As you can see from this exchange the City of New Rochelle continues to stonewall efforts to get to the bottom of the STAR and Combat Veterans Property Tax Exemptions Municipal Civil Service Commission Domenic Procopio pocketed for eight years, according to City officials, all supposedly due to an unidentified, unexplained “clerical error”.
We will say it over and over again, set aside questions about the basis for these tax exemptions being granted and focus instead on why a public official would see them on his tax bill for eight years and say nothing about them. Read the whole thing until the end.
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From: Robert Cox Sent: Monday, October 19, 2009 11:57 AM
To: Strome, Chuck
Cc: Gilwit, Kathy
Subject: follow up meetings regarding Mr. Procopio
Mr. Strome,
I met today with Kathy Gilwit. While I certainly appreciate the opportunity to meet with her it has become clear that she is not in a position to directly answer any of the questions I have asked over the past 10 days regarding Mr. Procopio.
I would appreciate the opportunity to sit down with the appropriate person in the tax assessor’s office to discuss the exemptions we all now seem to agree were being applied to Mr. Procopio’s property at 7 Pinebrook Road.
I have also asked some questions that I believe apply to you regarding Mr. Procopio’s role as Chairman of the New Rochelle Civil Service Commission. I would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you and get direct answers to the questions I have sent in previous emails.
Thank you so much for your time.
Robert Cox
Managing Editor
Talk of the Sound
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On Oct 22, 2009, at 11:38 AM, “Strome, Chuck” wrote:
Dear Mr. Cox:
As Ms. Gilwit has advised you, the exemptions on the property at 7 Pinebrook Road continued at this property as a result of a clerical error by the City, not as a result of any action taken by the property owner(s). The Assessor’s office handles over 15,000 exemptions, and from time to time unfortunately errors and oversights do occur especially given our limited staffing.
The City will correct the error in accordance with New York State Real Property Tax Law.
Relative to the New Rochelle Municipal Civil Service Commission, please be advised that the members of this body are appointed by and serve at the pleasure of the Mayor.
Sincerely,
Charles B. Strome, III
City Manager
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From: Robert Cox
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 12:50 PM
To: Strome, Chuck
Cc: Robert Cox; Gilwit, Kathy
Subject: Re: follow up meetings regarding Mr. Procopio
I asked for meetings. Your reply is entirely non-responsive to that request. Please respond directly to my request for meetings with people in the tax assessor office.
While I appreciate your answer to one of my questions – a reader had already sent me the relevent section of the City Charter – you have left unanswered the vast majority of questions. When will you answer all of my questions?
Be aware, the more you stonewall me the more I am convinced that the City has something to hide. I do not believe for one second that this was a “clerical error”. Regardless of the cause, a City official has known for 8 years he has been receiving tax exemptions to which he is clearly not entitled. That these exemptions include more than a dozen combat veteran exemptions for a man who never served makes this a particularly despicable act.
Why you would imagine I will accept anything less than a full accounting of this matter is both amusing and pathetic at the same time. Rest assured that I will never stop investigating this matter. That you continue to throw up roadblocks only serves to confirm my original suspicions and exponentially increase my determination to pursue this matter wherever it may lead.
You have a FOIL request from me. I look forward to your making available for inspection the records I have requested to inspect. To be clear, as Kathy seems confused on this point, that includes documents such as property records which may exist elsewhere such as the County Clerk’s office but copies of which are also kept by the City.
Thank you so much for your attention to this matter.
Have a nice day.
Robert Cox
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From: Strome, Chuck
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 12:50 PM
To: Robert Cox
Cc: Gilwit, Kathy
Subject: Re: follow up meetings regarding Mr. Procopio
I do not intend to reply.
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The More You Read About This Issue , The More Disturbing
Following along the dialogue regarding the STAR exemptions , I wonder , how can a person be in charge of a civil service commission and not be capable of reading his own tax bill ? Not a very encouraging comment on the level of competency , is it ? Maybe it’s something else Mr P brings to the table . How many votes did he deliver to Tim Idoni from his Casa Calabria society ? Oh , now it’s making sense . He doesn’t have to know anything about running a civil service commission , as long as he delivers a voting block . Just trying to sort out what he actually does .
If he can’t understand a tax bill one page long , he shouldn’t be running a city level commission .
If he does understand his tax bill , he has been stealing money from the taxpayers for ten years .
Either way , the taxpayers deserve their money back and city hall has done nothing except try to misdirect the conversation rather than say “we’ve turned it over to the assessor for proper disposition” . Chuck Strome himself has admitted Mr Procopio is NOT entitled to the exemptions eother on the 2nd property or his veterans exemptions . Ask any veteran what he/she thinks about Mr Strome defending this thief . Like I said , think through the response from Chuck and Cathy and I’m sure you’ll see how bad this is . Chuck should give a full accounting and Cathy should quit . Nothing else is acceptable .
We’re facing a 7 to 10% tax increase at minimum
Considering our tax increase for the upcoming year may be a double digit increase , wouldn’t it make sense to try to recoup any monies the city is entitled to to help ease the burden on the citizens ? They may not be compelled by law to clawback Mr Procopio’s “indulgence” but they ARE ALLOWED to do so by law. Doing so is mandatory if the city is to really able to claim they are acting in the interest of the citizens . I for one refuse to accept subsidizing Mr Procopio’s housing because he is “connected” with the mayor , city manager , or it’s communication director . Ethics in government demand there shouldn’t even be the illusion of inpropriety . The whole thing stinks of nepotism and inpropriety . It may not be illegal but it certainly is wrong on so many levels . Strome , Bramson and who knows else is so terrified of Mr Cox’s questions , they chose to throw Cathy Gilwit under the bus as a sacrifice to hiding the truth . She has no business engaging in the coverup of improper tax abatements . They tell her what to say and she repeats it . That’s hardly responsible behavior towards a citizen’s request from a city official . Shame , shame , shame on all of you . I’ll send you some Lysol , maybe it will help disinfect whatever ails you .
