Get the Facts Before You Complain

There is a very ugly, political storm raging right now in Peekskill.  Some recent comments about the Zoning Board of Appeals have been wildly inaccurate, and so I offer a few facts regarding the function of Peekskill’s Zoning Board of Appeals:

• It is a “board of appeals,” i.e. it only entertains appeals
• By NYS Municipal Law, the ONLY appeals it entertains are requests by property owners for relief from existing code or for interpretations of law when a property owner disagrees with rulings on the code by the planning staff or a building inspector
• By NYS Public Meetings Law all meetings of the ZBA (and also, by the way, of the Planning Commission) are public except for executive sessions to hear legal advice from the Corporation Counsel or other counsel assigned it by the City government. 
• All these public meetings are video recorded and archived.  If you want to know how a member voted, just go the city website, select “Video” and select the public body and date.  You can scan through the videos quite easily to find the voting.  You need not FOIL to get this information.

It is simply fact that the ZBA never received an application for relief from existing local code or for an interpretation of the code, so there was never a vote on this project or any aspect of this project by the ZBA.

I will also state for the record that in my opinion the ZBA can only function when it holds itself independent of party politics.  In the four years that I have served, first under Chairman Don Stroub, who served for 24 years, all but three as an appointee of Republican mayors, and now under Chairwoman Mary Ellen McGurty (also originally a “Republican” appointee) the ZBA has succeeded in maintaining its independence.  For a long while after I was appointed in July 2008 I was the only Democratic appointee, and so far as I know the only registered Democrat, on the board.  Never in all that time was I treated in any way differently from the other board members.  Don ran a very apolitical board, and Mary Ellen continues to hold the board to the same high standard.

To those who would cast aspersions wildly in all directions, please consider this: it is understandably difficult to get people, your neighbors, friends, fellow parishioners, etc., to take the time and trouble to attend regular meetings and required training sessions for no recompense and to risk the ire of fellow Peekskillians for decisions they have made.  To accuse, with no foundation whatever, members of a board that had nothing to do with an unpopular decision not only of making an unlawful decision but of doing so for partisan advantage further discourages citizens from actively participating in their government.