batavia

Joseph Neth and Marcy Crandall are Town of Batavia employees. Their assignment today: Sit for two hours at the corner of Main and Ellicott streets and count cars. Neth said it's his understanding that the state is thinking of reducing the lanes of traffic through the intersection and the car counts are part of the study for that proposal.

Tulips at the base of the Emory Upton Monument have come into bloom.

Julie B. Wescott, 27, of 335 Bank St., Apt. B3, Batavia, is charged with endangering the welfare of a child and unlawful possession of marijuana. Wescott was arrested at 3:50 p.m., Tuesday, by Officer Matt Baldwin after an investigation revealed Wescott allegedly failed to provide adequate supervision for two children.

Keith Joseph Lyman, 36, of 217 Bank St., Batavia, is charged with criminal contempt. Lyman is accused of violating an order of protection. He was arraigned in Town of Oakfield Court and jailed on $500 bail.

Kathy Pettinella says in November 2008, she almost lost her business -- a business started and built by her late husband and late son 15 years ago.

Her business, Dave's Produce, relies on cash in the bank so she can buy product at farmers' markets and deliver it to local restaurants.

So when one local restaurant allegedly stiffed her for nearly $70,000, it really hurt.

"Oh, my God -- I am done. I’m absolutely done." Pettinella said were her first thoughts when she learned of the original Pontillo's Pizzeria closing. "Looking at all that money, I went through all my bank statements, my deposit slips, I was in trouble. I couldn’t cut back anything anymore out of my household budget."

How and why Pontillo's was allegedly able to run up all that debt is something Kathy still can't fully explain, but until last week, when The Batavian wrote about the debt in a story on  financial issues surrounding the Pontillo family and their legendary pizza business, she said nobody in Batavia knew about the debt. It was something she wanted to keep secret.

She said she was shaking the first time she answered a call from The Batavian asking about the debt.

"I was petrified," Pettinella said of her long-standing fear of people finding out about the debt. "I was was afraid people would think, ‘What a stupid woman. That’s why women don’t run businesses because they would drive it into the ground.'"

"That was my initial thought -- that I just made a bad example for the rest of women who are working so hard to run their own small businesses."

Kathy Richardson and Dave Pettinella -- Big Dave, as she calls him -- were together for 27 years. They would eventually have two children together, but never marry. She said Dave was a strong, capable businessman who was good with numbers and taking care of his customers.  He founded Dave's Produce when he happened to come across a local restaurant that needed deliveries from farmers' markets in Rochester and Buffalo. 

It didn't take long for the business to grow and bring in more clients.

Who hasn't seen the big "Dave's Produce" truck driving around town?

Big Dave died in in July 2007, though, just two years after Dave and Kathy's son, Dave, Jr., died in a car wreck at Daws Corner. 

A week after Big Dave died, it was Kathy taking the orders, writing the bills, buying the produce and delivering the product in that big white truck.

She's run Dave's Produce as a one-woman business ever since.

So when Pontillo's managers started calling on her to deliver more than just lettuce and eggplant in March 2008, she couldn't help but think that taking on more responsibility for such a big local business would be a feather in her cap.

She had heard Pontillo's had lost some of its suppliers over unpaid bills, she said, and at that point, there was at least an unpaid balance of $10,000 owed to Dave's Produce, but she wanted to believe that eventually Paul and Sam Pontillo would get caught up and pay off what they owed.

"That’s the sad thing about it," Kathy said. "Yeah, by the time summer came around, Pontillo's was way in debt with me, but then the other vendors shut them off. And I felt bad. Why I felt bad, I don’t know. But I did want to see the business run and I was their main supplier."

Starting in March 2008, Dave's Produce was not just making two deliveries a week to Pontillo's in Batavia, but three, and the average monthly order went from $2,000 to $3,000 range to more than $10,000, according to invoices Kathy Pettinella provided to The Batavian for review.

Some of the invoices were paid -- usually for only a few hundred dollars, at most, but all of April 2008 was paid.

Dave's Produce went from delivering fruits and vegetables to within weeks of the first time of being asked to pick up some wings and BBQ sauce to bringing in just about all the product Pontillo's needed, including all the meat and mozzarella.

"I could get them anything they needed," Kathy said.

What she couldn't understand was, Pontillo's was obviously bustling with business, so why wasn't she getting paid?

"It would have been so much less of a headache," Kathy said,  "to shut them off and say, ‘you know, you treated the guys in Buffalo and other areas real bad. Your checks are bouncing for them as much as they are for me. All this money I’m paying for the product, these other vendors are paying for the product, and you’ve got all these customers paying for the product – where’s the money going? Where is the money going?'"

