Right now, Piermont Mayor Bruce Tucker and Piermont Village Hall are facing intense scrutiny from a bunch of people with power. Here are some examples - and this is just a tally from yesterday:
When we look back on Bruce Tucker's failed Piermont mayoral administration, the most salient memory will be his silence. He refuses to answer questions even in the public forum of Piermont Village Hall. He refuses to communicate to the taxpaying resident voters and neighbors who put him in mayoral office in the first place, about any matter of real significance.
Meanwhile, Tucker's pet project remains the abominably crooked land-use deal known as "447-477 Piermont Avenue" - actually intended to be built, in part, on the site of an old Sunoco gasoline station which had underground tanks. Why? Because Tucker misspent Piermont into a deep financial hole. He is now desperately trying to make-up the money with developer infusions, at the expense of all else including the sanctity of Piermont itself.
No wonder Bruce Tucker has stayed so mum throughout the year.
Everyone noticed.
Therefore, it is a fair question to ask. What will Bruce Tucker's answers under oath likely be, if or when called to account to the administrative authorities, the criminal authorities, or even the Almighty? How will Bruce Tucker answer to his failed mayoral reign, his harmful fiscal malfeasance, and in particular, his despicable and injurious zoning scheme so well-befitting a garmento reject out of Elizabeth, New Jersey like himself?
The answer is simple.
Bruce Tucker will exercise his right against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
He will TAKE FIVE.
Thus - Cinco de Mayor.
Now, there are a bunch of different ways that one can Take Five. For example, before Congress years ago, during the steroid scandal in Major League Baseball, slugger Mark McGwire simply testified "I'm not here to talk about the past".
Yet even that statement takes effort. The thing is, Bruce Tucker is not the athlete that Mark McGwire was. If ever held to account, Bruce Tucker will need to Take Five under cross-examination so many times, that he will really need to conserve his energy. Bruce would then probably end up just feebly holding up the five fingers of one of his hands, in response to each question. Or, perhaps Bruce could instead tattoo the number "5" on his forehead and just point to it with one finger, as constituting each answer, and thereby expend even less effort to communicate.
There is one main thing to recognize. There is an absolute commonality between: (A) Tucker's recidivist failures to make disclosures to his taxpaying resident voter neighbors in Piermont, on the one hand - and (B) the manner in which Tucker would be most likely to "answer" real questions during future cross-examination under oath if or when occurring, on the other hand.
Either way, with his characteristic goofy smirk signifying nothing other than contempt - contempt for the questioner, and ultimately contempt for himself - Bruce Tucker will brandish that Five. You can COUNT on it.
A simulation of how that type of future cross-examination would go, follows below. Please, when you see Bruce Tucker next, jump in with your own questions at any time, too.
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you and the other hacks
in Piermont Village Hall proceeded with the 447-477 Piermont Avenue project intentionally disregarding that it was the former site of a Sunoco
gasoline station with underground gasoline tanks?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that to date, you never
communicated anything substantive to the Piermont taxpaying resident voters,
your neighbors, about that untenable and unacceptable environmental situation at 447-477 Piermont
Avenue?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn't it true that you and the Village of Piermont are currently under a "Risk Assessment" by the Office of the New York State Comptroller (OSC) due to your fiscal mismanagement of Village government over the past seven years - leading OSC to just spend up to three weeks to date and counting, pulling extracts from your Village books and records? For that matter, isn't it true that the statistical majority of those OSC "Risk Assessments" lead directly to a plenary audit?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Moreover, isn't it true that to date you disclosed nothing of substance, regarding the OSC "Risk Assessment" of you and your Piermont government, to your taxpaying resident voter neighbors - you know, the same ones who voted you into office as Mayor of Piermont? Isn't it true that you are pretending that the OSC "Risk Assessment" does not even exist?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you and your Village Hall cronies repeatedly do everything possible to suppress public comment and to prevent dissemination of the content of public proceedings to the Piermont taxpaying resident voters?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that, as late as October 10,
2024, you falsely attested and certified to a Rockland County governmental agency that
the 447-477 Piermont Avenue project would have little to no environmental
impact? Isn't it true that you submitted former Planning Board Chair Dan Spitzer’s name on that same certification and attestation as
well as your own name, thereby throwing Spitzer under the proverbial bus?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that at meetings in Piermont
Village Hall, you rarely if ever respond to the public comment and instead just
sit there with a smug-looking smirk on your face while refusing to answer?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Did you and your Village Hall lackeys ever do
any due diligence on Jerry Polidoro, an original on-record owner of one of the
parcels at 447-477 Piermont Avenue and the first-known owner of Piermont Developers LLC – who turned
