$80
Million Dollar Lie…continued.
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Worcester is a show hosted by Ron Motta on WCCA (Worcester’s Public Access
Station)
In
this episode, the host is interviewing the sisters, Joyce and Gracemarie
Tomaselli. Part of their story was a post entitled – The
80 Million Dollar Lie. This horrifying story impacts everyone in the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts.
Background
information – Joyce and Gracemarie opened a small 28 seat restaurant in the
Town of Salisbury MA on September 12, 1992 after spending a year and half
bringing the building up to code. The restaurant opened and they began
receiving large bills for sewer ($4,000/year), but they had never operated a
business in Salisbury before so they didn’t think much about it…Until they went
to pick up their license renewals for 1995. They had to close their restaurant
on December 30, 1994 due to a posting error. They were told to pay $14,000 in
sewer user fees as well as a $13,000 betterment accruing 14% interest.
Salisbury
never recorded the sewer betterments after the vote at town meeting on May 17,
1982 to improve the wastewater treatment plant. Why? Probably because the 18
million dollar project was 100% paid for
with federal and USDA grants.
When
the Tomaselli’s purchased the property, there were no liens or betterments
recorded on the property.
The
Toamselli’s proceeded to the Apellate Tax Board; asked the DOR for help; asked
the Attorney General, and the Inspector General for help (Is this starting to sound familiar Templeton?) The Tomaselli’s
have even filed a Writ of Certiorari with
U.S. Supreme Court. The Tomaselli’s discovered from EPA and DEP documents that
the project cost for the sewer treatment plant was 18 million dollars paid
for by GRANTS. In court, the town of Salisbury and its’ attorneys Kopelman
and Paige came up with a figure of an 80 million dollar cost to justify
the unrecorded betterments charged to about 1,000 residents and businesses in
Salisbury. The town of Salisbury and its attorneys provided NO
documentation for the 80 million dollar figure.
A
few highlights from the interview-
Kopelman
& Paige was town counsel for Salisbury as well as its "financial advisor" for
the sewer treatment plant. Hmmm is that a Conflict of Interest?
When
the Tomaselli’s sued K&P, they discovered that in Massachusetts attorneys,
lawyers can LIE to the court with NO repercussions. There are only 11
states where a person can sue for fraud on the court. Massachusetts is not one
of those 11 states.
An attorney in Massachusetts
can lie to a judge and there are no consequences.
“That’s what we have been claiming all along,”
said Joyce Tomaselli who fought the sewer charges saying the town lied in court.
In other words, town officials first claimed in
Federal Court and at the Appellate Tax Board that the cost of the project was
$80M while they were trying to take the Tomaselli sister’s property, but now
that their actions have been exposed, they are trying to confuse rate payers by
saying the project did NOT cost $80M … which is what the Tomaselli sisters have
been saying all along. .
The Tomasellis say the rate payers were swindled
out of “fake betterment charge” when the town officials lied in court about the
cost of the project …. statements by Knowles, Condon and Harrington now seem to
back the sister’s claim.
Town Officials Told Federal Court Judge Saris,
Cost of Sewer Project was $80 MIL
The Valley Patriot researched the Federal
District Court Transcripts to compare the story being told now by Manager
Harrington, and Selectmen Knowles and Condon … with what they said in 2009
about the actual cost of the sewer project. Did it cost $18M or did it cost
$80M?
The following is an excerpt of a conversation in
Federal Court between Judge Saris and Salisbury Town Council Attorney
Mcenaney.
2/4/09 Transcript, United States District Court
TOWN COUNCIL – ATTY. MCENANEY: “I
represented the town at the proceeding before the Appellate Tax Board on the
appeal from the denial of their abatement application by the assessor and the
DPW director. That case, a full hearing on the merits was held before the
Appellate Tax Board. The Appellate Tax Board ruled in favor of the town. They
have taken an Appeal.
JUDGE SARIS: Well, let me ask you
this: How does one explain the difference between the $80 million and the $18
million? Are they just wrong?
ATTY. MCENANEY: I think they’re just
wrong.
Judge Saris: Or was there a mistake made?
ATTY. MCENANEY: I believe that
they’re wrong, yes. Furthermore the documents –
Judge Saris: Well, how do I know that? I mean, in
other words, did the Appellate Tax Board rule that, that they made a mistake?
ATTY. MCENANEY: I don’t believe they
addressed that specifically, but they found — they have a specific finding in
their opinion that the testimony that was offered by the DPW director was
credible in support of the decision. ….
JUDGE SARIS: But let me just ask
you this. Maybe they should have discovered it, whatever, but are they right
that it was $18 million and not $80 million?
