Lawsuit Alleges Poor Oversight of Donations, Revenues at Tilly Foster

A lawsuit recently filed in New York State Supreme Court by Southeast resident Ann Fanizzi is asking the court to dissolve the 40-year lease Putnam County has with the Society for the Preservation of Putnam County Antiquities and Greenways, until recently headed up by George Whipple, to manage and run the daily operations of the county-owned Tilly Foster Farm.

Fanizzi’s lawsuit, which names the society, Putnam County and Putnam County Executive MaryEllen Odell as defendants, alleges that revenues derived from the operation of the farm may have been mismanaged and not recycled back into making improvements at the farm, and quarterly and annual financial reports rarely have been provided to the Putnam County Legislature, as is required by the language of the lease, in addition to the county legislature’s failure to enforce the terms of the lease.

Fanizzi’s lawsuit says that she would have been the beneficiary of scheduled financial reports as she was “the primary contributor” to getting the farm up-and-running after having donated an estimated $200,000 over the course of several years.

More than a decade ago, Fanizzi was part of the grass roots effort to maintain Tilly Foster Farm as an open space after it fell into foreclosure and to keep the nearly 200 acres it occupied on Route 312 from being developed for residential and commercial uses.

After the county decided to purchase the farm in 2002 with $3.9 million from East of Hudson funds, allocated to protect New York City’s watershed, Fanizzi was appointed by the county legislature, along with others, to the advisory board tasked with coming up with a plan to preserve the farm.

Seeking to find another entity to take over operations of the farm, Fanizzi’s suit says that in 2006, then County Executive Robert Bondi sought proposals for a private horse center to occupy the farm, with nothing coming to fruition. In the late summer of 2007, the suit says that County Executive Bondi met with the advisory board to present two proposals, one of which was from the society Whipple led proposing to operate Tilly Foster as a museum open to the public for education and recreation, which would also include a restaurant, a farm/country store, a bed and breakfast and a venue for special events. Whipple also agreed to provide animals from his own farm for display and educational purposes.

In 2008, the advisory board threw their support behind the plan. It was just after that time that Fanizzi said County Executive Bondi told her that funding would not be available from the county and that $100,000 in seed money would be needed to get things off of the ground. Fanizzi said that she offered to donate money anonymously for those purposes and soon after met with Whipple to discuss financial contributions and the direction the farm operations would take.

In June 2008, Fanizzi said she gave Whipple $50,000 to install fencing and for animal feed, based on the agreement that an accounting of how the money was spent would be provided.

In September 2008, Fanizzi gave another $20,000 to Whipple, which the lawsuits says would be used for the express purposes of fixing the horse ring and establishing a museum celebrating the history of the farm.

Shortly after this time, Fanizzi says that Whipple allowed a collection of rock and roll music memorabilia to occupy the first floor of the farm’s homestead rent-free that the lawsuit says did not meet with the “historic identity”of Tilly Foster. The lawsuit says that Whipple later wrote Fanizzi

an email stating that the memorabilia would be removed in 2009 to allow for a display on the history of

the farm that Fanizzi had been collecting, but then never followed through.”

In 2008, Fanizzi purchased a horse for the farm and all told, by the end of 2010, the lawsuits says Fanizzi personally made cash contributions totaling an estimated $173,000.

Back in 2008, the suit says that Whipple signed a contract with a horse boarder, who is still a tenant on the farm, to pay a monthly rent of $6,000 a month, or $72,000 annually.

Fanizzi said that despite multiple personal requests that Whipple failed to provide an accounting of how the money she contributed actually was spent.

In November 2010, the lawsuit says that Whipple appeared before the county legislature’s Physical Services Committee, the last time a representative of the society has done so, with news that there was a $123,000 deficit at Tilly Foster and with a statement of revenues and expenditures from the beginning of the lease in 2008 up until the third quarter of 2010. Fanizzi said these statements did not reflect the estimated $100,000 she donated in 2008 and 2009 and under-reported how much she contributed in 2010 by an estimated $13,000.

Less than a month later, at a Dec. 2010 meeting to discuss finances at the farm, at which Fanizzi was present, the lawsuit says that Whipple announced the society’s intention to surrender their lease with the county to operate the farm.

Fanizzi’s lawsuit also alleges that six cattle brought to Tilly Foster for display purposes by mid-2011 had grown to a herd of 31 head, using up a large portion of the farm’s money for feed and veterinary bills, among other expenses.

In June 2011, after interim County Executive Paul Eldridge took office, the lawsuit says that Fanizzi arranged a meeting with Eldridge to discuss the problems at Tilly Foster, after having written several letters earlier that year to Whipple’s lawyer to say she might litigate if financial and operational reporting failures continued.

The lawsuit says that Whipple, along with his mother JoeAnn and his sister Meredith Whipple, all members of the Society, were at the meeting with county officials and asked Fanizzi to sign a release from legal action and the two parties agreed that Fanizzi would act as interim executive director at Tilly Foster during the course of the next year as the society’s involvement was a phased out.

The lawsuit says that during 2011, Fanizzi contributed another $27,000 to the farm to pay for maintenance and unpaid bills and that the society never followed through on appointing her as interim executive director.

At the end of January this year, Fanizzi’s suit says that she received a letter from the society’s lawyer informing her that Meredith Whipple had been appointed as Tilly Foster’s new executive director. The  lawsuit went on to say that the society had been renamed the “Whipple Foundation for the Preservation of Putnam County Antiquities,” and had published an announcement of new board members in a local newspaper that included the new Chairman of the Board, Putnam County Sheriff Donald B. Smith.

Since that time, Fanizzi’s lawsuit says that two board members have told her that the Whipple Foundation intends to continue its lease with Putnam County.

Asked about the lawsuit, Putnam County Executive MaryEllen Odell said she could not comment on ongoing litigation.

Fanizzi said she is not seeking to have the estimated $200,000 she donated to the farm returned. Fanizzi was a New York City school teacher who retired after close to 30 years of teaching. She said she has donated much of her pension to charitable causes, include Tilly Foster Farm.