Meet the Candidates
July 29, 2011
Click here to meet the 2011 Colonie Town Board Candidates!
MAHAN BULLDOZES THROUGH 25 YEAR SECRET LANDFILL DEAL
July 29, 2011
Candidate for Colonie Town Supervisor, Denise Sheehan, who spent a combined total of 20 years at the state Division of Budget and the state Department of Environmental Conservation, today said the Town Board’s vote to approve the Mahan administration’s plan to turn over operations of the town’s landfill to Waste Connections, Inc., will negatively impact town residents for years to come. Click here to continue reading this press release.
SHEEHAN SAYS LANDFILL DEAL STINKS
July 28, 2011
Colonie Town Supervisor, Denise Sheehan, today called on the members of the Colonie Town Board to vote “no” on the Mahan administration’s plan to turn over operations of the Town’s landfill to California’s Waste Connections, Inc.. Click here to continue reading the press release.
Republican Candidate, Denise Sheehan, calls out Supervisor Paula Mahan
July 22, 2011
Republican candidate for Colonie supervisor Denise Sheehan has called out Supervisor Paula Mahan’s administration. Click here to continue reading.
2011 Colonie Scramble Golf Tournament Pictures
July 12, 2011
Click here to view pictures from the 2011 Colonie Scramble Golf Tournament & Chicken and Steak Roast!
Colonie GOP Endorses Denise Sheehan for Town Supervisor
June 8, 2011
Colonie Gop Golf Tournament
May 17, 2011
| July 8, 2011 |
Click HERE for golf tournament information!
Colonie GOP Chairman Responds to Ricket vs. Mahan Court Ruling
March 31, 2011
Statement from Colonie GOP Chairman
John Graziano, Jr.
The Court decision today is a victory for the residents of Colonie. It reinforces the importance of hiring the most qualified people to deliver important services to our Town and reverses the Mahan administration’s attempts to give away these critical jobs to political cronies. Supervisor Mahan has referred to this case as a “frivolous lawsuit”. The Court’s ruling today highlights that it is the Mahan administration that has been frivolous in their approach to ensuring the health, safety and welfare of Town residents. The Colonie GOP is committed to ensuring our Town is run by the best qualified experienced professionals and we will continue to advocate for that.
Click HERE to Read Court Ruling
Spotlight News: Nemith cries foul on former Planning Board Chairman
March 18, 2011
Andrew Beam
Spotlight News
03/16/11
A Colonie car dealer is crying foul after hearing about the relationship between former Planning Board Chairman C.J. O’Rourke and a local developer.
Nathaniel Bette, son of Kevin Bette, president of First Columbia, hired O’Rourke for general contracting work on a home in Loudonville worth over $1 million, raising Mark Nemith’s suspicion, he said.
“I always felt there was a conflict of interest or something very much out of the realm of what would be proper because of the way certain things occurred,” Nemith said. “It does answer, at least in my mind, an awful lot of questions about things that happen when you compare now and look at the timelines of both Mr. Bette’s approvals and ours.”
Nemith has a contractual agreement with Wal-Mart, allowing them to build a supercenter on lots 2, 4 and 6, where a former Nemith Volvo car dealership was located. The site plan for the proposal was submitted in 2007, followed by more than a year of traffic mitigation studies. In September, the planning board shot down the conceptual plan after O’Rourke raised concerns about some of the waivers requested by Wal-Mart, such as the positioning of the front of the building not facing the Northway, the utilization of the setback and the extended width of the parking stalls.
A month later, First Columbia sought approval of its concept plan to build three new office buildings, totaling 335,000 square feet, on Plaza Drive. Only one board member, Mike Sullivan, was opposed to it. O’Rourke was absent from that meeting.
Nemith’s attorney, Clemente Parente, said that after going to all of the planning board meetings and reading through the transcripts, the situation is “very hard to swallow.”
At the First Columbia conceptual plan decision, Parente asked that that company be treated the same way as Wal-Mart was. Sullivan also asked that everyone be treated fairly, and noted his concerns regarding the size of the waiver for First Columbia to reduce its number of parking spaces, and what sort of precedent it was setting.
When O’Rourke initially became involved with the project in November 2010, he said he immediately went to Town Attorney Mike Magguilli to make sure it was ethical to be working on a project for Nathan Bette. Magguilli then referred him to the Town’s Board of Ethics, where he was cleared.
“I’m about good governance and full transparency,” he said. “Nobody told me to go to the ethics board.”
In September of 2010, the Colonie Planning Board unanimously voted down the conceptual plan to build a Wal-Mart at the Route 9 corridor. O’Rourke, then serving as chair of the Planning Board, was very critical of the project based on the waivers requested by Wal-Mart. Also present at the meeting was Kevin Bette, who claimed that Wal-Mart had gone back on agreements regarding the use of Auto Park Drive.
O’Rourke was brought on as a general contractor by Nathaniel Bette in November 2010 to build an addition to a home located at 10 Stafford Street, and after he completed that, he was asked to do renovations for the entire house.
Nemith said hiring contracts and putting together the Vanguard Show House project, located at 10 Stafford Road, takes month of preparation, and that O’Rourke was financially tied to the Bettes on this project before the Wal-Mart decision was made.
“They knew who the contractor was going to be months before,” he said. “It’s very suspect and very hard for me to believe.”
O’Rourke said that the Bette project had not even come up during the Wal-Mart decision and that he didn’t start work on the project until November when he was contacted by Nathaniel Bette.
