RIP Gerry Rafferty

Might not have heard of him, but he's one of the voices from my youth. OK, so you still might not have any idea who he is, but you probably would recognize the sax solo from his 1970s hit, "Baker Street."

The Scot died today in England at the too-young age of 63.

A more fitting tribute could not be had: You Can't Fight The Foo.

***

(In case you're curious ... here ya go.)

Don Roberts: He really was a super man, wasn't he?

Don with The Killer Doggies, Max and Isis.


Perfect.


One of many outings.


The Roberts Family


Father and son.


Isis arrives on the scene.


A bunch of kids rollerskating.


"Coop," Donnie and me.


Last winter, on the hill.


Don, adding "jet fuel" to the IROC at
EST Safety Park Dragstrip in Cicero.


Me and The Don at Cicero. He'd probably just
made a wisecrack about how much slower
the Mustang is than the IROC. "I just don't know."


Donnie, "dialing 'er in ... onto'r, over."


Donnie and Chris: Our girl's Godparents.

Roberts & Jensen families ... As a classmate of SV 1984, I want to share a memory that exemplifies the qualities of Don. He was always tinkering with something mechanical. I recall a time when, sitting in study hall with him, he observed a maintenance worker struggling to get a riding lawn mower working and he quietly got up and went outside to help him. Within minutes the mower was back in business and Don was back in his seat. My thoughts and prayers, as you honor the life of a special man.
Lori Grubham- Nemcek
(Sign or just visit Don's online Guest Book)

We stood in the middle of the street Saturday as the streetlights flickered on and the last warmth of a short summer disappeared down the block, gone somewhere far west of the annual block party. We dodged kids coasting on bikes and scooters. We laughed a little, wondering which child would bleed next, becoming the victim of a street littered with pock marks. We compared exotic beer labels. We tended to dogs, burgers, sausages, some chicken and a nicely seasoned London broil, placed on the grill by a strange but nice woman none of us knew, cook away. It was suburbia heaven, it was suburbia hell, depending on whose opinion you got. But we sure liked it.

My sister-in-law Leslie, who'd just finished a successful block-long search-and-recovery mission for my nephew Emmit's blue and gold bike, slapped my arm. "I just hung up on your sister," she said. I didn't pay much attention, although I wondered for a second why she hung up on either Cathy in Iowa or Chris in Watkins Glen. Still, it didn't seem important why. Or which sister, for that matter.

She walked away and dialed some numbers. I yelled down the block to anyone listening, "The London broil's about ready and we can't remember who it belongs to."

Leslie grabbed my arm. Something wasn't right. She was on the phone. She
doubled over in what looked like pain, then she walked away, as if I'd been the
bearer of some horrific news, but I couldn't tell what was wrong, or who the true
bearer was. "Oh my God, no," she said, "No." My wife walked after her, then
she doubled over, too. They struggled to stay upright but they weren't saying
what was wrong.

"What? Who is it? What's going on?"

"It's Chris. Donald ... boating accident ... they can't find him."

I can't remember which of them said those words. They were muddy but the message was clear. "What?"

By now you probably know the rest. In short order: Donnie was on his 28-foot Kryptonite around 4:40 p.m. Saturday, September 4, 2010, with his employee and friend, Frank Carson. Carson was piloting the vessel when something went radically wrong at what everyone agrees was breakneck speed. Both men were thrown from the boat at an estimated 70 to 80 mph. Those who retrieved Carson from the lake said the impact of him hitting the water ripped some of the clothes off his body. Still, he's alive today, and we're mourning Don.

It took until the next evening until they found Donald. All day Sunday, people had visited my sister's and Don's home, knowing the reality of things. Some, myself included, tried to avoid it, though, and said we were holding out for a miracle. My 12-year-old son asked me more times than I can number if his uncle was dead. For a solid day, I answered, "We don't know."

But then we did. Sunday evening rescue workers' sonar picked something up. An officer called my sister, who was sitting cross-legged on her driveway's concrete. She
was part of what looked like a drum circle, without the drums. I'd asked her earlier in the day if she'd ever had a party in the driveway. She pushed out a small laugh and said, "Yeah, and Donald's missing it, dammit!"

The thing was, no one knew what to say, or do, or where to settle. Kids played in the
house and in the vast yard, but the grown-ups walked around with zombie stares.
Someone stopped in the foyer to peek around to see what was on the TV. Another
dished some ziti that Serafina and Bill brought from their restaurant. Me, I walked
around looking at all of Donald's stuff - his martial arts equipment sitting alongside
his weight bench, his carbon-fiber Trek mounted to its indoor trainer, his billards
table that sat a few feet from the plush home theater he'd built in the basement,
some folded clothes in a laundry basket - while his gigantic dogs, Max and Isis,
followed me. We all seemed to end up in the driveway, though. Dogs included. No one
felt it would have been right to get comfortable. So we stood and sat on concrete and
waited.

In a way, this felt strangely like all the other times so many of us had visited Don and Chris up on the hill. It was a holiday weekend, after all, so it fit. Of the 20 or so people holding vigil, most of us had had occasion to arrive at their house by mid-afternoon to see Chris and Donnie III (or "Cube," as I nicknamed my nephew years ago - I think I'm the only one who actually calls him that), then wait for Don to shut things down at his business, Glen Harbor Marina, and head home. If not for the driveway drum circle and all the swollen eyes, it seemed like he'd be along shortly.

But it was the phone call from the Yates County sheriff that arrived instead. The sonar that saw something earlier? It was Donald, and he was on his back, about 110 feet below Seneca Lake's choppy surface. The fear we all had about him never being found disappeared, replaced by the gut punch that there was no hope. He wouldn't come home.

The news got to everyone quickly. Some were inside, others sat on the back deck.
My daughter and Cube were on laptops in the living room, playing Webkinz.
Soon, they were the only two who hadn't heard the news. Chris and Don's father,
Donald Sr., decided they'd go inside and let my 8-year-old nephew know about his
daddy. I ushered my daughter to the kitchen where I briefed her. We had many
hugs and a long cry, then we joined Cube and his mom in the living room. By
then, the boy was playing a word search game online. We asked him if he could
find words like "poop," or maybe "fart." How about a compound word? Like
"farthead?" He mostly ignored us, although we got a grin out of him. And then he
was on to other things, running the property with cousins and friends and the giant
dogs. The reality hadn't arrived yet.

Almost a full day later, Don's mother, Marie Roberts, sat at the glass table in the kitchen area of her son's house. My wife was preparing our kids for the 80-minute drive home. I can't recall what I asked Marie, but she looked up and responded, "We'll all be seeing shrinks soon."

"They won't have any answers for all this."

"All this" wasn't just the cruelty of seeing their athletic, high-achieving
44-year-old son taken so senselessly. It was losing Donald, of course, but they
had also lost one of their daughters not too many years before - Dawn (Roberts)
Jake - in a winter car accident while she was upstate with a youth travel soccer
team. "All this" was losing Donald and Dawn, but also having lost another
daughter when she was very young. Michelle had died with a childhood ailment
when all the Roberts kids were still little. Don had cried when his sister Dawn
was killed, and he cried some more when he remembered playing with Michelle,
a lifetime before.

Five children for Marie and Don Roberts Sr. and they had to bury three of them. If you had trouble with your faith in a higher power - or maybe if you didn't - you wouldn't hesitate to tell God where to stick such a "plan."

Later Sunday evening, an hour or so before that day's sun started to disappear from Burdett, New York - a remote outpost in the hills above Seneca Lake where, across the valley you can see "the second largest dairy farm in New York state," someone told me - Donald Sr. stood on concrete near his pickup truck with a white sticker of some running horses in the side window. His brother, Donnie's uncle Butch, stood next to him. Other friends and family members stood in a semi-circle. Everyone here knew Donnie a long time. They reminisced about all his fast cars and fast boats and faster bikes and sleds and how they always seemed to go faster over the years, one right after another after another. Donnie always pushed his vehicles to the limit when he was younger, they said. And even when he was older. Eventually the stories faded and the group disbanded.

This couldn't be real. This couldn't happen to Donnie.

There was more such talk two days later. On Tuesday, somewhere around 1 in the afternoon, a smaller group of us sat around the dining area table in Chris and Donald's beautiful home. Chris and Donnie's sister, Kathy, in from Albany, and Donald's mother had gone to pick out the flowers for the funeral. At the table, though, the talk was of cars.

"Sixty-something Dodge Polara. He put a big ol' plastic hood scoop on it," is what Don Roberts Sr. described as his youngest son's first-ever car. "Then he had a '71
or '72 Cougar. Souped that one up. Then he went into a Dodge 600," he said.

