Real Estate Amateur Hour

Here are the facts regarding the $1 a year Columbus Avenue Lease shown in the documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Law:

1. The Valhalla School district is leasing the entire Columbus Avenue School Property to Easter Seals of NY for $1 a year.

2. The $1 a year lease was prepared by a school attorney at the direction of Tom Kelly and Brian Wolfson, who offered it to Easter Seals five months before the school board voted to "enter in to negotiations" on leasing the school.

3. Dr. Kelly even applied, with his tenant, Easter Seals, to the New York State Office of Children and Family Services for a day care license before the board voted to enter into negotiations on a lease.

4. It is a ten year lease, with a ten year option. There is no provision increasing the $1 a year rent over twenty years

5. Valhalla pays for maintenance and utilities on the building. The $90,000 annual payment which the district claims as rent is a reimbursement for utilities, snow removal and maintenance that any other tenant would pay in addition to market rent and it is all that Easter Seals pays. The district also claims that Easter Seals was planning to renovate the playground for community use. Take a walk to the playground. The fence is in disrepair and coming apart. Sections of the top rail are disconnected and present a dangerous condition. Several of the swings are are broken and have not been replaced and a whole section of the old playground is mission. Easter Seals in in the third year of it's lease. It has cost the taxpayer over $1 million dollars to keep the school since it closed and Easter Seals can not even keep the swing set in tact.

6. The superintendent’s claim that Easter Seals paid $500,000 for "improvements" to Columbus Avenue, is completely undocumented. The lease requires Easter Seals to provide such documentation to the school district and the New York State office of Children and Family services must review and approve such improvements. Neither the district nor the Office of Children and Family services has any proposal, permit, invoice or correspondence evidencing any major capital improvements.

7. The school district has a continuing bond payment of $300,000 for work done on the Columbus Avenue School in 1991. The district pays $300,000 out of funds meant for children’s education to pay the bond so that Easter Seals can rent the building for $1.

8. According to the district's Voyages newsletter, only 24 Valhalla students use the after school program offered by Easter Seals exclusively for Valhalla residents.

9. To secure board approval of the $1 a year lease, school board members were told that if the district received market rent, the district would have to pay School, Town and County real estate taxes on the property. The truth is school districts are never subject to paying real estate taxes.

School Districts are government agencies organized to operate under the laws of the State of New York. Employees of the school district and even boards of education are not permitted to use tax dollars to subsidize privately run, un-mandated pre-school and after-school programs. By ignoring state law requiring districts to lease property belonging to the taxpayers at market rent, the board of education is effectively subsidizing Easter Seals, a Park Ave corporation, and its clients. Should school tax dollars subsidize similar programs at Holy Name of Jesus and the Methodist Church? After all, these benefit working mothers, too.

The resources of the school district must be directed to the education of the children of the district who are of age and only as prescribed by law. This matter has been brought to the attention of the New York State Comptroller's Department and after completion of their audit, the board should sell the property, applying all proceeds to outstanding debt of the district.

We continue to press the state comptrollers office to do a full audit on this district that has been illegally and fraudualently run since 1998. Please feel free to contact Jack Dougherty at the state comptroller's office and let him know you want an audit JDOUGHERTY@osc.state.ny.us

More Unethical Practices

Consistent with their unethical fiscal practices, the Valhalla School District has shown their partisanship in the area of information dissemination. Here are some examples:

1. The Valhalla School District, which is run totally by Superintendent Tom Kelly, refuses to make Board of Education meetings available for viewing on cable access. Even though the ability to broadcast is available by cablevision and requests to do so have been made at several board meetings, Tom Kelly still says no. This, of course, is to keep any resident who does not have children attending Valhalla schools in the dark.

2. The residents who do have children attending Valhalla schools are spoon fed only the information that would encourage parents to support Valhalla's upcoming budget. We may then refer to this as propaganda. Only improvements in student performance are stated in this propaganda and anything that reflects poorly on student performance is left out. The district has a new four page mailing called "Voyages" which displays the same kind of selective dissemination of information and it is at the taxpayers expense.

3. Last year, the Valhalla school District has been provided with a service by Verizon that enables them to call all parents simultaneously with a recorded message. This would be useful on snow days or if there is an emergency, but curiously it has not been used in that capacity. Instead the Valhalla School District used this service to remind parents to vote on the three consecutive days prior to the vote. Remember, only parents of children attending Valhalla schools were reminded to vote and no one else!

Drinking Drugs Weapons Harassment- "A Healthy Cross Section” of Valhalla Students

We are shocked to read the latest letter home to the Middle School High School parents telling of student fights, excessive drinking and drug use, unsupervised weekend events, weapons, and harassment among a “healthy cross section” of Valhalla students.

These incidents are somehow impacting on “our ability to remain focused on the business of educating our students”.

Focused? This is a district where unethical behavior and skirting the law are commonplace. A district where budgets are padded, where the superintendent and business manager negotiate $1 a year leases without board of education direction. Where buildings are leased to Park Avenue corporation at $1 a year in violation of the New York State Education Law. Where “off the books” deals are made to dump contaminated fill on school property with no records kept. Where an unneeded $300,000 artificial turf field is purchased through an equipment lease agreement to evade the legal requirement of a taxpayer referendum. This is a district that no longer has a track because we are waiting for a million dollars in foreign money from a pyramid scheme involving the cousin of the dirt broker who brought thousands of tons of untested landfill onto school property. No this can’t be happening in ethical Valhalla, where board members are so keenly focused on their, excuse me, “the” children.

Wake up parents, there are no grown ups home. Through a series of very bad decisions, the High School gym is at the 3rd graders school, the High School track is missing, the new baseball and softball fields are locked, contaminated and the state has come in and taken over the site. In the past two years the district has built and rebuilt and elaborate 500 foot decorative wall at the high school that is so unsafe it requires signs posted through out the grounds warning that anyone sitting on the wall will be removed by directive of the board of education. Meanwhile people attending games sit back into the woods on bleachers borrowed from the local little league. There is now an elaborate, unnecessary and dangerous playplaground at the high school involving rock climbing and high wire acts. Teacher training on the equipment is taking weeks, while uncertified substitutes fill-in in the classrooms. Did you know the pressure treated wood is contaminated with arsinec?

Whatever these student issues are they should be the focus of the administration and staff, not the dirt brokering, property management and circus ring leading that have taken so much time and money away from the children.