Somers Town Board Has Been Deceitful, Dishonest on Sewer Project
During the Sept. 10 Somers Sewer District #2 public hearing, the Town Board said they had 10 meetings on this issue. That’s false. They had five meetings and one informational session in 13 months.
The Town Board restarted this during a pandemic without notifying residents, once again. They said they sent Code Red messages and e-mails, when they know not everyone gets them. The supervisor said mailers are expensive, but had no problem spending $14,000 on a public relations firm to sell his agenda. He did not publish a notice in the paper 72 hours prior to the hearing, which he is legally supposed to do. Publishing a notice in the paper – on the date of the meeting – is not 72 hours.
The Town Board did not want a resident vote last year, and the supervisor says he is glad everyone will get to vote, when he knows darn well we had to petition for it. Thanks to Gov. Cuomo’s executive order, we now have absentee ballots.
The engineer is selling the new revised plan by stating we will not be paying the county buy-in charge and operation and maintenance fees until the sewer line comes to our homes. That’s a lie! It says on pages ES-2 and 4-3 in the Map, Plan & Report “County buy-in and O&M fees to only apply at the time of construction. Very deceitful! As a result, 989 residents would start paying and you may never see sewers come down your street for years, if at all, yet you have to pay forever.
On pages 4-5 in the report, it states the town can borrow more money to proceed “affording district taxpayers full participation.” They haven’t wanted our full participation now, so how will it happen in the future?
Residents are infuriated. The Town Board created animosity and we are the victims of unjust treatment. Please vote “No” on Nov. 10 and force our Town Board to do the right thing – use the $10 million to clean up the lake and the septics, which is in the 2015 Shenorock Sewer Study.
Visit www.SomersSewers.com for more information.
Linda Luciano
Shenorock