"That's the one he went deer hunting with, with his eyes shut," said Frank Roberts, Donnie's big brother, the rancher. Frank's plane had arrived from Tennessee, touching down in Elmira Monday afternoon . The driveway conversation early on Sunday, before Donald was found, had been that Frank wasn't about to travel to New York just to see his little brother step through the front door. They'd been through too much together, after all, and Frank had seen Donnie walk away from plenty of scrapes.

He had survived being pummelled by gigantic men when, in his 30s, he decided he'd like to play semi-professional football. He got into "football shape" and made it through several team cuts and was being groomed as a kick returner. No one could keep up with his speed, depite being an old dude, the coaches had noticed. But then came the pre-season concussion and back to real life he went.

Out of nowhere, he couldn't stand upright for a time, a few years back. Vertigo, we suspected. Then, as fast as it came, it went, and he was fine.

He'd even survived one night at Funzy's with Steve Reed and Richie Tripp, Johnny Williams and Jerry Osterhout, all those guys. But there was no barroom brawl and he wasn't thrown through the joint's plate-glass window by Jerry, as so many others had been. No, this "incident" was as simple as laughing while daring his ticked-off girlfriend to punch him in the chin. He probably didn't expect that she would, or that her engagement ring would slice through the bottom portion of his face the way it did. But she did, and it did. And he still married her.

Frank Roberts knew what his brother was made of.

"He drove that Dodge 600 over a bank by Tim McHale's house," recalled Frank, who said his brother had been an Arby's nighttime manager when he was a teen, working late hours to make the big bucks to buy bigger, faster toys. One night, on the way home, he fell asleep at the wheel. "He wasn't hurt at all, though. He got out of the car, walked the rest of the way home and crawled into bed. He dealt with it in the morning. He called Wimpy to come and tow it out."

Then came the red Yamaha Fazer. The one with the first Genesis engine available. Don would ride that Yamaha, while Frank rode his bigger Honda (1000 cc's to the Fazer's 600). "We'd race home. Where Brady Hill Road and Pierce Creek Road split, one of us would head one way, the other one the other way," Frank said. "Whoever got to the house first, won. I'd get to a point where it would get crazy and I'd back
off. I had the faster bike, but Don was always on the edge. He never backed off
and he'd beat me every time."

One evening, Frank recalled, they were racing home again. This time, a Broome County sheriff's cruiser trailed them, lights flashing. They ditched the cop at the split in the road and made it home undetected. Never did get their license plates. The problem was, now-Broome County sheriff Dave Harder (who was then a deputy, the Roberts' neighbor and Don Sr.'s friend) was on the porch with the boys' dad when they buzzed up. Harder must have known it was the Roberts boys. Couldn't have been hard to figure.

"He was just sitting there with Dad, hanging out," the grown-up Frank said, grinning, shaking his head, arms folded in his brother's kitchen. "We did quite a bit of lawn work at the Harders' that weekend, as I recall it."

There was a 1979 turbocharged Buick Regal around the time of the Fazer, too. Donnie threw a small block Pontiac 400 into it, then blew up two superchargers
bolted to that engine. He had started to date my sister around that time. Might
have been mid- to late-1980s.

Once he'd exhausted the Regal, then came the piss-yella '85 IROC Camaro, which sits at the marina today, daring someone to try to race it.

I first encountered the IROC when Donnie managed Bob Kohut's Main Street BP in Binghamton. On a Friday, somewhere back in time, the work day was done and I stopped in. A few of us had popped open beers when Kurt Motsko jumped inside the Camaro, parked in one of the BP's bays. Donnie was finishing up paperwork in the office. Kurt turned the key and fired the thing up. Don looked up from the paperwork and shook his head. Kurt backed the car out of the bay and past the gas pumps. I don't think any of us believed this was going anywhere, but before we knew it, crazy Kurt had the very loud, very bright, very identifiable-to-police IROC in the center of Main Street, pulling donuts in front of the American Legion hall.

With the car back in the bay and Kurt trying to hug the ire out of his seething friend, I witnessed Donald madder than I'd ever seen him. Before or after that day. He got over it, though. It was crazy Kurt, after all, and the police never did come.

With the IROC came the Hurricane CBR 1000, a bike of Biblical speeds. The thing was fast off the assembly line, but, of course, Donnie had to tinker: Vance & Hines
clutch kit; Vance & Hines exhaust; a Dynojet carb kit; and, a bunch of cam tensioners. "Was that one of the fastest bikes around?" I asked Frank.

"Still is," he said, grinning.

And there were the boats. Before the Kryptonite, there was a Hydrostream
Viper, and there were jet skis, too. Even the 1969 wooden family boat had a 289 V-8.

He had mastered them all. He'd driven or ridden all these vehicles to the brink. Then he'd show up for the party, where we'd be waiting to order from Jerlando's.

After the September 4 accident, law enforcement officials took Don's speed boat upstate to investigate. Why did it make the hard turn that threw the two men overboard? Was it mechanical failure? On September 8, it arrived back at the marina. The investigation showed that the boat was sound, aside from the power steering belt having popped off. But that could have occurred when the vessel made the sudden jerk to one side.

Someone who said they witnessed the accident described the boat "chinewalking"
before things went bad. Talk was that perhaps an inexperienced pilot may have
decelerated rapidly, forcing weight to shift quickly from the bow to the stern. In 15 mph winds, who knows what happened next or why? All speculation. Still, knowing Don, if he'd have been driving the boat, are we having this conversation? Yeah ... probably not.

Donnie really did seem invincible, if that was humanly possible. He was unbreakable.

And if you're the sort of person who allows yourself to believe there are such people - not necessarily someone who's perfect, but the kind who always has sound, salty advice you wish you'd thought of yourself ... the kind who knows exactly how to fix whatever it is you've gone and broken, and he has exactly the right tools for the job ... the kind who never draws attention to himself, but who everyone wants to be around for reasons maybe even they can't quite pinpoint - you might even say Don Roberts was a sort of a "super man."

I knew it before, but a day after the accident I was reminded that the boat that turned so abruptly is a Kryptonite. And it killed Donnie in the deep lake where he'd worked and played and had spent the majority of his life since he was a boy, right up until one Saturday afternoon, when he plugged a laptop computer into that blown monster of an engine he built, then looked to "dial her in," as he'd say.

It was Kryptonite and he was Superman.

At the moment, it's about the only thing that makes any sense.

***

Don would enjoy this Silversun Pickups video. If you knew The Donald, you'll know why.

"See you next Tuesday, Donnie."

Dan-O Comes Through: His "Decade's Top 20"

A good friend of mine out in Indiana comes through with a fun e-mail ever so often. The last one detailed his eldest son Ian's whiz-bang tour of the national geography bee. Ian kicked some serious locational butt, but maybe more fun for me was reading Dan's rundown of the whole thing, taking me back to our side-by-side desks in that newsroom south of Indy where we'd edit each other's weekly columns, firing ideas and challenges back and forth.

This week, as the decade comes to a close (is that possible?) I received his latest. He's chosen his Top 20 songs of the past 10 years. His list comes with the warning: May Not Be For The Eclectic. Of course, that doesn't include you because, after all, you're reading this.

Now, the music he's chosen isn't exactly all new, in the literal sense. But plenty was new to me, so I decided to pass it along, in case you've been looking for something "new," too.

So, here goes, complete with his commentaries. Hope you find something you enjoy.

Gracias, Dan-O. I approve.

