Scoop!

What could possibly be wrong with withholding salacious/revealing facts from your newspaper audience when you also have a side hustle to feed?

New York Times political reporter Maggie Haberman, author of the upcoming Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

NYT’s Maggie Haberman Faces Backlash
for Withholding Trump Threats

Trump said he simply would not leave office, among other secrets
Haberman apparently saved for her book in October

                                  – News headline

As you know, for the past 11 years I have been diligently covering the Blandon Park Architectural Review Board for our local newsletter, BP Today. In that time, I’ve written 1269 stories on every aspect of the board’s decisions, by-laws and enforcement actions, including litigation regarding enforceability of the deed covenants that empower the BPARB (and countless other homeowners associations) to regulate the exterior design of the Blandon Park planned community.

Most noteworthy, I suppose, were 60 articles about the Calcavecchia family tree-house, which was eventually torn down under court order when a state judge ruled that the homeowners had not filed a request for exterior improvements until after the 3-level structure was completed astride a pin oak in the Calcavecchia’s backyard. By flouting the BPARB application process, the judge ruled, the homeowners “were fundamentally and explicitly at odds with the provisions of their deed of property and entitled to no relief from the Court.”

That situation created quite a fuss over the course of almost four years, culminating in Chester Calcavecchia’s unsuccessful bid for the BPARB presidency. His campaign slogan, “If they can tell me what to do I’m going to tell you what to do,” was widely seen as petty and antagonistic, and he was defeated by local celebrity Kimberly Jo Pressler 1014 votes to 6.

Another significant story was the controversy over 2015 revisions to the approved color palette, which excluded the “Ochre Putty” shade that covered 90% of Blandon Park’s mailboxes. Although existing Ochre Putty boxes were “grandfathered in” by the new rule, the decision was poorly received by the community and ultimately reversed. The notable quote in that episode, by Pressler’s predecessor, Frederick “Fritz” von Dachau, was, “The Ochre Putty decision was based on the discontinuation of that shade by the Sherwin Williams company. We were simply trying to prevent confusion. I can assure you, Blandon Park’s founding commitment to earth tones will not waver. Blandon Park is where pastels go to die.”

And, of course, I covered every single meeting as the board debated whether to change the application form from Arial font to Times Roman.

The point is, 11 years of total journalistic immersion on the beat provided me with a unique and valuable perspective into the work of BPARB, and extraordinary access into the policies, processes and personalities of the organization. I was, you might say, an outsider embedded deep on the inside. All of which enabled me to write my forthcoming book: Not in Your Backyard! The Untold Stories of the Most Uniform Neighborhood on Earth.

Even though the book is not yet on sale, advance copies have fallen into the hands of major news outlets, which cherry-picked some of the previously unpublished revelations.

Dioxin Levels in Soil Found to Be Threat to Wildlife, Pets, Residents
Investigators from the federal Environmental Protection Agency have detected alarming levels of the persistent organic pollutant dioxin throughout Blandon Park, with the highest concentrations in the vicinity of the Sad Old Paper Mill Mall. In a potentially related development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have located a cluster of thyroid cancers and other endocrinological disorders among Mall employees, especially Forever 21. The BPARB investigated the reports in 2012, but took no action because by-laws do not specify dioxin as a “non-conforming environmental hazard.”

Kim Pressler’s Murky Past
Board president Kim Pressler, of 3294 Retaining Pond Vista Drive, was locally famous for two things: her unbending enforcement of mullion standards for replacement windows and her status as former Miss USA (New York State) in the 1999 Miss Universe Pageant won by Mpule Kwelagobe of Botswana. But the celebrity is misplaced. The Miss USA in question is Kimberly Ann Pressler, a Fox Sports sideline reporter. Blandon Park official Kimberly Jo Pressler, according to judicial records examined by this reporter, is a convicted felon who served 3½ years in the Kansas State Penitentiary for identity theft, wire fraud and assaulting a state trooper. That Kim Pressler was taken into custody in Topeka in 2015 following a high speed chase in which she attempted to run over the trooper in a hot pink Cadillac registered to Felicia Burgoyne, a top Mary Kay distributor in the northeastern Kansas region. Burgoyne had previously been found dead at a Pottawatomie County quarry in what the county coroner ruled an accidental death. When I confronted President Pressler to clarify her identity, she pushed me aside, saying “Fake newsletter.”

Very Strongly Enterprises Ltd., Owners of the Sad Old Paper Mill Mall, Is a Shell Company Wholly Controlled by a New York Developer
The true ownership was revealed in a 2014 lawsuit filed by Very Strongly Enterprises Ltd. over BPARB’s demand that the mall’s outdoor signage be “reduced in size by 20% and stripped of primary colors.” According to the complaint, Very Strongly is an offshore subsidiary “headquartered” in the  Cayman Islands, which headquarters is evidently a post-office box belonging to the Trump Organization. The current mall is a former industrial site acquired in 1998 and developed as a retail center. Over the same five year period, Very Strongly Enterprises also purchased an abandoned Pennsylvania asbestos mine and the former Love Canal (NY) Solid Waste Landfill for commercial development.

Who’s THAT Girl?
A 1991 photo of the groundbreaking ceremony for the Trump Topeka Grand Best Western shows developer Donald J. Trump embracing local model and cosmetics consultant Felcia Burgoyne. In the photo from the Topeka Journal, Trump’s tiny hand is clearly groping her buttock. Or adjacent real estate.

I can neither confirm nor deny that these so-called “tantalizing” facts are featured in Not in Your Backyard! (Putnam, October 9, 322 pages). But I resent the notion that I’ve somehow disserved my BP Today readers by sitting on scandalous information that could have benefited them and their community had the news been revealed earlier. Oh, please. That’s like saying “fresh” wine and cheese and Scotch whisky and filet mignon are superior to the aged varieties. Nonsense. On the contrary, this information only gets richer and more valuable with time. In any case, everything Blandon Parkers needed to know about Kim Pressler they learned when, without so much as a voice vote, she permitted Mylar balloons to be tethered to door knockers and mailbox flags for birthday and baby-shower celebrations. I wrote that story for the very next issue. And though I wasn’t able to nail down the tawdry influence of Big Helium on this out-of-character decision, the whispers were everywhere.

In any case, it’s absurd to suggest that I was pulling punches when — on the very day I came into possesion of the Burgoyne groping photo — my scoop on non-conforming ground cover broke in BP Today, resulting in the removal of more than 11 acres of pachysandra throughout Blandon Park.

Now, if we’re talking about the arbitrary standard of “timeliness,” you could perhaps make an argument that the Covid outbreak following a December 2020 BPARB meeting might have borne contemporaneous mentioning in the newsletter. I get it. But the detail of Covid-denying President Pressler leading a pre-meeting deep-breathing exercise for attendees was just the kind of thing Putnam wanted to save for promotion on the eve of publication. And it’s not like anyone died. Yes, Shingles and Siding subcommittee chair Priscilla Crain-Weintraub was hospitalized five days after the meeting and shortly thereafter passed away, but her cause of death was officially pulmonary embolism, so …

Long story short, my body of work over 11 years speaks for itself. I believe the ultimate testament came from Kim Pressler herself, who in her recent letter of resignation called me “a crazy, radical nutjob, who very frankly reminds me of my dad.” Wow. And she had more to say on the subject:

“My dad, by the way, once called me ‘Kimmy’ and hugged me. I don’t remember that, but that’s what people are saying. This so-called book is just persecution the likes of which you’ve never seen. I mean no BPARB president has ever been subjected to this unfairness. Can you believe I had to tear up my beautiful, beautiful pachysandra?”