03/14/11 No Wonder This Rag Is Called The Westmore Snooze: Former Westmore News Reporter Nik Bonopartis Has Filed Another Report About The Latest Building Department Police Raid And Richard Abel Is Still Asleep At The Switch

Photo: Once Again Westmore News Publisher Richard "My Daddy Gave Ne This Newspaper After He Forgot To Pay Over 100 Tax Bills" Abel Is In A Self Induced Coma.

Ace Nik Bonopartis Files One Breaking Port Chester News Story After Another At The New AOL / Patch News Website.

Staffing Changes Pending for Building Department as Authorities Review Thousands of Records

Of some 3,000 building permits issued over a decade, more than 1,000 are incomplete, creating a major time-sink for investigators.

By Nik Bonopartis - AOL / Port Chester Patch

Staffing changes and new leadership are in store for the building department as police and prosecutors dig through "thousands" of records that span more than a decade, officials said Monday.

For all intents and purposes, the building department remains frozen in time after police detectives installed new locks on the beleaguered office on Friday. The office is physically off-limits to anyone except investigators from the Port Chester Police Department and the Westchester County District Attorney's Office, as authorities look to preserve records and evidence.

An investigation into corruption at the building department began on April 29 of last year, when police closed the office for the first time and carted away boxes of records. Some employees were sent home Friday after police returned to lock the office down, but the department's clerical staff has been moved and will remain available to take applications and answer questions, Mayor Dennis Pilla said.

Police have remained mum of the details of the investigation, but former Building Inspector Frank Ruccolo was suspended in the aftermath, and officials say police have been digging through thousands of individual paper records that span a decade, when Leonard Cusumano – Ruccolo's predecessor – helmed the department.

When maintenance worker Daniel DeLisa was fired in February for allegedly outsourcing his $5,400-a-year cleaning job, DeLisa told authorities the late Cusumano gave his blessing to outsource the job a decade ago. Similar stories abound in the village.

One major time-sink for investigators is the sheer number of records in disorganized paper files. Those records pre-date recent modernization and digitization efforts at village hall, and Pilla said investigators are working through a cache of 3,000 building permits.

Of those permit files, 1,000 were never closed, meaning current staffers don't know what happened with those cases.

The process involves "reinspecting all of the suspicious-looking inspections from the past, to make sure that in the present tense there are no violations," Pilla said. "There are thousands of records that are abnormal. And the people of Port Chester need to understand that's going to take time."

While Pilla said potential criminal charges would come "not soon enough," he said the investigation's scope has expanded beyond the records at village hall.

Police have not discussed details, but a source familiar with the investigation said authorities are looking at the bank statements, property assets and financial records of suspected employees. The source pointed to one former employee who owns a home worth almost $1 million and likely could not have financed the home with official, reported income.

Sources say those patterns have increasingly become a focus of several concurrent criminal investigations – including the building department case and the parking meter theft probe.

In the meantime, Port Chester's leaders are exploring several options for the future of the building department. Pilla said staffers are exploring the possibility of combining building department operations with a nearby municipality, while Village Manager Christopher Russo interviews civil service candidates for the building inspector role. Russo will present a list of candidates to the board "very shortly," possibly at the next public board meeting.

Check back with Port Chester Patch for updates on the building department investigation.

HERE IS NIK'S PREVIOUS BREAKING NEWS STORY FROM EARLIER TODAY:

03/14/11 Where's The Westmore News? Here Is Another Port Chester Patch Breaking News Alert

BREAKING NEWS

TWO THUMBS UP FOR THE PORT CHESTER PATCH !!!! FORMER WESTMORE NEWS REPORTER NIK BONOPARTIS HAS ONCE AGAIN SCOOPED HIS OLD BOSS RICHARD "MY DADDY GOT ME THIS NEWSPAPER BY FORGETTING TO PAY OVER 100 PROPERTY TAX BILLS" ABEL . GOVERNMENT Police Shutter Building Department Again; Employees Sent Home Ten months after launching an investigation into corruption at Port Chester's building department, police have shut the office down again. By Nik Bonopartis | Mar 14, 2011

