Sister Villages

To The Editor:

I am writing concerning an article entitled "Condos Cause Rift Between Neighbors" which appeared on the front page of your May 29, 2009 issue. The condos to which reference is made is the proposed development project on Old Country Road at the site of the former Keyspan Building. The neighbors are the villages of Garden City and Mineola.

The article references reports from a Mr. Thomas Trypuc of the Cherry Valley Cooperative and from Deputy Mayor Donald Brudie.

Mr. Trypuc reported that the residents of Garden City who attended a recent Mineola hearing on the project "were given a frosty reception" by a few Mineola residents who also attended. Deputy Mayor Brudie, speaking of Mineola's residents, stated "[w]e're kind of persona non grata with the residents of Mineola. They feel we should keep our noses in Garden City, and they'll keep their noses in Mineola." While commenting that the Mineola board of trustees treated the Garden City representatives "very kind, very nicely, very professional," Mr. Brudie noted that '[i]t's the residents [of Mineola] who were not really up on what was going on, other than they saw big dollars."

I am a resident of Mineola who lives very close to Old Country Road, the dividing line between Mineola and Garden City. I attended the public hearing on the proposed condominium project and I spoke at it.

I would first like to address the perception that there is bad blood between the residents of Mineola and the people of Garden City. There is a little bit of that. It is residual. It flows from the hearings concerning The Winston, another condominium project, at which Garden City saw fit to send its Village Attorney, Gary Fishberg, to attend the subdivision hearing before Mineola's Planning Board. The stenographic record of that hearing quotes Mr. Fishberg as follows:

"What you have here unfortunately is, you have what's commonly known as "zoning for sale."

Needless to say, the residents of Mineola were stunned and offended that our sister village would send its gunslinging Village Attorney into our village to demean our intelligence and our motives.

That dovetails into my second point, the claim, apparently shared by Mr. Brudie, that Mineola's residents don't really know what's going on.

In actuality, Mineola's resident are quite informed about what is going on. We have a very transparent government where nothing takes place behind closed doors. We have participated as a community for several years in the development of a Comprehensive Master Plan for the future of Mineola. Not only did Mineola invite Garden City to participate in the Plan, but the Plan was presented publicly to the Garden City community on at least two occasions. The Plan was highly applauded by the folks in Garden City who "knew what was going on."

It was Mineola who outreached to officials in Garden City concerning the Mineola Internodal Center when it was in its planning stages. It was Mineola who met with the Board of Directors of the Central property Owners Association and of Cherry Valley Apartments in order, as a good neighbor, to mitigate any impact of the project on Garden City's residents. it was Mineola who lobbied to secure a landscaping grant to Cherry Valley Apartments as part of that project in order to shield the Cherry valley community from bus headlights and noise.

Mineola and Garden City are sister villages. We shop in each other's stores; we dine in each other's restaurants. We share a major LIRR station and host an Internodal Center where many Garden City residents park each day in order to take the train to New York City. We are home to a major hospital and innumerable medical facilities which the residents of both villages share. We are not uncaring people, ignorant of smart growth principles of municipal revitalization. We think that we are pretty good neighbors. And responsible, too.

But there is a lingering frost in the air. Mr. Fishberg's comments that zoning in Mineola is for sale were hurtful when made. They are hurtful still. And nobody from the government of Garden City has disowned them to date.

Dennis Walsh