Where's the Meeting?

To say that this Board Majority has completely screwed up the Comprehensive Planning process would be an understatement. For two years prior to their 2008 majority, the previous majority appointed a working group of people representing each of the eight election districts. They were careful to keep politics on the sideline by minimizing the appointment of members of the town's political committees to these positions. The prior committee had but one party committee member, (GOP) contrasted with this committee's makeup of nearly half of its members holding party committee seats, (7 of 15 members hold party committee seats and and two others ran unsuccessfully for these seats.)The meetings were held monthly, sometimes more than monthly as evidenced by the 33 meetings held in 24 months.

The latest chapter comes with a look at the town's web site which for weeks, noticed a meeting for last evening, the first since October 21st of last year if the Minutes listed on the town web page are accurate. But last night's meeting was never held, the public was never notified of its cancellation and even worse, many of the members were caught unaware of its cancellation and were seen wandering the halls of town hall, cell phones in hand, trying to figure out what was going on. (Yes, the picture above shows two hapless folks looking for the meeting that never was.)

Meanwhile, after two years of work by the prior committee which delivered a complete Comprehensive Plan to the town completely funded by the county IDA, the new Town Board for political spite, decided it was no good and had to be shelved so they could start over, spending tens of thousands of dollars on a no bid contract to a politically connected firm and stacking the committee, as Mark Evers tried unsuccessfully to do in his first term, with political committee members, many of whom are tied to the development community and its interests.

The new Comprehensive Plan Committee has become a joke, unable to say what specifically was so deficient with the plan delivered to the town in 2006 by Bergman Associates that it had to be shelved and unable to move the process along with this latest meeting cancelled without warning or notice to either the public or its own membership.

Meanwhile, North Greenbush, ground zero for development, has languished without a Comprehensive Plan for the last 16 months of this new Board Majority while developers call the shots, leaving folks to wonder if the government in this town is capable of doing anything right from administering a water contract to scheduling a meeting.

Ceresia Confirmed by Senate
Town Justice Andrew Ceresia has been confirmed by the State Senate to serve as Rensselaer County Court Judge. You can read the Times Union story here.

This will create a vacancy in town court which will be temporarily filled by the town board if they can find three votes to support a candidate. The town Republican and Democratic Committees are not bound by any such appointment by the Board and we will likely see voters make this decision in November.