Foley buyer wants out of $36-million deal

The buyer who signed a $36-million deal to purchase the John J. Foley Skilled Nursing Facility wants to cancel the contract and get his $1.8-million deposit back.

Kenneth Rozenberg, a private nursing home operator, sent a letter dated March 31 by express mail seeking to terminate the contract, citing health cutbacks in the newly adopted state budget.

"We have the county attorney looking into all the possible scenarios at this point," said Dan Aug, a spokesman for Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy. "If this deal is not consummated, we will continue to move toward closure and ask the county legislature to cease support of any lawsuit because the legislature did not put money into the budget to continue operations."

The Levy administration had counted on the money from the sale -- which had been expected to close by the end of the year -- to help plug the county's budget deficit. The county faces a two-year budget shortfall of $179.5 million.

The attempt to cancel the deal comes after several days of telephone discussions with the county in which, Aug said, Rozenberg expressed "serious concerns" about the impact of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's budget on the sale.

What was unclear Friday night is how a cancellation of the nursing home sale might affect a new four-year, $16-million contract with the county's largest union, the 6,500-member Association of Municipal Employees. Levy administration officials made the new union contract contingent on the legislature's approval of the nursing home sale.

Aug could not say Friday night whether the still-pending union contract, which was ratified by AME members Thursday, was also contingent on the sale going to closing. "We're reviewing those details," he said.

Cheryl Felice, AME president, said the contract, which is retroactive to 2009 and includes a two-year wage freeze and 2 percent pay hikes in 2011 and 2012, is binding. "I'm sure the county will make an argument and we'll make ours," she said."The [legislative] vote took place on . . . [March] third and that was our obligation under the contract," she added.

Presiding Officer William Lindsay (D-Holbrook) said he had not been notified by the administration of the development. "We're back to square one," he said. "This puts the whole thing on the front burner again."