Published: September 05, 2008 03:19 pm            

CHEERS & JEERS: Congratulations and best of luck to the local athletes competing in the Iron Man competition in Wisconsin on Sunday.

CHEERS



TRIATHLON: Congratulations and best of luck to the local athletes competing in the Iron Man competition in Wisconsin on Sunday. There’s quite the local contingent participating. Seven local athletes, to be exact, will swim, bike and run. They’ll do it with friend and fellow athlete Tim Chesko on their mind. Chesko died in February. We’re hoping the best for our local competitors and we’re especially excited to see the competition is a family affair as well. City Clerk Richard Mullaney and his daughter, Erin, are competing. Pretty neat.



MEDINA SUPERINTENDENT: Richard M. Galante is former superintendent of the Medina Central School District. That’s a good thing. Considering the guy lied on his resume, saying he worked for state police, is certainly a terminable offense. It went to court, he got a lesser sentence than what would ever be expected — community service — but he resigned. That was a smart move. The guy has no credibility whatsoever in Medina at this point. The scary part is that he did not lose his teaching certificate. He’ll probably get picked up by another district, which is equally scary.



JEERS



GRANCHELLI DEAL: Granchelli, Joseph J. Granchelli, Velco Inc. and Centennial Development filed suit three years in a row to force down the assessments placed on 22 properties citywide. OK, fine. The suits challenged the assessment rolls produced for the 2006-07, 2007-08 and 2008-09 tax years and sought a $1.3 million reduction in their total assessed value. The city and Granchelli negotiated an out-of-court settlement knocking back the combined value of the properties $526,000. Assessor Peter Galarneau said Granchelli agreed to value reductions on 13 of the 22 properties and, significantly, to accept the reduced values on the 2008-09 assessment roll only. Reductions will not be applied to the prior rolls, meaning the city won’t have to agree it overtaxed Granchelli and pay him refunds. Granchelli’s properties are frozen, unless improvements are made. Doesn’t that mean he can just let his buildings fall into disrepair, so he can avoid increased assessments. We agree that some of these buildings may be over-assessed, but if fixing them up breaks his freeze, we’re worried what shape these properties will fall into.

        

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