In a sign that a 10-month corruption investigation may be coming to a close, Port Chester police shuttered the building department at village hall on Friday, freezing operations and sending employees home. Details remain few. Port Chester police Lt. James Ladeairous confirmed detectives closed the office on Friday, saying the office is physically off-limits pending action by the police and village government. Mayor Dennis Pilla also confirmed the lock-down. "This is yet another step in the journey of rooting out corruption in Port Chester," he wrote in reply to a query from Patch......

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03/14/11 Where's The Westmore News? Here Is Another Port Chester Patch Breaking News Alert

Breaking News

TWO THUMBS UP FOR THE PORT CHESTER PATCH !!!! Former Westmore News REPORTER NIK BONOPARTIS HAS Once AgAIN SCOOPED HIS OLD BOSS RICHARD "My Daddy GoT Me This NewsPAPER BY FORGETTING TO PAY OVER 100 PROPERTY TAX BILLS" ABEL . Government Police Shutter Building Department Again; Employees Sent Home Ten months after launching an investigation into corruption at Port Chester's building department, police have shut the office down again. By Nik Bonopartis | Mar 14, 2011

In a sign that a 10-month corruption investigation may be coming to a close, Port Chester police shuttered the building department at village hall on Friday, freezing operations and sending employees home. Details remain few. Port Chester police Lt. James Ladeairous confirmed detectives closed the office on Friday, saying the office is physically off-limits pending action by the police and village government. Mayor Dennis Pilla also confirmed the lock-down. "This is yet another step in the journey of rooting out corruption in Port Chester," he wrote in reply to a query from Patch. The investigation was revealed publicly for the first time last year, when police first shut down the department and hauled away boxes of records on April 29. Frank Ruccolo, the department's building inspector, was suspended without pay in the resulting investigation, and soon after submitted retirement papers. Although the village drafted administrative charges against Ruccolo, the disgraced former building inspector used the protection of state personnel law to bury the charges when he retired. As a result, the details of those charges never became public, and village residents have become increasingly frustrated as other suspended former employees used the same legal strategy. State law says the personnel files of public employees are protected, unless details in those files point to dereliction of duty or other allegations of misbehavior. Two employees have been suspended in an investigation into money stolen from Port Chester's parking meters. Estimates suggest the thefts totaled about $150,000 per year. On Sept. 22 of last year, former DPW General Foreman Gary Racaniello buried 36 pending administrative charges by resigning. In a letter, Racaniello told Russo his resignation was "conditioned on" two things: "that all disciplinary charges...are hereby withdrawn" and "that all copies of disciplinary charges (pending or to be lodged), as well as other paperwork related to any other disciplinary charges will not be filed." In January, village hall brought disciplinary charges against William Oxer, a DPW employee and former chief of the Port Chester Fire Department. Those charges have not been publicly revealed, and Oxer declined to comment when reached by phone. Oxer's name came up in the parking meter probe as early as November, but his legal troubles were not limited to the meter investigation and hint at the alleged wide-scale corruption involving building department operations–after a home he co-owned caught fire in September, Oxer and co-owner Charles Horton were cited for allowing illegal occupancy, conducting work on the home without permits, and renting the home without installing smoke or carbon-monoxide detectors. In December, police served the DPW and finance department with a subpoena, marking the third time in one year that criminal authorities took records from village hall departments during corruption investigations. The investigations and suspensions have fueled political disagreements within Port Chester, sparking heated exchanges and drawing the attention of the district attorney's Public Integrity Bureau. Mayoral challenger Bart Didden has said the investigations signal a lack of oversight, while imcumbent Mayor Dennis Pilla says it's the staff he's hired and supervised – including Village Manager Christopher Russo and Code Enforcement Director Christopher Steers – have been the driving force behind finding and exposing corruption in the village. In October, Trustee Sam Terenzi was called in to speak to investigators at the Public Integrity Bureau after an outburst during a public meeting in which he referred to a tipster in the parking meter probe as "a rat." Terenzi and the board's Republicans were accused of trying to fire Robert Lombardi, the assistant village manager who headed the administrative investigations in the parking meter probe. Republican trustees, including Terenzi, Didden and Kenner, argued that eliminating Lombardi's $79,000-a-year position was a cost-cutting measure, but raised eyebrows among the public for the timing of that effort, days after Lombardi revealed charges in the meter investigation. After months of praising Code Enforcement Director Christopher Steers for combating corruption and systemically inspecting thousands of homes in Port Chester since taking over enforcement duties from the building department, mayoral candidate Bart Didden issued a campaign press release earlier this month saying those efforts were not enough. Downtown "is an embarrassment to our residents," Didden said, while criticizing the pace of code enforcement efforts ahead of Tuesday's mayoral vote. Check back with Port Chester Patch for updates on the building department investigation. Also, be sure to go over to Broad Street and wake up Richard Abel, because he and the Westmore Snooze is once again asleep at the switch.

