Most of you have seen the movie ” The Money Pit” starring Tom Hanks and Shelly Long. A young, struggling New York couple buy a beautiful upstate home for what they think is a steal. After they move in, however, they realize they got what they paid for: a disaster in desperate need of repairs, falling apart and an urgency to renovate the house before the frame collapses.
Sounds familiar? Ansonia’s money pit is the 1970’s Farrell office building. Instead of building a new facility on Olson Drive, city administration took on the task to convert the building the Farrell building into Police Facility/Senior Center/Parking Garage. As City Admin got into the conversion, it has became more than a simple conversion. My understanding is that $6 million was originally proposed for this conversion project.
The 2021 – 2019 audits show that Ansonia City Admin spent $12.8 million (Construction in Progress) to date as of June 30, 2021 for the Farrell building conversion. This is more than double the proposed project and basically the same comparable cost of a brand new facility on Olson Drive. Currently, as I speak the I have not heard if the Farrell building has a complete COO (Certificate of Occupancy).
Obviously, something went wrong. It appears the city admin did not request a thorough engineering study and/or the study was incomplete. Taxpayer’s should be entitled to see the engineering study if there was one. Who’s to blame. Not the Engineering company, it is City Admin as they did not have the professional expertise and common sense for a project of this magnitude. The people responsible should be fired for wasting millions of taxpayer dollars. In private industry I have witnessed employees being fired for wasting $500,000 or less.
Kurt Miller, The Chief Administrative Officer replied to my first letter stating that the $11 million bonded in 2021 was for the Farrell building conversion. I don’t understand why the city needs another $11 million dollars to complete the project which would then be a total of $23.8 million ($12.8 + $11.0). This does not make any sense. So the city spent $12.8 million and then bonded $11 million monies later. This is equivalent to building a $12.8 million house and then going to the bank to get your mortgage after you finished building the Money Pit.
How was the reported $12.8 million spent to date funded. My guess is through spending surplus funds, use of bond monies acquired prior to 2021 and maybe city operating funds or ARPA monies.
The 2021 audit reports has a summary of bond monies approved. What it does not show is the particular project and amount associated with each bond. Also, there is no post audit report that measures how the money was spent versus each bond’s original intent. Complete lack of transparency and accountability by city officials. Is the city admin using the bond money pool as a slush fund to cover their mistakes and fuel their agenda?
Tax revenues are not sufficient to keep their agenda afloat and they will need to continue borrowing money to keep the boat from sinking or worse a tax increase.
Sincerely,
Richard Tylinski
ANSONIA
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