To the editor:
I have been reading, with amusement, the letters to the editor that Richard Onderko has been writing. His mistruths will not go unanswered.
Mr. Onderko has forgotten that he was on Borough Council for three years, with his term ending last December. In all three of those years, Republicans had an overwhelming majority. During that period Mr. Onderko could have passed anything he wanted.
Mr. Onderko wrote about the abandoned homes in Lost Valley. In his own words, they were there since Floyd, which is untrue. Most were due to Irene and the economy, which started to decline in 2007.
Why wasn’t anything done about these homes from 2010-2012, when he was a Councilman? That is when he had an overwhelming majority.
According to the state-sponsored plan he gave me, the only recourse we have as a municipality is to condemn these homes, pay fair market value to the mortgage holder and pay to tear them down. All this would cost borough taxpayers roughly $2 million or more.
I am working with the Governor’s office and the Commissioner of the DEP to see how many of these homes the state can purchase as part of its buyout plan. We, along with the county Board of Health, will continue monitoring these homes to maintain the health and safety of the residents in these areas. I apologize to the residents for the inconvenience and ask them to be patient while we try to resolve this problem in a fair and logical way.
In another letter, he wrote about the flood commission. Mayor Zuza did propose it, but only after she decommissioned the Manville Flood Committee that Mr. Onderko chaired because he failed to make any progress due to his lack of leadership and lack of meetings.
When I took office, I started the present flood commission. Both Mayor Zuza and I sat on the new commission until she became ill. I was the one who moved Frank Jurewicz to be chairperson and solicited other communities to participate. We have all seen the results of a functioning commission that meets and is productive. Under Frank’s leadership we received over $700,000 toward the completion of the flood study and have three proposals for flood mitigation on the table. Mr. Onderko had nothing to do with these accomplishments.
Mr. Onderko also talks about the Grant property on Main Street and the fact that the Republicans took that building over due to lack of the property owners paying taxes. He is correct. He was partly responsible for the albatross we are now stuck with. We are collecting absolutely nothing, with the exception that we are now responsible for a contaminated piece of property; if we cannot get the state to clean the property, it could run into millions of dollars for Manville taxpayers. That is why I didn’t want to foreclose until we knew the extent of the contamination.
Mr. Onderko, since you want to take credit for foreclosing, are you also going to take responsibility of the price of cleaning this contaminated property?
Mr. Onderko and Ms. Asher have offered nothing to benefit the well-being of this community while members of the council except to criticize and find fault with everything this council has accomplished. They have been obstructionist in every aspect of the renaissance we are experiencing as a community.
I am asking for your support in electing Frank Jurewicz and Harry Bugal for Borough Council so we may continue the rebuilding of our community.
Angelo Corradino
Mayor
Manville
