Meeting gets testy over school handling
WOONSOCKET — Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt put on an impassioned defense of her handling of a $90,000 bid for the Social Street School during a meeting of the City Council last night, but members still aren’t satisfied with her explanation for failing to inform them of the offer and called for a deeper probe. During a meeting marked by testy verbal exchanges, Baldelli-Hunt in- sisted she told the council about an offer of interest from an unnamed party more than three months later – on Nov. 27 – but she didn’t provide the figure or the identity of the bidder, John Lippolis of Blackstone, because she didn’t have his permission to provide those details. She excoriated Council President Dan Gendron for allowing Lippolis to give his uncontested version of his dealings with the administration two weeks ago – when she was unable to attend the meeting – and then having the council go public with insinuations of wrongdoing. With councilors suggesting the negotiations with Lippolis were somehow tainted by impropriety, the mayor said, “it becomes like a bacteria that’s festering.” “It should not be happening,” the mayor said. “What happened in thiscase was trying to create a story out of nothing... I am not going to be accused of doing anything inap-
propriate. I’m not going to stand by while someone tries to have a gotcha moment with this administration.” But Councilman Jim Cournoyer wasn’t buying the mayor’ s explanation – and neither was Lippolis. He was sitting in the back of Harris Hall with Project Manager Robert Fluckiger while the mayor spoke. They weren’t allowed to speak or rebut the mayor’s remarks, but when they heard the mayor say she didn’t have his permission to share the details of the bid, he and Fluckiger sat there shaking their heads in disbelief. Later, he and Fluckiger stalked out of the hall and told The Call that the mayor had not provided an accurate characterization of their offer. Contrary to what Baldelli-Hunt told councilors, they said it was entirely without contingencies on disclosure. “It’s just made up,” Fluckiger said. “It’s not there.” Before Fluckiger and Lippolis stalked out of the hall, Cournoyer told the mayor her story didn’t add up. Waving a copy of the written offer in front of him, he said it was hand-delivered to the city by a seasoned lawyer – Lloyd Gariepy – and mentions nothing about any contingencies. Cournoyer acknowledged that the mayor had a meeting in late November to inform them of an offer of interest, but there was no mention of who it was from or the dollar amount. “We had a written offer, a written bona fide offer, submitted to the mayor’s office,” said Cournoyer. “It was never communicated to us.” The first the council heard about the offer from Lippolis was two weeks ago, after a story appeared in The Call indicating that two suitors had surfaced for the abandoned schoolhouse – including one from Lippolis. That offer wasn’t for $90,000, however, but it was a second offer of $65,000 he made in late December, after failing to hear back from the city on the higher amount. Simultaneously, the mayor disclosed that Gary Fernandes, the owner/operator of River Falls Restaurant, who has done some highly praised restoration work on a number of older buildings in the city, including several schools shed by the Woonsocket Education Department, had also tendered an offer on the school. Fernandes was offering somewhat less than Lippolis, $50,000, but given his background, councilors were prepared to forego the premium and sell to Fernandes. Until, that is, Lippolis showed up at a council meeting on Feb. 5 – hours before the council was getting ready to vote on selling the school to Fernandes – and asked why they’d never gotten back to him on his more generous, original offer. The sale is now on hold. While Baldelli-Hunt said Monday the reason was that Lippolis was waiting to hear back from the council, Lippolis said it was the other way around, “We were waiting to hear back” – from anyone. After months went by without contact from the city, Lippolis said Rene Menard, a former Manville state representative who had been involved in some early meetings to discuss the purchase, suggested he come in with a lower offer of $65,000. “As far as I’m concerned,” Cournoyer said, “this needs to be looked into further... We need to get to the bottom of this. It’s indefensible, and it’s unacceptable.”