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space silenced!
On the morning of July 6, 2008, SPACE member Susan Filgueras delivered a collection of documents to town hall to be distributed to town board members prior to their meeting that night. The documents, gathered by her from the town's own records, clearly showed the serious concerns held by the DEC and others concerning possible ongoing toxic waste pollution at the Kay-Fries site, which is still listed as a Hazardous Waste Superfund site. Neither the applicant (who is seeking to construct a shopping mall there), the town's consultants, or town board members themselves had ever bothered to look at these damning records. Apparently the Supervisor read the letter and accompanying documents, and determined that he did not want these discussed at the ongoing SEQRA public hearing being conducted by the town board. At the meeting that night, the Supervisor opened the Public Comment portion by announcing that each person could speak for no more than three minutes. SPACE member Frank Collyer went to the podium and began to read the documents to all present. At the three-minute mark, he was told his time was up. Collyer protested stating that this was a public hearing to gather information for the board to consider before making a determination on granting the Special Permit for the application. Supervisor Marino declared him out-of-order and commanded him to sit down. |
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SPACE member Susan Filgueras, who had spent hours gathering the information then continued reading the information into the minutes of the meeting. At the three-minute mark, she too was silenced. SPACE president George Potanovic then continued, finishing just before his three-minute mark. Later, Councilman Lou Vicari stated that time is too valuable a commodity to waste, inferring that SPACE's testimony was wasting his time. We note that SPACE member Susan Filgueras had spent many hours combing through the town's records and organizing the documents she found for presentation to the town board, a job the town should have done itself. Are her hours less valuable than Vicari's minutes? He, like all other board members spent hours in front of Bagel World speaking with potential voters at election time, Is their time now too valuable to listen to testimony on a serious subject from their constituents? If they can't - or won't - spend the time necessary to do the job they each sought out, properly, they should resign. Vicari's remarks are demeaning to all town residents, and deserve an apology. We question why the Supervisor decided to limit public input on such a serious subject as allowing construction of an 80,000 square foot shopping mall in this hazardous location without a thorough environmental review. The applicant's engineer, Dave Zigler then got up and was given all the time he wanted to refute SPACE's testimony. He could only allude to documents and photographs he claimed he knew about, but did not produce - this to contradict physical documents that SPACE had provided to the board. SPACE realizes that the town needs tax-ratables, like this ShopRite shopping mall, but questions the town's motives. They have already stated that they want the project done, and are now conducting an environmental review on the project thy want built. This is an obvious conflict of interest. And we certainly object to our Supervisor acting like a petty tyrant, denying the citizens of the town who must live with this, their legal and moral right to testify. Read the documents for yourself here and you decide! You may also want to read these earlier items: |
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