Officials Duck and Cover

As Talk of the Sound has previously reported, investigations by the New York State Department of Labor Asbestos Control Bureau and the New York State Education Department were initiated last week based on reporting by Talk of the Sound.Talk of the Sound had received information that asbestos tiles and material may have been improperly handled and disposed of illegally. The test results confirm this to have been the case.
By failing to stop work and seal off the area when workers found what they believed to be asbestos in the office of Principal Michael Galland on July 16th, a number of New York State and Federal laws were violated.The asbestos material was confirmed in tiles, dust and pieces of tile and dust stuck to a carpet ripped up by employees of district contractor George Wood Plumbing working at the direction of John Gallagher, Director of Buildings and Grounds. Gallagher is a contractor, employed by Aramark.

Asbestos in schools is heavily regulated by New York State and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.Staff and students in the building from July 16th to July 20th, may have been exposed to the cancer-causing material. School officials did confirm that students were in the building that week until noon each day along with staff and porcelain tiles.

By law, staff and students at a school must be notified immediately of possible exposure to asbestos. That has yet to happen.Talk of the Sound has reported for years on problems within the Buildings and Grounds Department including kickbacks, no-show jobs and shady contractors. This is just the latest example.

Assistant Superintendent John Quinn, the New Rochelle Board of Education cabinet official responsible for Buildings and Grounds, first became aware of the asbestos incident at Davis last Thursday from an email from Talk of the Sound seeking comment on the incident.

The tiles and contaminated carpet was carried from the principal's office, through the hallway, to the school lobby and out the front doors of the school, according to one source. The material was then transported in an open garbage truck to the district yard at 51 Cliff Street, co-mingled with other district trash and delivered to a waste transfer station in Mount Vernon.

By contrast, asbestos material taken from a second that was properly abated after Poretta and Sinkfield complained about asbestos exposure from the Principal's office, was sealed and removed in a special vehicle and carted to a special asbestos dump site in Pennsylvania.

 “If a building was a superhero, that’s it,” said Helfrich, the team’s former offensive coordinator who was promoted to head coach when Chip Kelly left for the Philadelphia Eagles earlier this year.

The Ducks have an ever-growing national profile on the field, but the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex, as it is officially named, is undeniably world-class. Estimated conservatively at $68 million, the six-story, multi-wing football building was funded by Oregon alum and Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny.

The six-bedroom, five-bathroom home originally was constructed as a hunting lodge and given its name for a prominent Philadelphia family, the Cadwaladers, in the early part of the 1900s.
“The culmination of this whole project is this great room that has a first-story window that’s in the front facing the road, and a balcony around the whole room so that you can stand up on the second China ceramic tile and look out the big window,” Mrs. Spalter says. “That’s really the special feature.”

The fireplace in the great room has Mercer tiles that tell the story of the Cadwalader family, which is said to have been present at the signing of the Treaty of Penn and hails from Wales in the United Kingdom. Mercer tiles also tell the story of Rip Van Winkle. The tiles were handmade for a relative of Henry Mercer as a wedding gift, and afterward the molds were broken, Mrs. Spalter says.

“When he (Harry Cadawalader) built it, he built the fireplace in such a way that he had vents to every room so that he could warm the whole place with just the fireplace,” Mrs. Spalter says. “And then later a furnace was added and electricity and all the other things for today’s person.”The second fireplace is located in the library, in the oldest section of the house. The earliest iteration of the home was a two-room structure used by a farmhand that predates the Cadwaladers’ construction of the lodge.

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