City declines to act on water complaint
Kingsbury Sweeping agrees to pay $100 for filling street sweepers
The city is not pressing charges against John Pickett, whose employees were caught on camera filling up water trucks from a city hydrant.
The decision ends a complaint that was filed this summer against Pickett’s company, Kingsbury Sweeping.
Pickett paid $100 as restitution for the unknown number of gallons of water taken by Kingsbury Sweeping over the last two years. The city also put a meter on the hydrant, and Pickett is now paying for his water usage.
The building never had a water line for trucks. It only had the standard interior hookups.
But often street sweepers fill up at the job site, so Public Works Commissioner Anthony Gotti said he did not have any way of knowing how much water was taken.
After the Saratoga County Sheriff ’s Office investigated the situation, deputies asked Gotti if he wanted to press charges. The mayor advised him to say no, he said, and he felt the same way.
“I didn’t see anything criminal. Restitution was made, just like it would be for anyone else that was caught. It’s always been that way. I just didn’t see the reason to prosecute for something that was taken care of and paid for,” he said. “As long as he’s paying for the water, I’m happy.”
Past incidents have involved people using a hydrant to fill a swimming pool, which can be more than 10,000 gallons. It takes 300 gallons to fill one street sweeper, but it’s not clear
how often they were filled.
Gotti said he was content to have the hydrant metered from now on.
“I don’t want people to think it’s OK to do it,” he said. “But if they pay restitution and they
don’t do it again — everything is metered now, there’s no problem.”
He added that he was pleased that Pickett admitted to taking the water after videos surfaced showing his trucks hooking up to the hydrant.
“When I talked to him, he said there were multiple times (in which hydrant water was used), after he talked to his people,” Gotti said. “I felt that was very honest.”
A private investigator filed a detailed report of multiple days of observing the company using the hydrant last summer.
In one video, a man appearing to be Pickett hooked up a water truck to the hydrant, according to videos reviewed by the Times Union.
Gotti said he hadn’t been given the videos or the investigator’s report, and that he believed Pickett when Pickett said employees made a mistake.
“He said, ‘I didn’t really realize my guys were filling up from the hydrant.’ Here’s a guy running a multimillion dollar business. I’m not going to call him a liar,” Gotti said.