Following requests by the governments of Bridgeport and Stratford, as well as pubic utilities, Superior Court Judge Dale Radcliffe plans to hear arguments on Wednesday morning to decide if a receiver should be appointed to oversee the troubled Success Village coop whose roughly 2,000 residents have grappled with an antiquated boiler system betraying heat and hot water with the cold weather season on the horizon.
The CT Post’s Dan Tepfer was in the courtroom:
A large and angry crowd of Success Village residents filled the courtroom Friday as a judge ordered a trial to select a receiver for the financially-strapped housing complex.
“We had no hot water last night and no hot water this morning,” Success resident Olga Alicea said outside the courtroom. “I’m a senior citizen and I had to carry a five-gallon bucket of hot water up two flights of stairs just so I could have a bucket bath.”
Residents said they have been without heat and hot water since May and are especially concerned as the weather gets colder.
Lawyers for the city of Bridgeport, the town of Stratford, United Illuminating Co. and Southern Connecticut Gas Co., are suing to have a receiver appointed to take over the management of the troubled 900-unit cooperative housing complex that straddles the Bridgeport-Stratford line.
Full story here
This situation is screaming of BOD fiduciary malfeasance at a felonious level. And there are players deeply entwined with this situation and city-/state-level politics. It is not possible for such financial and physical-plant deterioration to occur without long-term BOD awareness. The only reason a BOD would just watch this train-wreck is if they didn’t want intervention and scrutiny by the “outside” world. As long as the cooperative membership could be cowed and coerced into coughing up ridiculously high common charges — in the context of gross underservice of contractual maintenance/services-provision — the antics and neglect of the BOD could continue. But the BOD is obviously (collectively) so corrupt and inept, that they allowed a complete implosion and unavoidable, big-time, outside scrutiny…
I would go so far as to bet that this situation ultimately leads to prison time for a couple or three BOD members — and maybe even some other “agents” and politicians. This is a long-term, deep, fetid situation with a variety of creepy-crawler miscreants having perpetrated major fraud and larceny on hundreds of innocent, modest-income cooperative owners. (I would imagine that as this heats up, a couple of the creepy crawlers might become flight risks…)
Judge Radcliffe took the right first-step in seeking relief for the victims of a what will surely turn out to be a major crime(s). I would bet that he’ll be presiding over later criminal trials related to this horrible situation.
(There are a few other condo associations in Bridgeport that might be involved in similar controversies in the near future. The Connecticut AG, et al., are watching!)