20. A goofy song, but unmistakably catchy. The Apparitions: God, Monkey, Robot

19. My favorite track from my favorite album of 2008, from the sadly departed Chicago band Bound Stems. Bound Stems: Sugar City Magic

18. Closing out the decade, Metric turned in one of the finest albums of the year. I could have easily gone with three or four songs to represent the Fantasies album. Metric: Sick Muse

17. Another album featuring a number of songs that could have landed a spot here. Cloud Cult: Take Your Medicine

16. One of a handful of stellar songs off the band's 23 album. Blonde Redhead: Spring and By Summer Fall

15. A few years ago I had the good fortune to attend a metals conference in Austin the same week as South by Southwest. I saw these guys, and a few others, in a small courtyard between two bars. I'd love to return for the entire festival. The Wombats: Moving to New York

14. I'll never understand why horns aren't featured more frequently in popular music. Spoon had one of the most consistent runs throughout the decade. Spoon, The Underdog

13. I picked up this album back in 2006 on the strength of this song and another, Life of Leisure (actually my favorite, though there's no great sounding video). I was playing it one day and Ian happened to enjoy it as well. A few months later, I took him to his first show, an all ages show at Metro near Wrigley. He was, as you can imagine, the youngest lad in the place. As we were on our way out (Rainer Maria was 3 out of 4 on the bill), I noticed the lead singer (the pretty redhead in the video), talking to some folks. Belatedly, I realized that I should have stopped and introduced my boy, figuring she'd enjoy meeting a 9-year-old kid. The following day, I sent her an e-mail through the band's site, and she responded with a nice note to my son, explaining how she saw us and was hoping we'd have introduced ourselves. It was a pretty neat experience all around, primarily because I got to take my boy to his first show. Rainer Maria: Catastrophe

12. Hey, if you write an estimated 7,500 songs over the course of a decade like former GBV frontman Robert Pollard did, one of them is bound to be one of the best. As far as albums go, their previous disc, Isolation Drills, was one of my favorites of the past 10 years. Guided by Voices: Everywhere with Helicopter

11. Formerly known as Say Hi (To Your Mom). Basically one dude. Say Hi: Northwestern Girls

10. A surprising choice for my favorite album of 2009. Play loud. A Place to Bury Strangers: Keep Slipping Away

9. Now for something a little slower. Beautiful song. Sun Kil Moon: Carry Me Ohio

8. This Scottish band put out one of my favorite discs of the decade, 100 Broken Windows. Idlewild: Roseability

7. A song from a great EP from this Austin band. Voxtrot: Rise up in the Dirt

6. I don't know if it's a life-changing experience, as Natalie Portman's character suggested in Garden State, but it is a damn fine song. The Shins: New Slang

5. What Smashing Pumpkins might sound like today if Billy Corgan wasn't so impressed with being Billy Corgan. Silversun Pickups: Kissing Families

4. It may not leave you dancing, though it should encourage you to shake your head and arms wildly. Tapes and Tapes: Insistor

3. Who wouldn't want a cool name like Roscoe? They've got a new album coming out in a few months. Midlake: Roscoe

2. Critical darlings, these guys are somewhat hit or miss for me. TV on the Radio: Wolf Like Me

1. This collection of really talented musicians put out four outstanding albums during the decade. Listen closely and you can hear the parts of the song that appeared in a University of Phoenix commercial. Interesting how many great indie tunes wound up pitching products over the last decade. New Pornographers: Bleeding Heart Show

*****

One more fun one. This one's mine. Another from Silversun Pickups.

51 Main Street's coming ... but so may be Jacknutz?

I received an impromptu tour of 51 Main Street last week from Dan Ragan, who has been the manager of the rehabilitation project for the building’s owner, Kelly Wagstaff.

Critics of the pace of the rehab can take solace in knowing that the first floor is just about completed, and while this is certainly unofficial, the word is that a solid Broome County business is targeting move-in prior to “black Friday,” which this year falls on November 27. Good news, all around.

Meanwhile, we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that City Councilman Bob Weslar (he of the non-response to most who attempt to contact him by phone or e-mail on topics related to his councilmanic district) apparently weighed in that the Oak and Main Street off-street parking at 51 Main is unacceptable, far after-the-fact.

We shouldn’t be surprised because Weslar seems to make it a habit to meddle where he shouldn’t, as was the case from the get-go, when Wagstaff looked to purchase the place in 2005.

Weslar was bent on pushing Wagstaff to pay the full amount of unpaid taxes for the property (despite the fact that its assessment had been improperly inflated for years), even at the possible expense of losing the sale and allowing the historic building to slide further into decay.

He eventually came to his senses, but not before he tried to impose his opinion on, literally, what types of shrubbery should be used to landscape the corner lot.

Meanwhile, word is that the “historical society” has weighed in with opposition of the 6-foot wrought-iron fencing that’s been purchased to place around the property. According to Ragan, the fence meets city code regulations, but there’s still some sort of bureaucratic flak that needs to be dealt with in order to connect all the dots.

Utter silliness.

For anyone looking on casually, this project was never touted as a full-on restoration. It’s always been referred to as a renovation. Putting it back on the tax rolls. Pumping life into that neighborhood. Or as my kids like to say, even today, “saving that awesome old building.”

Which brings me to another potential development in that same neighborhood. In short, a gentleman named Gene Honnick, of Johnson City, has applied with the city to roll in a 20-foot-long “concession trailer” on the property at 60 Main Street.

This is the site of the former Lost Dog Café, right next to the now-closed Giant food market. He’d like to put it there beginning next May and leave it there until October. He’d sell food out of it, presumably to passersby on the sidewalk, weekdays from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

That’s got to be an exaggeration, you say? There’s no way a 20-foot-long “concession trailer” fits into any right-minded planner’s or economic developer’s vision for a stretch included in the “Main Street Program,” which, according to the City of Binghamton Web site, is “an effective and creative approach to helping communities revitalize their downtowns and neighborhood commercial districts.”

It's about historic preservation, we're told.

It’s no exaggeration that the application is in, copied to Binghamton City Councilwoman Terri Rennia, Brian Seachrist (an attorney with the city) and Tom Costello, who recently began his reign as director of code enforcement. The application was submitted to members of the Planning Commission, from Patrick C. Day, planner.

Honnick would like, from the Planning Commission, a special use permit to operate his business called, appropriately, “Jacknutz Barbeque Stand.” Honnick would be selling on a take-out basis with nowhere for people to eat (see: Kennedy Fried Chicken, 2 a.m., any weekend) a “variety of items, including hamburgers, kielbasa and goulash,” according to the application.

Those crappy old guardrails you see surrounding the lot there at the corner of Main and Murray, my, won’t they make fine seating arrangements for the discerning burger-kielbasa-goulash crowd?

One business owner who would be forced, by geography, to look at the trailer and its clientele for six solid months, had this to say, in a letter encouraging the Planning Commission to deny this special use permit.

“We have had several clients question us when we suggest they come down to (our business), since they never know what kind of characters are hanging around. We’ve also had clients (and employees) request an escort to their car or down the street because they don’t feel safe.”

This business owner went on to say that adding a 20-foot trailer would only contribute negatively to the neighborhood, as such a business would be placed solely for the purpose of serving those who would tarnish the image of a block that, with the addition of a new business coming at 51 Main Street, is about to receive a positive injection.

The city needs to take a step back and decide what it wants to be. Will this block, where our high school resides, be allowed to turn a positive corner, and be given half a chance at rejuvenation on the heels of new life at 51 Main?

Or will our city officials take a short-sighted view, snub their collective nose at people like Kelly Wagstaff and her investment time and dollars, and continue to hand things over to more jacknutz?

We’ll see.

Ignore poll misinformation; make an informed choice

We've read it all on the Web site BC Voice (and nowhere else, mind you). According to "BCVoice Insiders," Binghamton mayoral candidate Douglas Drazen is a backfiring Pontiac J2000, while incumbent Matt Ryan's Boxster is being challenged, side-by-side, by Republican Rich David's slick M5.

In fact, if you read BC Voice with any regularity, on a mind-numbing number of threads you've seen that Mr. Drazen has no shot. He needs to pull out. If he doesn't, David's destiny will be thwarted by a veering clunker and the local anti-Christ's Porsche will sail across the line, beating an opponent that, some will tell you, could have won this race, if not for that dog-gone rust-bucket J2000 blocking all things progressive.

It's all bunk.

Like anyone else who posts on that Web site, I'm allowed an opinion. The difference? I actually sign my name to my view, good or bad, and I try to back those opinions with facts. While I don't have hard-and-fast numbers to throw at you today, I can tell you this, with a fair degree of certainty: Just about all polling information you read about there? Contrived. And it's contrived by one camp or another to attempt to sway you away from a cause, or toward another.

In a word, it's what's "wrong" with polls. Too many times, instead of being used by camps to gauge how things are proceeding for their candidate, they're used to garner sway. Time-honored tradition, of course. And misleading as it gets.

Let's say you have one internal poll that tells its supporters that their candidate is way up. Well, certainly they want that information out there. A salvo like that could be demoralizing to a foe. But let's say that same candidate's volunteers aren't hearing good news in their phone conversations with voters. Their candidate is down and it's looking grim.

Hey, not to worry. People love a front-runner, right? They like to ride with a winner. No one loves the thought of spending a vote on someone who "just can't win" or who may "cost the election" for another candidate who might just be a tad more palatable than the final choice.

So the spin comes out sideways. Translation: A candidate's camp will report false information to create a better buzz.

If you think this doesn't happen you (a) have never worked on a political campaign, and/or (b) just joined us on our fair planet.

