Part 4a – Mayor Dermody putting fear in people and saying city is shutting off water
One more instance of the Mayor saying the city is shutting off water to 39N residents at the end of the contract.
This is one last pushback against the City Attorney, who claimed on November 3, 2023, the city never threatened to shut off water to 39N. The city attorney said our organization was “frankly wrong” when we said the City had threatened to shut off the 39N water supply,
Take a listen to the Mayor during his June 16, 2022 meeting with 39N residents. Understand at the time the mayor was speaking; he had the NIES water engineer report performed on 39N that said, “Fire flow capacity for residential fire scenarios is acceptable.”
The Mayor even called out a well-known retired doctor during this meeting and asked if your house burned down and you knew, that I knew, the infrastructure was inadequate and didn’t tell you, would you be mad at me? The doctor being put on the spot, said probably. What a horrible thing to say in a crowded room, implying they are in fire danger.
In October 2023, the Mayor said that if two houses caught fire on 39N, the fire department would have to choose which house it could save and which would burn—a blatant lie. Center Township Volunteer Fire Department is on call for fires on 39N. They would never let a house burn on their watch. The city is rarely called in for mutual aid as our VFD has state-of-the-art equipment and tankers designed to fight county fires without hydrants.
Be sure to listen all the way to the end of this clip, where the mayor clearly says the city won’t leave the system as it is and continue to provide water to the conservancy district. Everyone in that room took that to mean the city is shutting off their water in 2025 unless they annex to the city.
City Attorney, Nick Otis, was wrong to say the city never threatened to shut off the water. Clearly, they did on multiple occasions.