ATTY. MCENANEY: My understanding
based on the testimony of the DPW director, is the total project cost was $80
million. The local share was $7.8 million.”
Below is a transcript of Condon’s speech last
month at a Board of Selectmen Meeting.
FREEMAN CONDON: I wish Tom
[Saab] had stayed around because I wanted to ask him one thing and that was
whether he had read the article before he forwarded it or forwarded the link.
Because I believe that the manager’s response was measured and moderate, and I
am in complete agreement with the way he handled it. The charges in the article
were absurd, and if Tom had read it, he would have known it was absurd. So, he
said that his fingerprints are not on it, he had nothing to do with it, but
simply, sending the link to 400 people infers that there was some support for
that.
When the manager, Mr. Harrington, said that some
of the things were inaccurate and false, they were absurdly false. The project
number was given at $80M, it is not even realistic.”
“The people were told in the article that the
federal government paid for the whole project. You know that kind of thing had
to be dealt with and it had to be repudiated, because they were totally false,
and you can’t have people try to buy into things like that, that don’t have a
single shred of basis in fact, so, I agree completely with Mr. Harrington’s
response. And again, I thought it was most appropriate.
SELECTMAN FRED KNOWLES: I
just will concur with Mr. Condon.
Conclusion: If the Town charged rate
payers $7.8M for a sewer betterment charge to pay 10% of a $80M sewer project
that town manager Harrington and the Board of Selectmen NOW say was only
$18M,
*********************************************************
By Kevin
CullenGLOBE COLUMNIST OCTOBER 22,
2011
SALISBURY - Whoever said revenge is
a dish best served cold never had Joycie and Cookie Tomaselli’s eggplant
parmigiana.
They are sisters, Joyce and
Gracemarie Tomaselli, aka Joycie and Cookie, and they grew up in Lawrence and
spent their summers on Salisbury Beach, where the waves invigorated them, the
sun tanned their skin, and the salt water taffy pulled at their teeth.
They became social workers, because
they had big hearts, but somewhere buried deep in those big hearts was a dream:
to own their own restaurant, to create the smells and the sounds and the tastes
and the sensations that filled their house, where their mother, Mary “Mama’’
Tomaselli, cooked and sang in equal measure.
In 1991, they took the plunge, quit
their jobs, and bought a restaurant just off the beach. They called it Mangia,
and they moved into the apartment above the restaurant. They hoped to open for
Memorial Day, but every time they were about to open town inspectors said they
needed one improvement or another.
They missed two summer seasons
before they finally satisfied all the town demands and opened in September
1992. Mangia had only 28 seats, but it had Joycie and Cookie in the kitchen,
and it had Mama in the dining room, doing magic tricks for the kids, playing
standards on the piano for the adults.
When Mama Tomaselli sang “As Time
Goes By,’’ old couples held hands and looked at each other the way they did
before they had rings on their fingers.
The food was terrific. The atmosphere
was better. It was like walking into some old Sicilian lady’s house at dinner
time.
The restaurant got great reviews
and was building a loyal following and then the Tomaselli girls started getting
bills for sewer usage that made no sense. They got a bill for $2,593 for 1991,
when they owned the restaurant but it wasn’t opened. They couldn’t possibly
have used that much water.
‘I never wanted
to serve papers. I only wanted to serve linguine.’
Joyce
Tomaselli
On New Year’s Eve, 1994, Cookie
called the town and said she was wondering why she hadn’t gotten the paperwork
to renew their licenses, and the tax collector told them they wouldn’t get
their licenses until they paid all their sewer and tax bills and that was
$19,000 and Cookie Tomaselli almost fell over.
“Where am I going to get $19,000 in
four hours?’’ she asked. There was no answer, and they closed Mangia down.
The Tomasellis couldn’t understand
why the town made them jump through so many hoops just to open and then created
a situation that ensured not only that they had to close but that they had no
income to pay their bills. It nagged at them.
In 1999, Mama started the long,
excruciating descent into Alzheimer’s, but even as they took care of Mama,
Joycie and Cookie couldn’t let go of Mangia.
They started combing through
records. They said they accidentally were given records at the town hall which
showed there were two sets of books on the sewer project.
They were escorted out of
selectmen’s meetings by police officers when they wouldn’t stop asking
questions.
Joycie practically became an
engineer, figuring out how sewer systems work. And lo and behold, the Tomaselli
girls, Joycie and Cookie, figured out they were way overcharged for sewer use.
They calculated that they were charged $13,900 between 1991 and 1994 when their
actual water use should have made the bill $1,643.
But that wasn’t the half of it.
Joycie and Cookie Tomaselli claimed that they and other town residents were
billed almost $8 million to pay for the local portion of the town’s sewer
project that was already entirely reimbursed by the state and federal
governments. They claimed the town was engaged in a huge fraud.
