About the Mohonk Preserve’s efforts to keep their public usage land holdings from being usurped by Mike Fink, certain key errors must be clarified.
The parcels that have been litigated about between Mike Fink and Karen Pardini, and the Mohonk Preserve are on the Clove Road. I am a Clove Road property owner for almost 35 years and have roamed the valley and both bounding ridges for 55 years. In these cases, the Preserve had to respond to incursions upon their longstanding boundaries by Mr. Fink, who tore down existing posted signs, placed up his posted signs, cut logging roads into these neighboring properties and harvested trees. After repeated letters and offers to try to negotiate what the perceived problems were and repeated requests to cease and desist, the Preserve had to file suit to derail the opportunity for “adverse possession” to be claimed by Mr. Fink.
So these suits were brought by the Preserve to stop the invasions by Mr. Fink.
In one case, for which I was a witness, Mr. Fink and a companion suddenly began posting a huge stretch of Clove Road up to and including a long existing privacy fence, followed by painting red blazes on trees descending the hillside right through the garden of neighboring land owners. I have been hanging out and visiting on these lands with these boundaries long established way before Mike Fink ever appeared and long before Smitty got foreclosed on. Fink attempted to extend his land grab beyond Preserve property onto quite a few acres of yet another neighbor. In court, he claimed amongst other things “adverse possession” for these properties, maintaining that he, Fink, had “exclusive use” of these properties for 25 years. So I happily rendered a travel log in court of my various wanderings on these properties over the years , hunting for deer, observing rare salamanders, hiking, and camping by invitation on my friend’s property during a hurricane, etc.
Note that Fink not only harassed the Preserve, but expanded his incursions onto other neighbors’ property. At Mr. Fink’s request, the suits brought by both the neighboring landowners and the Preserve were co-joined. Contrary to the assertions by Coppolino in the article, all of the parties, including Mr. Fink, mutually agreed to settle this case. So of the 2 cases involving Fink vs. Preserve he lost all of his claims upon the non-Preserve neighbor and settled with the Preserve. It is totally untrue that he never lost a case.
As for the current case, which the Preserve did lose at trial court, but is currently appealing, I have observed in my travels up and down the road to destinations usually involving doing something on Mohonk Preserve land, the gradual extension of an old logging road upwards onto the 71-acre former Finger property. My research into this matter, whereby I actually took note of my interview with Preserve representatives BEFORE writing this response, indicates that various incursions onto the land, including cutting of trees and tearing down posted signs and putting up other posted signs, required the Preserve to take legal action. All of the rigamarole presented by Mr. Coppolino to support Mr. Fink’s claim upon this land can be most simply undermined by the following FACT presented by Fink during the court case: A deed conveying the land in question from Michael Fink TO Michael Fink, circa 2009. How's that grab ya?
The evil machinations attributed to the Preserve are actually exclusively those tactics wielded by Fink/Pardini in their long vendetta against the Preserve – adverse possession, squatter’s rights, and quit claim deeds, supplemented by verbal and other harassment of Preserve headquarters, attempts at intimidating Preserve employees, embellished by copious amounts of tearing down of posted signs, and supplemented by positioning his own posted signs.
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The parcels that have been litigated about between Mike Fink and Karen Pardini, and the Mohonk Preserve are on the Clove Road. I am a Clove Road property owner for almost 35 years and have roamed the valley and both bounding ridges for 55 years. In these cases, the Preserve had to respond to incursions upon their longstanding boundaries by Mr. Fink, who tore down existing posted signs, placed up his posted signs, cut logging roads into these neighboring properties and harvested trees. After repeated letters and offers to try to negotiate what the perceived problems were and repeated requests to cease and desist, the Preserve had to file suit to derail the opportunity for “adverse possession” to be claimed by Mr. Fink.
So these suits were brought by the Preserve to stop the invasions by Mr. Fink.
In one case, for which I was a witness, Mr. Fink and a companion suddenly began posting a huge stretch of Clove Road up to and including a long existing privacy fence, followed by painting red blazes on trees descending the hillside right through the garden of neighboring land owners. I have been hanging out and visiting on these lands with these boundaries long established way before Mike Fink ever appeared and long before Smitty got foreclosed on. Fink attempted to extend his land grab beyond Preserve property onto quite a few acres of yet another neighbor. In court, he claimed amongst other things “adverse possession” for these properties, maintaining that he, Fink, had “exclusive use” of these properties for 25 years. So I happily rendered a travel log in court of my various wanderings on these properties over the years , hunting for deer, observing rare salamanders, hiking, and camping by invitation on my friend’s property during a hurricane, etc.
Note that Fink not only harassed the Preserve, but expanded his incursions onto other neighbors’ property. At Mr. Fink’s request, the suits brought by both the neighboring landowners and the Preserve were co-joined. Contrary to the assertions by Coppolino in the article, all of the parties, including Mr. Fink, mutually agreed to settle this case. So of the 2 cases involving Fink vs. Preserve he lost all of his claims upon the non-Preserve neighbor and settled with the Preserve. It is totally untrue that he never lost a case.
As for the current case, which the Preserve did lose at trial court, but is currently appealing, I have observed in my travels up and down the road to destinations usually involving doing something on Mohonk Preserve land, the gradual extension of an old logging road upwards onto the 71-acre former Finger property. My research into this matter, whereby I actually took note of my interview with Preserve representatives BEFORE writing this response, indicates that various incursions onto the land, including cutting of trees and tearing down posted signs and putting up other posted signs, required the Preserve to take legal action. All of the rigamarole presented by Mr. Coppolino to support Mr. Fink’s claim upon this land can be most simply undermined by the following FACT presented by Fink during the court case: A deed conveying the land in question from Michael Fink TO Michael Fink, circa 2009. How's that grab ya?
The evil machinations attributed to the Preserve are actually exclusively those tactics wielded by Fink/Pardini in their long vendetta against the Preserve – adverse possession, squatter’s rights, and quit claim deeds, supplemented by verbal and other harassment of Preserve headquarters, attempts at intimidating Preserve employees, embellished by copious amounts of tearing down of posted signs, and supplemented by positioning his own posted signs.
I rest my case.