You know when you meet someone, and they give you a bad feeling......like, a feeling in your stomach, you just can't quite describe?
I got that feeling the first time I spoke with our Monroe Town Supervisor.
It was like I was being swindled, with every word he chose, every attempt to "win" me over, I became more and more uneasy.
I can deal with a salesperson. He or she has a sale to make, and they want you to feel good about buying whatever they're selling. With the Supervisor, it was different. He was just lying.
In November of 2012, my neighbor called me to tell me that our brand new, six cinema multiplex theater in our village was purchased by our Town Board.
The theater had gone out of business, rather quickly. Not because people weren't attending movies, but, because the owner had gotten himself into legal and financial trouble and wound up in prison.
The bank took the building, and subsequently auctioned it off.
The Town Board, at a budget meeting, with no public present, and without any prior public input, resolved to purchase the movie theater, at auction, the very next day, for up to one million dollars.
The Board sent one Councilman to the auction where he won the bid for $880,000.
The Town Board had no business plan and no fleshed out, concrete idea as to what they could or would do with this building. In the Times Herald Record article, Board members mentioned that they planned on possibly using the building as a Town Hall.
They took it off the tax rolls which means the School District alone was losing $40,000 in tax revenue.
There were two other bidders at the auction who wanted to buy the building to open up a movie theater, which would have kept the building on the tax rolls.
So, after I received the phone call from my neighbor, and read the Times Herald Record article covering the Town's purchase, I decided to make a few phone calls.
My sense of curiosity couldn't let this one slide.
My first call was to then Town Supervisor, Sandy Leonard. She was unavailable to take my call.
My second call was to one of the bidders on the building who was named in the Times Herald Record article. He is a successful developer, and in fact, is responsible for the construction of the Eitz Chaim Synagogue in Monroe. He was kind enough to take my call, and he shared with me his intention was to buy the building and open the movie theater. He had done his homework, understood the structure of the building, and shared with me some of the issues the building had, including water damage as well as the need to upgrade the projectors. He also shared with me his surprise that a municipality would buy such a building since the floors are slanted for stadium seating and are not built for office use.
My next call was to Acting Supervisor, (current Town Supervisor), Harley Doles. This is where that feeling comes in. That bad feeling. That feeling that you're talking to a shyster of epic proportions. That the person on the other end of the phone is cunningly calculating your angle, and is playing to it, while speaking in a stream of non-sequitur sales pitches, oozing deceit and corruption.
I said, "Councilman Doles, I'm calling to ask about the Town Board's purchase of the movie theater".
The first thing out of Doles mouth, instead of a positive, reasoned explanation, was this:
"Yes, Ms. Convers, did you know that the other two bidders were going to turn the theater into an office building? We saved the building!"
He is the savior in this story. And he is also a liar. I know this, because I had just spoken with the other potential buyer, who didn't give me a creepy, weird, ominous feeling at all. In fact, the other guy is a husband and dad of two kids and lives in Warwick, and was quite friendly and kind.
I went on to say, "What are you going to do with the building, Mr. Doles?"
Here's where it gets even more odd.
I had done a charity theater production for the Presbyterian Church earlier that year. Doles was a member of the Presbyterian Church and knew that I was in that production. Here was his angle.
"Ms. Convers, you like theater, don't you? You know the Troiano's? They're going to run the theater! We're going to have stage productions, and they're going to run it! It's going to be great!"
I shared with Mr. Doles my concerns about their lack of a concrete plan, and the fact that they spent almost a million dollars on a building without taxpayer input.
He continued to bob and weave and convince me that I will love it, because I'm "in the theater".
The Sugar Loaf Performing Arts Center is only minutes away and has been struggling since it was built. Museum Village has a community theater troupe and a theater. The School District has multiple plays each year.
I was a theater major in college. I do love the arts. I don't love liars, and I don't trust a man like Harley Doles to provide me with arts and culture. Nor do I want someone as disjointed and irresponsible as he is to use my tax dollars to provide a cultural center for me.
I decided to attend some Town Board meetings to get a look at our government at work.
I was not alone. Many people showed up to the Town Board meeting which immediately followed the Town's purchase of the movie theater. And for many different reasons, people were not pleased.
It was the Town Board's response to this displeasure that was the most enlightening. It was immediately apparent to me that the Town Board was not working for the people in that room that night.
There were other forces at play here, and the more I organized and the more I attended meetings, the more I understood the level of corruption we were dealing with.
To be continued..........