It's the same question John Pontillo said he's put to his brothers, Sam and Paul, but he's never gotten an answer either.

Paul, however, says Kathy Pettinella is lying.

"I don't care what she confirmed, she's lying," Paul Pontillo said when first asked about the debt a week ago. "Ly-ing. Lying. OK? It's nonsense. We spent three hundred bucks a week with her. Produce. How many weeks would she let us go to come up with this number?"

The invoices show that even before Dave's Produce became the main supplier for Pontillo's, the restaurant was putting in orders for $500 to $600 per week.

Paul Pontillo apparently signed one of the invoices, and Sam Pontillo appears to have signed another, but the rest were signed by managers.

It was Paul, though, according to Pettinella, who was responsible for making payment.

According to Pettinella, if she ever got a check it would bounce, and then she would spend three weeks trying to get in touch with Paul, who would then pay off some of the bounced check with cash and issue a new check for the next invoice, but then that check would bounce.

"Pauly would say, ‘you’re going to get $1,000,'" Pettinella said.  "Well, by the time I get the money from the night manager, there’s not $1,000 in that envelope. There’s $500. But you try to call Paul and there’s no way he’s going to pick up the phone."

Shortly after Kathy Pettinella sat down for an interview with The Batavian on Saturday, she stopped in at Wilson Farms on East Main Street, across the road from the recently reopened Pontillo's Pizzeria, and as she was leaving the store, she stopped Paul Pontillo walking on the sidewalk.

She approached Paul -- talking to him for the first time since the original Pontillo's closed -- and asked him about calling her a liar.  She then called me and said Paul wanted to talk some more, but rather than try to arrange a three-way interview over the phone, since I was already in my truck and in the area, I just stopped by to talk with both of them. 

When I arrived, Kathy and Paul were yelling at each other. Paul was heatedly denying the extent of the debt Pettinella said Pontillo's owed Dave's Produce.

Paul Pontillo said there was no way the restaurant ran up that much debt to Dave's Produce, and he also accused Kathy of not being fully cooperative in settling the debt.

"I asked you for copies of the invoices six months before we closed," Pontillo said.

Just an hour before, The Batavian had reviewed invoices provided by Pettinella. The allegedly unpaided invoices spanned from January 2008 to October 2008. Six months prior to the closing would have been May 2008. 

A good portion of the $67,750 in bad debt the invoices allegedly show occurred after May 2008, with the entire April 2008 debt being paid off, according to Kathy.

The Batavian first became aware of this alleged bad debt because of a document provided by John Pontillo. He said it was prepared by Sam Pontillo after the restaurant closed, to show just how much debt the business had wrung up. Of the suppliers with outstanding balances, Dave's Produce was by far the largest.

The document lists the amount owed at $68,421.75. 

Paul Pontillo vehemately disputed that figure, and has continued to dispute it, since first being showed the document. He said that at most, Pontillo's owed Dave's Produce $3,000 or $4,000.

In another interview this week, Paul said the level of debt Pontillo's had at the time it closed would be normal for a business that just shut its doors. He said if the financial figures were available for South Beach, when it closed, or Cristina's, when it burned down, those documents would show a similar amount of unpaid bills.

"That's just what happens when you go out of business," Paul said.

The debt, he said, is really an old issue. He thinks The Batavian should be paying closer attention to the conduct of the estate's administrator, John Forsyth.

While Paul Pontillo is clearly the one Kathy Pettinella blames -- she said John did try to repeatedly warn her -- for the bad debt, she said Sam Pontillo knew what was going on (he did apparently sign one of the invoices), and she also had her own problems with Sam at his Le Roy restaurant.

Pettinella produced a copy of an allegedly bounced check from Sam and said it was shortly after that -- in March 2009 -- that she stopped deliveries to the Le Roy Pontillo's, though the bounced check and other debts associated with the Le Roy store were eventually paid, she said.

She said Paul Pontillo was well aware of her situation and that he and Sam "saw her coming."  They took advantage of her, she said.

"For Pauly Pontillo to turn around and do this to me – I just never would have thought it," Pettinella said. "I just never would have thought, for somebody to be that evil. I wasn’t in the right state of mind. I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t want to be mean. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. But you can’t be (that way) in a business -- business is business, it’s not personal. I just wasn’t looking out for myself."

Pettinella said no other small business owner in Batavia has even come close to running up any kind of big debt to Dave's Produce, which is part of the reason she said she was so trusting of the Pontillos.

"The people here in Genesee County, in Batavia, they’re wonderful," Kathy said. "They just support local business and they’re so good. We have a strong community. Business owners here in Batavia, their integrity is high. They’re … I’m just at a loss for words – they’re just amazing here.”

