PureBunkum

THAT’s a hypothetical question?

Say your car was towed, and you asked the tower how much it would cost to get it back, and he said, ”Ma’am, it would be like $2,000.”  The answer sounds pretty definitive, wouldn’t you say?  Give me two grand, and you can have your car back.

Only this was no ordinary car owner, and this was no ordinary towing contractor, and it’s highly suspect that this was a hypothetical question.

The Wilkes-Barre woman is in her eighties, and her car wasn’t towed because the meter expired.  It was stolen and ended up in the lot of the city’s controversial towing contractor, Leo Glodzik, owner of LAG Towing aka the city’s golden boy.

The woman, identified in a Times Leader article Sunday, is Natalie Aleo, who reported on Dec. 10 that someone stole her car.  Well the city police located it in Plymouth and for some very strange reason didn’t notify Aleo.  They apparently did notifiy Glodzik, who towed the car to his lot.

Glodzik said he was moving some vehicles around last week and found identification papers in Aleo’s car and called her.  She came to his lot and asked what it would cost to get the car out of storage.  That IS NOT, under anyone’s definition, a hypothetical question, but Glodzik told the TL it was.  So he apparently gave her a hypothetical answer.  “Ma’am, it would be like $2,000.”

As it turns out, the car’s engine was blown.  TL Staff Writer Jerry Lynott reported.  Glodzik said he offered to take the woman’s car wherever she wanted – for a fee, but that she refused after being told of the car’s condition.  She was probably also blown away by the “hypothetical” pricetag to get her car out of storage.

Enter city Mayor Tom Leighton, who called the elderly woman.  Why, we don’t know.  He probably had a near heart attack when he found out Glodzik may be making headlines again.

But Mayor Leighton assured the TL that Aleo was “perfectly happy” with LAG.  Isn’t everybody? “This lady had no idea why the mayor was calling her,” Leighton said.  She’s not the only one.

Also stepping into the fray was Charlotte Raup, president of the city’s Crime Watch Coalition.  Raup said this woman was a victim and should pay nothing to get her car back.  Glodzik said, “We don’t charge the victim of a crime,” adding she paid nothing.  However, Glodzik knew her car was stolen, which made her a victim.  So why then did he tell her, hypothetically, that is, that she’d have to pay $2,000 to get her car back?

At least one city councilman months ago demanded that the city take a good, hard look at Glodzik’s contract because of other alleged complaints about his business practices.  This incident has Tony George fired up anew and said the issue may be raised at meetings this week.

Last July, George asked Leighton to terminate Glodzik’s contract.  That, of course, went nowhere, except for the formation of a committee to review the contract.  That went nowhere as well.  Not one meeting has been scheduled.

Just what is this committee waiting for?  Glodzik has thumbed his nose at the council by refusing to provide receipts, and there have been other complaints against him.

Perhaps Forty Fort resident Mark Robbins, whom some have dismissed as having a vendetta against Glodzik, will be vindicated after all.  Robbins has not let Glodzik out of his sight since his own vehicle was towed.  He said his vehicle was also damaged and that Glodzik refused to take responsibility.  He has also accused LAG of taking advantage of the poor and the elderly and has filed numerous complaints with state offices.

We don’t know yet whether Aleo’s 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass was in working order before it was stolen.  But it did make it to Plymouth before ending up in LAG’s lot.  Now Glodzik says the car isn’t worth repairing.  “What I’ll do is junk the car,” he said.

Really.  If that’s the case, then how about telling us why you told this elderly woman, who asked you what it would cost to get her car out of storage, ”Ma’am, it would be like $2,000.”

- Betty Roccograndi

Poor Walter Griffith.  He’s being sued for allegedly recording a CityVest official without his consent, and the verdict is already in.

Although Griffith denies the allegations, Luzerne County’s rookie district attorney Stephanie Salavantis has pretty  much declared the maverick county controller guilty.  Does anyone else feel that this inexperienced county official is one day going to find herself in trouble for not looking before she leaps?

“The bottom line is he broke the law,” the DA told The Citizens’ Voice while passing off the case to the state’s attorney general.  Why again is Salavantis wasting the time of new Attorney General Kathleen Kane, who’s eyeing bigger fish to fry, like state Gov. Tom Corbett, when she said her own office’s investigation determined that Griffith recorded dozens of conversations without the parties’ consent?

And why doesn’t Walter remember doing so?

Maybe, like The CV’s headline screeched Tuesday morning, he’s “OUT OF CONTROL.”

CityVest honcho Y. Judd Shoval filed a civil suit against Griffith on Monday alleging his privacy was invaded, The Times Leader reported.  We haven’t heard much from Mr. Shoval or the other principals of CityVest ever since the non-profit organization accepted $6 million from county taxpayers to restore the Hotel Sterling and to create jobs but then didn’t deliver the goods or pay back the loan.  Things didn’t work out as they planned, and they would just like to walk away from it all, unscathed.  Our problem, not theirs.