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03/01/11 What A Gavone - Bart "The Bigot" Didden Had No Certificate Of Occupancy At His Downtown Office. Bart Is Just A Fake, Phony And A Fraud.

Is Former Planning Board Member Bart "The Bigot" Didden On Drugs Or Is The The Furniture Upstairs In His Head Just Re-arranged In All The Wrong Rooms?

For Many Years Extremist TEA Party Lunatic Bart "The Bigot" Didden Worked Out Of A Downtown Port Chester Building That Had No Certificate Of Occupancy And Had Many Other Serious Building Code Violations.

Bart "The Bigot" Didden Appears To Be Mentally Ill As He Has Trys To Take Aim At Port Chester Village Manager Chris Russo Over Code Enforcement.

Through The Murk Of Bart "The Bigot" Didden's Long History Of Corruption And Building Code Violations He Now Procliams That "Downtown Is An Embarrassment To Village Residents And That Port Chester Has Not Done Enough To Crack Down On Safety Violations.

Manga-Looch Bart "The Bigot" Didden also accused Port Chester Mayor Dennis Pilla of going back on his promise to increase code enforcement staffing, saying the mayor "transferred funding for two additional code enforcement officers to a contingency fund."

Mayor Dennis Pilla disputes Didden's hallucinations, saying the vacancies in the part-time positions were created when the part-time code enforcement officers were promoted to full-time positions. He pointed to an internal e-mail exchange with Village Manager Christopher Russo.

"Two of the full-time positions were filled by the part-time code enforcement officers being brought up to full time pending civil service exam, of course, but they are legally in the positions provisionally," Port Chester Village Manager Chris Russo wrote. "This resulted in two part time positions now vacant for which we are actively recruiting."

Since taking over code enforcement duties, Christopher Steers has been highly lauded by both Democrats and Republicans on the board. Code enforcement was traditionally part of the long-corrupt building department, which was raided by the Port Chester Police Department early last year, resulting in the retirement of Acting Building Inspector Frank "Dirty Deals Done Dirt Cheap" Ruccolo after he was suspended without pay in May.

Frank "Dirty Deals Done Dirt Cheap" Ruccolo, assistant to longtime building inspector Leonard Cusumano, is widely rumored to have taken bribes.

Several sources say police raided the building department after police received credible evidence that Ruccolo had taken a $1,500 bribe to approve an illegal dwelling, but the investigation has been ongoing for 10 months without a comment from police.

Remnants of the alleged corruption surfaced earlier this month, when maintenance worker Daniel DeLisa was fired for allegedly outsourcing his $5,400-a-year cleaning job. DeLisa told authorities the late Cusumano gave DeLisa his blessing to outsource the job a decade ago; DeLisa had been paying a woman to do the work since 2001.

