Hoffman is Last Chance for the Developers

To date, we haven't seen signs touting the other Republican candidates for town board, but this sign makes clear two things. Republicans running the town board on behalf of development interests think Kelly Hoffman is their only chance of keeping control, having no liking for Mark Evers and believing the other GOP Board candidate has virtually no chance of winning. Secondly, the placement of these two signs, the latter in the background to the right for Lou Desso, remove any doubt as to so called Democrat Al Spain's standing in his party of registration. Spain, like his brother who infamously touted his desire in 2007 to see RT 4 become another Wolf Road, is a tool of the development interests who run the agenda of this majority. These Republican signs, incidentally, are at the home of "Democrat" Al Spain, tool of the GOP in Troy which holds the keys to his City job.

Spain, Hoffman, Desso, Fiacco and Evers have already voted in support of a needless $40,000 expenditure to redo the Comprehensive Plan, and with a No Bid contract. As members of the Comprehensive Plan Committee, Spain, Fiacco and Hoffman each voted to award that no bid contract and each voted to make significant concessions to developers demanding more big box heavy commercial zoning designations along RT 4, something the prior committee voted unanimously not to allow and which this committee refused to do at a recent meeting only to be convened again and voting nearly unanimously to cave in to the politically connected resident and developer making the request.

The CPC members are also squarely responsible for operating their committee well outsides the Open Meetings Law, making the vast majority of their decisions without minutes of their meetings, records of votes or even verification of required quorums. Any plan passed under such circumstances would fail to a likely legal challenge based on its failure to comply with the Open Meetings Law.

We expect this blank check development faction currently running the town board to be doing a great deal of bullet voting in the hope that Hoffman squeaks out a victory giving them a 3-2 majority to continue their plan to turn RT 4 into Wolf Road, but we think town Democrats have a plan to keep that from becoming a reality and given the fact that they have solid candidates who hold the two best performing ballot lines in the 2007 election, the GOP has a steep hill to climb.