The Town of Geneseo Planning Board steered clear of the controversial Newman PDD application at its monthly meeting Monday night. The subject was not mentioned despite a written request by Please Don’t Destroy Geneseo to have two aspects of the matter placed on the agenda.
PDDG had asked the board to discuss their request to have the FOIL procedures simplified so that public documents in the case could be made available automatically. They also asked that the board consider opening up an additional public comment period on supplemental material that the applicant has submitted since filling its draft EIS last fall.
Instead of taking up these matters, the board engaged in a lengthy discussion of the future of Lakeville Estates. The board’s legal counsel and engineering advisers were not present at the meeting, nor were any representatives of Newman.
The only mention of the Newman matter was an indication from Chairman Dwight Folts that the matter would next be taken up at a special April 7 meeting of the board. Meanwhile PDDG reported that they have received no response of any kind to their two requests, and as of Wednesday, that they still had not received a copy of a memo from the town’s engineers to the developer that they FOILed almost a month ago.
PDDG’s Corrin Strong and Bill Lofquist published a commentary on the FOIL issue in this week’s Livingston County News. The article, in commemoration of National Sunshine Week, was titled, “More sunshine needed in Geneseo.”
In the article, the two explained the struggle that has been going on behind the scenes over their Freedom of Information requests. The authors accused the Planning Board leadership of embracing a “culture of secrecy” and further suggested that it was improper for the board to delegate to its staff its responsibility to take a “hard look” at the issues.
Pointing out that the board itself has apparently not been getting copies of communications between its engineers and the applicant, the article concludes,
“In the present case, it appears that not only do we not have public oversight of what our planning board is doing, we don’t even have board oversight.”
