Letters

It was expected that Jay Schneiderman and Ralph Fasano would continue to lie, pivot, omit, sidestep and bully aggressively to push Liberty Gardens through.

It was hoped, as well as expected, that your paper would provide informed and unbiased coverage of the callous machinations of Schneiderman and check the misrepresentations of Fasano and his cohorts. It has not.

Your latest article [“Liberty Garden Developers Present Final Environmental Report to Southampton Town Board,” 27east.com, December 20] instead parrots the lies and evasions, as well as the outrageous assurances and arrogant dictates of Fasano and his pilot fish, Schneiderman.

For instance, your headline: Is it really the town that is “poised to act on” Liberty Gardens or Schneiderman teetering desperately in his last hours? He doesn’t speak for the town and should not be allowed to shackle the incoming board.

Your article simply states that he canceled the “special meeting” he called “before the regular meeting” to vote on Liberty Gardens, omitting that he was forced to cancel because he violated the 48-hour notification required. Not newsworthy?

Your article notes: Concern’s “five-year effort” to build “a combined workforce and veterans’ housing complex” without digging out all the legal/financial statements made by Fasano, and the State Office of Mental Health that funds him, to prove that this was gated “supportive housing” for mentally and psychiatric disabled veterans, the homeless, and rehab hopefuls who were required to prove their infirmities — what Fasano and Schneiderman call “affordable local housing.”

Your article asserts: “A common refrain among opponents is that they support veterans, they support workforce housing, but they just don’t support this project in their midst.” Echoing Michael Daly and his YIMBY trash-and-Bogeyman talk.

This is a sustained lie. The “common refrain” has always been that veterans, the impaired and homeless, insofar as they can live on their own, are deserving of every chance, but we were being sold on “local affordable housing,” and traffic and workforce solutions are a “desperate need.” We were not afforded transparency, or a fair chance to consider the actual proposal and to vote on it. Instead, with the town’s complicity, people were vilified and assaulted for bringing the facts to light.

Your article lifts Fasano’s words from a letter published in The Press, written by him or his hired marketing firm (paid by taxpayer dollars), where they refer to the opposition as “a small but vocal group of opponents.” Where are your quotation marks?

This is compounded by referencing a “late letter” (December 2023), sitting atop a voluminous file, from one resident who opposes the development, to speak for all.

Notwithstanding all the nostalgia and chest-beating about local journalism and its essential role in investigative revelation, The Press is going to have to do better than this. Give yourself a dunce cap.

Frances Genovese

Southampton