When asked again to explain how it happened, how the alleged debt was ran up to $67,750 in just 10 months, Kathy Pettinella tries again to answer and then says, “That still doesn’t answer your question, why did it keep going on so long? I just kept looking for the grace. I just kept thinking, things will turn around. People can’t be that evil. Wrong."

When I drove past this oddly parked car with a flag sticking out of the passenger window, I had to turn around go back and get a picture. I have no idea why the car is parked this way. Perhaps it's somebody's creative way of trying to draw attention to the building behind it that's for rent.

Joshua Cordero McIver, 22, of 130 Third Ave., Apt. 18H, Brooklyn, is charge with criminal trespass, 3rd. McIver was reportedly barred from College Village on Feb. 22. He was reportedly arrested for trespassing on April 1. Then, on Monday, Mciver was allegedly found again at College Village, this time hiding under a desk covered by a bed comforter in Pine Hall.

Nicholas A. Darrow, 19, of 13192 Broadway Road, Alden, is charged with petit larceny. Darrow is accused of shoplifting from The Rez Smoke Shop.

Two men recently indicted by the Grand Jury of alleged property crimes entered not guilty pleas today.

Bryan M. Hargrave is charged with three counts of burglary, 3rd, criminal mischief and petit larceny.

Hargrave is accused of breaking into businesses in Pavilion and the Town of Batavia on Sept. 23.

Carl Rivers, is accused of stealing a 2000 Chevrolet Silverado on March 19, 2009, in Oakfield. He is charged with one count of grand larceny, 3rd.

Hargrave is out of jail under supervision of Genesee Justice. 

Rivers is in jail without bail, but will have a bail review on Thursday. He has prior felony convictions, according to his attorney, Gary Horton. 

Hargrave and Rivers are accused of completely unrelated crimes. Their cases happened to be on the docket back-to-back today.

Lisa Rene Richmond, 22, of 3181 Dodgeson Road, Alexander, is charged with endangering the welfare of a child. Richmond is accused of maintaining squalid living conditions with her 2-year-old son living at the house. Department of Social Services and Child Protective Services are following up on the case.

Lynda Rae Morrill, 44, of 3181 Dodgeson Road, Alexander, is charged with endangering the welfare of a child. Morrill is accused of allowing her 2-year-old grandson to live in squalor.

Leslie G. Cannon, 46, of 9022 Linwood Road, Le Roy, is charged with unauthorized use of a vehicle, 3rd. Cannon is accused of borrowing a car and then refusing to return it at the agreed upon time.

Shannon Victoria Albano, 25,  of 1523 Friedman Road, Darien, is charged with DWI, driving with a BAC of .08 or greater and improper right turn. Albano was stopped at 1:03 a.m., Monday, on Griswold Road in Darien by Deputy Jason Saile.

Javonie E. McKinney, 36, of 705 Viking Way, Brockport, is charged with DWI, aggravated unlicensed operation, improper lane change and leaving the scene of an accident. McKinney was driving on Bank Street in Batavia at 12:40 a.m., Saturday, when he allegedly struck a utility pole. He then allegedly drove from the scene and was located later at Bank and North streets.

Brandon C. Dodd, 23, of 41 Maple St., Batavia, is charged with harassment, 2nd, Dodd is accused of going to the house of a woman and threatening to hurt her. He was jailed on $2,000 bail.

Summer Marie Morley, 26, of 36 Exchange St., Apt. C, Attica, is accused of DWI, driving with a BAC of .08 or greater and moving from lane unsafely. Morley was stopped at 12:45 a.m., Saturday, by Deputy Jason Saile on Route 238 in Darien.

Tiffany M. Miller, 20, of Rochester, is charged of petit larceny. Miller was arrested by State Police at 2:11 p.m., Friday, at Kmart.

A 17-year-old from Batavia is charged with criminal mischief and criminal contempt. The youth was arrested in Batavia by State Police at 6:50 p.m., Friday.

Brandon M. Culliton, 23, of Batavia, is charged with unlawful possession of marijuana and DWI. Culliton was stopped by State Police at 9:10 p.m., Thursday, on Route 262 and Bank Street Road, Byron.

David R. Elliott, 20, of Wyoming, is charged with DWI, driving with a BAC of .08 or greater, leaving the scene of a personal injury accident and possession alcohol by a person under 21. Elliott was arrested by Le Roy Patrolman Daryl Robb following an accident in which a car reportedly driven by Elliott struck a utility pole on South Street.

A five-car accident with no injuries is reported in the parking lot of Sacred Heart Church at 15 Sumner St. in Batavia. Fire and/or police are responding.

UPDATE (6:55 p.m.): "She didn't know which pedal did what," said Batavia Police Officer Matthew Baldwin at the scene of mild mayhem in the church parking lot.

