"…Long lives after them."

This opinion piece appeared in the Townsman, July 17, 2008 edition

It is amazing how incredibly evil people become once they are elected our town supervisor. The wickedness is now to be expected. In the good old days our supervisors were dumb as a bag of rocks, idiots, stubborn mules, louts, oafs, buffoons, baboons or airheads, but lately they are truly malevolent, nasty and mean. It is as if electing supervisors had been taken entirely out of our hands and put into the Devil's. And boy, is that Dark Angel shrewd. He picks someone who has fooled us by his or her dedication to our community, usually as volunteer to one to our many committees or organizations where not a sign of his or her insidious motives yet had been exposed. The Dark One then beguiles us by putting into his candidate's mouth sweet intentions and judicious sentiments. He casts a spell so that we feel a moment of joy and anticipation when the old supervisor is finally rid, and the new one oathed and given custodianship of the town ledger book. And then, Yikes!

Thus with Jeff Moran, who for all these years we confused for a thoughtful man with a generous spirit.

Let us inspect the perdition he has wrought in his six months as our political leader.

First, there is his infamous "abstention" on a resolution to refer the Farm Festival application to the ZBA for interpretation of Section 5Y of the zoning law, which prohibits the display of merchandise between a structure and the curb. His stated reasons for abstaining were that the following issues had not yet been adequately addressed; 1) the public's safety, 2) the additional expenditure of $6000 in Town funds and 3) the concerns of local merchants who pay high overhead to vend the same products as those to be offered by out-of-town merchants. What balderdash! The supervisor obviously hates fresh produce, and hates fun. That he then committed himself full bore to untangle all the minutia and red tape around the Festival, and successfully realized a safety plan, and addressed the concerns of the local merchants is of NO ACCOUNT. Read the letters in the paper yourself! Jeff is just evil, bad, terrible and a big kill-joy.

Now there is Jeff's malignant consideration of the Elna Ferrite building as possibly suitable for purchase and renovation for Town offices. Were this consideration not odious enough, he also should be condemned for the re-surfacing of an old idea to create an "office campus" on our sacred Comeau, even though all he did to advance this latter proposal was acknowledge he had indeed read about it in a local paper. As far as the Comeau-campus idea, Evil Jeff must know it has the same chance of being realized as the chance of dogs learning to use porta-potties. With respect to utilizing the Elna Ferrite building on the Bearsville Flats, anybody with half a brain knows that this is Evil Jeff's devious way of finding a good excuse to send a sewer pipe up the Flats and turn the corridor into a parade of Dunkin Donuts, Jiffy Lubes, Holiday Inns and other demonic delights. There should be no consideration of the Elna Ferrite idea on its merits; none, none whatsoever. It is just evil, bad and terrible.

Do I have it right? Isn't this exactly what we are supposed to think when we read some of the letters to the editor, or watch the Orcs on Thursday nights on public access tv?

Dear Reader, a thought for you: Jeff Moran is a good, decent fellow trying to do his best. If we don't necessarily swoon over all his ideas, believe me, the road from a supervisor's idea to its execution is no less short than the path from Jay Wenk to the Nobel Peace Prize. There are miles and miles of process in Woodstock, which can unfortunately tire good ideas, but certainly exhaust inferior ones. Take a breath. It's really going to be okay.

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Last week a charming letter to the editor from a charming lady thanked Les Walker, the architect (responsible for the Comeau-campus hub bub), "for reminding 21st century Woodstockers of the main reason the Comeau estate was purchased by taxpayers in the late 1970's; to have a central location, [sic comma] on a beautiful piece of land, [sic comma] to consolidate Woodstock town offices."

My one quibble is that the original purpose for buying Comeau was to have a central location on a beautiful piece of land to consolidate Woodstock town services. Since that time the firehouse, rescue station and highway facility have been strewn like Hansel's breadcrumbs across our town; aren't such letters now a little quaint? Her admonishment to the new town board, "Let's not continue the previous town board's tradition of seeking piecemeal solutions to our building infrastructure needs," stings. Oh, doth it sting. More blessed and unguent were those years when town boards sought NO solutions "to our building infrastructure needs" other than to form committees.