“Nathaniel is not an officer of the town, and he doesn’t hold any position at First Columbia,” he said. “So there is no conflict of interest.”
He continued to say that he found it strange he is being criticized for doing work in his hometown.
“I live in Loudonville and I do 70 percent of my business in Loudonville,” he said. “I find it weird for somebody to think it’s strange that I have a project in Loudonville.”
Nathaniel Bette said the project was completely independent of his father, except for some advice given to him, as well as a loan to pay for the project.
The Vangaurd Showhouse was purchased by Kevin Bette in 2009, and is next to the family’s residence at 12 Stafford Street. On Oct. 20, the Town Building Department approved the addition to the house, according to the building permit.
Also in the permit, which was obtained by The Spotlight under the Freedom of Information Law, it states that the general contractor is First Columbia Construction. Nathaniel Bette said that the company acts as a project manager, and O’Rourke was the general contractor.
While O’Rourke said he was approached by Nathaniel, the younger Bette said O’Rourke had come up to the house and gave him his card when asking if there was anything he could do on the house.
“He came over to the house during the week, gave me his card and asked if there was any work that needed to be done because things had slowed down for him,” Nathaniel said. “He had really good numbers and came in as the lowest bidder. So we brought him on to do stuff.”
When later asked to clarify when he first made contact with Nathaniel Bette of the project, O’Rourke said he didn’t know for sure.
“I’m not into semantics,” he said.
Parente said that while there may have been a decision by the ethics board and that there was full disclosure to the town, he has issue that none of this was ever made public.
“I have difficulty with that when really the disclosure should have been to the public,” he said. “Not simply to an internal organization.”
When asked if there was going to be any legal action taken by Nemith, Parente said the main goal is to have their project looked at objectively and fairly.
“Anything that we can do to move this process along, we will do, but that’s as far as I’ll say on that,” he said. “We want our project to be reviewed in a fair and impartial matter. If we think it wasn’t then, we’re going to have to bring that up.”
Parente also said it is up to Wal-Mart’s attorneys on whether they would want to proceed with any legal action. One of Wal-Mart’s attorneys, Bob Sweeney, has not returned phone calls made and the other, Victor Caponera, is currently out of the country.
Spotlight News: O’Rourke to step down as Planning Board Chair
January 18, 2011
Andrew Beam
Spotlight News
01/06/11
C.J. O’Rourke cites focusing on his business and ineptitude of planning department as reasons for resignation
After having conflicts over how the Colonie Planning Department is run, C.J. O’Rourke is stepping down as the chairman of the Planning Board.
While his tenure is up this year, O’Rourke said he asked to not be reappointed because of problems he’s had with the department’s lack of development in the town, and issues he’s had with Planning Department Director Joe LaCivita.
“I think it’s quite apparent that if you look at the Town of Colonie, just 12 to 15 miles away there is the largest construction project in the World underway,” he said of the Globalfoundries Semiconductor Chip Fabrication Plant in Malta. “There’s only been one application that’s come across the planning department’s desk since December. One person. That tells a big story about developers and the town.”
O’Rourke said it was also a business decision as he owns and operates a construction company and said that he wasn’t willing to put the amount of time required to chair the board when it wasn’t being run properly.
“I worked very hard to try and make changes within the town in terms of business and planning,” he said. “I just felt my efforts weren’t fully successful.”
A recent incident occurred at a Dec. 20th planning board meeting, where his unrest with the planning department and LaCivita spilled out into a public forum.
The issue was over the Van Buren Subdivision on Turner Lane where members of the project were seeking for final site plan approval. O’Rourke said that the agenda item was not ready to be presented because there had not been a public hearing called and ended up tabling it to Jan. 11.
“We couldn’t have action, there couldn’t be any,” he said, adding that an agenda change was requested. “The board didn’t need an update, they were looking for final approval and it was evident someone wasn’t telling the truth. Either the developer or the planning department, someone made an error.”
O’Rourke said LaCivita failed to provide notification for a public hearing, which he said the board usually publishes in local newspapers. He took LaCivita to task during the meeting and criticized him for his mistake where he referred to him as “incompetent.”
“I’ve been senior level management in several organizations before I started my business, and never once has a senior level person I’ve been associated with been as incompetent as he is,” O’Rourke said.
He referred to the incident as “a waste of taxpayers’ money”, and said that it also wasted the time and money of the developer as he would have to pay his attorney for representation.
“We failed to do proper notification in terms of the land use law and public notification,” he said. “It specifically states when an application comes to final approval that a public hearing must be called. Certain notifications must be made and one was never done.”
Request for comment from LaCivita has not been returned.
O’Rourke was appointed as chairman of planning board on Jan. 1, 2010, by Supervisor Paula Mahan, after serving as a member of the board for a three year term. During his tenure, O’Rourke said when he made decisions he did not exert any of his political beliefs over the issue.
“I felt I did what’s right for the taxpayers and what’s right for the people of Colonie,” he said, “I felt I was successful in doing that, and I’m frustrated I couldn’t effect more change in the way planning was handled in the town.”
Mahan said she is appreciative of the work done by O’Rourke and that she understands his reasoning to step down as chair of the planning board.
“Both Joe LaCivita and C.J. O’Rourke have worked very hard on behalf of the town and both have made strong contributions,” she said. “I am grateful for C.J.’s years of service as Planning Board member and chair and I understand his decision to resign in order to devote more time to his business and family. The most important thing is to focus on the fact that a full slate of planning issues has been handled successfully in the past year, and I am confident we will continue to make good progress.”
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