Who wrote this defamatory Resolution?

Has the City Council enacted a Resolution authorizing outside counsel in this matter?

Your Corporation Counsel could not have written the Resolution because your Corporation Counsel prepared the Agreement I signed, exactly as presented to me, for the retiree dental insurance benefit. In any dispute about the retiree dental insurance, could your Corporation Counsel be a witness for me?

Who wrote this defamatory Resolution?

In America we have a right to confront our accuser.

With the mandatory retirement as your City Court Judge at age 70 on December 31, 2021, I applied for the retiree dental insurance which I understood I was entitled to just as retired City Court Judge Alessi had been given in 1993. In fact I alerted your insurance department in the summer of 2020 to be prepared for my application for the retiree benefit as of January 1, 2022.

As a retired City Court Judge, and therefore a private citizen holding no elected or appointed public office, I signed an Agreement prepared by your Corporation Counsel regarding retiree dental insurance. If there was something procedurally missing here, that is an error of the City, not of mine. For the record, I never requested that the Agreement be confidential.

Why is it that this Defamatory Resolution is before the Council?

Could it be I am being defamed because I had the courage to run for the County Legislature and win against an incumbent Republican who was on Assemblyman Goodell’s payroll for $75,000 in 2023?

Could it be I am being defamed because I wrote a truthful essay for the July 27 Post-Journal about the City government’s DPW garage debacle on Washington St.?

The author of this defamatory Resolution, out of actual malice, has made several inaccurate statements and, despite including unusual detail, left out essential and material details. This Resolution is vile, vicious and vindictive.

First, the City knows that the last City Court Judge to retire before me, at age 60, received City retiree health benefits, although he had been on the State payroll for 15 years before retiring in 1993.

Second, the City knows that the State Office of Court Administration by a March 24, 2022 e-mail, had no objection to the City offering a dental insurance benefit to me as a retired City Court Judge.

Third, the City knows that its Corporation Counsel prepared the Agreement I signed confirming I would have the retiree dental insurance benefit.

Fourth, the City had its paralegal send a letter dated May 10, 2024, immediately canceling my dental insurance and promising to send me a refund of part of the retiree’s premium I had prepaid for all of 2024.

Fifth, after Andrew Goodell contacted me, apparently at the request of Mayor Ecklund, I sent him a letter dated August 1, 2024, agreeing to the terms of the City’s letter of May 10, 2024, to settle this matter. (How is it that Andrew Goodell, a non-City employee, obtained access to my and my wife’s confidential health records?).

As of August 1, 2024, having agreed to the City’s terms of May 10, 2024, why is this defamatory Resolution here tonight? It has but one purpose; to defame me as widely as possible in this community, a community I have served for 45 years..

Who could be so vile, vicious and vindictive as to subject my family to this public humiliation and nightmare?

The money Ecklund and Goodell now demand, $1,576.70, instead of the refund promised in the City’s May 10, 2024 letter is under the $5,000 jurisdictional limit of Small Claims Court. The City of Jamestown does not even need a lawyer to present its claim in Small Claims Court.

So why is this defamatory Resolution here tonight?

This City is using this dispute to make sure that as many thousands of my former clients and as many thousands of County Legislature District 12 constituents as possible would see my good name dragged through the mud.

Mayor Ecklund with the apparent assistance of Andrew Goodell has, with actual malice, subjected my family to a living nightmare.

For starters, including but not limited to, to mitigate the great damage done to me and my family, I demand a public written apology from Mayor Ecklund and from Andrew Goodell by next Monday, August 26.

I demand the withdrawal of this defamatory resolution from the City Council agenda.