It was a sensational allegation,
practically sedition. The town fought back, denying any and all assertions that
the amateur sleuths made. The town disputed the Tomasellis’ methodology, denied
it was pulling a fast one on sewer users, and initiated action to seize the
Tomasellis’ property for nonpayment of back taxes and sewer fees.
It is an epic legal battle. Cookie
and Joycie found themselves serving legal papers on people. Sometimes it was
overwhelming.
“I never wanted to serve papers,’’
Joycie lamented one day. “I only wanted to serve linguine.’’
At a court hearing years ago, one
of the lawyers for the town smirked at the Tomaselli sisters and made some
remark about them being out of their depth.
“We’re a town,’’ he told them
during a break. “We can do anything we want.’’
After the town prevailed at one
court proceeding, the same lawyer leaned down toward them as he left the
courtroom and said, “See?’’
That court hearing led to another
and to another. It is a legal battle royal, the end of which is nowhere in
sight.
But something happened last month
that suggested a tide may be turning on Salisbury Beach. Something that makes
it harder for the town to dismiss Joycie and Cookie Tomaselli as a pair of
deadbeats tilting at windmills.
The Justice Department sent letters
to Attorney General Martha Coakley, Revenue Commissioner Navjeet Bal, and
Inspector General Gregory Sullivan, recommending that they conduct their own
investigations into what the Tomaselli sisters have uncovered.
Mama continued to fade into the fog
of Alzheimer’s. As the years passed, she could only sing a few words from
“That’s Amore.’’ Joycie and Cookie took care of her until she died last May.
Mama was 99.
Joycie and Cookie fight on. They
say reopening Mangia would be a fitting memorial to their mother.
“Mama always said, ‘When you
believe in the truth, you never give up,’ ’’ Cookie Tomaselli said. “We’re not
giving up.’’
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist.
Contact him at cullen@globe.com.
Follow him on Twitter @GlobeCullen.
********************************************
Any
of this sound familiar Templeton?
This is cruel and abusive treatment, and I give these girls credit for fighting for what is right. So a lawyer can stand before a judge and lie, and not worry about it !! Where are the people of Salisbury, in all of this?? No one with a backbone or the gumption to stand by these girls. The girls need to make sure their case is not lost since we have a new administration in office. Shame on local officials for not telling the truth, because the truth will come out in the wash, although it may take a while. Bev.
ReplyDeleteThis is cruel and abusive treatment, and I give these girls credit for fighting for what is right. So a lawyer can stand before a judge and lie, and not worry about it !! Where are the people of Salisbury, in all of this?? No one with a backbone or the gumption to stand by these girls. The girls need to make sure their case is not lost since we have a new administration in office. Shame on local officials for not telling the truth, because the truth will come out in the wash, although it may take a while. Bev.
ReplyDeleteThe reasons for this blog my uncle started are along the same lines as what the town of salisbury has done. With the government in this up to their eyebrows. What has been done with the extra money they have collected? I would think the law firm may have charged a flat rate and scooped up all they could. The facts about this are so similar to Templeton issues with the mill and treatment plant. Millions and Millions a fortune to anyone have been scooped up and redirected to a wrong party and with the watchful eye of the public closed and lips shut they will do this over and over and get away with it. The time to stop the theft of town assets is here and i hope people sit up open their eyes and mouths to help out.
ReplyDeleteThis story is not just about the Tomaselli issue but the issue of the lawyers who lie and change the face of the towns they are serving. What a shame to let this happen and fight as hard as these people have. All the people in Templeton are being taken also due to K+P and their faults in court cases. After the runaround the people in Templeton were forced to pay for the treatment plant upgrades and most still are. You also should hae not been charge like the Salisbury people are.
But with the things in Templeton being as they "were" the carpet got raised and the brooms came out to do the sweeping.
Let all hope those days never return and we run our town the way we should.
Watch these videos and you will see what we were talking about long ago.
It's the same story and the same lawyers. WHO KNEW?
GERRY KNEW!
If K&P can lie to the Judge then it makes sense that the Judge knows this, so he becomes part of the lie. K&P were instrumental in setting up the Ethics Laws in Massachusetts. By proxy it makes perfect sense that these ethic laws may in fact be based on more lies. I have heard that our legal system is an extension of the City of London which ties in with the International bankers and the extremely wealthy. Is it any wonder Erving Paper Mills got out of their contractual obligations with the Town of Templeton with the help of K&P? It is my opinion thet the WWTP case can be reopened if the Selectmen wish to do this due to obstruction of justice by K&P and the Selectmen's office at the time.
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