Binder sells to DiVello
After more than a year of wrangling in court, carters Dan Binder and Jon DiVello have reached an out of court settlement in which Mr. Binder has agreed to sell about half of his business — the home pickup service — to Mr. DiVello.
No one’s revealing the price tag that Shelter Island Environmental Services, LLC paid Mr. Binder for his Shelter Island Sanitation business, but Mr. Binder said his Dan’s Carting will continue to collect and haul construction and demolition debris and roll-off services and his house clean-out services. He’ll also be involved in picking up large containers.
The deal could result in his doing some off-Island work for Shelter Island Environmental that operates Mattituck Environmental Services doing carting on the North Fork as well as on Shelter Island.
Mr. Binder will also continue his property management work, caring for houses for owners who aren’t on the Island full time and he will continue to do small carpentry jobs as he has in the past, he said.
Besides running Mattituck Environmental, Mr. DiVello and his partner Stanley Lomangino have developed the nearly $10 million Peconic Recycling and Transfer Station in Cutchogue. The facility is designed to process about 85 percent of waste that typically ends up in a landfill, sorting hundreds of tons of commercial waste and construction/demolition materials.
Mr. DiVello’s father purchased the carting business then known as Shelter Island Refuse from Fred Ogar in 2003. Jon DiVello took over the business in 2011, changing the name to Shelter Island Environmental and advertising that it has been serving the community here since the 1960s.
The younger Mr. DiVello tried to buy out Mr. Binder’s business back then, only to have negotiations break down, resulting in Mr. DiVello bringing suit against Mr. Binder in 2013.
Mr. DiVello charged that Mr. Binder’s use of the Shelter Island name in his business was meant “to deceive and mislead the public” about who was handling their refuse.
He also charged that Mr. Binder libeled him in a letter to the editor that appeared in a September 2012 edition of the Reporter. In that letter, Mr. Binder said his company was properly recycling refuse but that “another garbage company” on the Island failed to do so. He never named the other company, but the Reporter, in an editor’s note, identified it as Shelter Island Environmental.
What changed in recent weeks that led to the purchase?
Mr. Binder said a previous offer from Mr. DiVello “just needed a lot of tweaking” and that once the two men put aside the bitterness that informed their communications in the last two years, the stage was set for “some good healthy negotiations.”
Mr. Lomangino, wasn’t able to address the buyout Tuesday morning, but said he would do so later in the day.
The parties are due back in court Tuesday for what Mr. Binder said amounts to ending the legal battle.
“That’s what I’m looking forward to — just peace and quiet,” he said.
