FASNY: MEGA DEVELOPMENT WITH SIMPLE SOLUTION

October 7, 2013

Dear Mayor and Common Council members,

I was heartened to hear your answers at the Woman's Club candidate forum, especially your protestations that the granting of a special permit to FASNY was not a 'done deal'.  I remain worried that the Council will grant FASNY not the complete special permit but rather a compromise, brokered deal where a portion of it is approved.  Remember, ANY granting of this special permit is a loss to Gedney, the surrounding south-end neighborhoods and indeed, the City itself. 

If FASNY is granted anything on the site of the former Ridgeway Country Club they will ask for more and more.  And why not, they have lots of land and money to try to realize their dream of a unified 1200 student preK-12 campus.  If not today, certainly in the future.  Presently bursting at the seams they asked for a special permit in Mamaroneck to build a temporary fourth campus last spring. 

Think forest from trees.  Recall, FASNY started out with a forty-nine page DEIS which you deemed incomplete.  It wasn't until they got push back from the city and community that they ramped up their PR and paid consultants.  FASNY created a monster with its massive, voluminous DEIS and FEIS reports ( boiler plated with low levels of analysis ) in an attempt to equate quantity with quality.  An average reader detects blatant misrepresentations, wacky math and aspirational assumptions that are the bedrock of this shifting magical thinking landscape.

This is a big project but fortunately it has a simple answer.  Clue:  read your own consultant's report TRC Technical Report dated 9/12/13.  There lies the impossibility of their plans layed out in unbiased analytical terms.  I can not believe that you carefully reviewed TRC's report and then were able to declare the FEIS complete.  I had lost any hope for a balanced, thoughtful analysis of the FASNY request for a special permit until I read that report.  This appears to be the smoking gun in this expensive exercise in obfuscation.

This whole FASNY project has been a drawn out tremendous burden, a water boarding of the entire city.  Enough.  Declare this project dead in the water.  Exercise the leadership that you were elected to show.  Good judgement dictates that a conscientious Common Council has a moral responsibility to not gamble with your constituent's well being.  Vote a resounding NO to this absurd request for a special permit.  

Thank you,

Anne M. Casey, M.D.