Community Corner

Letter To The Editor: Homeowner Amnesty: The "Gift" That's Likely to Keep on Taking, Even After It Expires

This is a Letter to the Editor from Frank Troha, former Port Chester resident and homeowner.

Letter to the Editor,

It’s my opinion that homeowner apathy (or lack of awareness) will end up destroying Port Chester. How so many homeowners can simply sit back and allow themselves to be fleeced is beyond me. I’m speaking of the homeowner amnesty program, which I believe has no legal leg to stand on, yet continues unabated thanks to homeowners who either don’t know their rights, are too intimidated to speak up, or just don’t care. So far, the only individual with the courage to consistently speak out against this travesty that’s been foisted upon Port Chester homeowners is an 89-year-old woman named Bea Conetta. With the exception of Mrs. Conetta, I feel most homeowners in Port Chester should be ashamed of themselves.

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I’ve said it before, this village has become a nightmare for many decent property owners because of the way it has chosen to lump them in with so-called “slumlords”. No other community in the USA that I’m aware of has had the audacity to disparage honest property owners in this manner. Ramapo, for example, has at last gone after its slumlords, and rightfully so. Port Chester, on the other hand, has decreed a policy that ultimately pursues every property owner in town, and thusly has gone off the rails.

What Port Chester has done over the past two to three years certainly appears to be punitive, unethical and illegal, especially if you know anything about “estoppel”.  If not, spend a few minutes looking up the meaning of the word, and then ask yourself if your village has violated it. In short, a community’s officials can’t require that its residents operate in a certain manner for decades on end, collect fees from its residents relative to such operation over the same time period, and then turn on a dime and tell its residents that the official documents it has issued them (certificates of occupancy or in lieu of letters, in this case) – and made them pay for under local law -- are suddenly no longer valid and in need of replacement at residents’ expense. And, by the way, can community officials (as in Port Chester) go about replacing the old documents under a snail-like, half-baked, under-resourced, make-it-up-as-we-go schedule -- and for whatever fees it capriciously sets -- regardless of the havoc it wreaks on residents’ lives? How can this sort of travesty – and its resultant chaos (e.g., numerous delayed and lost sales of property, running into millions of dollars) -- possibly be legal in a country that’s based on rule of law? It cannot. And that’s why we, as a free nation, have estoppel in the first place.

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On a closely related matter, I’ve watched local zoning board meetings and witnessed incidents I never thought I would see in our country. For example, a woman was asked to testify against her spouse concerning a back-yard deck that, according to satellite imagery, appeared improper. (I had thought in the USA there were laws against spouse testifying against spouse, never mind the use of satellites by village officials to compromise a citizen’s privacy along with special software purchased by the village to extrapolate deck size based on a home’s known dimensions.) I also learned that the records held in the village assessor’s office don’t align very well with the records of the building department, but no matter, the homeowner can be dinged despite the most blatant of discrepancies. I also learned about the many homeowners whose parents and grandparents apparently played by the rules for many decades, opening building permits -- and doing so during periods when very few homeowners bothered to open a permit for every little thing they did to their homes. Yet today, the sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters must now pay dearly for the slipshod “work” of our building departments of years past that may well have failed to come back to close out the building permits, or even pick up the phone when an honest, conscientious homeowner tried to ask them to return to inspect the work for which a permit had been opened.  

We’ve been told that today’s amnesty program was designed to supposedly relieve the financial burden of such aforementioned past wrongs committed by: 1) allegedly corrupt and incompetent former building departments; 2) homeowners who bought homes believing all was well because, after all, their title insurers, lenders and attorneys told them so after communicating with the building department and getting the “all clear” signal from village officials or staff; and 3) the occasional homeowner who intentionally did substantial work without opening a permit. What a ruse! Many innocent homeowners in Port Chester are suffering terribly (and all too silently) under the slyly named “amnesty” program, which automatically implies every homeowner must be guilty of some sort of building code violation and therefore needs to come forward (and pay yet another fee) to prove his or her innocence, i.e., if ever he or she is to be able to sell or refinance or bequeath their property. Ask long-time resident Charles Montoya how amnesty has been working out for his parents who obviously have played by the rules for decades. He’ll give you an earful, just as he gave former Mayor Pilla and more recently the current mayor and board of trustees – all to no avail, according to Mr. Montoya.

