The list of misconduct and abuses grows and grows and grows for Town of New Baltimore Highway Superintendent Denis Jordan (D). The New Baltimore Town Board just sit and stare into space, wide-eyed, clueless while Jordan makes threats, harasses residents, creates dangerous hazards, damages private property, causes lawsuits against the Town, and even threatens the Board itself. Why does this craziness continue? why hasn’t the Town Board taken action against Jordan as provided under New York State Law? Politics? Cowardice? Ignorance? Indifference? Maybe a little of each but the incompetence and stupidity is damaging the entire community!
Why doesn’t the New Baltimore Town Board read the writing on the wall?
The entire New Baltimore Town Board met in public session on September 11, 2017. Supervisor Nick Dellisanti, Deputy supervisor Jeff Ruso, board members Shellie vanEtten, Chuck Irving, and Scott Brody were all present. Mr Denis Jordan, the under-fire New Baltimore Highway Superintendent, was sprawled in the last row. Four residents, three of them women, all with complaints against Jordan, were also present.
All four residents have significant claims against the Town of New Baltimore and all the claims are based on Jordan’s abuses, incompetence, and unethical practices. The four appeared at the meeting as a show of solidarity. One of them was to read a public statement into the record demanding answers to explain how Jordan has managed to keep his job while perpetrating all sorts of incompetent and crazy schemes.
We have the text of the resident’s public statement, and we’d like to share it with our readers now:
September 11, 2017
The Town Board of New Baltimore
New Baltimore Town Hall
3809 County Route 51
Hannacroix, New York 12087Ladies, Gentlemen, Neighbors:
Subject: Remarks addressed to the Board in Public Session.
I am here this evening to address the New Baltimore Town Board directly and to get answers to the many questions I have placed before the Town over the past year and a half regarding the lamentable performance of the Town of New Baltimore Highway Department under the authority and supervision of Mr Denis Jordan, Town of New Baltimore Highway Superintendent.
The Town of New Baltimore, in addition to the numerous email notifications and photographic documentation I have provided, has made at least one on site inspection visit of New Street, a roadway owned by the Town of New Baltimore, in response to the ongoing problems of runoff water drainage and the failure of the New Baltimore Highway Department to maintain gutters and storm drains. There is an at least six-year record of the incompetent installation of culverts, drains, and ditches and the resulting damage to private property in and around New Street.
In 2016, the town supervisor and deputy supervisor, as well as board member vanEtten personally visited the site of damage to private property. Mr Ruso himself discovered a culvert that was so poorly maintained that one end could not be identified. Two days after that inspection, Mr Dellisanti, Mr Ruso, Mr Jordan and Mr vanWormer were provided with a tour of the New Street and Madison Avenue East problem areas. Shortly, thereafter, NBHD crews arrived to clear drainage ditches that had not been cleared of debris and vegetation for at least 2-3 years. They proceeded to identify the blind culvert and uncovered a drainage grate from under 2-3 inches of soil. Mr vanWormer remarked that he had no idea the drain was there, and he’d been with the department for at least 17 years. The department dug up the road, replaced the mystery culvert, installed culverts under two residential driveways, and left a so-called catchment hole and several bizarrely crafted storm drains. The runoff drainage problem was not cured.
The drainage problems were not cured and the department managed to create new hazards and aggravate the drainage situation.
In 2017, the town of New Baltimore Highway Department and its contractor Callanan, appeared unannounced and commenced paving operations in the Hamlet of New Baltimore. I personally sought out and questioned Mr vanWormer about what was planned, since residents were not provided with information, and the Town website merely stated that details would be announced; that notice still appeared even after the paving had been started and even after it had been completed.
The most recent operations of the NBHW department can be characterized best by saying it is half-assed done by halfwits! The epitome of jerry rigging.
Not only were the operations on New Street largely unsupervised by the Highway Department, upon arrival on the day New Street was done, I was practically speechless when I returned home at about 3:00 p.m. to find that the roadbed had been raised an average of 8-15 inches, a huge drop prevented one from using the front entrance to my home, another 10”curb made use of the second entrance a significant hazard. There was a raised sloped edge along the street on the East side measuring some 12-15 inches. You could not exit a car at the roadside and safely get out because of the slope and the drop-off. The road has been substantially narrowed such that when unloading my car another car cannot safely pass by.
The highway department attempted to cure the drop-off to the residential parking areas by dropping crushed stone. That jerry rigged solution has failed because the stone is either compressing or washing away, leaving the dangerous curb exposed again. It’s incredible but the Department on the West side of New Street, right across the street and opposite the No 18 New St. parking area, deposited a blacktop ramp from the roadway onto the lawn of the Arndt property, apparently so that Ms Arndt can drive her car up onto her lawn. Even more bizarrely that ramp actually fills the drainage ditch along the West side of New Street, preventing runoff from draining along the ditch into the drains.
In another incompetent attempt to remedy the hazards caused by the deposition of untold truckloads of blacktop on New Street, the Department had to pour concrete steps supposedly to allow our entrances to be used. The concrete steps were not provided with a foundation and now vegetation is growing from under the steps. No doubt water can seep under the steps and frost will heave them. The concrete or cement mix used is obviously not the correct mix because the edges are already disintegrating, crumbling. At the top of the steps there continues to be a raised hump of approximately 6-8 inches in height, causing a significant hazard of tripping, and which will pose a particular problem in winter with ice and snow buildup. This needs to be corrected.
