Cohen slanders Calabrese

Date: 9/26/2013

Stunningly, Mayor Richard Cohen stooped to a new low around the Labor Day weekend (“Mayor responds to condominium trash reimbursement resolution, Sept. 16).

While Councilors Cecelia Calabrese and Dennis Perry resolution refers four times to Zoning residence A3 – which condominiums are only a subset of – it refers to condominiums each of those times and in eight additional cases.

The term “apartment complexes” never appears. Furthermore, the resolution refers to “condominium dwelling units [that] are taxed at the same rate as all other residentially classified real property.” One can’t make it much clearer that the effect of the resolution pertains to “condominium complexes” only.

The modest cost of a reimbursement program (less than $200,000 annually) can be absorbed in the current budget’s general reserve item and the various cash reserves in the bank dwarf $200,000.

This resolution is no excuse for the mayor to increase taxes. The assertion that the resolution would lead to trash fees is imaginary. The resolution includes no such thing. If you all go down and pick up the administration’s “document dump” on this, the cost and the man hours and paper to create and reproduce it may approach $200,000.

It’s that kind of wasteful spending that leads to tax increases. Cohen has “some ‘splaining to do” as to why he is so driven to continue a discriminatory policy against condominium owners, that he’d slander and defame the character of a councilwoman just doing her job.

Brian Halla

Trustee, Castle Hills Condominium

Agawam