Residents Are At Fault for Town Board’s Incompetence

If it wasn’t so sad, it would almost be comical. Every meeting finds Mr Feiner and his Board stretching, reaching and desperately seeking to place blame for their bad, immoral, unethical and perhaps illegal behavior. Interesting too, is that Mr Feiner is incapable of keeping from inserting his foot into his mouth, and has enlisted the Town Attorney and Town Clerk to keep him out of trouble. Their silence during the meetings would be appreciated and should be required. However, Mr Lewis always feels the need to go farther and routinely berate resident taxpayers who speak, as well as pay his salary, and insist on treating and speaking to them as one might to a misbehaving child. He believes this is appropriate. It is not.

The Town Board members, with Mr Feiner leading the pack, has complained about the residents in attendance and that they sit in the rear of the hall, creating disturbances and feedback for the microphone system. This is the reason they claim the audio for the broadcasts of televised meetings is so bad! The G10 has sat there because the chairs in the rear are free-standing, allowing movement to gain more legroom, elbow room and simply space. Those seats also have a reclining backs which allows these abused residents to sit longer and more comfortably. The rest of the seating chairs are fixed on a base rail and are immovable and uncomfortable.

ABG knows the reason these residents sit where they do is purely for a modicum of comfort. In fact, the real offenders disrupting the meetings are the Commissioners, Police Chief, Building Inspector(s), Recreation Commissioner(s) and the like attending the meeting. They are also seated in the rear for the same comfort reason. However, their behavior is disruptive, annoying and frankly, disrespectful to everyone in attendance. Nothing is ever said to them, however.

During the last Town Board meeting, Mr Lewis claimed it was the residents in attendance who were creating the disturbances and feedback to the audio system which was another convoluted explanation as to why the audio at home was so poor.  During the race to renew the Cablevision contract, when Mr Feiner and his Board rapidly, anxiously and without reservation okayed the deal with Cablevision, the Board claimed to have been promised cutting edge, state-of-the-art new equipment to replace the existing, outdated and faulty equipment. Some equipment was changed, but not enough of it.

Another ploy ABG believes the Board was instructed to use by Mr Feiner was to keep their microphones off while they spoke during the Town Board meeting. This would cause everyone to not be able to hear much if anything of what was said while still being able to maintain they were doing nothing wrong. Many audience members shouted up to the Board from the comfort of their reclining seats that the Board was not being heard. Sometimes they simply repositioned the microphones feigning a solution. It was only after the audience continued to inform the Board they still couldn’t be heard that they switched the microphones on. Despicable behavior from this elitist group.

The other weapon the Board uses is to not start the Town business until after doing about an hour or so worth of presentations, poetry readings, musical interludes and so on. This very effectively delays the start of the normal 7:30PM meetings, reducing the real business of the Town as well has limiting the public comments sessions. The newest part of this is that they are now ending the meetings at 11PM. So by starting later and ending earlier, they have quietly done away with the second, 5-minute public comment session. So now you have the 3-minute public comment session, to which you won’t get answers to any questions raised, and a comment session for Hearings. This no longer seems like the open government Mr Feiner used to believe in.

The issue is not settled. Two work sessions ago the Board desperately sought ways to silence the residents. This was just another skirmish in the residents’ quest for truth, honesty and a truly open government. What we are getting is quite the opposite. If you watch these meetings on TV or the internet and you have difficulty hearing what is being said, let the Board know. If you come to the Board meetings and watch them live, sign up to speak and then let them know. Although, beware. They are slowly finding more and more ways to silence the public.