To the editor:
The editorial in the Oct. 11 Republican is not the first time I’ve been attacked in this newspaper in a nasty, personalized way for representing Cazenovians who object to the Wheeler administration’s wholesale abandonment of the village’s Comprehensive Plan. And I’m not the only one. Village Planning Board Member Gavilondo was also the victim of a personalized attack by Mr. Emerson for her opposition to Mayor Wheeler’s plan to turn the village into Anywhere, USA.
It’s not fun being dragged through the mud for helping my neighbors exercise their First Amendment right to petition government for redress of grievances (which is what litigation is). But I’m more interested in addressing the notion Mr. Emerson propagates that – somehow – the Cazenovians challenging Wheeler’s dystopian vision are to blame for the ensuing litigation rather than this vision itself.
The village’s Comprehensive Plan was a community-wide effort that cost tens of thousands of dollars and untold hours to put together. Cazenovians who worked hard to realize this achievement, who believe in the plan’s goal of managed (rather than developer-driven) growth, or who are at risk of having their properties devalued by the plan’s abandonment form the constituency that retained me to challenge the Western Gateway zoning amendment affecting the village’s western edge, and the Aldi project affecting the eastern. The lawsuit I brought to oppose the zoning change succeeded; the one to oppose the Aldi project did not.
But when Emerson calls these challenges “frivolous,” all he does is demonstrate that he is untutored in legal matters and has no interest in getting tutored.
In both cases, the judges refused to reach the merits of the case. In the Western Gateway case, the judge upheld the rezoning on procedural grounds (the village had crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s) but never decided the substance of the case: that the legislation was masquerading as a zoning amendment because its real purpose was exclusively to facilitate expansion of the Brewster.
Nevertheless, the lawsuit I brought was instrumental in stopping this expansion. And, since the zoning amendment was tailor made for the Brewster, there has been zero interest by other businesses in using its provisions to gut renovate historic residences. The result is that the Western Gateway rezoning is an empty shell and is likely to remain one given the availability of open space in which to develop on the other side of the village.
The Aldi judge also never reached the merits, deciding the lawsuit on narrow procedural grounds: for lack of “standing” (i.e., the plaintiffs couldn’t demonstrate they would be hurt more than anybody else). The result will be a strip mall: three plain cubes cheek-by-jowl hugging the highway.
This is the polar opposite of what the Comprehensive Plan envisioned for this area: carefully managed development which continues the look and feel of the historic business district. Instead of charming, we got antiseptic. Was it “frivolous” to try to prevent this? You be the judge.
Barry Schreibman
Cazenovia
