Well this doesn't look good for our Third Selectman

Kevin Rennie's Daily Ructions has the scoop.

When Greenwich board of selectman member Drew Marzullo (aka Joseph Andrew Marzullo) was arrested for shoplifting in Clinton, Connecticut on August 26th, he had 25 items in his Blackdog tote bag and no evidence he’d paid for any of them.

Marzullo at first denied taking more than $600 in clothing items. He became emotional and admitted he’d taken the goods and apologized for lying to police, who had been called to the scene by a J. Crew employee.

[Marzullo], the arrest report states, said that he did not know why he had stolen the clothes [pictured below] when he could have purchased them.

Mug shot

Skeetcher shriekers

Who's a party animal, ya big hunk!

Taking price cuts early and often

118 Glenwood Drive, Belle Haven, cut its price to $15.5 million today. It started at $17.975 in May, was dropped to $16.975 in July, and now another substantial cut today. That strikes me as very smart.

This is a very special house, to my eye, with, of course, the water views contributing much of that attraction. It's on the east side of Overlook, so thee's no direct water access, but no one's going to build anything on the west of the road — there's no land to do so, so you're high and dry, looking down the Sound. And you wouldn't want to moor a boat here on the exposed side of the peninsula anyway, and swimming and small boat sailing is available just around the corner at the club.

Is this, finally, the right price? Beats me, but Belle Haven commands a premium price, and there aren't many lots in the neighborhood that offer this kind of view. Listing agent Chris Finlay's usually pretty good with his pricing estimates, and if he missed a bit here, he and his clients are adjusting rapidly, rather than let the house linger, overpriced, and growing stale. Like I said, smart.

Sale on Dawn Harbor Lane

14 Dawn Harbor Lane, a spec house in Riverside, has closed at $5.250 million.

That's not chump change, but the final price was probably a bit disappointing to its builder, who priced it at $6.9 million back in April, 2015. Especially if you add in the carrying costs for 2 1/2 years.

Before and after at 10 Mianus View Terrace

10 Mianus View Terrace (it'd have been nice if they'd repaved the failing driveway — something to negotiate, perhaps)

House flipping: this developer paid $900,000 for a split-level in July, moved a wall, added central a/c and new appliances, did some painting  and has put it back up sale this week at $1.450 million.

It's still a split, and its backyard remains problematic, but it does offer an example of how to modernize and transform, to the extent possible, one of those horrible 1960s houses. Not all of us can afford to build a new, $3.5 million house, and this developer shows how much you an do, at minimal expense, to make at least a rayon purse from a sow's ear.

The July listing, showing the house before renovation, can be seen here.

Additional pictures of the new version below:

Did they really build this without a stall?

Can'd do much about the yard

Greenwich Democrats withdraw from Marzullo

Sandy Litvack celebrates at NATHANIEL Witheredall

Decline further support for the Selectman candidate, opening a back door for octogenarian Sandy Litvack to serve under Tesei.

The DTC’s Executive Committee issued a statement late Thursday after a meeting and said while it was up to Marzullo whether he wanted to remain on the ballot the party would focus its efforts on the other races on the ticket and not Marzullo’s reelection campaign.

“The Greenwich Democratic Party believes elected officials must be held to the highest standards of integrity, honesty and transparency,” the statement said. “The Executive Committee has concluded that Drew Marzullo’s actions over the past month have not measured up to these standards.”

Could Litvack in fact win it all? Depends.

Will Odell Beckham be charged with a hate crime for peeing on America?

Felon?

Police hunt for man who peed on a "Black Lives Matter" sidewalk drawing; "possible hate crime".

Sarah Dara Dara Littman, moron, homophobe, anti-semite, historical illiterate

Just noticed this link submission by reader Holden, who reads her drivel so that the rest of us are spared.

Communism? Che Guevara? "Something worth fighting for"? You can forgive a 14-year-old for this sort of stupidity, but not a 59-year-old crone. Surely she should have learned by now of Stalin's persecution of Jews, of Che's torture of homosexuals, and communism's reliance on purges, concentration camps, and execution of political dissidents.

From Lenin to Stalin to Mao, from Czechoslovakia to Poland, East Germany to Cuba, to Pol Pot's Cambodia, to Rocket Man, to Maduro's Venezuela, communists have starved, murdered and imprisoned hundreds of millions of people, all in the name of social justice. Can Littmann cite a single communist regime that she thinks is worth fighting for? The dumb bitch was on this globe when almost all of this was going on, yet she still believes a military officer, sworn to loyalty to our country, should fight for this? That he's serving a noble cause?