out to have an abominable environmental record in the State of New Jersey that you yourself could have found if you had ever bothered to look for it?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Alternatively, did you know full well of
Polidoro’s disastrous environmental record in New Jersey in advance, and then purposefully conceal it from disclosure from the Piermont taxpaying resident voters in April 2024 and thereafter?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you and your Village
Hall minions did little to no due diligence on Frank DeCarlo of Frank DeCarlo
Construction (FDC), the current identified owner of Piermont Developers LLC –
who turns out to be a developer with a Paramus foundation-crack to his credit,
a Jersey flipper of single-family houses, an oft-cited silt-violator in Bergen
County, and a guy with a disgusting Troy, New York record as a landlord?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that during your 7-year term
as Mayor of Piermont, you have actually done little to nothing to remediate the
Village’s problems with flooding, parking, and traffic – even resulting in residents forced to build or rebuild their homes on stilts?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn't it true that you deliberately forestalled visible flooding remediation in the Village of Piermont, so as to not scare away developer money expected to be coming in from 447-477 Piermont Avenue and from other projects?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you and your Piermont
Village Hall enablers floated a fake law to facilitate spot-zoning for the 447-477
Piermont Avenue project alone - and that you then tried to ram it all through Piermont Village government before Village taxpaying resident voters woke up to figure out how harmful your corrupted development plot really was?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that your practices as Mayor
are destroying the historic character, charm, and aesthetics of the Village of
Piermont?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that your malfeasance got
the Village of Piermont sued in State Supreme Court two times and counting -
and that you have now wasted sums estimated to be in excess of US$100,000 to
litigate against the very own taxpaying resident voters and neighbors who
elected you into mayoral office in the first place?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you have endeavored to
hide the names and faces of the Village officials from view, and for the most
part have purposefully kept those images off of the Village website and other Internet
platforms – as opposed to effecting any semblance of transparency in Piermont
Village government such that the Piermont public officials are actually identifiable and accessible to the public?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you purposefully concealed Piermont Village financials from the Village’s Internet website
for a period of approximately four years, and then and thereafter only uploaded
those financials to the Village website once you were shamed and forced into doing so?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you and Piermont
Village government failed to meet even an extended deadline of the New York
State Comptroller’s office (OSC), and thereby permanently defaulted in inclusion of
Piermont financial information in the Comptroller’s Fiscal Stress Monitoring
System for the prior year - thus preventing Stress Monitor evaluation of Piermont by the public for that time-period, forever?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that, notwithstanding your
bragging in a public meeting and to a local hack blogger’s rag to the contrary, you
actually don’t have US$3,200,000 banked and accessible as an “unassigned Fund balance”? Isn't it true that, instead, you, by yourself or else in other cases through others, are pathetically begging residents for money to fix the crumbling Piermont Pier tip and even begging for US$10,000 for Christmas lights for the
Village?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you misspent Piermont
taxpayer resident money down from an initial US$800,000 surplus into a negative US$7,600,000 Net Position deficit hole, over your seven years in office as Piermont Mayor?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that, throughout Year 2024,
people have been jumping out of your abhorrent mayoral “administration” like rats jumping
off of a sinking ship?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you threatened and
terrorized a vulnerable fellow Piermont Trustee for disagreeing with you and thinking independently, and that you
are still all-consumed with your intended objective of destroying that man’s
political future?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you were once clueless
enough to actually consent in a signed writing to designating the Orangetown
Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) as the lead agency for the 447-477 Piermont Avenue
project?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that your method of
communication with taxpaying Village residents is planting occasional propagandized stories with hack
ersatz journalists in fifth-rate local "publications"?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you and your
administration failed to effect needed inspections of the Piermont Pier and the
pier-tip dock for a period of seven years, the same period of time as your woeful mayoral reign - leading to the pier-tip dock's degradation, imminent collapse, and now closure?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that for a time this summer you actually thought it
was a good idea to eliminate the Village’s little league baseball field and pave it over in
favor of parking, particularly once and after you lost parking for the 447-477
Piermont Avenue project due to Reilly’s withdrawal of a land-strip therefrom?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that, as between you and the
Piermont taxpaying residents and neighbors who voted you into office, you