There seems to be some confusion regarding whether CityVest had to even pay back this loan, and someone needs to take a good, hard look at the loan documents.  If they didn’t have to pay it back, we deserve to know who authorized that sweetheart deal.

It’s hard to believe that if he’s found guilty, Griffith, who’s gone after perceived wrongdoings with a vengeance, faces up to seven years in prison for each violation of the state’s wiretapping laws.  That’s what Salavantis’ first assistant, Sam Sanguedolce, told the CV. 

At least county council Chairman Tim McGinley is exercising caution before shooting from the hip.  He said it’s “a little premature” to consider whether Griffith should resign.

Meanwhile, Griffith said he’s baffled by the whole thing, that he never illegally recorded anybody.  ”It’s kind of confusing to me,” he told the TL.  That makes two of us.

I guess we’ll find out soon enough whether any laws were broken.  Griffith sounds pretty confident that he didn’t do anything wrong, but we have a DA who proclaimed unequivocally that he broke the law.  Whom do we believe here?

Anyway, Griffith appears to be in some trouble, especially with the well-to-do Shoval  nipping at his heels.

Perhaps when all is said and done, this may turn out to be a mere sideshow.  What we really want to know is what the federal grand jury investigating CityVest and the Hotel Sterling debacle concludes, whether the organization is really off the hook for $6 million of taxpayers’ money and if we’ll ever be able to freely travel over the Market Street Bridge again.

- Betty Roccograndi

It seems to me that Wilkes-Barre City Crime Watch Coalition head, Charlotte Raup, makes a pretty valid point.

With five cameras in the vicinity where 5-year-old Kevin Miller was tragically struck and killed by a hit and run driver, why was not even one photo helpful in catching the culprit?

I dunno, said city administrative coordinator, Drew Mc-Laugh-lin.  Actually, Drew said that just because the city police opted to release someone else’s photos doesn’t mean the city cameras were lacking.  He told The Times Leader that the private photos just provided the best “full spectrum” view of the car.

But, Drew, we’re talking five cameras from the city’s pricy surveillance system.  Shouldn’t we be able to expect them to zero in on a crime being committed.  Perhaps “Hawkeye” is a bit overrated or someone was asleep at the switch.

“We’ve spent so much money on these, we should at least have been able to get a license plate,” Raup said.  You’d think.

Even a Pittston resident sounded the alarms.  Anthony Antonello posted a video on YouTube which shows several city cameras in place where the hit-and-run allegedly occurred, the TL reported.

The photos which did provide information the police felt was useful in soliciting the public’s help were from cameras on buildings owned by King’s College and Thom Greco.

Drew said, “The perception is that if we did not have these private images, there would be no images.  That’s simply not true.”  No, no, Drew.  The perception is that perhaps the city’s Hawkeye system leaves a little bit to be desired if five cameras were unable to provide valuable images in capturing  the suspect in this horrific fatality.

But thanks to Greco’s and King’s cameras, plus tips, police on Friday seized a Pontiac Grand Am and identified a Plains Twp. man as a person of interest.

Drew would not show the city’s photos of the crime scene to TL Staff Writer Terri Morgan-Besecker, saying they may be used in a criminal prosecution.  Or is it that the city would be embarrassed with what the Hawkeye cameras produced, if anything?

Not so, said Gus Genetti, Thom Greco’s uncle, who is a member of the Hawkeye board of directors.  He said the Hawkeye cameras are superior to the ones he put on his nephew’s building.  “They’re digital and can pan, tilt and zoom in,” he said.

Unfortunately, they apparently were unable to pan, tilt and zoom in on a vehicle that just struck a little boy holding his father’s hand.

“I don’t think there should be any criticism of Hawkeye.  They picked up what they needed to pick up,” Genetti said. And what was that, we wonder?

Maybe it’s time someone re-visits the operation of the Hawkeye Security Systems, including its costs, especially its costs.  A few years back, the company which held the contract to monitor the system warned of increased costs after it was let go.  That’s because the cry baby police union filed a grievance that it was its job, not a private company’s, to man the cameras.  And to no one’s surprise, the state Labor Relations Board said, that’s right. 

You may also remember what happened when the police union also protested that the city was taking away its crime-fighting duties of manning the city’s parking meters by employing trained monkeys to do that job.  Sorry, citizens, just trying to make a point here.

The police cost city taxpayers a small fortune over that unreasonable complaint, especially when the parity clause for the fire fighters’ contract kicked in, and they also got back pay for NOT overseeing the parking meters.

So who is monitoring the city’s cameras these days, and how much is it costing?  Is there over-time involved?

Will city Controller Kathy Kane do an audit?  We understand she works quietly behind the scenes, so maybe we’ll never know.  But someone needs to shine the spotlight on this non-profit to make sure city taxpayers are getting their money’s worth, especially now that we’ve been hit with a 26-percent tax hike.

- Betty Roccograndi