If Chuck Strome skirts his
If Chuck Strome skirts his moral obligation you can bet not far behind a legal obligation shall follow.
The Tax payers in New Rochelle deserve better than a City Manager whom is percieved to drag his feet in a matter of public trust. There have been other occasions where by Mr. Strome has crossed ethical lines. Specifically in his letter writing on City Stationary touting a certain developer suggesting the City of Stamford CT should get on board that developers gravy train.
Citizens of New Rochelle deserve total propriety with matters that concern public money and public funds. Transparency is a obligation. If Strome thinks he can sweep the matter over towards understaffing and sheer quanity of Star Tax Filings he is opening himself up to scrutiny. NY State Ethical Guidelines kick in and he may have a responsibility to go above and beyond to clear this matter up. I believe this may be time for a wider eye inclusive of Press Coverage on a larger scale. Once the lights are turned on the Roaches may start to scatter so to speak. Star Tax falls under a wider code in NY State Law. Go at Cuomo hard with this he may just have to do something.
Robert send the exchange to
Robert send the exchange to Andrew Cuomo ask him to ask the questions of Chuck Strome.
If you do not get an answer from him you can assume political affinity is in play.
Then you should bump it up to the federal level.
Strome may not have an obligation to meet with you but he has an obligation to clawback every dollar that was eroniously applied due to the assesors 15,000 exemption work load and their short staffing problem.
Eventually we can only hope that his short staffing gets even shorter as he himself could fall victim to his incompetance, and his inability to see the gravity of the implications of him not taking action immediately.
City is not required to demand restitution
According to the NYS Dept. of Taxation & Finance, all such matters are determined at the local level. If the City chooses, they could forgive any unpaid taxes. So, when you say Chuck has an “obligation” to clawback monies you must mean a moral obligation. Legally, they can do whatever they want.
Until the City provides the public records I have requested and/or some sort of meaningful explanation as to how these exemptions came to be and how they ended up being applied to Mr. Procopio’s tax bill when he was clearly not entitled to them we really do not know exactly what happened. I will see that simply calling this a “clerical error” is unacceptable. It does absolutely nothing to dispel the impression that as a government official, Mr. Procopio received a very generous “favor” in these exemptions being applied to his tax bill.
Regardless, the City does not dispute that since 2002, Mr. Procopio has been receiving thousands of dollars worth of STAR and Combat Vet exemptions to which he was not entitled. Is there some question as to whether Mr. Procopio had an obligation to report the supposed “clerical error”? As a public official, Mr. Procopio certainly has an obligation to explain why he failed to notify the tax assessor of the “clerical error”. So, why didn’t he? Mr. Procopio serves at the pleasure of the Mayor. I would like to know whether the Mayor has determined why his appointee failed to notify anyone of the “clerical error” and instead pocketed money intended to combat veterans.
Chuck Strome seems intent on dismissing the matter because he claims that Mr. Procopio did not actively seek the STAR and Combat Veterans exemptions. At the same time, the City says they have NO RECORD of anyone applying for those exemptions. So, if there are no records on what basis can Mr. Strome say with any certainty what happened in this case.
By way of explanation, Mr. Strome says the City handles 15,000 exemptions as if this is somehow explanatory.
One of the questions I have asked repeatedly is why the tax assessor would sign his name to a document that all of the exemptions on the tax roll are valid without making even the most cursory examination of the exemptions. The information is stored in a database (you can access it via the City’s website). It is a simple matter to sort the database by STAR exemption and highlight any properties that match a name already in the database. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Microsoft Excel can do this in 3 minutes (File, Export, Sort for Dupes) — maybe less. In a matter of minutes the tax assessor can generate a list of names of people who are getting STAR exemptions on more than one property. I venture to say that the result would be a list of a tiny fraction of 15,000. Perhaps you would come up with a few dozen matches. How long would it take the assessor to then inspect those properties to see whether a name is listed as the sole owner of both properties as is the case with Domenic Procopio. I would venture to say that by checking the tax roll in this way once a year might take an hour and result in catching these sorts of “clerical errors”.
We will see when we get the records but Mr. Procopio probably owes about $10,000. Let’s say you find a half dozen of these cases a year. That’s $60,000 which would allow the City to keep one of the firefighters, police officers or DPW workers they are not planning on firing.
When you start to understand the full extent of the manipulation of the tax rolls by way of improper exemptions and the failure to close out a building permit on a residence with a Certificate of Occupancy you will see that there are hundreds of thousands of dollars being given away by the City, often to people who have various connections within the City government. Toss in uncollected taxes from people who are in arrears and the work of Mr. Vacca in identifying improper STAR exemptions on properties where the owner is renting a single family home to 2-3 families you can see that the amounts involved climb up over a million dollars a year.
In a year when the City is talking about cutting firefighters and police and DPW workers, this is money that can go towards making our city safe, clean and in good repair. What is amusing is to consider how much energy the City has put into obtaining Stimulus Funds from the Federal government with no result when they could put far less effort into simply collecting money they are already owed.