CROTON UNITED MEMBER JOEL GINGOLD'S 1/29 GAZETTE LETTER, POST GOUVEIA

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CROTON UNITED MEMBER JOEL GINGOLD'S 1/29 GAZETTE LETTER, POST GOUVEIA ACQUISITION VOTE

To the Editor,

For better or for worse, the Gouveia Park will soon become part of Croton.  I sincerely hope that, five years or so in the future, I will be able to look back and say that the decision to accept it was a wise one.  But I remain skeptical.

The questions surrounding the acquisition were never related to the property itself.  While few people have actually been permitted to visit it, from the descriptions provided, no one disputes that it is a very desirable piece of land.  What remains unknown is the cost of developing and maintaining it and whether it will become a drain on the village’s finances.  And this question was not adequately addressed in the village board’s rush to commit to the acquisition.

As in so many of the board’s actions, the problems lay less with WHAT they did, but in HOW they did it.  The mayor announced some time ago that a decision would be made sometime in the spring.  Then, out of nowhere, it appeared on the agenda for last week’s meeting.  Published on the Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend for a meeting Tuesday night.  And buried in the over forty documents attached to this item were two critical reports which had never been seen before, namely the report of the ad-hoc committee and the updated cost-benefit analysis.

Even assuming that someone had found them, and I admit that I missed seeing the financial analysis, there was not adequate time to properly review them, formulate questions, and have them answered.  The mayor’s review of the cost benefit analysis, projected on a screen that few could read, was inadequate at best. Perhaps, this was not an accident, but part of the board’s strategy to rush the approval through before any serious doubts could be raised.  A subsequent reading of the financial statements indicated a number of questions regarding both the estimated costs and the projected revenues.

The legitimacy of the entire process was brought into question last year when it was revealed that the mayor and Ms. Gallelli had secretly conspired with Barbara Sarbin of Something Good in the World to establish SGW’s school on the property without the knowledge of the public or even the other board members.  And this issue has not gone away. READ MORE HERE https://www.facebook.com/notes/croton-united/croton-united-official-joel-gingolds-129-gazette-letter-post-gouveia/402557009901336

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