They were all there for Bingo Nite when, according to Baldwin, a woman offered to help a disabled lady by moving her car for her, making it easier for her to get in. But the Good Samaritan was unfamilar with the vehicle controls, made for the disabled, and she accelerated too fast, couldn't stop and hit two parked cars. One of those vehicles smashed two other cars, and the driver, still in reverse, then hit a truck.

Nobody was hurt in the accident.

(Isn't five in a row Bingo?)

UPDATE: Photos by Howard Owens.

Faculty and students of John Kennedy School were at Clor's in Batavia this afternoon selling BBQ chicken meals to help raise money to fund field trips for students to such places as Cooperstown.

Don Carroll, below, was also on hand selling raffle tickets in support of his annual Christmas toy drive. And the cook in the bottom photo wanted his picture on The Batavian.

 

One of the complaints of landlords in Batavia is that when there is a problem with a property, the city rarely issues a violation notice against the tenant.

It's usually the landlord that gets hauled into court.

It doesn't have to be that way, according to City Court Judge Robert Balbick.

Balbick spoke with members of the Neighborhood Improvement Committee on Thursday afternoon.

"Under city code they are both responsible," Balbick said. "I don’t choose who the defendant is. That's the choice of the city."

Council members Sam Barone, Rose Mary Christian and Bob Bialkowski were on hand for the meeting.

Balbick told them they could amend city code to require tenants to be included in any enforcement action.

Batavia landlord Terry Platt is on the committee, and he said he would certainly like to see Batavia become known as a place where, if you're a tenant and you cause a code violation, you're going to be held responsible.

“If we could work toward the tenant area and let the tenants in this city know that they are going to be held responsible, then over a five- to 10-year period this city could be just like Stafford -- Judge Muskopf set a precedence there," Platt said. "When you drive through Stafford today, you still slow down. He set a precedence. (Tenants will learn) 'Hey, don’t do that because you’ll get nailed in this city.'"

Balbick also suggested that landlords could call police for some enforcement actions against tenants.

“I’ve looked at pictures and the things that happened in apartments and it borders on being criminal," Balbick said. "Some of the damage isn’t just wear-and-tear on carpets. Some of the damage is holes in the walls and broken windows. You have your civil remedy but people may consider other remedies, such as going to the police. And have the police department address it as criminal mischief."

Platt said he's tried that route and the response from the police is always, "it's a civil matter."

Platt said 10 years ago, he and his crew were in an apartment doing work and they found a pound of marijuana. He said he told police and the police didn't want to take action, since Platt hadn't seen it actually being carried into the apartment.

So, Platt said he went to the tenant and told him he had two choices -- stay and he was calling the cops or move out.

“I knew the cops wouldn’t do anything, but I knew he’d get out if I said that, and he did," Platt said. "I wanted him off my property because I didn’t want that on my property.”

A good portion of Balbick's conversation was directed at explaining how court works for code-enforcement matters.

Disclosure: Terry Platt is my residential landlord.

The phrase "tea party" has taken on a new meaning these days, but this morning a group of pre-school girls were on hand at the Richmond Memorial Library to reclaim the term for things more frivolous than worrying about government and taxes.

It was the "Fancy Nancy Tea Party," named after a series of popular children books.

About a dozen girls were on hand with their mothers, dressing up, decorating their own cups and plates and then sitting down to a real tea party.

Above are Mia, 3, and her friend Jadyn, 4.

Kaitlin, 2.

Violet, 3.

The women organizing and supervising the event were also all dressed up for the occassion. Above is June Lee.

Wii bowling was introduced to the residents of 400 Towers a month ago.  It only took a month and one day for Dennis Meyers to post the first 300 game at 12:10am today 4/16).

Dennis, an avid bowler (and pool player) was reluctant to start Wii bowling while he was still competing in league bowling two nights a week.  After watching for a few nights, he decided he would try it.  He was hooked.

Meyers has become a coach for those just learning.  One of his success stories is MaryAnn Harkness, who bowls from a wheel chair.  MaryAnn, a left handed bowler, had the distinction of having a bowling technique named after her.  The slow moving, and often ineffective attempt, was lovingly named the "MaryAnn ball".  That term may fade into history after working with Dennis..  So much so, that on April 15, MaryAnn not only bowled two 200+ games, but beat her mentor's score in one of the games. 

There are over 40 residents now playing the Wii Bowling.  Plans are underway to have a Friday night handicap summer league. 

Residents can check out the system from the towers' Snack Shop to play at a time convenient for them.  There are scheduled times for open bowling on Sunday evenings and Thursday mornings.  Open bowling is also available most evenings after 9pm.

The system was purchased by the 400 Towers' Resident Council.