I don't particularly like the job that Matt Ryan's done as mayor, so I'm not going to vote for him (nor did I last time around). That fact, alone, won't likely move anyone away from supporting the man, which is why I began questioning him, and some in his administration, about things that simply ... look wrong.

I've gotten him to respond, in his own words, to some pretty pointed questions, and in doing so, he's gone emotionally off the hinge. When he did answer questions, he was either disingenuous, or, I felt, he wasn't telling me the truth. I base that on several contradictions ... again, in his own words.

His approach is so far to the left that it doesn't register on my "liberal-centrist-conservative" screen, and I'm surprised that so many fairly conservative local Dems (see: Joe Merrill as a primary example) would express support for him to continue in this job. That sort of thing makes me highly skeptical about the back-room deals and potential strong-arming I've heard about lately in the local Democratic hierarchy (ie, you support X candidate, or come the end of the year, you may just find yourself on a job hunt).

Rich David, meanwhile, is a fellow I like personally. He replaced me in the community relations coordinator role at City Hall when I became Deputy City Clerk, so I know him a little bit. I also dealt with him on issues while I served on City Council in 2005. We sometimes butted heads, but maintained what I believe was a mutual respect, even in the event of dissimilar opinions.

I view Rich David as more of a traditional pol who would have his strengths and downfalls, like anyone, but who was also indoctrinated in The School of Bucci ... which isn't a bad thing at all, in my estimation. It's a conservative route, socially and fiscally.

I wonder if tradition is what's needed right now, though. Could be. But we see the city's in dire need of someone standing on the brakes, then turning this thing in a completely different direction. Armed with his background, is Rich David going to be able to steer things off a worn, tired road? I don't know. If he's elected, I hope so. If elected, he'll have my support.

Although some who frequent the BC Voice political forums surmise I'm a Drazen operative, or that I'm working on his campaign, neither is true. I currently have a Doug Drazen sign in my lawn. I voted for him last time around, and I may be voting for Doug again.

Doug's never asked me to help with his campaign, and I have not. That said, all the blather and bluster on BC Voice about him being a clown or being a whackjob either comes from folks who haven't met him, have seen a clip of him poking sardonic fun at an issue, or who simply wouldn't vote for him in the first place, based on their political biases.

Drazen is quirky and eccentric (maybe why my wife busts my chops, saying it's part of the reason I agree with him so often). His comments on how he'd tackle issues within City Hall and citywide have been perceived by some as perhaps too conservative, bordering on radical. But what I like is that, as he puts it, there's no political machine behind him, and he'll sink or swim on his word, in the public eye.

Oh, yes. This was supposed to be about polls and their validity. Suffice to say, my sources are as solid as any you'll read on this site, and as of last week, there were three candidates running neck-and-neck (and neck). In fact, in one instance it was reported to me that, according to a Rich David pollster, that there appears to be a David-Drazen flip-flop at the front of the pack, with Matt Ryan right there, just behind them.

It really points up the importance of voters getting to the polls on election day, making the most informed decisions they can. Don't let poll misinformation factor into how you spend that one vote.

Take everything you read and hear about polls with a grain of salt. That includes what I say here.

***

And now, for something completely different.

Matt Ryan and the Code Enforcement Contradiction

"I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna say that, you know, everything is enforced fairly. We have so many code violations in the city, we can't cite 'em all at once. You can't ... and we also have the problem of trying to find the people."

Last month I was one of several local taxpayers and homeowners to announce the formation of an oversight committee in the City of Binghamton. In theory, the group would monitor and question the city on issues related to code enforcement, or not to put too fine a point on it, areas where the enforcement of code was either miserably lacking, or terribly misguided, sometimes to the extent of the glaring appearance of vast lapses in ethics, and in some cases, the suspicion of illegality.

For example, in a previous blog entry I reported on a situation encountered by neighbors of mine. They received a code violation for a shared garage, the other half of the garage residing on the property of a vacated house. The two properties share a driveway.

The code violation corresponded with an admitted interest from the city’s mayor, Matt Ryan, and a man who, on numerous occasions, has referred to himself as the mayor’s business partner. That man, Robert Cavanaugh, has since been indicted by the Broome County district attorney on three felony counts relating to his contracting business.

The mayor admitted that he and Cavanaugh were, on some level, interested in the next-door property to my neighbors. It may have been an investment property, or one he would have bought to live in, himself, said Matt Ryan.

You may recall from that previous blog entry that when asked, on the spot, who reported the garage as a code violation, the following three responses were offered by three involved parties:

* Dave Chadwick, then-code director, now retired, but still reporting to work at City Hall in the capacity of consultant, said he didn’t recall who reported the garage.

* Chris Schleider, the code officer who wrote the ticket on the property, told me he had no comment, and that I should ask Matt Ryan or Dave Chadwick. He also told me that the information could be had through FOIL, also know as freedom of information legislation. (It should also be noted here that my neighbor said he was told by Schleider that he was directed to check out the garage by his boss - Chadwick, who had received direction from the mayor. Chadiwck and Ryan have since denied this.)

* Matt Ryan, the mayor, admitted in a taped phone conversation (at which time he knew he was being taped), that it was indeed Robert Cavanaugh who reported the garage to code enforcement. Ryan also said he asked Cavanaugh why he made such a report.

In the meantime, my neighbors have tried to move on. They recently shelled out a fair amount of money to have a different private contractor come in to remedy the garage situation. That side of the garage is now down. Problem is, they only own half.

So as you sit reading this, the other half of the garage sits crumbling. And what’s the city been doing about it since the spring? After checking in with my neighbors, they gave me the go-ahead to dig around a bit. They said they’re none too pleased having to face the other half of the garage now, as nothing appears to be in the works.

I inquired with the city’s new code director, Tom Costello, in an e-mail Tuesday. I copied the mayor on the e-mail, as well as Dave Chadwick, since he’s still employed there in some capacity. I asked what action, if any, has been under way regarding the monstrosity that sits next to my neighbors. Certainly, if their garage was a safety hazard back when the mayor had some interest in “running the numbers” on the next door property, then it’s assuredly no safer today as it sits, crumbling.

I received the following response from Costello at 5:37 p.m. Tuesday:

I have reviewed documentation for the property ... and noted that the property was inspected repeatedly in response to a series of complaints about lawn maintenance, uneven sidewalks, and structural deficiencies located at or on an existing accessory structure (garage). The most recent inspection was conducted on 5/17/2009.

Given this information, I have referred your questions to the Inspector who is responsible for this district, Chris Schleider. When he has responded to my inquiry, I will give you the most current information about the parcel.

I wrote back at 7:37 p.m.

Mr. Costello, I appreciate your prompt response. I'll share it with my neighbors.

It concerns me that the most recent inspection is listed in department records as more than 5 months ago. I'll be sending you photos of the remaining structure, photos that were taken this week (Monday, specifically), that will serve as visual evidence.

It's somewhat alarming that when the mayor had personal interest in this property, his administration's code enforcement division provided a full-court press. Yet when that interest subsided, so did the pressure to rectify a situation a man purporting to be the mayor's business partner deemed "unsafe."

I look forward to what Mr. Schleider has to say about this on-hold situation.

In the meantime, I couldn't help but note some incredible hypocrisy by the mayor, or perhaps someone who wrote a statement on his behalf. In either event, it was attributed to Matt Ryan, regarding code enforcement in the city. It was dated September 17, 2009, and was disseminated to members of the area media.

“The city’s commitment to transparency includes complying with all FOIL requests and encouraging citizen input on operations,” Matt Ryan’s statement read. “The city’s policy is to enforce the Housing Code fairly and equitably citywide. The city’s enforcement record speaks for itself.”

I agree that things do, indeed, speak for themselves. That includes when the mayor spoke for himself, in that same taped September phone conversation I mentioned above, about the city’s code enforcement efforts. The following are his words, verbatim:

"I'm not gonna lie,” said Mayor Ryan. “I'm not gonna say that, you know, everything is enforced fairly. We have so many code violations in the city, we can't cite 'em all at once. You can't ... and we also have the problem of trying to find the people.

“I mean, ya know, one of the things is - and I'll admit it - the local people who get fined, ya know, are the ones who end up, ya know, in court more (laughs) because (laughs) they're here,” Mayor Ryan went on to say. “It's very hard when someone's out of state to get 'em in court. It's very costly and, uh, it's almost impossible sometimes.”

Matt Ryan said that part of the problem is a lack of manpower. He added that another problem is the city’s small legal department.

“People say they should do this and do that, then they say, well, you should cut this and cut that,” he said. “What you end up with at the end of the day is, ya know, uh, an organization that's too small to have any great accomplishments except hold the line.

