a year to those owners for at least three years to cover their insurance, taxes, and utilities for that agreement.

Of course nothing was insured by the town so there will be no reimbursement of our million dollars in tax money that was mismanaged and ultimately went up in flames.

Steve Cogtella
Enfield

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