 |
"Stonewalling and Sandbagging" |
At the Town Board meeting on January 14, the new Supervisor and Republican Board members showed exactly how they plan to run things going forward: by stonewalling the public and sandbagging the Democratic Board members.
In the public comment period, 20-year resident and former CAC chair Sheila Buff twice asked Supervisor Barrett two direct questions relating to the decision to hire Morris Associates as the new town planners. (Click here to see why we think this firm is such a bad choice.)
Question #1: When he hired Morris Associates, was Supervisor Barrett aware that the firm helped the towns of Chatham and Ghent pass laws allowing gravel mining?
And question #2: What other planning firms did Supervisor Barrett interview before deciding on Morris Associates?
Let’s go to the videotape. As you’ll see, Supervisor Barrett stonewalled--twice. He didn’t even say he wouldn’t or couldn’t answer the questions. He didn’t say anything.
Supervisor Dick Barrett stonewalls questions about Morris Associates at the Town Board meeting on January 14.
Supervisor Dick Barretts gets asked again a few minutes later—and stonewalls again.
The Town budget for 2008 includes approximately $30,000 for consulting services from Morris Associates. In addition, thousands of dollars of escrow money from applicants before the Planning Board go to pay the town planner for services related to their applications. Shouldn’t the Supervisor have interviewed other firms before deciding to hand over large amounts of taxpayer and applicant money to Morris Associates? And if he didn’t, shouldn’t he say so and explain why? And shouldn’t he answer reasonable questions from a tax-paying Town resident?
After the Stonewalling, the Sandbagging
The first new Town law of 2008 was introduced at the meeting. It’s a law to increase the membership of the Planning Board from the current five to seven members. When did the Democratic Town Board members find out about this? At four o’clock in the afternoon on the day of the meeting. They were sandbagged by the Republicans. Here’s another example of actions speaking louder than words. For all the words about cooperation that has been coming from Dick Barrett and others, the action was to spring a new law on the Democratic Board members without warning. Is that the sort of “cooperation” the Republicans have in mind going forward?
The public hearing for the Planning Board expansion will be at 7:15 on Monday, February 11, before the regularly scheduled Town Board meeting. Whether you think the expansion is a good idea or not, please attend the hearing and express your opinion.
More Sell-Out News
The sell-out of Milan to large developers and real-estate interests continued throughout the evening. Among other decisions, the Republican members of the Board voted to appoint Al LoBrutto and Jack Grumet as the ex officio members of the Pine Plains planning board. They will act as liaisons between the towns on the Durst/Carvel project, replacing Ross Williams and Lauren Kingman. Why do the Republicans think it’s a good idea to replace the two people who are most familiar with this very complex and very important project? Unfortunately, that question, though asked by the Democratic Board members, never quite got answered by Supervisor Barrett.
In an attempt to salvage some of the damage done by removing key people at a crucial moment, Ross Williams proposed that the Town continue to retain Greenplan as the consultants for the Carvel/Durst. This too was voted down by the Republicans. Their apparent rationale was that Morris Associates would be able to represent the Town’s interests in this matter. Is it realistic to think that a single planner with no previous involvement in this extremely complicated project—which has been going on for the past four years--can grasp all the many important details in just a few weeks? (The natural resources inventory alone almost fills a file box.) And how much will the Town have to pay just for Morris Associates to play catch-up?
We’ll find out soon. The first public hearing on the draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) for the project will be in Pine Plains on February 6 (click here for more details [link to latest PPU email]). We’ll be posting the DEIS here as soon as we can get it.