“It's not like we have a team ... that's why it was so important to consolidate tax collection with the county, which we did in six months, which the other group talked about for years and never accomplished anything,” Ryan added.

"... some people get caught in the system, uh, that you don't want to get caught in like Mrs. Monico - though I still think her sons (laughs) letting their mother go to jail over $500 ... I wouldn't have done that to my mother, but anyway, um ... ya know ... it's not a perfect world, so if you wanna, if you wanna, you know ... and I'm a, I'm a ... strong advocate,” Mayor Ryan continued.

“I was a really good public defender (laughs) and, uh, I made some of those arguments, the law's not fair, and we should ... and wouldn't it be great if everything was perfect,” he said.

“And you do that when you, when you ... ya know, my job was to make that argument and try to convince a court that somebody was, ya know, wrongfully prosecuted or overly prosecuted because of who they were,” Ryan said. “And that was part of the equation. But in this case, these code violations are not that.

“There's a lot of code violations that we've cited that we just can't get enforcement on, and it's not that easy.”

Speaks for itself.

***

And now, something completely different.

The Mayor and His (Former) Friend

Listen to the entire phone conversation here.

...............................................................................

Sometime back in May, my wife and I dragged our bulky garbage cans to the curb. It was a Wednesday evening around 6. A gray-haired slender man was three doors down, standing in the middle of the street. He wore a navy blue suit and drove a car the same color. He spoke to a blue-collar type.

We recognized one as Matt Ryan, Binghamton's mayor. The other, we didn't know, other than he and his crew had been around for a few days, repairing cedar shake and replacing roofing tiles on a nearby home.

"Hey, there's your mayor down the street," I said to my wife, joking. "If we stay out here at the curb, maybe he'll come up and talk to us."

"You can stay out here. I'm going inside," she said.

It might have been a week or two later when friends of ours from down the block, in the direction of the mayoral sighting, told us of a situation they encountered with a contractor, and with the city's Code Enforcement Department. They said that a garage behind their house - a garage shared by the vacant, neighboring property - had become the target of code.

My friend relayed that shortly after a contractor (that same contractor who kibitzed with the mayor down the street on garbage night) had been working on a house a couple doors up, the official city notice about the garage arrived in the mail. It was a code violation, he learned through the formal paper work, which said, in part, that if he did not remedy the garage's woes in 30 days? The city would issue a criminal summons for his arrest.

In that same time frame, he was also approached by the contractor working nearby, who, unsolicited, offered an estimate for the garage's removal. My neighbor said the man offered to do the work for $1,000. My neighbor said that man’s name was Bob Cavanaugh.

My neighbor told me that in a subsequent conversation with Cavanaugh, the contractor mentioned that he was business partners with Mayor Matt Ryan and that the two were interested in purchasing the empty house next door. They'd like to buy it, fix it and flip it, is the way the story was presented to me.

My friend said that Cavanaugh told him the bank, which at that time owned the property, wanted $80,000. My neighbor said Cavanaugh told him that he and Mayor Ryan were hoping to buy the house for far less because, after all, it needed serious upgrades due, at least in part, to plumbing damage while it had been vacant.

In a later phone conversation with Mayor Ryan, my neighbor's wife said the mayor told her that Cavanaugh spoke out of turn, and that the two men were not business partners. She said Mayor Ryan told her that he had been interested in the vacant property to purchase and live in. My neighbor's wife told me that her impression of the conversation with Ryan was that the mayor couldn't back-pedal any faster than he did that day.

My neighbor, pretty upset about the garage citation and, most especially about the "criminal summons" threat aspect of it, quickly began work to dismantle his portion of the garage. It quickly became evident, he said, that this was not going to be a simple task. In this time frame, he said he contacted the city code inspector who had issued the ticket.

My neighbor said that in his conversation with Chris Schleider, the code inspector for the city, Schleider told him "not to worry" about the ticket, that it was just a formality and was issued to "get the ball rolling." My neighbor said Schleider characterized the entire issuance of the citation as a catalyst to get the bank to act on its side of the garage as well.

My neighbor said he asked why the garage was suddenly an issue and he said Schleider told him the following: That he received a call from his supervisor (Dave Chadwick, then head of the city's Building Bureau and the Code Enforcement Department – who retired over the summer) who said he had been called by the mayor (Ryan), who had requested that a code inspector go over and inspect the garage at the vacant property alongside my neighbor's.

My neighbor said that Schleider told him that because he cited the garage on the side of the vacant property, and the structure was attached to a second bay on my neighbor's property, he issued the citation for both sides.

In a September 3 phone conversation, Mayor Ryan told me he never made such a call. In fact, after we spoke that evening, Mayor Ryan showed up at my neighbor’s front door, unannounced. My neighbor told me that on that particular evening, he was under the weather and was trying to hurry Mayor Ryan off his porch so he could go back to the couch. Ryan, in a later phone message to me, characterized his conversation with my neighbor differently. He said, in his message, that my neighbor told him he wanted nothing to do with the story, and that it was me who pushed the issue.

My neighbor later told me that what he wanted nothing to do with was Mayor Ryan on his property that evening when he was feeling ill.

My neighbor told me that Mayor Ryan, while on his porch September 3, called Chadwick, on the spot, to ask – while on speaker phone – if there was any truth to the mayor having requested that a code enforcement officer check out the garage. My neighbor said he heard Chadwick’s response, which was that no such communication ever occurred. In Ryan’s message to me later, he wanted me to be sure I got that point, loud and clear.

When I saw my neighbor at our block party on September 5, we chatted a bit. I asked him if he was willing to stand by his story – that it was Schleider who told him he had been directed by Chadwick, who’d told him he’d received that call from Mayor Ryan.

My neighbor stated, again, that he stood by that. It was exactly what Schleider told him, he said.

I spoke with Dave Chadwick by phone back on July 21 (weeks prior to his retirement). He said that he has not seen a circumstance in which a contractor would call in a code violation of a property near where they might be performing work. However, he elaborated.

"Bob (Cavanaugh) has made complaints to this office before," Chadwick said, referring to the city’s Building Bureau, "and to Code Enforcement. That's fact."

But Chadwick said there was no specific name listed regarding the reporting of the garage. Chadwick added that he could not recall how his office had received the complaint.

The following morning (July 22), I called Code Enforcement and asked to speak directly with Chris Schleider. I stated my name and told him I would be writing about the scenario in this blog.

“I'm interested to know the impetus of the complaint regarding (my neighbor's garage),” I told Schleider. There was a pregnant pause, after which Schleider said, “Uhhh ... anonymous.”

“Since you were the one who cited the property, and since it was fairly recent, I thought perhaps you'd recall ...” I started, but Schleider cut me off. “No, I don't, Steve,” he said. “You'd be better off talking to Dave Chadwick or Matt Ryan.”

"But since you were directly involved ..." at which point Schleider cut me off again.

"I think you should FOIL (freedom of information legislation) that information, Steve," he said.

"So, Chris, I want to be clear," I told him. "Are you saying you don't remember? Or that you'd ..." at which point he cut me off a third time. The rest of my question would have been, "... or that you'd prefer not to answer the question?"

"No comment, Steve. Sorry. Thanks. Bye." And he hung up the phone.

Just two hours after I spoke with Chadwick on July 21, Mayor Ryan left a message on my cell phone. I'd mentioned to Chadwick that I intended to contact the mayor for comment, but at that point, I hadn't. In fact, I had never contacted him by phone before. Prior to that call, I was unaware that he had my cell phone number.

In the message he left for me, he said he'd like to explain his relationship with Bob Cavanaugh, which he termed as "non-existent." We traded phone messages over the next 24-plus hours. Then I got a call from my wife, who was at home. She said Mayor Ryan had arrived, unannounced, on our stoop. He asked if Steve Jensen lived there. He was pleasant, she said. He told her we'd been playing phone tag. She told him I was on my way home from work. By the time I arrived, he'd left.

We traded phone messages a few times more, then I sent Mayor Ryan an e-mail telling him I would be out of town on vacation for a bit and that I was sure we’d eventually connect. When I returned from vacation, I got busy with work and put the topic on the back burner. Until September 3, when I phoned Mayor Ryan on his cell.

I asked him about his alleged business partnership/relationship with Cavanaugh.

“I talked to the neighbors and they know exactly what happened,” Mayor Ryan said. “First of all, that person, they talked to Bob Cavanaugh. I'm not ... I have nothing to do with it. Bob Cavanaugh had a relationship with them about talking about the garage. I had nothing to do with it. Nothing ... at all. I can’t control what Bob Cavanaugh does.”

I found the following comment particularly interesting, given that Chadwick had said he could not recall how the complaint was reported, and Schleider had tagged it as an “anonymous” complaint.