If there's anything not worth fighting for, it's Sara Dara Dara, but sadly, she comes with the package.

Apologize for what? Airline passenger dragged off plane after demanding that pets be removed

"Taser the bitch! Taser the bitch!"

Woman claims she has "life-threatening" allergies to dogs, then refuses to deboard. Hilarity ensues.

It started when the passenger, who has been identified as 46-year-old Anila Daulatzai, told the flight crew that she had a "life-threatening pet allergy," 

Daulatzai brought this to their attention because there was an emotional-support dog and a pet on the flight.

The airline said that for Daulatzai to remain on the flight, she would need to show a medical certificate.

"Our policy states that a Customer (without a medical certificate) may be denied boarding if they report a life-threatening allergic reaction and cannot travel safely with an animal onboard," a Southwest representative said.

"Our Flight Crew made repeated attempts to explain the situation to the Customer, however, she refused to deplane and law enforcement became involved," the airline said.

After Daulatzai was removed from the plane, she was taken into custody and charged with failure to obey a reasonable and lawful order, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, obstructing and hindering a police officer, and resisting arrest.

The Maryland Transportation Authority said in its statement that Daulatzai was taken to Anne Arundel County District Court and that she was later released on her own recognizance.

"When the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) Police receive a request from the captain of a Southwest plane to remove a disorderly person, we respond accordingly," the department said in the statement.

Southwest Airlines on Wednesday apologized for the incident.

"We are disheartened by the way this situation unfolded and the Customer's removal by local law enforcement officers," a Southwest spokesman said in a statement. "We publicly offer our apologies to this Customer for her experience and we will be contacting her directly to address her concerns."

I can sympathize with airplane passengers who are annoyed by the new wave of "emotional support" pigs, ponies, turkeys and dogs now crowding the cabins: the animals are there mostly courtesy of on-line phoney certificates and $50 psychologist letters of attestation (Sarah ...), but that's the game. Plus, this flight had a pet dog, for whom a fee had been paid. The passenger could have come up with her own phoney letter from a doctor, and she could have succeeded in having the canines decabined, but she didn't. 

So pay the price for being an A- hole prima donna. 

UPDATE: It seems that the woman is  Muslim and her "deadly allergy" may be related to her belief that dogs are spiritually, rather than physically filthy. If accurate, perhaps she should have carried a letter from her Iman.

Take those price cuts early

3 Old Round Hill Lane, which started in 2015 at $8.995 million, has now dropped to $6,999

I showed this property to a client a year or so ago, when it was still priced at $7.995 million. I advised him that, though it was, maybe, a $6.5 million house, the owner had just taken a million-dollar cut on an illusory price, and he wouldn't be receptive to a realistic offer. We passed, and now that buyer's gone. 

I'm not sure I'd give the same price opinion today, given market conditions, but it is a nice house.

Greenwich BOE votes to spend what we won't be getting

Coming soon, COURTESY of greenwich taxpayers, the "new" new LEBANON school

Voted last night to ask the town to advance construction funds for New Lebanon School. 

Readers with a long memory — all the way back to May, perhaps — will remember the BOE's promise to hold off on this boondoggle until state funding was secure. Now that the funding is not secure: Malloy, in fact, has vowed to stop it, they want to start construction anyway, committing $12-$22 million of our money. That way, by the time the state finally leaves us entirely on the hook for this $37-million disaster, our town officials will scratch their collective rear-ends and say, "well gee, we're already committed — we can't stop now!"

The excuse for this huge, over-sized structure is that it will serve as a magnet school and draw students in from other, whiter, areas of town. That isn't going to happen, because parents prefer neighborhood schools for their children. This applies to New Lebanon parents as well, who last year loudly rejected a proposal to shut their school and bus the children to other, under-utilized facilities around town. 

And I side with the New Lebanon parents: one of the great things about Greenwich is the system of local, neighborhood elementary schools. We could build a new school there that's of an appropriate size, at half the price, and tell the State of Connecticut to go pound its diversity sandbox: what can they do, cut off our funding? They did that years ago.

Related, possibly:  talking with local fellow-agents, we're all noticing a drying up of the $3.5-$5.5 market, even in Old Greenwich and Riverside. With CT still without a budget, billion-dollar deficits stretching out over the horizon, and the new tax bill on the table down in D.C. that seeks to punish the blue states by ending the federal deduction for blue states' high taxes (an excellent idea, but it won't make things easier around here), my pessimism grows.