Karta Owner: “I Need Help”

Kenneth Cartalemi opened his carting and solid waste business Karta Corp. on Lower South St. in 1989 and ever since then he has been engaged in perpetual battles with various entities, he said.

“Every single thing I have done has turned bad on me,” Cartalemi said.

Cartalemi has been sued by the city of Peekskill and the state of New York, has been repeatedly cited by the Department of Environmental Conservation, has filed for bankruptcy and is currently under court order to sell his property.

While Cartalemi waits for money from the city of -issued to purchase his properties on 1013 and 1017 Lower South St.-to become available on April 12, he worries about how he is going to get a stubborn tenant off of his property in order to close the deal.

“The tenant was ordered by a federal court to get off the property, but he won’t get off,” said Cartalemi, who did not name the tenant but said he is using the property for office space to run a garbage business. “If we go through the normal procedure it could take months to get him out.”

The tenant would not identify himself when reached by phone Monday afternon, but answered the phone as "carting." When approached by Patch at 1013 Lower South St. on Cartalemi's property last week, a manager who identified himself as Karta refused to answer questions.

Cartalemi said he is looking for help from the City of Peekskill to get the tenant out. Under the terms of Cartalemi’s settlement with the city, the federal court will not help rid his property of the tenant unless Cartalemi has the city’s cooperation in his request.

City Manager Rick Finn said that the city is ready to close the deal in April 13, but is waiting for Karta to resolve its issues.

“They are individual issues that affect them, not the city. It is their issues, their things to resolve,” Finn said in an interview last week. Finn would not identify the issues to which he was referring.

“I have asked the police, state police, county police, everywhere. I can’t get a federal judge to assist me without Peekskill’s cooperation,” Cartalemi said. “The DEC is issuing violations to me for him being there and I can’t legally get him out without going into 60-90 days more and thousands of more dollars.”

Cartalemi is accruing thousands of dollars in interest and taxes every day that he does not close the deal. He already owes $650,000 in back taxes and fees that are being factored into the closing. The city will be ready to close on April 13, the day after the cash becomes available, but if the tenant is still on the property the deal cannot be finalized, Cartalemi said.

While the tenant is Cartalemi’s main obstacle, he is also still in the process of cleaning up his land to satisfy the agreements of his sale to the city. An oil spill discovered during environmental assessment of his land has been cleaned already, Cartalemi said.

“To my knowledge, the oil spill clean up has taken place. There is about 18 yards of soil that they had to truck away that may be done already too,” Cartalemi said, explaining that it was planned to happen last week or this week.

Cartalemi said that his land is up to DEC standards, and he is working with the city to satisfy its request for further clean up that is not required by the DEC, but that city is requesting based on its own environmental assessment. City manager Rick Finn said the cost of the environmental clean up is “in no way going to be a deal breaker," and that the city and Cartalemi are working it out.

Wendy Rosenbach, a spokeswoman from the DEC, said that the agency is currently reviewing Karta’s closure plan, submitted by Cartalemi’s consultants. Rosenbach said that they are reviewing the plan from a technical viewpoint and the review should be complete within one or two weeks from today, April 4.

“Once the city owns the land if there are any problems they’d be on the hook to clean it up,” Rosenbach said.

“I am getting old, sick and I am very tired. I’ve been battling them (the city) since 1989 when we opened,” Cartalemi said, noting that he is now working together with the city to put an end to the ordeal. “I am trying to get out of this problem and I can’t get any help (with removing the tenant).”