Jay Walking

This opinion piece appeared in the Townsman, June 12 2008 edition

With gasoline prices through the roof, the local real estate in the cellar, school districts contracting but somehow costing more to sustain, food prices higher than Overlook Mountain, dogs ruling the town, zoning regs blowing from the municipal windows, ancient town-owned buildings throwing gobs of BTUs to the heavens, labor contracts with town employees languishing, warfare raging on the planning board and very strange fellows being elevated to prominent standing in the community the Woodstock town board – thank goodness – is going to take up councilman Jay Wenk’s proposal to formally remove from the town supervisor his authority to set the agenda.

Wenk’s idea is everybody should set the agenda.

He invented this marvel with assistance from cell tower – hater - litigant Jay Cohen, he of “the mendacity” fame.

Wenk got up from the table no less than twice to confer privately with Cohen during the May 20 beat up – the – supervisor meeting. Cohen, apparently squeamish about the sight of blood, left the meeting early, but only after delivering a stern lecture to the board on the importance of the agenda being passed around to each of them like a sign-up sheet.

Sad news for Cohen: you are being played. Town boards can over rule the supervisor’s agenda at any time. It works like this:

Supervisor opens the meeting, and proposes to embark on agenda items A, B and C. Any councilperson not happy with A, B or C can make a motion to suspend the supervisor’s agenda and embark on issues X, Y and Z. Another councilperson seconds the motion. It requires three votes to carry the motion. With councilpersons Wenk and Chris Collins roped under the dynamic leadership of councilperson Liz Simonson, is there doubt such a motion would carry?

How do I know Cohen is being played? Remember the court hearing last May 5 where the attorney for the Town, Rod Futerfas, put up a vigorous defense of the Town’s amended master management agreement with JNS Enterprises, the company that built the Town’s municipal communications tower on California Quarry for no charge in return for a share of the revenues from rentals to cell phone companies? The amended agreement deferred some of the Town’s revenue share to JNS to compensate for the more expensive tower mandated by the Woodstock planning board.

At every turn in the cell tower war Collins and Simonson (and Cohen) denounced three members of the previous town board for “lying“ on the required environmental quality review documents and for awarding a “no bid” contract to JNS. All these allegations were tested in state supreme court, by Cohen among others, and thrown out.

So why did the new town board allow the attorney for the Town to put up his vigorous defense of an amended agreement that a majority claims was duplicitous and illegal? Let’s see if the e-mails clear up the matter. [Note: I made no attempt at cleaning up the spelling or grammar.]

April 09 at 3:10 PM from Liz Simonson to town board:
I would like to have an ex session next week to talk about water/sewer and the Cell Tower lawsuit. I would also like to have rod there for the lawsuit discussion.
Jeff, I have been told by Glenn Kreisberg that oral arguments have been requested by the judge and that they possibly may start this week. If that is the case, please let us all know when that became known and how has Rod been given direction without the consent of the TB.

On Apr 10 at 12:52 PM from Jeff Moran to town board:
On May 5, 1 PM, both sides are to present oral arguments before Judge O'Connor. The law is the law, the papers are in, and this is simply for each side to deliver their position. Rod is very surprised that oral arguments are even permitted; it is a very rare occurrence. No direction by the TB is required, and Rod can, at our request, send a letter to the TB explaining the Town's position, which is that this suit, one in a series, raises issues that have already been resolved, i.e., thrown out.

On April 10 at 1:49 PM from Jay Wenk to town board:
Yes, I would like to know, briefly, what the other side claims, and what our response is.

On April 10 at 7:55 PM from Chris Collins to town board:
I dodn't [sic] know if anyone remembers but I motioned last year to withdraw the SEQR appllication [sic] as it was improperly filed i.e. had many inaccuracies in it. While my motion was defeated. [sic] I could not sign off on a letter saying things were resolved when in fact, I don't think the issues have been resolved. The false statements in the SEQR application still remain to be resolved. The application process was poorly executed and should not be repeated in the future. We must protect the town from future law suits [sic] based on a specious application process.

On April 11, 9:18 AM from Liz Simonson to supervisor and town board:
Jeff, I feel I need to remind you and the Town Board that the "Town's
position" to which you refer is indeed a position of the full Town
Board. Rod should make his recommendations to the TB in ex session and then the TB determines the direction he will take in the case. So again, I am asking to have an ex session on tuesday with Rod to review.
Rod, are you available on tuesday at 6:30pm?

April 11, 2008, at 12:19 PM from Rod Futerfas to town board:
I just wanted to let everyone know that I will not be available on Tues. night due to a prior commitment I have made. I have prepared a letter, which I'll send to Jeff outlining what the papers, presently before the Judge, state. The papers are already in the Judge's hands and cannot be changed. The oral argument has been permitted so we can tell the Judge what's already in the papers. Oral argument is rare, but this is a new Judge and in this case she has decided to permit the oral argument.

April 12 7:54 PM from Liz Simonson to attorney and town board:
Rod, I await your letter. However, I would like to know exactly when you received your instruction to proceed, as you say with the "papers", and are you certain that you have a consensus of the Town Board for that direction? I have NEVER had the opportunity to discuss this matter with you and to my knowledge neither have the other TB members. The last time I looked, it takes a majority of the TB to instruct their counsel on direction during litigation.
As we all know this petition questions the legality of the amendment to the JNS contract. That amendment negatively impacted the amount of revenue the Town of Woodstock should have received from the carriers for the first five years.
I believe with three new TB members it is imperative that we meet to review our options and would like to know when you are available.

April 13 10:23 AM from Chris Collins to town board:
Jeff, I would like to have an Exec Session on this topic with Rod to clarify issues regarding the cell tower. It appears that we all feel the need for this. If Rod cannot meet on Tuesday let's schedule another date and time as it is a burning issue.

April 13 10:55 AM from Jay Wenk to town board
Jeff, have you been able to get another date yet with Rod and the TB?

And there the e-mails stop on the cell tower case. There was never an executive session. There was never any public discussion about the lawsuit. Simonson is correct in her April 12 message that “it takes a majority of the TB to instruct their counsel on direction during litigation.” But the three busy e-mailers, with their majority on the town board maybe told Cohen, “Gee whiz, the supervisor made us,” and allowed Mr. Futerfas to make his strong defense of the amended JNS agreement and Cohen got busy drafting new rules for the town board.

The purpose of this is to assure cell tower hater and litigious Jay Cohen that the three members of the town board he worked so hard to help elect will just break their tails for him, but only after they wrestle from the supervisor the agenda that is already in their hands.