Would seek to recover annual village revenue source
In an economy where revenue sources seem to always be on the way out, Tuckahoe Deputy Mayor Steve Ecklond (R) wants to take a closer look at the early termination of a lease agreement with Nextel. The 10-year lease was broken in March 2009 and Ecklond wants to see if the terms for cancellation were followed.

The contract for the site lease agreement, created in early 2005 during the administration of then-Mayor Mike Martino (R), and originally set to expire in 2015, essentially allowed Nextel (now governed by parent company Sprint) to lease space on the Village Hall property in order to retain the right at any point to construct a 120-foot-tall flagpole, which would have housed a cellular antenna inside it.

“I worked very hard on getting that lease committed,” said Ecklond. “I think it’s certainly worth exploring whether we have a valid challenge against their termination.”

The lease of approximately 100 square feet of village property provided annual revenue to the village that totaled over $25,000 by the time of its cancellation.

Beginning in 2005 with a $2,000 per month lease, the contract stipulated a 4 percent increase in the lease fee each year.

Had an antenna actually been installed, the village would also have received a portion of any rental fees Nextel decided to charge to other wireless companies (called “co-locators”) for concurrent use of the antenna.

The terms of the lease also provided for three five-year renewals after the expiration of the 10-year contract, had it been fulfilled.

The language used in the lease document asserts that cancellation of the agreement is permissible if the location is deemed “not appropriate for its operations for technological reasons.”

According to Ecklond, the company had already done testing before the contract was drawn up and had determined that the Tuckahoe property was a prime location for construction of its antenna.

“They were crystal clear that the back parking lot of Village Hall…was very advantageous to them,” he said.

During Monday night’s Tuckahoe Board of Trustees meeting, Tuckahoe Village Attorney John Cavallaro said that he had sent three letters to Nextel requesting an explanation of the specific technical rationale, to be accompanied by relevant engineering data, for the cancellation.

Cavallaro said he had only received three copies of a nearly identical letter in response, citing vague technical grounds for Nextel’s cancellation.

Ecklond articulated his support for hiring a lawyer to protest the cancellation on the village’s behalf, provided that a final request for specific data is either ignored or answered with insufficient documentation.

Ecklond also said that, if such a case is fought and won, he hoped that the village could be awarded retroactive lease payments dating back to the original cancellation by Nextel a year ago.

“It was a source of revenue for the village, and any source of revenue is an offset to the tax base,” said Ecklond on the agreement’s importance.

The cancellation of the Nextel lease is another financial blow to the village, which is seeking a new tenant for its third-floor office space after the former tenant, The Rollins Agency, Inc., officially bought out the remainder of its 2010 lease and vacated its rented office space during last week’s snowstorm.

Tuckahoe Mayor John Fitzpatrick (D), who was not yet on the Village Board when the Nextel contract was signed, commented on the advantageous setup of the lease and his hope that Tuckahoe can make the company honor its agreement.

“We were seeing the revenue, and we didn’t have to see the negatives,” said Fitzpatrick, commenting on the fact that the village collected the income from the site lease agreement whether Nextel ever built its flagpole or not.

Fitzpatrick continued by saying that he was “absolutely” in favor of trying to make Nextel honor its lease. “I think any stream of revenue we’re losing, we need to chase actively.”

If Nextel does, in fact, make its case that the location on village property was technologically infeasible for its operations, Ecklond said he was still interested in maintaining that revenue source for the village.

“Worst case scenario,” he said, “at the end of the day I’ll gladly go out and solicit other cellular companies.”