“You know, it’s unfortunate that he called the code office and I told him that and he wasn't ... you know ... I went and talked to those people,” Ryan continued. The “he” Ryan referred to here was Bob Cavanaugh.

“I talked to them on the phone. I told them what happened,” Ryan went on. “They know what happened, so if you want to continue to make a story out about it that’s not there, go ahead, Steve. But, you know, the reality is you and Victor (Salcedo) are very vindictive people, and, you know, it’s just too bad you people have nothing better to do. Have a nice night.”

And he hung up the phone.

I gave him a few minutes, then I called him back.

"... he (Cavanaugh) talked to that guy (my neighbor) and saw the roof and he said, 'boy, you need to do something here. This doesn't look safe,'" Mayor Ryan said. "And stupidly ... uh, although Bob, I won't deny it, one of the arguments I had with him is he got ... he said, 'Well, this could fall down on some kids and, you know, I should see something like that that's dangerous, you should call code,' and I said, 'Bob you should have thought this through.' You know, you're, and he didn't think it through. He was thinking, 'Well, we'll call code and see if we can get them to move ...'

"And so he said, 'Well, let's call code and find out what we can do.' And it wasn't like ... I guarantee you Bob has enough work where he wasn't trying to shake this guy down for work," Ryan said. "It was about, just, stupid, not thinking it through and not thinking what the consequences would be ...

"You can ask Chris Schleider ... he tried to talk him out of, when he saw what was happening, he said, 'Chris, don't give him a ticket.' He wasn't trying to get him ... at least that's the way Bob explained it to me. Now, I didn't really check with Chris, but I'm assuming Bob's telling me the truth, that he tried to talk Chris out of citing the place.

"And I know what it looks like," Ryan continued. "I know it looks like he's trying to get, you know, code to do something so the guy will have to get work done. And maybe ... I don't know, I can't say how Bob thinks. I don't think that's what he meant. He told me he was just reacting to trying to find out what, uh ... he called Chadwick ... he called Chadwick and uh, and, Chadwick I think sent over Chris, and he said, you know, but I had no knowledge this happened 'til after it happened, and I don't ... I hope you're not thinking that I ... just like Victor thinks that I ... when Victor got hauled off to jail, which he didn't tell me the truth about the facts about, through, 15 minutes or whatever he ended up being in there, uh, you know, he uh ... I don't know. I just lost the train of thought I was talking about, anyway ...

"What I'm suggesting to you is that this was not something that, Bob planned, it's just ... Bob, just, Bob does stupid things sometimes, and I said, 'Bob, what the hell did you do that for? Why would you call code? You know ... didn't you think this through? If code comes over and sees a dangerous situation, they have to cite it and then you look like an idiot.' And he goes, 'Well, it is a dangerous situation.' I go, 'Yeah, but, that's, just,' you know, he ... he will defend himself on this saying, 'I ... I don't wanna see this fall on ...,' you know, because he doesn't like to admit he's wrong. Uh, I don't wanna ... he said, 'I don't wanna see this garage fall on some kid, and that's why, and I was trying to help this guy, because he said he wanted to do something about it.' So, that's his rationale.

"So I ... I'm not happy with the way it turned out, and then ... but when I started looking at those, you know, that letter I got from all the neighbors, obviously I was, that's when I went to Bob and said, 'Bob, what the hell are ya doin?' 'Cause I didn't know what was ... I didn't know he was talkin' to so many people, but, don't forget, you know, neighbors can get on a little roll here and make things sound worse than they were. I mean, he was out ... and I think there's an element of that there, too. I'm not saying that he's not aggressive, but I think when a bunch of neighbors get together and talk they ... they can come up with the, you know, the worst-case scenario."

At that point, I reminded Mayor Ryan of what was alledged to have been said by Cavanaugh: that the two were business partners and that they had an interest in potentially flipping this property next door to my neighbor's property.

“Look, I’m not … I don’t make a lot of money as mayor,” Ryan went on to say. “I did … Bob would call me from time to time, ‘cause I said ‘If you find,' what I told Bob is, ‘If you find the right property, I might invest in one.'

“That’s all I ever told Bob, and, you know, and that I certainly, I was also looking for a house for myself, and I would never … you know, that’s why I know that this thing has gotten blown out of proportion because then the people started saying, ‘Well, we don’t want … we want a … an owner-occupier. We don’t want somebody buyin’ it and flippin’ it to somebody who’s gonna violate the R-1 rules, and all that stuff,’ and I said (unintelligible) I looked at the numbers on that place, I mean, and I said, there’s no way.

“If they want $80,000, the bank, there’s no way to make, uh, you know, make this work for even, uh, even if you wanted to … even if you wanted to flip it and sell it, but certainly, as the mayor,” Ryan said, “I’m not gonna flip it and sell it to somebody illegal. I would improve the property and see if I could make a profit on it and in that house, there’s no way I could make a profit on it. And so I didn’t have anything to do with it.

“But it was ... quite frankly, I’ve never had any … I mean, we’ve just talked about it,” Ryan continued. “I never invested in a property with him.

“So, I mean, he called me up and said, ‘Hey, there’s this house over here, and I went and looked at it, and we looked it over, and then found out the numbers on it, and that was it. And we never did anything on it. But the fact that he’s going out and sayin’ that stuff, I really don’t have any control over that. That’s why I ended up being very mad with him and that’s why I don’t have a relationship with him anymore.”

Despite Mayor Ryan’s proclamation, the string of events revolving around my neighbors' garage and the code enforcement citation made several property owners on our street wary. Over the course of a few weeks after the citation, I heard from a few of them that they were so skeptical of what appeared to them to be a lack of ethics that they were moved to construct a letter, to be sent to Cavanaugh, and to be copied to Mayor Ryan.

They said they believed the appearance to be that when Cavanaugh pointed to a potential code violation, a directive may come from the city, at which time Cavanaugh would become privy and, consequently, approach the homeowner about potentially handling a remedy.

In other words, their stated perception was that the city's code office had the potential to be used as an instrument through which a contractor could potentially benefit financially.

The following is their letter (for the record, I was not asked to help construct this letter ... in fact, I had no part in its genesis, writing or delivery). I did, however, sign the letter, as did my wife.

As I have throughout this report, I've removed names of my neighbors, and I have placed in parenthesis generalities, rather than pinpoint specifics where warranted. I don't think the letter loses any of its zip.

May 15, 2009

Dear Mr. Cavanaugh,

During the month of April, while you were completing a job on (our street), certain things happened to trouble and disturb several of the residents in our neighborhood. As a local businessman, we believe you would be interested in how you are perceived by the public and that is why we felt it was important to write to you. Perhaps you are unaware of how those events which transpired between you and (our neighbors) have been interpreted.

In about mid-April, Mr. Cavanaugh, you approached (our neighbor) about his garage, a structure which has stood on his property much longer than he has owned it. During the conversation, you revealed that you are interested in buying and flipping the adjacent vacant property at (the next door property) with Mayor Ryan as a partner. Mayor Ryan’s visit to you at the property seems to have validated that claim.

You spoke with (our neighbor) about encouraging the bank to take care of the problem garage by reporting the structural deficiencies to code enforcement. When (our neighbors) returned home from vacation, only a few days after speaking with you, they found the citation in their mailbox which was issued to them as well as their neighbor since, as you know, the structure is shared by both properties. Along with an order for removal, the citation included the threat of a criminal summons for non-compliance within 30 days.

Imagine the impact this had on a law-abiding, hard-working couple which has held down three jobs between them just to maintain their nice home and support their (family). A demolition permit was subsequently issued, but after several professionals looked at the job, it was determined that removing the structure would jeopardize the garage that sits on the 10-foot bank behind it because the back wall of the garage acts as a retaining wall.

This is no simple project to be completed in a few weeks with no advance notice, especially since it also involves three other properties with at least two absentee landlords.

Even so, being pressured by the time constraints and consequences in the citation, (our neighbors) promptly began removing the portions of the structure which could safely be removed.

We have the following concerns surrounding these events:

1. Though you offered to do the needed work for $1,000 as a favor, it could seem that you reported the code violations in an attempt to get additional work.

2. When you speak excessively about your connections with the mayor and other government officials, it might be somewhat intimidating to conscientious homeowners who strive to maintain their properties up to standard.

3. While you were working on the (property at which you replaced cedar shake and roofing tiles), you walked up and down the block examining every house for maintenance needs. When you described such a need to (another of our neighbors), a single senior citizen, as a "serious problem," it seemed like you were trying to take advantage of her since a similar "serious problem" with her siding was fixed by her handyman last year with a hammer and one nail.