blame the victims at every opportunity rather than take any responsibility for
your own failures like an adult would instead do?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you were trying to
stick Frank DeCarlo and FDC Construction with a confiscatory first-year tab of up to US$312,000 for the 447-477 Piermont Avenue project, comprised of US$112,000
in taxes and up to US$200,000 in permit fees – all to try to make up for the negative US$7,600,000 Net Position deficit hole into which you misspent Piermont resident taxpayers during your
seven years as Mayor?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you hired Nelson Pope
Voorhis to run propaganda as a “planner” for the 447-477 Piermont Avenue
project, when in fact Nelson Pope’s real claim to infamy is inserting an
anti-NIMBY clause into a contract with Southold, New York to try to crush resident
opposition to development?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you still intentionally
disregard the fact that the 447-477 Piermont Avenue project is within 792 feet
of a Superfund site?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you and your
administration have wantonly sought to obstruct New York’s Freedom of
Information Law (FOIL) and Open Meetings Law at every conceivable turn?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you have publicly
uploaded the most embarrassing and unprofessional photos to social media and
the Internet, of any Rockland County, New York official, ever –
including countless photos of you getting drunk on alcohol, and even photos of
you emulating murderous guerilla leader Che Guevara?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you continue to support
Piermont’s yearly celebration of France’s Bastille Day, instead of properly
celebrating the American holiday of Flag Day?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that this year in 2024 you
busted through the Rockland County tax cap and instead hit your taxpaying
resident neighbors with a harsh 6.9% tax increase – due to your own malfeasance
and rank mismanagement of Village of Piermont finances?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you were functionally
useless in your non-reaction to an oil spill from a residential construction site into the Sparkill Creek this
summer - and that under your mayoral “administration”, local officials were even
denied entry into the subject premises while that oil spill was still continuing?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that the Wall Street
Journal, the Atlanta Constitution, and Good Housekeeping exposed you in 2006
while you were still a garmento wholesaler, for falsifying the thread-counts in
the sheets that you sold to unsuspecting retailers – ultimately leading you in turn to
sell-off your business after less than three years in your Manhattan showroom?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you actually put your
family home in hock repeatedly in an effort to fund your business as a sheet
and towel salesman?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you proceed at all
times in willful disregard of your Piermont resident neighbors, running a local
government which is less transparent than North Korea or the Kremlin?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you stated in an April 2024 public meeting and then told a local rag in
a July 2024 interview that you intended to keep the bulk of a US$3,200,000
“unassigned Fund Balance” in Village Hall coffers and not remit the bulk of it back to taxpaying Piermont residents - while also admitting that to be your way of manipulating
the Village’s credit rating before the bond market and Wall Street?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you never select
committee members, pro tempore Trustees, or Village Hall personnel
unless you are first certain that they themselves will function as your mindless puppets
and fellow political hacks without exercising any independent discretion or
original thought of their own?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you and the Village of
Piermont tried to game the Judge and the Rockland County Department of Planning
in the Janice Young v. Piermont litigation before losing it, and even at one point flouted a court order of Honorable Hal Greenwald, J.S.C.?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that when you lost the case
of Janice Young v. Piermont, you immediately thereafter hid from view like a petulant coward - as opposed
to communicating with your Piermont constituents about the outcome, and as
opposed to apologizing to them for wasting their money on that litigation which you yourself
induced and caused?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you continue to
threaten to waste even more Piermont taxpayer money by the still-pending filed Notice of
Appeal in the Janice Young v. Piermont case, thereby threatening to
appeal Justice Greenwald’s decision in that case at the further and unnecessary expense of Piermont taxpaying residents?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that the best you could do
to select a replacement for a Trustee vacancy, was to select a substitute
Trustee whose best "qualification" for the job was the fact that she is a sculptress? Are you KIDDING me?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that you stood behind an
Affidavit of Jennifer DeYorgi Maher wherein she attested that she mailed a
referral to the Rockland County Department of Planning - which attorneys for the
County then attested was in fact never received by the Rockland County
Department of Planning?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:
QUESTION (TO BRUCE TUCKER): Isn’t it true that your deplorable
mismanagement of Piermont village government has now caused “moles” within your
midst to inform on you, inexorably leading to the justifiable end of your
political career?
BRUCE TUCKER'S ANSWER:(Adjourned at 4:47 P.M.)