But what will happen when homeowner amnesty expires in Port Chester? Oh, I think that’s when the “fun” will really begin – and I believe you’ll see that that the homeowner amnesty program is indeed a “gift” that will just keep on taking for decades and decades to come. I believe that anyone who tries to sell or refinance post-amnesty could potentially be fined into foreclosure due to the virtually unconstrained variety and size of fines they could possibly incur. What’s also egregious is the fact that any homeowner can be punished solely on account of the actions of any prior owner (who may have failed to open permits, or may have failed in sufficiently persisting that they be closed) – not to mention the alleged neglect, chicanery or malfeasance of former building department officials who nevertheless blessed their purchase of the property, indicating that all was apparently well with the property prior to closing. And I do remember a prominent board of trustees member once chuckling as he said, “Port Chester never lost money on a foreclosure.” All told, in my opinion at least, the upcoming expiration of amnesty does not bode well for homeowners. Actually, I think it can prove disastrous for many homeowners, including those who have always played by the village’s rules, dutifully paid the village’s absurdly high property and school taxes, and essentially done no wrong concerning home ownership.

Additionally, I believe the village coffers can be substantially and quickly augmented by this recent maneuver by the mayor and board of trustees. Those of you paying attention know that the duration of the amnesty program was recently curtailed – and done so very unexpectedly. I have to wonder why it was curtailed so suddenly by the same board of trustees that had just two weeks or so prior indicated it would be extended. I won’t hazard a guess here, but with this seemingly calculated move, any holes in the village’s budget are likely to be closed sooner rather than later, I imagine. If homeowners in Port Chester don’t have the wherewithal to expose the amnesty program for the legal travesty it apparently is (under obvious violation of estoppel) and demand restitution for any expenses or losses personally incurred to date, they can at least insist that the amnesty program be extended indefinitely. Or is that too much to expect?

I left Port Chester weeks ago, and I’m so very glad that I did. Do you remember how we were originally told the amnesty program would help reduce overcrowding and promote health and safety by inducing slumlords to open their doors to long-overdue inspections? The way honest, struggling homeowners in Port Chester --including owners of small studio apartments who pay some of the most exorbitant property and school taxes in the nation, amounting to 6K per year in some instances -- were being lumped in with slumlords of large multi-family homes and commercial buildings really bothered me. So did the highly-publicized police department and parking meter scandals, and so did the apparent apathy of most Port Chester homeowners who still rely on an 89-year-old woman to publicly fight their battles for them at board of trustees meetings.  How remarkably sad! And I’m feeling compelled to add this: The former police chief – recently embroiled in a major scandal -- will now reportedly get a nice taxpayer-funded pension and the investigative record into the reported criminality at the local police station (while under his watch) will be sealed, just as in the parking meter scandal that cost the taxpayers around a million bucks a few years ago. Port Chester’s motto should be whatever Latin words express the sentiment, “The citizen’s primary duties are to shut up and pay up.” In short, I’m glad and grateful that I’ve left Port Chester.

So, good luck, Port Chester.  If there’s a silver lining in the homeowner amnesty program, it may lie in the much-needed wake-up call it can send to the many hundreds of property owners who just might start paying attention to local politics and governance. After all, it’s tough to bury your head in the sand when you finally discover how easily the same village that blessed your purchase of your home under its old rules can potentially drive you into bankruptcy and take away your home under its ever-“evolving” new rules -- not to mention ever-growing fees and fines. The Montoyas and a number of other Port Chester families have already become keenly aware of this. For the sake of Port Chester’s future, let’s hope more families wake up, speak up and insist that the rule of law apply here, just as it should throughout any purportedly free nation. And please give 89-year-old Bea Conetta a break. You and everyone else reading this really need to do your civic duty and speak your minds at upcoming board of trustees meetings. And if you’re shy about speaking in public, you can at least show up and applaud for those with whom you agree.

Lastly, consider hiring an attorney -- preferably one with no ties to local politics. You can pool your resources with a few other homeowners you know to spread out the cost of legal counsel, if need be. Incidentally, the NYS Attorney General’s office advised me to hire an attorney more than a year ago, promptly after I informed them of Port Chester’s homeowner amnesty program. So, I imagine they’d advise you to do the same. After all, this is still a nation of laws and no village or village official is above the law – even in Port Chester.  

Good luck saving your homes and your village.

Sincerely,

Frank Troha

Beacon Falls, CT



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