W. Seneca's inspector sold plans on the side
FBI is reviewing how Czuprynski ran office
By Mary B. Pasciak
News Staff Reporter
Updated: April 10, 2010, 11:45 pm /
Published: April 11, 2010, 7:01 am
As West Seneca's building inspector, William P. Czuprynski was responsible for reviewing plans for every building project in the town for the last quarter of a century.
He did far more than review the plans, though.
Czuprynski also drew many of the plans he was supposed to approve or reject, and charged residents and developers fees for his drawings.
That practice was the main reason the man known to some as "the bulldog" — and to others merely as a bully — was finally forced to retire this year, bringing an end to what many residents consider his reign of terror. And FBI agents are asking town residents and officials questions about how Czuprynski ran the inspections office.
If you wanted to get a project approved in West Seneca without any problems, you had to show up in Czuprynski's office in the basement of Town Hall — ready to pay cash, according to builders, contractors, and homeowners.
And town officials knew what was going on. Yet cash continued to change hands across the counter in his office for years — sometimes as often as twice a week, during busy seasons, according to town residents and people who have worked in Town Hall.
"It was common knowledge that Bill was doing work on the side," said Vincent J. Graber, who was on the Town Board for 12 years. "He was never told that he couldn't. He was doing it long before I ever got on the Town Board."
There was no job too small or too big — porches, additions, entire houses. One of the priciest subdivisions in West Seneca literally has Czuprynski's handwriting all over it.
Frank J. Mathewscq, the 88-year-old engineer who worked with Czuprynski on his side jobs, said he's known the former building inspector since he was in high school with Mathews' son. Over the years, the elder Mathews and Czuprynski would work together on drawings, he said.
"He'd do the drafting. I'd verify they were structurally sound," Mathews said.
By the time Czuprynski, 63, retired this year, he had drawn plans for projects totaling many millions of dollars in West Seneca.
"You had to do what he wanted," one former contractor said. "If not, you'd always have to worry about him coming in and telling you that you did this wrong, you did that wrong."