Federal Bankruptcy Judge Julie Manning on Thursday afternoon sided with the municipalities of Bridgeport and Stratford opposed to a “bad faith” bankruptcy filing by management of Success Village co-op whose roughly 2,000 residents are without heat and hot water with the cold weather season coming.
The bankruptcy filing placed a hold on a state trial hearing in which Judge Dale Radcliffe was weighing a request by the municipalities to appoint a receiver to oversee solutions to the heat, hot water and financial chaos at the co-op.
Manning’s decision is immediate. She announced she will file her written opinion on Friday. So this decision returns to Judge Radcliffe for action on the receivership request.
If the judge designates a receiver, Bridgeport and Stratford have both approved loans for a combined $700,000 as a short term fix for heat and hot water.
How long will it take for arrest warrants to be issued for the embezzlers that put the lives of several hundred modest-income homeowners and their 2000+ dependents in indefinite turmoil?! I truly hope that the federal investigators make fast work of their investigation of the Success Village financial situation and round up and jail the miscreants that knee-capped that community.
And truly, the people of Success Village need and deserve maximum state and federal assistance in reclaiming their home-asset value, comfort, and emotional lives just as surely as the victims of any “natural disaster” deserve such assistance. Where are Lamont, Murphy, Blumenthal, and Himes on this issue? (There are probably at least 1000 votes that they need this year, or in the future, located in Success…)
Where is a Bridgeport Fair Housing Commission that might have heard, TWO YEARS AGO, about a Board and Administrator who were providing no regular info to them whil they were tendering common charge payments of $500 or more monthly? Perhaps FAIR Housing might have had no enforcement power, but it could have found a more speedy way of guiding the ‘members’ in their struggle to maintain financial equity as well as to have a voice in their affairs of self-governance.
And who have been the voices of the legal community providing advice and receiving payments from the owners? Did they look at the By-Laws and not identify these as the operating “rule of law”? Did one or more have an ultimate design on the acreage for future development by incapacitating the owners in legalese and ultimate bankruptcy? Is this ongoing struggle something that the local Bar Association ought to research or investigate for the purpose of rebuilding citizen respect for “rule of law”? Time will tell.
Judge Radcliffe should dissolve this so called BOD and order a new election.
Ok,now,what’s the plan for these people in a few weeks when they have no heat? Oh,that’s right,there isn’t a plan,I guess space heaters and they will have to go to a local gym for showers?