After the scandal surfaced, Didden was forced to backpedal after claiming he'd "uncovered" the corruption.

Although the police investigation is ongoing, Cusumano passed away in 2007 and Ruccolo was allowed to retire, it's difficult to find a resident in town who does not have a corruption story about the building department.

It all adds up to a staggering amount of corruption Steers has had to contend with as code enforcement director, and in January he threatened to quit after Trustee Sam "Wine, Dine And Pocket Line" Terenzi was dangling a promotion in front of Steers in exchange for political support.

Years Ago, Port Chester's Most Influential Newspaper, The TRUE BLUE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW Reported On The Bart Didden And Lenny Cusumano Corruption Story

THE TRUE BLUE

CONSERVATIVE REVIEW

=============================

Port Chester's most influential newspaper.

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For Years And Years Bart Didden Has

Been Threatening To Send

Corrupt Members Of The

Mayor Gerald Logan' Patronage Machine To

The Port Chester Ethics Board......

For a year Bart Didden was filing Freedom of Information requests against Port

Chester Trustee Bob Sorensen.

Bart Didden went so far as to threaten Robert Soresen, by saying that he would release

the information unless Mr. Sorensen did not immediately resign. Then Bart Didden went

on cable TV attacking and threatening Mr. Sorensen.

Worse yet, Bart Didden was taking the information about Bob Sorensen to the Westmore

News in "anattempt to get bad articles written about Trustee Bob Sorensen. Further, Bart

. Didden contacted Liz Sadler of the Journal News in order to get even more articles

printed about Mr. Sorensen and his family.

Bart Didden was the driving force behind organizing the "Letter To The Editor" writing

campaign agaipst Mr. Sorensen's family.

But that was not enough. Bart continued the attacks for about two and a half months calling for Mr. Sorrensen to be sent to the Port Chester Ethic's Board.

When all was said and done the Bart Didden's information about the Trustee Sorensen's parking tickets was not very good and was in fact a hyped up attack against Mr. Sorensen.

For the record Trustee Robert Sorensen was never ever

referred to the Port Chester Ethics Board.

The Port Chester Official That Should Be

Dragged Before The Port Chester Ethics

Board Is The Lawbreaker Bart Didden.

Bart Didden has sat on the Port Chester Planning

Commission, while having

No Certificate Of Occupancy

For one year Port Chester Building Inspector Lenny

Cusamano has been afraid to inspect Bart Didden's

Main Street Business even though G&S testified at a

public hearing that Bart'Didden's building is not in

compliance with Port Chester Buildin Code Laws.

Over one year ago Port Chester Building Inspector

Lenny Cusamano was asked to produce a copy of

Bart Didden's Certificate Of Occupancy and could

not produce a copy.

Bart Didden Is A Lawbreaker And A Criminal.

It Is Landlords Like Him Who Have

Ruined Downtown Port Chester

The True Blue Conservative Has Always Said

That When Planning Board Member Bart Didden Says Jump.

Building Inspector Lenny Cusumano

Says,"How High?"

Perhaps we should now start saying...

"When Bart Didden says jump fetch beg or

bark and Cusumano does it."

The single-family homeowners of Port Chester Hate The Fact That

Planning Board Member Bart Didden Has The Very Corrupt Port Chester Building Inspector Lenny Cusumano Wrapped Around His Little Finger.

First Bart Didden sues the single-family homeowners of Port

Chester for 10 Million Dollars and then he uses his cash to become

a big shot in the Republican Party that he repeatedly called corrupt.

BART DIDDEN IS NOT A PART OF THE SOLUTION

BART DIDDEN IS A PART OF THE PROBLEM

Port Chester Taxpayers Suffer, Because Of

Downtown Building Code Violators Like Bart Didden

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