This past Sunday, Newsday published an article revealing that Babylon Village Public Works Superintendent Charles “Skip” Gardner owes more than $31,000 in unpaid property taxes.
Village public works chief owes $31,000 in delinquent taxes
Until May, Gardner also owed $3,400 in property tax liens issued by Babylon Village from as early as 2012, according to tax records.
Village Treasurer Valerie Fronzo said Gardner paid those liens on May 9, four days after Newsday filed a Freedom of Information Law request for details on them and other property tax delinquencies.
Today, Mayor Ralph A. Scordino published a response on the Babylon Village government website. Since the Village website dates from the Cretaceous period, it was published as a scanned PDF.
http://www.villageofbabylonny.gov/_literature_238332/Mayor’s_Response_to_Newsday_2017
For your convenience, I reproduced the text of the letter here.
To my mind, this response raises more questions than it answers. I may or may not have more to say about this later on.
Dear Residents of Babylon Village,
It is with great sadness that I feel the need to write this letter to our community regarding our most trusted and valuable employee, Charles, “Skip” Gardner. Skip’s personal life was recently the object of a Newsday article which was extremely unnecessary and very hurtful. As many of you know, it was recently discovered that our method of payment to employees was not done appropriately. Unfortunately, we did things in accordance with the guidance of our village attorney. The advice was not accurate and lead to this situation. When the raises and payments were discovered as inappropriately done, it was noted that Skip’s salary was the highest in the Village. From there, there were many inquiries and documents obtained regarding Skip. I felt this was totally inappropriate, though not illegal. It was discovered that Skip had been late on tax payments, as many others are in this Village and Town. This now became fuel for an article.
In many ways, I found this comical. Imagine if we dug into the lives of everyone in this village. What would we find? How many of us have ever been late with a payment? When my wife and I were paying high tuition costs for our children, we were often late on many things. How many of us struggled through those tuition years and were so grateful when they were over so we could start digging out of the hole we were in.
How about other aspects of people’s lives? Many of us live, work, and volunteer in this community. We know many things about our neighbors because of our jobs or volunteer work. Is it our business to discuss this or make judgement upon them? I don’t think so. Who is anyone to comment on someone’s personal life? If we are going to claim that we have a right to know everything about public servants, then let’s take a look at all of them. in our community, we have many teachers, police officers, fire fighters, village, town, county, state and federal workers. Maybe we should put each of them under a microscope. Or, maybe we should allow everyone to have a private life, deal with their problems in private, and just judge their performance at work.
If we are going to judge someone’s performance at work, then no one compares to Skip Gardner. If you know Skip, you know that there are only two things that matter to him………..his family, and Babylon Village. He is usually the first one at work in the morning and the last one to leave. He is the reason that the village looks the way it does and operates so smoothly. Skip has saved this Village an enormous amount of money with his expertise and problem solving skills. He knows where every pipe is, when every tree was planted, what needs to be replaced because it’s about to break, how to fix something that no one else can fix, and how to prepare for any emergency that may come up. He has been a Village employee for 48 years and a historian of people, land, equipment, procedures, and preparation. Skip is the reason that things get done around here. I would like to think that I am the reason, but it’s Skip
As far as the Village administration, we will be correcting our procedures to insure that everything is done in an appropriate manner. As far as Skip, we can only hope that he will be with us for many more years to come.
Ralph A. Scordino, Mayor
Village of Babylon
Skip is the glue that holds everything together. I have for twenty four years admired how dedicated he is to his job. Job is not what it is for him however. It’s his life. And he is a wonderful asset to us all that live here. During Sandy I don’t think the man slept for months and he did an unbelievable job for us all. Sad to hear he has been brought to the forefront for anything other than his wonderful efforts to make our village a better place. This too shall pass. Focus on the good. Thank you skip for all your efforts through the years.
Akip Gardener is BABYLON VILLAGE!!! He is a stand up guy that always goes out of his way to help everyone that asks for his help!!! He is constantly working and doing for the village of Babylon. Kudos to Ralph for standing up for Skip and I for one agree with everything he said about Skip. God bless Skip.
Although I no longer live in Babylon Village > I was in the FD 35 years with Skip. If there was something to be done that you thought was necessary > He would do it, if he could. Many times he drove the Sumpwams Hose Co 2 truck to a fire and our Ambulance when needed. It was all in the name of helping people and supporting our Village. As far as Newsday is concerned they always were a RAG >> They always had a negative view of Volunteer Fire Depts and prodjects. I personally ,remember the bashing of the Southwest Sewer District. And to beat all wanted the district to extend the project to include their Melville plant. They were turned down . I hope the people in Babylon Village continue to appreciate the work Skip has done and give him your support.
Thanks Skip for all you have done.
Skip Gardner obviously has tons of dirt on Mayor Scordino. Let’s crowdfund his tell-all. It can be called: “The Mayor’s Sexy Secret: How One Civil Servant Served Us All”.
I’ve never been late on anything because I have engaged the combination of (A) grit, (B) determination, and (C) a trust fund that my grandfather activated when I was 21. Skip, you need to buckle down and get this taken care of. Just go to law school or something. It’s not hard. All you have to do is have your mom apply for you.
Well, I gotta run. My 1966 Chateu de Blah-blah is done breathing, and it ain’t gonna drink itself!
Gary-
You didn’t have any negative comments and that upset you. So you made up a fake name and posted that response to spark a conversation. I have news for you. NO ONE READS YOUR STUFF. Your facebook page is a joke. Basically you get up every morning and search “babylon village” on Newday.com and then post it on your facebook page. I only came across this site because I overhead a group of people talking about you at the Babylon Bean and I wanted to see if it was true. It is.
You are not from Babylon and have no idea about it. You wait for Newsday. Really? You have a house here. Big deal. You know nothing of importance. Why don’t you tell everyone what good you have done for your community and share that instead of this crap? Have you done anything??? What is this website anyway? You post 2016 Payroll? Are you kidding me? People can just google it!
As far as Chris’ response: It is dumb.
I found it interesting that you didn’t post the Mayor’s letter on the Babylon Village facebook page. (typically you do) You saw all the support that Skip was getting and you didn’t want to get hammered with negative comments so you posted it on your website that no one reads.
That is all!
So, if Skip is the glue that e holds the Village together, and he does everything for everyone, what if something happens to him? He can’t be that young, and apparently he works all the time, sounds like a heart attack in the making. Or he could get hit by a bus like anyone else. Or he could decide to retire, but he’s probably making way too much money to do that–he must have plenty of money if he never even noticed that his property taxes had never been paid. I’d notice if I had an extra $35K sitting around.
Anyway, Skip’s a great guy, but that’s not the point. The point is that he’s making a huge amount of taxpayer supplied money while neglecting to pay the taxes that all the rest of us have to pay. BTW, I AM from Babylon, not that it matters if we grew up here, because those of us who live here now chose to live here. And if we still live here it’s because we have paid our property taxes and our homes haven’t gone up for auction.
Malisa, how dare you, sir!