Letters

Early Halloween will arrive at the Southampton Town Hall public hearing, October 25, 6 p.m., whence all the usual phantoms of truth will dance before the concerned citizenry gathered to oppose the “Liberty Gardens” plot. Vampires here from foreign climes will be waiting to suck out blood from the remains of a bit of property: a movable feast, as this property is on County Road 39, where fatal accidents continue to occur with increased frequency.

Then might appear, out of smoke, the luxury Realtor in the robes of the pontificating YIMBY-shaman rubbing his hands and rising to rain curses on the crowd if they don’t sacrifice to his gods.

Fires will be lit to burn alive the squiggling creatures that are crawling from every page of the latest weighty draft environmental impact statement, which, though subject to every form of acidic torture and shredding, refuses to die, but, phoenix-like, reappears verbatim in the next weighty DEIS, which is uploaded from a dank swamp of perpetual computers and issued forth.

Ghouls with their counters clacking away — or not — who cannot see traffic and gridlock, nor feel public anger, will rise from the abyss to cackle forever more, “There will be no traffic impacts … or anything else …” — and then vanish once again into thin air.

Newts enjoin goblins of every stripe and, with the usual skeletons, snarl and emit ugly noises as the cowered public tries to object, whilst a chorus of moaning mothers with imperiled babies held high will advance. And all the while a three-minute bell tolls doom to the speaker and the scythe falls.

In other words: the usual hell of a sham public hearing, with a dead DEIS stinking up the room, and the conclave where decisions are made hidden underground, away from view.

This Halloween, the curse is an “affordable housing” proposal dressed up and masked as “workforce housing” and “local housing” that will ease traffic, and portends problems aplenty. For now: 60 units on 5 acres with the curse to morph into 120 on the total package of 9 acres in the twinkling of an eye averted, due to the magician’s trick of cutting the property in two for purposes of SEQRA review, with the promise that the whole piece will return intact and ready to go when the cloth is swirled away.

Plan to attend this Octoberfest. Garlic won’t do the trick, but sustained opposition and the clear light of facts might send the marauders packing.

Now, wouldn’t that be a treat?

Frances Genovese

Southampton