Oyster Bay supervisor asks consultant to explain contract overages

Oyster Bay Town Supervisor John Venditto has instructed a consultant to respond to a resident’s questions about the town’s contracts with the consultant’s firm as well as others.

At last Tuesday’s board meeting, Venditto asked Hal Mayer, a consultant with Cashin Spinelli & Ferretti LLC., to prepare a written statement on behalf of the town for the Hicksville Gardens Civic Association after an article in Newsday about cost overruns on contracts prompted public questions.

Earlier this month the Town Board approved increases totaling $287,088 for services provided in 2015 on two contracts with Cashin Spinelli & Ferretti.

Margaret Eaton, a 62-year-old retiree from Hicksville, said the reported cost overruns and town contracts in general had become a topic of conversation at her association.

“It’s a big concern that people are talking about,” Eaton said. “Maybe proactively the board could put something out there to address this to say RFPs have been asked for,” Eaton said. RFPs are formal requests for proposals to companies that want to bid on town contracts.

Venditto said when he read Newsday’s April 14 article he “was really concerned whether it really was an over-expenditure, because that was never my understanding.”

In an April 13 email, Venditto said: “These overages are the result of various unforeseeable problems that arose during the course of 2015, for which the town utilized the services of CSF [Cashin Spinelli & Ferretti] for their technical expertise.”