Walter shoots back at Blass, defends enforcement action at Wading River Motel

Riverhead Town Supervisor shot back at Suffolk County Social Services Commissioner Greg Blass yesterday for the commissioner’s comments in the media about the code enforcement raid on the Wading River Motel last Friday evening.

The supervisor said Blass, who called the execution of a search warrant at the motel last week “Gestapo-like” and “sleazy,” doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“Greg Blass does not have the facts,” Walter said at briefing with reporters in his office Friday morning. “Greg Blass has been shooting from the hip.”

The motel, which was essentially converted to a homeless shelter this year, when new owners took it over, lacks town permits for improvements and renovations done to the premises this year, Walter said. The supervisor displayed numerous photos he said were taken last week when town investigators and police officers entered the premises with the warrant, inspected every guest room as well as the main office building, photographed each guest’s identification papers and ran warrant checks on the guests.

“My primary responsibility is to make sure these people are safe, even if he [Blass] won’t,” Walter said. He said it was obvious from the pictures that the motel was not a safe environment.

The photos depicted small cluttered rooms crammed with clothing, food items, dishes, cups and toys. They also showed two-burner electric stovetops built into what appeared to be makeshift countertops, adjacent to small stainless-steel sinks. In many photos, personal items were piled on top of the electric stovetops. The supervisor also showed pictures of smoke detectors, dangling from the ceiling, apparently disconnected and non-functional, and pictures of rooms having three or four beds in them.

“I personally believe at $96 per day” — the daily rate the county pays to the motel operator — “these rooms should look as good as the Hyatt’s,” Walter said. At that rate, the motel’s gross annual income is $1.1 million, he said.

Walter declined to release copies of the photos to the media because they are part of an investigation that is still ongoing. He said the town would be issuing “numerous summonses” to the motel operator for town code violations early next week.

According to the supervisor, the motel has been operating without a lawful rental permit, and the premises are overcrowded and unsafe. The operator undertook a lot of work on the premises without the necessary building permits, Walter said. The work included, among other things, new plumbing and electrical work, converting of every guest room into an “efficiency,” conversion of a laundry room to a guest room and the creation of two apartments in the office building.

Town attorney Robert Kozakiewicz, who participated in briefing, said the the search warrant was necessary because town code enforcement officers and investigators needed to make a surprise inspection of the premises in order to ascertain the exact conditions there.

“Let’s face it,” Kozakiewicz said, “if they know we’re coming, in the absence of a warrant, we weren’t going to get a true picture of what’s there. Beds and things magically disappear,” he said.

The supervisor said he was angry Blass, “a non-elected official” had made allegations about the town’s motives in obtaining and executing the search warrant, and he was incensed Blass had written an op-ed piece in Thursday’s News-Review complaining about the town action.

“I was take aback he’d be writing a letter to the editor like that after he and I spoke on Sunday,” Walter said. Doing so was “unprofessional,” Walter said. He said the two had agreed to meet to discuss the conditions at the motel as soon as town investigators completed their investigation.

Walter said he took the matter up with Blass’ boss, County Executive Steve Levy, during a phone call late Thursday night. Walter said Levy promised him a meeting with a high-level staff member in his office “to work with the town to bring this place into compliance”; he was no longer willing to sit down with Blass, the supervisor said.

The supervisor accused the social services commissioner of a cover-up. He said had “gone so far beyond the scope of what a commissioner should be saying,”

“It seems to me the department of social services screwed up here, and the Town of Riverhead found out, so now they’re throwing as much mud at the the Town of Riverhead  as they can to deflect the fact that they screwed up,” Walter said.

Walter and Kozakiewicz answered questions by reporters about conditions at the motel and the need for the enforcement action. They said they could not speak to why the police ran warrant checks agains all the IDs collected at motel, which would be a question for Police Chief David Hegermiller, who was unavailable due to a family matter.

Walter’s deputy, Jill Lewis and his political adviser, Anthony Coates, were present during the briefing but did not participate in it.

Motel principal Anthony Marino Jr. and his attorney John Zukowski of East Setauket were at Riverhead Town Hall yesterday. They, too, spoke with reporters and answered questions after the meeting in the supervisor’s office — to which they were not invited.

Marino adamantly denied the supervisor’s allegations about changes made to the premises. Sinks and stovetops were there when he bought the facility, he said. 

Marino said when he took possession of the motel, he actually killed electric service to all stovetops “at the breakers.” They are all inoperable, he said. The motel has underwriters certificates for all electrical work done on the premises, Marino said.

Zukowski said his client tried to file a rental permit application more than a month ago, but the town attorney refused to accept it.

Marino said he and his father, Anthony Sr., successfully operate numerous motels on Long Island and homeless shelters in New York City. They have a 40-year track record in the industry, he said. They have never had a search warrant executed on any of their premises, he said. “I’m not a criminal. I don’t engage in criminal activity,” Marino said. “I house homeless families.”

“Governing through search warrant and press conference is no way to govern ,” Zukowski said. “If you have a problem, call us in to discuss it, if there’s a violation, issue a citation,” he said.

In a phone interview Friday night, Blass denied the conditions at the motel are in any way dangerous, and said the supervisor’s allegation that his agency was engaged in some sort of cover-up was “preposterous.”

“Our case workers have beent here from the get-go,” Blass said. “And the town was there for the health department inspection.” The health department, Blass said, is the agency with jurisdiction over the operation of motels in Suffolk County.

“The door was always open. The place is an open book. His inspectors have been there. This atrocious warrant, this raid, did not achieve any purpose other than to terrify already-desperate people,” Blass said. “The town was much more intent on finding out who was there, if anyone had any outstanding arrest warrants, and what contraband they could seize. They came away empty,” he said of town investigators.

“Why was it necessary to do warrant cheks in a code enforcement action,” Blass asked. “That in itself reveals the town’s true intent and speaks volumes about what this was really all about.”