Critical Condemnation/ Eminent Domain Meeting June 24 at Town Hall

Next Tuesday, June 24 at 7:00PM the Town of Prattsburgh has planned a special meeting at the Town Hall. They are inviting the school boards, SCIDA and UPC/First Wind to meet with them in executive session to try to resolve the lawsuits. When they come out of executive session they plan to vote on the "Determination of Findings" concerning eminent domain. The Determination is being written by our Town attorney, John Leyden, who is also the attorney for SCIDA, the lead agent for this wind farm project.

Our understanding is that if they vote to accept the determination, then they will have to approach the landowners to try to pay for the easements. If the offers are rejected, then the Town Board will go to a judge, show that they have tried to buy the easements and ask for permission to condemn the properties. Once the landowners are notified of condemnation, there will be 30 days to appeal.

We learned at this past Tuesday’s Town Board meeting (June 17) that the town received 70 written comments, in addition to those presented at the public hearing itself. There are over 100 pages in the transcript of the meeting alone. A big thank you goes to everyone who took the time to make your opinions be known.

There are a lot of unknowns about this meeting. At this time we don't know whether the school boards will accept the invitation, so it could conceivably turn out that they will not be in executive session for that long. They did say, however, that they are committed to voting next week, and for this reason it will be good for people to be there for this vote. Please come prepared to wait comfortably until they let us in. A Board member suggested that the meeting be in a bigger place, but Town Supervisor Harold McConnell vetoed this, so it is unclear whether they will move the meeting if the crowd is large.

We will try to send out last minute e-mails on Tuesday, June 24, if things change. A video of the June 17 Town Board meeting will be posted on this website shortly. Please see Ruthe Matilsky’s report below on the meeting, the town supervisor’s rant and his failure to condemn violence at the meeting.

The Prattsburgh Town Board meeting on June 17 was disturbing for several reasons. The information given by the town attorney, John Leyden, was so confusing that I am still trying to figure out whether I am missing something or he was being deliberately misleading. On a personal level the other disturbing event was the way Supervisor Harold McConnell behaved when an audience member lunged for my camera and nearly broke it.

The meeting started out like most meetings do – old business, new business, committee reports, etc. Then the board went into executive session to discuss lawsuits. Forty-five minutes later, when the public was allowed back in, we learned that the Board had decided to table voting on the Eminent Domain Resolution which Mr. Leyden had drawn up. We couldn’t actually find out what it was that the Board was going to be voting on because Town attorney John Leyden wouldn’t tell the public.

It is disturbing that a vote on eminent domain was on the agenda in the first place, considering that the majority of Board members had not read any of the public comments. Mr. Leyden maintained there isn’t much to read because most of the comments have nothing to do with eminent domain. When pressed, he said that comments had been written about windmills. I pointed out to him that the town has to prove public purpose in order to legally condemn property and that is why people were writing about windmills and their unproven public benefit. Nevertheless, he did not rescind his advice to the Board to just skip comments about windmills.

At around this time, the man two seats down from me became agitated and interrupted to say that the problem is with the seven people that won’t sign leases. He maintained that they have to sign leases. Mr. McConnell agreed with him. Then this guy, whose name we haven’t been able to find out, lunged for my video camera and said he didn’t want his picture taken.

When people in the room protested his action, Mr. McConnell took the opportunity to launch into a “You people” speech aimed, presumably, at the people in the room who have questioned the wind projects in general and eminent domain in particular. While admitting that I had the right to videotape the proceedings, Mr. McConnell said it was all right for the man to lunge at me.

I understand the man was angry and instead of using his words (as we tell the four year olds) and asking me to turn the camera away from him, he tried to break it. I am more upset with the Town Supervisor, who should have not allowed violence of any type to occur in the meeting room. The fact that his own actions appeared to condone the violence speaks to the atmosphere of fear and intimidation that has insinuated itself into politics in Prattsburgh for too long. People in Prattsburgh have learned that if they speak up there may well be consequences – in this case, the Supervisor allowed an audience member to assault me and told me it was my own fault. Mr. McConnell has an obligation to the people in Prattsburgh to make sure that intimidation is not a part of public proceedings. If he can’t do that, then he needs to be dismissed.

Ruthe Matilsky