Updated: SCCC President Mamie Howard Golladay disputes the Sullivan County Democrat's (and the Watershed Post's) take on the windmill debacle. See the email below.
Sullivan County and Sullivan County Community College are trapped in a contract that allows a Saratoga Springs company, Atlantic Energy Solutions, to take a bunch of public money without even building the windmill that they were once supposed to construct. The problem, according to the Sullivan County Democrat, is that the college president didn't read the documents she signed. Because they were blank:
[C]ollege officials did not realize what they were signing – binding documents signed without the aid of their own attorney and at least twice without the review of the County Attorney’s Office. Indeed, Yasgur said SCCC President Mamie Howard Golladay at one point signed blank closing documents given to her by the Bank of New York.
Turns out that the contract says that AES can bleed the county and the college dry without actually building anything:
The agreement’s execution thus meant that AES could subsequently get money from the college ahead of any purchase or lease of equipment – which occurred several times over, to the tune of $2.8 million.
Did we mention that this is all taxpayer money? Yeah.
Updated April 18, 2010: SCCC President Mamie Howard-Golladay, in an email to the Watershed Post, says that there are several inaccuracies in the report above. She writes:
"Your article as well as that in the Democrat are inaccurate. First, the 'windmill' did not cost $7.5 million. Secondly, those contracts were reviewed by the county attorney's office prior to being signed by the college."
When we requested some clarification, Howard-Golladay sent another email:
"It is not true that the 'windmill' cost or will cost $7.5 million across the 18 year duration of the lease agreement, rather all of the projects completed by the company will cost that amount. The wind turbine was one of the project albeit one of the two largest projects. Secondly, the two pages that were 'blank' to which the County attorney referred were supposedly 'exhibit' pages on which the equipment would be listed in the contract. Both pages contained a note to that affect."
