Diana, Yorktown Town Board Must Explain Developer-Heavy Contributions
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
I’ve been following this year’s campaign with a lot of interest. Recently, I took an interest in the financial backers of many of this year’s contenders. What I found alarmed me greatly.
Supervisor Tom Diana and the Town Board regularly receive political donations from people who currently have or previously had business before the town. Since 2022, the supervisor has had nearly a dozen donations from businesses that have business with the town, a glaring ethical problem.
In just this one year, our supervisor took in $7,000 in donations from those who have had business before our board. Here were the donations I found that most concerned me:
- $1,200 from Adler Group Diversified LLC, which is behind the Creative Living development.
- $1,000 from Flame Asian Bistro and Wild Fusion I, whose owner is behind the recently approved Gardena Hotel.
- $1,000 from Eric DiBartolo’s Rainbow Bridge Pet Crematory.
- $700 from the Pizzella brothers, who won a contract for sewer repair in 2016.
- $550 from Envirogreen Associates, who the town gave permission to build a new retail site at 2040 Greenwood St.
- $500 from JCM Racing, which was built with town-approved building permits in 2017.
- $500 from Mohegan Auto & Tire Center, which the town granted a zoning amendment and wetlands permit.
- $500 from Yorktown Autobody, which won the town’s towing contract after it was rebid.
- $300 since 2018 from Geon Environmental Co., which has a $10,000 contract with the town to perform air sampling and analysis.
- $250 from Thomspon & Bender, the communications company with a $60,000 annual contract with Yorktown.
- $250 from Site Design Consultants, the company behind Unicorn’s Underhill Farm project.
- $200 from 102-104 Ash Associates, part of the Creative Living development.
These donations warrant an explanation, and further ethical scrutiny of the town supervisor and the Town Board’s financial donors. I don’t know what the explanation for this is, but Yorktown’s contracts cannot be handed out for political favors.
The right thing for the campaign to do would be to return the donations because “pay to play” is not how we should conduct business in Yorktown.
Regardless of the explanation, this sets a worrying precedent for our town. I hope, come November, that Yorktown’s voters choose to reject this behavior.
Steven Goodstein
Yorktown Heights
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