I suppose it had to come, once truth about the pro-developer bias of our village regulatory boards was made known to village residents (and voters!): Full-blown censorship has just shown its ugly head in the Southampton Village Building Department.
Honest Jackie Allen just told me that she had to: (1) check with Alice Cooley, village assistant lawyer, before emailing a copy of my letter to the Suffolk County Health Department, complaining about the Village Planning Board (the Planning Board just violated that Health Department’s “conditional variance” during its January 4 “public hearing” for Paul Robinson’s 245 Old Town Road); and (2) the Planning Board file for that Paul Robinson subdivision was declared “closed,” to keep my hard copy of the letter to the Health Department out of that file.
So, the Letters column is now my only recourse for informing our village residents (and voters!) about the continued illegal steamrolling through developer applications opposed by village residents.
Who is Alice Cooley? She is the lawyer paid by our village taxes to advise the Village Planning Board. Ms. Cooley just authored the SEQRA negative declaration about Paul Robinson’s 245 Old Town Road, an unorthodox subdivision application, in which she deleted the entire Old Town Pond, although it lies visibly between the Atlantic Ocean and Robinson’s 245 Old Town Road, about 500 yards uphill from the northern shore of that fragile inland body of water.
Hey, that’s nothing. At an early December meeting of the Board of Architectural Review and Historic Preservation, about replacement of a one-story middle-class house at 31 Rosko Drive with a McMansion objected to by some eight or nine neighbors, lawyer Alice Cooley echoed John Bennett’s demand for his client, 31 Rosko Drive, for “more diversity in architecture!”
“Yes, that’s what that neighborhood needs,” Alice Cooley echoed Bennett publicly, forgetting that the essence of a certified, legal subdivision is its “common plan and scheme.” The certified and legal Rosko Place Subdivision “common plan and scheme” was approved by the village’s Planning Board in 1960, and duly filed with the Suffolk County clerk, before being illegally taken over by Epley-backed spec builders starting in 2006.
Ms. Cooley and other lawyers paid by our village taxes keep encouraging our village regulatory boards to violate New York State laws. So what’s a little violation of Suffolk County Department of Health rules and conditions?
Evelyn Konrad
Attorney at law
Southampton
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