3-29-11:

Crowd sourcing (NYT article) for social change: that is what wikicoco.com is and will be. Join us.

Will be promoting wikicoco.com more energetically in the next few weeks.

Letter re hearing this week:


I have never at any time violated any aspect of town law. The hearing you attended came to exist in this way:

(8/10) permit revoked > (10/10) ZBA appeal > (12/10) good faith offer to settler > (1/11 and 3/11) planning board

Following an illegal act on the part of the ZEO, I was initially denied the right to appeal. When I did achieve an appeal, the attorney acting without the consent of the zoning board expanded the scope of my appeal to include any and all additional issues without even informing me as to what the charges I might answer would be. The town board was unable to achieve a quorum on the zoning board without allowing members to join who might be willing to allow me a fair hearing and ignored the application of a highly qualified person who lived in Stuyvesant Falls, an individual who knew there was no barking problem with my facility, while waiting for more applications to come in and eventually selected a less qualified person. While we were waiting for a quorum to emerge on the zoning board, I made a good faith offer to settle the dispute. The supervisor of the town, the town attorney and other town officials decided that this good faith offer would be an opportunity to alter my permit and thereby render my business not viable. Subsequently, with the encouragement of town officials, Fritz Platt and Patty Yerick gathered more complaints. These complaints are clearly coordinated and without except false. Next, we had an opportunity for public comments which included issues beyond my good faith offer to settle, including irrelevant personal defamation against me.

At the same time, I initiated a campaign to bring mediation services to town government, a free professional service offered by the New York Courts to avoid conflicts in neighbor to neighbor disputes in the future. The town board refused to consider this option.

As you know, these problems lead me to conclude that I needed to file an action in Northern District, Federal Court. In that setting, I will argue that this entire process was politically motivated in order to punish me for exposing routine corruption in town government. I will be asking for wide ranging changes to assure this never happens again.

Again: 1) I did nothing wrong; 2) I spent 5000 in sound proofing anyway; 3) I made a good faith offer to settle; 4) I campaigned for mediation services; 5) I sent you and the board information as requested when I was under no obligation to do so despite many months of unfair treatment.