LETTER: Zeoli is not a Superman

Written by Ernie Santoro
Thursday, 27 October 2011 09:08

As I glanced through a large booklet sent to me in the mail about Mr. Zeoli's accomplishments while in office, I was astonished to read all the things he claims he did for the town. As I got to the end of the booklet, I expected to see Mr. Zeoli in a cape fighting crime at night, because that's how ridiculous that booklet was.

His claim that he brought the UI to this town is ridiculous, as he had nothing to do with that except he happened to be in office at the time the cinemas closed, which allowed the UI to have a large enough parcel available to meet their requirements. The UI has their own real estate people and they were looking in this town, thanks to the Goldblatt administration, years ago.

As I looked at one of the photos in the index referencing open space, I realized it wasn't even property that was acquired by Mr. Zeoli. I guess the swamp land off Lambert Road he was responsible for purchasing during his administration was too wet for a photo shoot. Speaking of that feather in his cap, that Ewen property deal was so bizarre that if it happened 60 years ago people would have been yelling "pay off". Here's that scenario in a nutshell: a developer paid 3.3 million for the entire property, keeps the part suitable for development, sells the remainder to the town for 4.3 million during an economic downturn with Mr. Zeoli's full support and backing at the expense of the taxpayers. And now, after paying an outrageous price for that property, there are only two people in this town that are utilizing it and Mr. Zeoli is one of them.

Here are a few more facts on Mr. Zeoli:

He's raised taxes every year he's been in office after being left an approximate 1.7 million dollar surplus by the previous administration; a surplus, mind you, that during the campaign against Mr. Goldblatt he was insistent about it being about a 1.2 million dollar deficit. I'm sure Mr. Zeoli just made a miscalculation, as I don't think he would intentionally mislead the voters of this town.

On top of everything else, he has not provided sufficient funding to our schools and has done little to help our senior citizens.

We now have an opportunity to elect an accomplished business man in the area of finance and a family man who is truly concerned about the school system in this town and will do more to help our seniors.

We need a person who is going to treat the office of the first selectman as a full time job, not splitting his time between his hobby farm and his duties as first selectman

Ernie Santoro

Orange