The Deputy [Highway] superintendent has already commented that the raised, sloped edge of the road will cause a problem when plowing in winter and will complicate snow removal.
In an apparent attempt to cure the raised edge of the roadway at the garage of No. 10, the Department dropped blacktop to form a sloped grade into the driveway. This sloped grade now forms a conspicuous channel along which runoff from the roadway is conducted into the foundations of No. 10 New Street. We continue to use sandbags there.
In short, ladies and gentlemen, not only has the Department created hazard after hazard, they have each time created a new problem.
There is no explanation why truckload upon truckload of blacktop had to be deposited on New Street to the extent of raising the road surface at least 8-10 inches above the pre-paving level! How much has that cost the taxpayers of this Town?
Editor’s Note: By any standard we consulted, the blacktop deposited by Mr Jordan’s contractors, Callanan Industries, should not have exceeded 2-2½ inches maximum. We can only speculate that the reason between 6 and 10 inches of blacktop was dumped on New Street was because Callanan Industries sells blacktop. What was in this excessive use for Mr Jordan, we might well ask?
And where was Mr Jordan when all of this was going on? Well, at 3 p.m. on the day New Street was being literally dumped on, Mr Jordan left early to attend a wake…regrettably not his own.
In the meantime, request after request after request has been brought to the Town to cure the hazards and remove the dangerous situations. The town has shown only indifference, and the incompetence and waste continues.
Rather than respond to residents’ concerns Mr Jordan prefers to harass a local woman property owner because of a privacy fence. Rather than cure the problems and remove the hazards created on New Street and elsewhere, Mr Jordan is off installing culverts on friends’ properties. I have heard of at least two such preferred operations going on in the Town over the past couple of months.
The glaring questions persist: Where is Mr Jordan getting the money to hire his own attorneys when the town has an attorney? Where is Mr Jordan getting the money to hire surveyors to continue his harassment of local property owners. Where is Mr Jordan getting the money to hire Delaware Engineering as consultants to establish that New Baltimore is the only place on Earth were water runs uphill? Where is the accountability? Where is the leadership? Where is the responsibility? Where is Mr Jordan getting the wherewithal to confront this board with his own threats of litigation? What has the board done in response to Mr Jordans now infamous refrain, “Let them sue us!”
Mr Jordan must be made accountable for the untold damage he has done as Superintendent of Highways not only in terms of incompetent roadwork, corrupt contract practices, but also to the trust and confidence of residents in this local government, a town board whose responsibility is to steward the public treasure and to act in good faith and fair play in performing their fiduciary duties to the residents of this town.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Jordan must be held accountable. Mr Jordan must GO! And he must go NOW!
Need I remind you that this is an election year, and some of you are seeking re-election. It doesn’t look good.
I am providing a copy of these remarks for the record and ask that the Clerk conform them as part of the record of this September 11, 2017, public regular session of the New Baltimore Town Board.
Mr Jordan was re-elected two years ago and won by ONE vote. With the public outcries and public knowledge of Denis Jordan’s years of misconduct and incompetence, waste of taxpayer money, abuse of residents, and his alleged favors being done for “friends” of Denis Jordan by Denis Jordan using Town of New Baltimore resources. Jordan’s neglect of his duties and obligations, his ignorance and incompetence, his questionable contracting procedures, and his refusal to respond to good faith questions posed by residents has been brought to the attention of the New Baltimore Town Board for almost 10 years now, multiple notifications, hundreds of photographs and yet Jordan is still there. Granted, two of the town boards were dominated by Democraps (under supervisors David Louis and Susan O’Rorke) and they wouldn’t lift a finger against their fellow Democrap, Denis Jordan. But now we have a Republican-dominated board and still nothing!!!
Editor’s Note: We have reliable and credible information that Jordan won the last elections by one vote because the Republican and Independent election leaders did not count the absentee votes for that election!!! If that is factually true, someone’s head has to roll. So much for the democratic process and we wonder why people don’t vote.
We have personally inspected the damage and situations described in the resident’s public statement, and we can verify those facts as being true. We have F.O.I.L.ed supporting documents from the Town of New Baltimore and those documents do not paint a pretty picture of the operations of the Highway Department much less of Mr Jordan’s management skills…they’re zilch! We have also spoken to the woman being harassed by Jordan. That woman keeps her property immaculate and takes great pains to keep it beautiful; Mr Jordan made the claims, stating that he had received several complaints about her property but would not say who made the complaints. In fact, he first made the complaints and only afterwards collected any facts. Sounds like harassment, putting the cart before the horse again, Mr Jordan.
We agree with the resident’s public statement and call on the New Baltimore Town Board to commence legal proceedings to remove Denis Jordan from office, to audit his performance and his recent dealings with Callanan and their paving operations in the Hamlet of New Baltimore, and to prosecute Jordan and his accomplices if illegal activity is revealed!
We want justice and compensation for those New Baltimore residents who have been injured by Jordan and his incompetent operations!
This book should be required reading for the Town Board!
The Editor
