Agenda Items Make St. Paul’s Focus Once Again





Three items on the formal agenda at the November 20th meeting of the Garden City Board of Trustees related to AvalonBay’s St. Paul’s proposal dominated Board discussion and public comment for several hours, and finally drew to a close after midnight.

The following are the latest developments from the meeting:

*In a 6 to 1 vote, the Board of Trustees voted to ratify Mayor Peter Bee’s acceptance of a report from The Greenwich Group International, which included a financial analysis of the latest AvalonBay deal made at the last Board meeting. Trustee John Watras voted against it because he had not yet seen a copy. The report confirmed that the deal is now more financially attractive to the Village and will generate more revenue.

GGI also found that the deal is fair and reasonable given the current economic climate and the additional money that AvalonBay is offering is reflective of their estimated reduction in construction costs of at least $1 million. GGI concluded that, “Despite the extreme volatility in the market, we believe that the Village is protected on both the downside, due to the greater proportion of guaranteed payments, and on the upside, due to its ability to share in profits.”

*After a protracted discussion, a motion made by Trustee Thomas Lamberti failed to pass after three trustees, including Lamberti, voted in opposition (Watras, Brudie and Lamberti) and four abstained (Mayor Bee, Mauk, Episcopia and Rothschild). The motion would have waived the parking requirements for AvalonBay for the proposed increase in public space.

Mayor Bee said the motion was premature and the issue should be dealt with if and when the Board decides to take the next step with AvalonBay and negotiate a development agreement.

“I just wanted them to go on record on what they were going to do,” Trustee Lamberti told the Garden City News after the meeting.

*In another related vote, Trustee Lamberti and Donald Brudie voted to refuse AvalonBay’s parking space waiver request. The remaining trustees abstained. Trustee Gerard Lundquist was absent.

*Mayor Bee released Trustee Lamberti from his current duties as chair of the Mayor’s Committee on St. Paul’s and said he will now assume the responsibility of reviewing AvalonBay materials.

*Deputy Mayor John Mauk said he “rues the day” he suggested mothballing as an option for the public opinion poll because he agrees with the Mayor’s Committee report, which concluded it will be a waste of money and time.

*Trustees received a memo from Village Administrator Robert Schoelle, Jr. advising that if the Board decides to mothball the building, Public Works Director Robert Mangan and Superintendent of Buildings Michael Filippon recommend that repairs be “undertaken as soon as possible” to prevent further structural deterioration and an increase in remediation costs.

*Mayor Bee pulled an item on the agenda concerning a proposal by Strategic Planning Systems Inc. to conduct a public opinion poll on the future of the Historic Main Building at St. Paul’s. He said the item would not have enough votes to pass at that particular meeting. The poll would have likely been via telephone. Robert Nouryan, a member of the board of directors of the Central Property Owners’ Association, said he believed a Village-authorized telephone poll would undercut the Village-wide poll set for Dec. 2nd by the Estates and Eastern POAs and the privately-run poll currently being conducted by the CPOA. Mayor Bee said that he was attempting to gather as much data as possible before making his decision.

In regard to the parking issue at St. Paul’s, Mayor Bee said the Board has the option to exempt the public space from the additional parking requirements, since it was the Board that set the zoning requirement. The Board can also decide to turn down the offer of public space entirely. He added that if public space is secured in the building, the Village would be permitted to dictate public access times so the parking space requirement might not apply.

Trustee Lamberti argued that Matt Whalen, AvalonBay’s vice president for development, promised to underwrite the cost of providing 120 new parking spaces for the ballfields without taking away any of the field space. Village staff, which included Kevin Ocker, chairman of the Board of Commissioners of Cultural and Recreational Affairs; Brian Ridgway, Village clerk; and Lt. Kenneth Jackson of the Garden City Police Dept., reviewed the site and determined that the spaces AvalonBay proposes alongside the roads of egress and ingress would not be approved for safety reasons.

Lamberti said AvalonBay can not fulfill their promise unless they are given the green space behind the gym, which is being currently used as a ballfield. According to Lamberti, Whalen was asked to participate in the staff review but declined, telling Village consultant Karen Backus that it was the Village’s responsibility to find the space to fit the additional parking.

Whalen submitted the following response when contacted by the Garden City News after the meeting: “Long ago, the Village acknowledged that a parking problem existed outside of the seven-acre RFP site and that they would address the issue. The issue has not been addressed so we offered a preliminary sketch to get the discussion going. The real question for Trustee Lamberti is: Has the Village engaged professional engineers to determine where they can fit new parking spaces to accommodate the needs of the ball fields? That’s the only way to resolve the issue.”

Like he did at the last Board meeting, Lamberti again expressed his disgust that the Mayor’s Committee was not given the enhanced proposal. He questioned the Mayor’s candor on this issue. “He has the most disarming way of expressing disingenuous things….Something is going here. I can’t put my finger on it.”

Mayor Bee appeared saddened by his comments. “I am disappointed by the process and by what we as a Village are doing to volunteers,” he said. “I must tell you, my term will be up at the end of March and there are parts of this I will miss. There are parts I will not. As a volunteer, I consider myself to be a person of integrity; I would guess that each of us probably does about him or herself. It is disheartening to get up here and have allegations and innuendo made against you. That’s a hard thing for my wife and my children to read about in the newspaper, as well as it is a hard thing to hear myself. I am doing the best I can. If you disagree with me, you are free to do so. But I’m doing the best I can.”

Deputy Mayor John Mauk offered his support to the Mayor. “I just want to comment as someone who has served with you for a long time: I think your best is very good,” he said. “We are all very fortunate to have somebody with your demeanor who tries to be as fair and impartial as you do. Sometimes you probably ought to bang the gavel a little bit more than you do, but I want you to know that I think all the rest of us really do feel that you do a great job.” His comments were followed by applause.

Mayor Bee explained his decision to remove Lamberti from his duties as chair of the Mayor’s Committee, which at this juncture consists of reviewing AvalonBay publicity materials for accuracy. “I have reflected on this for some time, and talked with a couple of the trustees,” he said. “It’s my feeling that in as much as Trustee Lamberti has announced his opposition to the AvalonBay proposal, and also has expressed his discomfiture at Mr. Whalen, the AvalonBay representative, his candor, I don’t want to place him in an awkward position any further and will therefore take myself to act as the Village representative in dealing with AvalonBay’s public dissemination of literature, so I will take that role on this evening.”

Trustee Lamberti contacted the Garden City News after the meeting and provided the following response to Mayor Bee’s action: “I was surprised that Mayor Bee removed me from my responsibility of reviewing the factual accuracy of Avalon Bay’s ads, as chair of the Mayor’s Committee on St Paul’s. He acted after talking with a couple of trustees without any discussion with me. I have had this responsibility for the past several months. AvalonBay never objected to the corrections that I made to their ads. Neither AvalonBay nor the Mayor has expressed any criticism of how I performed this duty. The Mayor has now appointed himself to this task. All ads that appear this week in the newspapers should say that they have been approved by the Mayor.”




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