On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Kathy Vassar wrote: =>apparently chris kotsiopoulus was in court recently and fined a whole $1000. =>he was ordered to submit plans, apparently. => =>as i understand it, what he has submitted is a request for a building permit =>with a site plan that shows the wall still there. what i was told by the =>building dept was that the ONLY part of the wall that had previously been =>ordered removed was a small section in the sideyard setback! (not any part =>near the Swartzes that many of us have seen) that was news to the Swartzes =>after having been told THE WALL had been ordered removed. => =>Steve Orr has talked to town engineering and has described the new plans as =>nibbling away at the edges of the wall but it sounds to me as though the new =>plans still include THE WALL. Steve, can you fill us in?
I'll tell you what I have, but we have lots of questions outstanding. When this whole thing exploded, a number of officials went over to the Swartz's place and were all uniformly distressed at what had happened. The upshot was that ChrisKo was issued a cease&desist order as well as orders to submit engineering plans on how he was going to take the wall down. Last night, I got a call from Micheal and Betsy Swartz letting me know that they had gotten word that the wall is in fact *not* coming down. What Chris had submitted were engineering plans on how he was going to make the wall conform to regulations. Apparently, based on my conversation with Town Engineer John Bertorelli this morning, conformance means that only that part of the wall that is improperly intruding into setback areas is going to be "nipped back". In other words, when asked to produce plans on how the wall was to be removed, he instead submitted plans on how he was going to make the existing wall conform to regs. Note that there are issues that are being completely skirted: * He was found to have brought up contaminated fill. Somewhere along the line, someone started taking speech lessons from Bill Clinton, because what used to be "contaminated fill" is now "improper fill". Order magnitude 1500 or 1600 truckloads full. (I forget the exact number of truckloads that were involved.) The fill is loaded with blocks of asphalt, which is not allowed because it is a petroleum product and will leach into the environment. One of my concerns is that only the large visible blocks of asphalt will (if any) end up getting removed. The smaller, and probably the majority mass, of the asphalt will get left behind so we can all slowly drink and bathe in it. * The height of the wall that was originally approved was not to exceed five feet. This wall is exceeding IMNSHO 20 to 25 feet in certain parts. While John did say that somewhere between 30 to 40 feet will be removed from each side, nothing in the new plans talks about reducing the height of what's left. And without removing the height, we have no way of seeing how the contaminated fill will be removed. To date, I see no order from any Department to have the fill removed. I have no clue why. I spoke with Ann Welles from the Planning Board and she is taking the initiative to act as point man to assess what is happening and what should be happening and what is not happening. I am *very* concerned that that Town is going to be sued by the abutters for not enforcing, or more appropriately, abdicating all responsibility, in exchange for ChrisKo proceeding. It seems to be a lot like the Saudis paying Al Quaeda for not bombing them. I was not able to talk with Joe Mikielian in the Building Department today. He's busy shoveling snow. I'll be talking with more people, as will Ann and we'll pass along more information as it becomes available. Please feel free to make your own inquiries. And one last thing: If you respond to this message, *please* reduce the size of the text that you are quoting. Thanks to all for listening. -- -Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have - -happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ -Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- -individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question? steveo at syslang.net