4. It also seems questionable to us that you have information about (the vacant property next to our neighbors) which seems unavailable to the general public. It may appear that you are using connections to city offices and information that would give you an advantage in purchasing the property without competitive bids.

5. And finally, Mr. Cavanaugh, all of this could give the impression that you are also using your personal relationship with (Mayor Ryan) and other government officials to cause this property you wish to purchase for your own profit to be cited for code violations in an effort to motivate the owner to sell.

Aside from questioning these practices, Mr. Cavanaugh, we want you to see how this situation has caused (our neighbors) great distress as well as an undue and unfair financial burden. We feel that by implying the mayor’s involvement in the case, you may have caused code enforcement to accelerate the process without a thorough assessment of the physical circumstances surrounding the structure. Now instead of a building that had served well enough for outdoor storage, they are left with a possible hazard on their property that needs to be replaced.

Though (our neighbors) obviously bear the brunt of this trouble, the situation as a whole concerns all the residents of our street. We are especially curious about your intentions for (the vacant property) and your (potential) acquisition of the property. Our desire for the property is that it be owner-occupied which corresponds with City Council's and the mayor's desire to increase home ownership.

With (Mayor Ryan) as a partner, we hope that you would have that same objective, even though our recent experiences with you have made us wonder whether you have the best interests of the neighborhood in mind. Please note that due to your admittedly close personal and business relationship with (Mayor Ryan), we are sending him a copy of this letter.

Thank you again for your time and consideration.
Sincerely ...

The letter is signed by several of the tax-paying property owners who live on our street.

“I can’t deny, I mean, but, Bob, the fact that Bob Cavanaugh says something, does that make it real?” Mayor Ryan said. “I mean, does that make it truth? I have never had a business relationship with Bob Cavanaugh. I, you know, never. And I … you know, I never had a business relationship with him.

“I, we did … like I said, we talked about it," he said. "I talked to him about it. He would constantly say, ‘Oh, I found this house, let’s invest in it, we can make some money,’ and I’d say, ‘Oh, I’ll look at it,’ and none of them ever … I did look at a few, but I never got involved with one because I just didn’t like the numbers, I didn’t like the situation.

“So, then that all of a sudden turned into, from that letter I got, seemed to turn into that I was, you know, gonna try to flip houses in the neighborhood, and that I was some kind of, you know … I don’t know. It just, the tone of the letter that I received – that you signed – was just one that, you know, had nothing to do with reality of my reality, at least.”

I reminded Mayor Ryan that perception can be reality for some. He agreed.

“I hope that you’ll accept what I’m telling you to be … ’cause it is the truth … and I have, I mean, I … all I can say is, I got witnesses that saw me almost punch Bob Cavanaugh up at State Park, and luckily I didn’t because, but … he’s actually, he had two good golfing buddies … let’s just put it this way, he had two good golfing buddies and both of us now want nothing to do with him.

“You can ask the D.A.,” Mayor Ryan said. “I have no … he knows that I did nothing wrong. They came, like I said, they came and took a statement from me about the … exactly what happened with the check, and that’s what happened.”

Over the summer, I had a conversation with a different nearby neighbor of mine who said she had hired Cavanaugh to perform some home repairs when she and her husband moved into their home. She showed me a signed contract with R.J. Cavanaugh Enterprises for work to be performed at their property. It was dated April 14, 2008.

She said that she felt she made a mistake by paying Cavanaugh up front for the work. She added that she still had not been fully reimbursed, and that so much time had elapsed, she no longer expected to be.

She also offered a chronology of her dealings with Cavanaugh:

* On Monday, April 14th, I signed a contract for an impending job for my home on (address deleted).
* On Wednesday, April 16th, I gave RJ a check in the amount of $2,000 as a deposit for this job.
* On Saturday, April 19th, I called RJ to inform him I had to cancel the job completely due to unforeseen financial problems. During that conversation, he said he would return the money in full, but needed some time. I agreed to give him time.
* On April 25th, I e-mailed him to express how deeply sorry I was for cancelling the job. No response.
* On April 28th, I e-mailed him again in an effort to contact him for payment. No response.
* On April 30th, I spoke with him on the phone. He asked if (he) could pay me back on an “installment plan” where he would give me $500 a week until it was paid off. I said that would be fine.
* On May 8th, he paid me $500 in cash.
* On May 15th, I called him about another installment, but he said since it was raining, he didn’t have the money. I said that’s fine, but that I do expect to get my money back by the end of the month. He told me he would have another payment on Thursday, May 22.

There is a receipt in her paperwork showing that Cavanaugh paid her $300 on May 22, 2008. Below it is another receipt showing that Cavanaugh paid her $200 on Saturday, June 7, 2008, with a note stating that he still owed her $1,000. It is signed by her and Cavanaugh.

I spoke with this woman today (September 14). She said that Cavanaugh still owes her the $1,000, but she added, "That money's gone." I asked if she had pressed the issue beyond the interaction that occurred in the summer of 2008.

"I called Cavanaugh," she said. "My father also called Cavanaugh. Then we got a call from Cavanaugh's attorney. They said if we didn't stop calling R.J., they'd file harassment charges."

This neighbor’s story, coupled with our other neighbors’ garage/code enforcement situation spurred me to go back to check on a scenario I’d been told about many months ago – this one, too, regarding Cavanaugh, with another assertion of Ryan as his business partner.

At some point in late winter of this year (I’d place it around March, perhaps April), local businessman Garo Kachadourian offered to let me read a notarized letter in his possession, from a Windsor couple who’d had dealings with Cavanaugh. The couple had hired Cavanaugh to do structural work at their home, the letter said.

In their letter, they claimed, they had paid Cavanaugh and had not seen all the work performed. Their letter also stated, a few different times, that Cavanaugh told them he was business partners with Mayor Ryan.

Kachadourian also showed me a copy of a check the Windsor couple wrote to Cavanaugh. I did not receive a copy of the check, but Kachadourian allowed me to photograph a copy of it. The check was for $1,000. In the copy I viewed, that check was written to R.J. Cavanaugh, but was then endorsed by a “Matt Ryan.” The signature looked like the signature available on press releases from Mayor Matt Ryan of the City of Binghamton.

Kachadourian, who owns a Binghamton auto repair shop, as well as the Web site BC Voice, said that at some point, his friends had submitted their letter to the office of the Broome County district attorney, Gerald Mollen, for review. The letter was written in the late summer/early fall of 2008. I was allowed by Kachadouriuan to photograph the letter, as well.

“We started searching for a contractor in early summer, 2008,” the letter stated. “We received only two estimates, one from a contractor whose name I don’t remember, and a second one from Robert Cavanaugh of R.J. Cavanaugh Enterprises. We chose Cavanaugh because he said he felt he could have the job done quickly. We thought that he was a large outfit, based on the fact that he told us he had several crews.

“He showed us pictures of projects that he had done, letters of recommendation and also told us that Matt Ryan, Mayor of the City of Binghamton, was a partner in his business.”

They wrote that they met with Cavanaugh for the first time on August 28, 2008. He gave a written estimate of $24,500 for the work to be performed and they signed the contract. The scope of the work included basement work, roof replacement, work on the front porch, and window framing and installation. The couple’s letter stated that Cavanaugh required a $2,500 deposit.

“I told him that I only had $1,000 at that time because it happened so fast,” their letter, which was written from the woman’s perspective, stated, “and I hadn’t had a chance to get my financing in place yet. He agreed to take $1,000 that day, and he would accept the balance of the deposit ($1,500) when my financing was secured. At the house, I wrote a check for $1,000 (check No. 4256) …”

The couple said in their statement that they had asked Cavanaugh to cash the check quickly.

“He did not cash the check until August 14, 2008,” they stated in the letter. “Because he held the check, the check bounced. Mr. Cavanaugh called me to tell me about the bounced check, and I made sure the funds were in the account so that it could be re-deposited.

“He said that it would be the right thing to do for me to call Mr. Ryan to explain that the bounced check was my fault and not Cavanaugh’s. I made the phone call as he requested, but Mr. Ryan and I did not discuss the business partnership during that conversation.

“I later observed the reverse side of the $1,000 check that Mr. Cavanaugh apparently had endorsed the check,” the letter stated, “and made it payable to Matt Ryan, and Mr. Ryan then endorsed the back of the check back to Mr. Cavanaugh. Mr. Cavanaugh also told me during our conversation that the job was ‘going to move quickly,’ so he would need the first draw in the amount of $12,000 in order to purchase materials.”

