The following letter was published in this week’s issue of the Gazette.
To the editor:
It is not easy to admit a major mistake, especially when the reasons for the failure were predicted at the outset of the venture. It helps if a face-saving exit strategy is offered. Mr. Lippolis of River Towns Realty has offered the Croton Board of Trustees an exit strategy, and they would do well to consider it.
Croton is not a place where open government is welcome, and that is once again the case with the latest chapter in the decade-long Laurel Gouveia saga. At the same time the Board of Trustees was telling us the implausible story that various village offices would be relocated to the Gouveia residence, they were secretly reviving plans to lease the house to a family seeking to live in the middle of what purports to be a public park.
Enter Mr. Lippolis. After viewing the property last summer, on August 31 he wrote a memo to Village Manager King and basically said that the “deferred maintenance” (realtor-speak for “the house is a dump”) and other factors make it impractical to attempt to rent the property as a residence. To his credit, Mr. Lippolis then offered two alternatives: rental as a “Corporate Office located in a Public Park with Hudson River views” or subdivide the residence from the park and sell the residence.
“Croton is not a place where open government is welcome, and that is once again the case with the latest chapter in the decade-long Laurel Gouveia saga. At the same time the Board of Trustees was telling us the implausible story that various village offices would be relocated to the Gouveia residence, they were secretly reviving plans to lease the house to a family seeking to live in the middle of what purports to be a public park.”
In customary Croton fashion, the residents of Croton knew nothing about what has been going on behind the scenes. But now that those who run Croton have made a decision, the documents have been made public. Well, that is not exactly true. Only some of the documents have been made public. Whatever documents relate to the public trust doctrine and potential liability thereunder remain tightly sealed from view even as the Croton Board of Trustees reviews a real estate listing agreement which contemplates alienation of public parkland for a period of at least 60 months.
Long before the Board of Trustees did Mrs. Gouveia a favor by saddling Croton taxpayers with this white elephant, village residents pointed out the serious problems with the scheme. One of those problems was the lack of an exit strategy in case the property turned out to be the money pit which we all knew it would become. The most obvious impediment is the difficulty in generating income from the property by means of rental agreements, as well as the cumbersome process if Croton decided to sell the property.
Mr. Lippolis is not so crass as to utter the phrase “public trust doctrine” but at the end of his August memo, he gently raises the issue of legality. As I noted previously (The Gazette, March 22 2018) the law in New York says that public parkland is held in trust for the public and this means that Albany must approve many of the options which Croton has proposed for Gouveia—including some of the options proposed by Mr. Lippolis. I understand that the Croton Board of Trustees is Mr. Lippolis’ client and that for years his client has adamantly refused to discuss the issue in public, but Mr. Lippolis’ avoidance of the doctrine does not make the problem go away.
I have never understood why the Croton Board of Trustees does not work with Ms. Galef and Mr. Harckham so that we can unload this money pit of a house. Mr. Lippolis’ suggestion that the property be segmented and the house sold with a sufficiently large plot of land is a win-win. It would allow for the “Laurel Gouveia Lived Here” ego billboard along Albany Post Road, it would allow the Board of Trustees to save face by maintaining the fiction that this was a smart decision, and it would save hundreds of thousands of dollars for the taxpayers of Croton.
I am a bit more risk-averse than Mr. Lippolis, but I appreciate that his considered judgment as a licensed professional is that it is within acceptable risk parameters to proceed with the commercial rental listing despite the years-long discussion as to whether the parkland can be alienated in such a manner. Berkshire Hathaway is a large company with deep pockets, so there is recourse in the event of litigation, and if they are comfortable with being the licensed agents in this transaction, that is a sign that they don’t see a problem with the public trust doctrine. It may be that those of us who have raised this issue over the years have been ignored by the Croton Board of Trustees because we are wrong on this point.
However, the failure to discuss this openly may impact the pool of prospective renters. I assume that Mr. Lippolis will have private conversations with other brokers and disclose to them how the Village of Croton intends to defend and indemnify them (and their client) in the event that the public trust doctrine becomes an issue. That is fine.
But more risk-averse commercial realtors may not even show the property given the possibility of the lease being adjudicated as void on grounds of the public trust doctrine, and a prospective lessee’s attorney may balk at not having at least an Opinion of Counsel letter and an indemnification clause in the lease. This is particularly true since the whole marketing angle is to pitch it as “Corporate Office located in a Public Park with Hudson River views.” That is an attractive pitch, but any licensed professional such as a real estate salesperson or attorney will immediately think “public trust doctrine.” So why not deal with this up front now rather than after some company has sunk tens of thousands of dollars into buildout?
Being a politician in Croton means never having to admit you made a mistake; you just force the taxpayers to bear the consequences. So our Board of Trustees will never agree to get rid of the whole Gouveia property. But Mr. Lippolis’ suggestion is a reasonable compromise, and as I recall the only obligation the Village of Croton has is to keep up that huge “Laurel Gouveia” sign and display that creepy Hummel statue of the children.
Selling off the decrepit house and as much of the non-wild land (such as roadways etc.) as possible will reduce the burden on Croton taxpayers at a time when we are facing uncertain financial times ahead. The third option proposed by Mr. Lippolis in his August memorandum is about the most sensible thing I have heard in the last 5 years of the Gouveia saga, and provides a pathway to resolution for the taxpayers of Croton.
Paul Steinberg