Agreement In Sewer District Suit Against Ramapo Over Dirt

Rockland County Sewer District No 1 has won a settlement against the Town of Ramapo for a project that has become infamous in a town known for cronyism. In 2012 the sewer district agreed to pay $800,000 to Ramapo to remove dirt left over from an expansion project, and gave the town a $400,000 advance.

The town didn't do the work and the dirt remained in place in piles for years in Sloatsburg and Hillburn.

Working with County Attorney Thomas Humbach, and Director of Public Policy and Intergovernmental Relations for the County Executive Stephen Powers, Legislator Charles Falciglia exposed the contract failure, which had been going on for five years with little evidence that a majority of the work was done. The story was reported on NBC 4 New York by investigative reporter Sarah Wallace in March of 2017.

The county filed suit against Ramapo in June of 2018 to recover the $400,000 advance.

The advance was paid to the town while Christopher St. Lawrence was both Town Supervisor and Chairman of Sewer District No. 1. St. Lawrence resigned from both posts after he was found guilty of fraud and corruption connected to town financial obligations for a minor league ball park which voters had refused to fund.

“I do not know where the $400,000 eventually wound up, but a good bet would involve a connection to the Pomona Ballpark,"Falciglia said. "It’s nice to see a bad act by an elected official rectified so the Sewer District can recover money that is rightfully theirs.”

County Executive Ed Day applauded the efforts that led to this settlement saying, “We dug deep to get to the bottom of this dirty deal and I am pleased to see that this money, which belongs to the taxpayers of Rockland, will soon be returned. As long as I am in office, we will continue to root out waste and mismanagement in government.”

“I will continue to follow this up until the final cent is recovered,” said Falciglia. “Should the Town default I will also ensure that the Sewer District moves to enforce the settlement and seek all reasonable attorney’s fees and interest.”

The Sewer District has been in the news a lot, for more irregularities than expensive piles of dirt.

In 2015 a plan to have the Sewer District pay for a Clarkstown Police Department storage building hit a snag when residents questioned why Sewer District officials expected the County Legislature to approve selling county bonds for the building for "the pump station and collection system." The Rockland Voice quoted the then-Clarkstown town supervisor saying that the Sewer District had given Ramapo lots of deals and was willing to help Clarkstown and that it was one of many similar deals.

Then in 2016, the Rockland County Legislature voted unanimously to amend significant portions of the local law that governed Sewer District 1. The major changes included reducing the size of the Board from 13 to 10 members, docking the pay of those who failed to attend or who had no documented excuse for missing meetings and tighter reporting requirements regarding the status of the Sewer District's overall operations. Additionally, in what was believed to be the first such requirement of a board in Rockland, any Sewer District commissioner convicted of any felony is automatically and immediately disqualified from the Board.

Then in 2018 the county won a ruling involving $70,000 in payments to elected officials serving as Commissioners on the sewer district board. The payments began in 2003 and stopped in February 2015 after the new county executive discovered that the stipend was being paid to all Commissioners. The County Sewer District laws state that elected officials serving on the board are not to be paid, while non-elected officials earn an annual $2,375 stipend. Some county lawmakers fought the court case saying that the county executive was carrying out a vendetta, but the judge said they had not shown evidence of it.

SEE ALSO:

• Rockland Sewer Commissioners Must Pay Back Stipends: Judge
• Rockland Throws Down the Gauntlet to Ramapo, other Rockland Developers
• A Dirty Deal Between Ramapo and the Rockland Sewer District
  
• St. Lawrence Resigns Chairmanship of County Boards
• Illegal School Holding Classes In Stadium Funded Through Fraud
• "Corridor of Corruption" Scandal Nets Another Guilty Plea
• Firefighters, Officials Call for State to Intervene in Ramapo, Spring Valley Code Enforcement