F.B.I. probing $6 million payment to UB, says council member

 

         BRIDGEPORT REPORT

 

 By Reginald Johnson

 

   BRIDGEPORT ---- The F.B.I. is investigating the city’s payment of $6 million to the University of Bridgeport for land to build a new high school, according to a city council member.

  “Please note that I have it on good authority that the illegal $6,000,000 purchase of TWELVE U.B. parcels is ALREADY under investigation by the F,B.I. and I am all in for it,” wrote Councilwoman Maria Pereira in a letter to other members of the City Council, following a contentious meeting of the council’s budget committee Monday night.

  Pereira, a few other members of the council and some community leaders have been questioning the legality of the payment to UB ever since it was authorized by the city’s School Building Committee in July of last year. The money was intended to purchase property that would allow for the construction of a new Bassick High School.

 Pereira and others charge that the school building committee did not have the authority on its own to authorize the payment by the city and that the full City Council had to approve the payment before it was made, under the terms of the City Charter.

  Pereira, who represents part of the East Side, said in an interview that she did not make a complaint to the F.B.I., but fully backs a federal probe.

  “I have no doubt that the school building committee had zero authority to authorize a land acquisition to purchase 12 parcels of UB property for $6 million without any City Council approval. I’m 100% positive it was illegal,” said Pereira.

  An F.B.I. official at the Bridgeport office would not comment on any possible investigation.

  “We would not give any information out on something like that, one way or the other,” the official said.

  Jorge Cruz, a council member from the South End, backs the idea of a federal probe.

   “Definitely it needs to be investigated,” said Cruz, who has been a critic of the Bassick High School plan and also raised concerns about the $6 million payment.

  Cruz and others such as the Rev. D. Stanley Lord, president of the Bridgeport NAACP, said they wondered why the deed of sale for the property purchased said the tract was conveyed for $1, not $6 million.

  “What was that?” said Lord.

  The property in question sits off of Lafayette and Broad streets, and includes several UB dorms and the university soccer field. Under the tentative plans for the new high school, the dorms would be demolished.

The property at the University of Bridgeport purchased by the city for the new Bassick High School.

   The high school project at UB was pegged at a cost of $115 million, derived from both state and city funding. But city officials right now are moving to spend another $8 million on construction, though Pereira claims the figure is actually $12 million.

  The increase in spending was the subject of a May meeting of the school building committee, a group that is composed of city council members, Board of Education officials and city development representatives.

Several attempts to obtain the minutes of that meeting have been unsuccessful and as of Tuesday, the minutes were not posted on the city website.

  The committee is in violation of state law in this regard, since the state freedom of information act stipulates that minutes of all municipal committees have to be made publicly available within seven days of a meeting.

   Cruz said he and Council Member Alfredo Castillo have been trying to get the school committee minutes for weeks, but have been rebuffed.

  Cruz went to the City Clerk's office to find out what was going on.

  "The supervisory clerk told me they (the committee) decide when they want to send minutes in --- sometimes weeks, sometimes months," Cruz said.  "I asked why is that. She said,  'I don't know, that's the way they do it. We keep telling them they have to submit on time because of FOIA'. "

   The move to spend more money by the city on the Bassick project was also taken up by the City Council’s budget and appropriations committee on Monday night. City officials laid out their plan to spend another $8 million, to remediate the UB property and demolish buildings. That proposal was approved, but not before Pereira raised several objections, in which she referred to the original bonding that was set aside for the Bassick project and specifically what the city council had approved.

  When she referenced the recent indictment of State Sen. Dennis Bradley, D- Bridgeport on wire fraud charges and said that the F.B.I. should now be interested in what she claimed was an unlawful transfer of city money in the $6 million payment, council member and committee co-chair Ernest Newton said she was out of order by bringing up the Bradley case. The other co-chair, councilmember Scott Burns would not allow her to speak any further, saying “you’re not a member of the committee.”

 Pereira said in her letter to the full council that her constitutional right to free speech had been violated and her right to speak as a city council member under the city charter had also been violated.

  Aidee Nieves, president of the city council and a co-chair of the school building committee, could not be reached for comment on Pereira's claims of an unlawful payment by the city to UB, or about the lack of timely minutes of school building committee meetings.