The letter stated that the $1,000 was re-deposited on August 23, 2008, and cleared. The couple wrote that they were frustrated dealing with Cavanaugh about the scheduling of work. By mid-September, the letter stated, the work had not yet begun.

“This went on for (the) next few weeks, each time we got a different excuse and an assurance that ‘they would be there the following Monday or Tuesday’ or ‘later in the week,’” the letter stated. “On September 19, I left Mr. Cavanaugh voice mails on both his cell and business phones telling him that the windows had been delivered. I also asked him in those voice mails to give me start dates for each phase of the project. He did not return my calls. After that date, I left him voice mails on both his cell and business phones about every other day, and I have never received return calls.

“I finally called his business partner, Matt Ryan (the mayor’s current cell phone number, as of September 3, when I called him, was listed here), to ask him to get a message to Mr. Cavanaugh. I asked him why Mr. Cavanaugh had my money but would not return my calls. I mentioned that Mr. Cavanaugh told me that they were business partners, and Mayor Ryan denied that they were. He told me that Mr. Cavanaugh never should have told me that, that he had only written a letter of recommendation for Mr. Cavanaugh. He told me that he would get a message to Mr. Cavanaugh.”

The letter went on to state that shortly after that phone conversation, the couple received a call from Kelley Fischer, described in the letter as Cavanaugh’s attorney.

“(Fischer) said that Mr. Cavanaugh had asked him to be a ‘mediator’ between him and me,” the letter continued. “For a time, he acted as a ‘go-between’ between Mr. Cavanaugh and I. During a conversation on October 2, I told Mr. Fischer that I wanted to fire Mr. Cavanaugh and hire Ken Peters of Pour Boys Concrete and/or a contractor friend of his … to do the concrete, roof job and renovations work. He advised me that I couldn’t hire them because they were under contract to R.J. Cavanaugh Enterprises to subcontract the work at my place.”

The letter then stated that Peters attempted to contact Cavanaugh to get money to purchase materials for this job, but to no avail. The letter also stated that Peters said Fischer was incorrect in telling the homeowners that he was under contract with Cavanaugh’s company for these repairs.

During our September 3 phone conversation, Mayor Ryan commented on the check written to Cavanaugh.

"Can you think of any reason why somebody might end up with a ... money from a ... from somebody ... somebody might endorse a check?" he asked me. "Can you think of any, Steve?"

"I'm asking you about this specific instance," I responded.

"Can you think of any?" he continued. "Instead of ... you know, again, you think of yourself as a ... you know ... see, the thing why I know you're disingenuous is 'cause you know where this check is right now and what's going on with it, so why are you asking me the question? You know that this check is part of a case against Bob Cavanaugh, right?"

I told him that I had heard rumors, but had no direct knowledge to that effect. I then asked him again if he'd care to explain his signature on the check written to Cavanaugh.

"The check was, on a Saturday morning, after we got done golfing," Mayor Ryan said. "He needed materials, he had to buy materials for on Monday morning, he wasn't going to have to be ... early at his job, he said, and he said 'Can I sign this over to you and you give me money from your ATM?' I said, 'No problem.' You know? And, 'cause I know him well enough that he ... I've always had a relationship with him where he's, you know, never stiffed me for any money. So, I cashed the check for him. I'm sorry, I didn't cash the check for him. He ... well, eventually I cashed the check, but he endorsed ... he endorsed it over to me and I gave him $1,000 from the ATM machine.

"That's what I'm talking about. So there's nothing ... and the D.A. knows this. I met with the D.A.," Mayor Ryan said. "I gave a statement to that affect, and they know exactly what this is about, Steve, so don't try to make it something it isn't. You guys are searching for something, and I know where you've been. I know you went to the feds already. So, that's why I don't ... you know, the reality is, Steve, this isn't about journalism, it's about trying to get me. I know where you've been already with the check. I know you have."

I told Ryan that, in fact, I had not been anywhere with any check, and that I also had not - and have not - gone "to the feds."

Later in the same conversation, Mayor Ryan all but implored me to not write this article with his name attached. He said he felt he had showed me that he was clearly not a business partner with Cavanaugh, but I told him I planned to write the story with all information presented, and that readers could come to their own conclusions.

This appeared to upset Mayor Ryan even more. He then offered to supply me with another source of information on Cavanaugh.

“If you want to write a story about Bob Cavanaugh, I’ll give you another name,” Ryan said. “The lady, I forget her name but, he stiffed this lady on … now, maybe you already know about it. That’s what I almost punched him for, I was so pissed off, and I went to see her, and the daughter called me up, again, because he used my name and I went and saw the (unintelligible) lady and I was totally pissed off at what I saw and how he … apparently he had taken advantage of her …

“So, that’s what I’m talking about, is that, just because somebody says something, and that’s why I just got done explaining to you, Steve, you know, if you want to continue to write the story that’s all about innuendo and all about, you know … you have no evidence. Don’t you think the D.A.’s office woulda looked into to see if I was his business partner? I have nothing to do with Bob Cavanaugh other than, you know, I was his golfing buddy and I’ve never been involved in a business deal with him. Ever.”

I asked Ryan why he thought me writing both sides of the issue would hurt him politically.

“Because, people are gonna … well, I don’t know what else you’re going to write, but people, you know … you know how people are,” Ryan said. “You just said, some will believe it, some won’t. All I’m suggesting to you, Steve, is that you have no evidence. This is not journalism.

“The fact that somebody says that you’re … just like when, you know, Kim, uh, my campaign, she used to work on my campaign said I wouldn’t date her anymore because she was … and then she also, they found out afterwards, she told the Press that she was, uh, her integrity was impeccable because she was, you know, a district attorney.

“Turns out she had been fired by the – not fired, but (unintelligible name) told her if you don’t quit, we’ll fire you, and she wrote the article in the Press … never checked it out, and at the end of the day it was a bunch of bullshit, because I wouldn’t date her because she was African American and I couldn’t win the mayor’s race if I was dating an African American. Do you remember that? So, is that journalism? To print that letter? Do you think that is?”

“I don’t remember it, Matt, I really don’t,” I responded. He continued to equate the stories.

“You’re doing the same thing,” Mayor Ryan said. “You’re just suggesting that this is the, you know … and it’s just, there’s nothing there. You’ve gotta have something more than that, Steve, to start this kind of bullshit. That’s what I’m suggesting. If you were a real journalist, you wouldn’t do it.”

I reminded Mayor Ryan that he made the statement, himself, that he told Cavanaugh that he was interested in investment properties, if Cavanaugh were to find any, and that Cavanaugh should give him a call. I told Mayor Ryan I believed that if I expressed interest in investing in properties with someone, it could be perceived by some as being a business partnership.

Mayor Ryan began to yell, calling me a coward if I wrote this article.

“It’s just disgusting what you’re saying,” Mayor Ryan said. “I’m glad that you’ve never been a prosecutor because, you know, that’s why they need good public defenders like me because people like you would draw conclusions from no evidence, so you know …”

I tried to show him, again, by example, how someone could get the impression he was looking into business ventures with Cavanaugh when he admitted to me that he checked out a property and, in his words, “ran the numbers.” This was followed by more unintelligible yelling from Mayor Ryan, punctuated by …

“Steve, shut up! I’m not going to listen to your bullshit!” Mayor Ryan yelled into the phone. “You are … I told you, I’ve never done one with him. That would make me a business partner … If you don’t know the difference between thinking about something and doing something, then that’s exactly what you’re going to write your journalism about. I had no business relationship with Bob Cavanaugh. Ever.

“I talked about it. That’s not a business deal. If you went to court and said, ‘Well, he said he was going to be in business me,’ well where is the documentation? That’s what I’m talkin’ about, Steve. You don’t … you have to have something more than that, and that’s what you’re writing an article on, nothing else. And that’s my point. You’re gonna make a … you’re gonna put in all these things.

“I’m talking to ya and now you’re going to say I admitted that I might, you know, might be interested in purchasing a property?” Mayor Ryan asked me.

“You said that,” I reminded him.

“And that I told you it never happened,” he yelled.

“You said that,” I repeated.

“And you’re gonna write that?” Mayor Ryan went on. “A suggestion that I have a business partner? You’re a scumbag if you do that. You’re a … not a journalist. You’re a liar and a scumbag, just like Victor Salcedo.

"So, record it, put it out on the Internet, but that’s the truth, Steve Jensen. If that’s what you’re gonna do, you’re a punk coward. Goodbye.”

…

And now for something completely different.

This change, he won't contain,
Slip away, to clear your mind.
When asked, who made it show,
The truth, he gives in to most.

So lay down, the threat is real,
When his sight goes red again.