James A. O’Neill of C.W. Augustine Inc., Housing Administrator for the Ogdensburg NSP Housing program, touted his accomplishments yesterday, or at least that’s the headline on the story. What is immediately apparent to anyone who knows how Mr. O’Neill operates, is a clear pattern of shifting the blame and making excuses anytime his work is called into question. He did the very same thing years ago during our case against him for shoddy construction. He’s all smiles and charm while the money’s hanging in the balance, but after he has received his payment if anyone starts to question the quality or sense of the work done, he gets angry, arrogant, and willingly throws his former clients, colleagues,  and anyone else available under the bus, in an attempt  to cover up his own failings.

Yesterday, Mr. O’Neill not only called out the Ogdensburg City Council, but also the whole city of Ogdensburg, when he stated, “In  Ogdensburg,  however, not only do you not get the credit, you take the blame if something happens.” and “We’ve  tried to do  right  by  the city, but they let their petty politics and their personal crusades get in the way.”

Looking back at the documents of our court case against Mr. O’Neill, its hard not to notice similarities in the statements he had for us when we called his work into question. I’d like to give you a quote now, from his sworn deposition, “Before this case was formally initiated, I have been under fire from these clowns, and upon advice from my attorney, I included the corporate name on all letterhead.” Sound familiar?

Listen friends for the “jimmys”, statements like “boots on the ground,”  “excellence and value,”  “typically, what we do in this situation,” and the clincher: “that’s a non-issue!”. He is the king of bluster (further evidenced by his use of the royal “we”), and apparently thinks he’s the king of the North Country as well… Such a benevolent king too, doing all that work for Ogdensburg pro bono! Why, I am sure he didn’t receive a cent for his valiant efforts to fix what (he claims) was screwed up before he got there, and his excellent budget work allowed him to only spend $200,000 of our tax dollars on houses now worth less than $100,000.
God save the king!

By Pat Biggs

Originally written around 2002. . .

Want to know what our life has been like in the past four years?

Take a sixteen year old, a twelve year old, a seven year old and your spouse and live in your garage for four years.  You have heat (most of the time) and running water, both hot and cold, unless the poorly insulated supply pipes freeze and burst, or the waste pipes fall apart within the walls because the installer either forgot to glue them or didn’t know how to do it properly.

Some of your waste pipes leak because they were punctured by the drywaller.  You find out about one puncture because one day you see dirty water dripping out of an electrical outlet and you wonder, “Why?”  You regularly see dirty puddles at the bases of walls, but by now you know what it means. Call the plumber.

When you wash clothes, the lights flash in numerous places.  When its windy and rainy, you move your furniture so that it won’t get wet from the water coming in around windows, under doors, and through the walls.  The day after the storm you go out to pick up all the chunks of shingle that have fallen off the windward side of your abode. Remember, the structure you are living in is ONLY FOUR YEARS OLD.

Just as I did, you’ll find out something you never knew before.  Big barn rats will move into your walls if your sewage pipes leak, because running water in an exterior wall is a wonderful rat luxury in the wintertime.  You learn something else. . .what you’ll do when your house cat meets up with a rat that has made it inside your house. The rat is too big for your cat to handle.  You’ll help the cat by stabbing the rat with a kitchen knife until it is dead.  While your children watch.

Funny, what I learned that day.  The daughters I expected to scream and run away to vomit, calmly said, “Should I get another knife?” and “How can I help?”  My children have intelligence, good manners, and GUTS.  So does the cat.

Luckily, no rats ever found the kitchen.

You tell your lawyer the story of the rat and–without skipping a beat–he says, “Well now, why don’t you hang a little sign around its neck with [the contractor’s first name] on it.”

He makes you laugh, God bless him.

Do you think your family life could survive a situation such as this?  What if you had had your pockets turned inside out by the builder, and he now had your savings of a lifetime?
What do you do when there is no place left to go?

I turn and fight. I know how to handle rats, you know.

The work our builder performed for us is literally so shoddy that our home cannot be completed as planned.  The sub floors are so crooked that hardwood finish flooring cannot be installed.  Some walls are plaster-boarded, but most of those have experienced stress cracking and nail pops.  Some walls have horizontal cracks on both sides.  The architect’s report and the engineer’s report list the problems in detail.

We moved from a sound and beautiful home into this hovel because we had nowhere else to go after paying our con-tractor everything we had.  We think of this place the same way a homeless person might regard a large cardboard box-it’s better than nothing!

Another family who hired our contractor calls him “a crook.”  One woman who hired him said he did the same thing to convince her to hire him as he did with us-that he used his position as an inspector for the St. Lawrence County Housing Council, Inc. to convince her to hire him.  She subsequently won a lawsuit against him for shoddy workmanship on work performed on her home.  A representative of the Housing Council consulted with the contractor and his lawyer during court proceedings in that case.  AMAZING.

Our contractor was the APPLICANT for the building permit in our case.  According to
Pierrepont local law, it is the APPLICANT’s responsibility to notify the Town of Pierrepont code enforcement officer when certain stages of construction are complete and ready for inspection.  We were led to believe that this had been done.

Surprise!  There is no documentation that any inspection was ever performed by the Pierrepont code enforcement officer, Gary Gowing, during any stage of construction.  Why?  We would really like to know.

Are the state and federally funded housing authorities who have our contractor’s corporation working for them checking to see whether each of their projects has actually been inspected and approved by local code enforcement entities?  I’m talking about the Potsdam Community Development Office and the St. Lawrence County Housing Council, Inc.  It is my understanding that both entities are regularly given our tax money in the form of grants.

What is actually going on here in the North Country and how does it affect you and the ones you love?  Is it safe to trust quasi-public housing authorities who have been aware for YEARS of the problems we and others have experienced-yet still use our builder’s corporation as a sub-contractor?  Our builder told us a long time ago:  they’re all friends.  Well, I don’t know about that, but I do know that there is a great deal of loyalty among them.

No one in an authoritative position in New York State has been willing to investigate this matter thoroughly.  I believe that is because they are afraid of what they will find if they look too closely.  SCANDAL?