WPCNR MR. & MRS. & MS. WHITE PLAINS VOICE. April 7, 2006: The President of the Rocky Dell/Reynal Park Organization comments on the fire sale of Railside Avenue.

I agree with Mr. Albanese's statements of how quickly the Railside decision went down.

The residents of the Rocky Dell/Reynal Park Organization, along with supporters from other sections of the city, including the neighborhoods of Councilpersons, gave a great show of support for protecting the land for the beauty and buffering ability of the Greenway, and also in recognition of the goodness of the existence of woodland, just for what it is, woodland, which is growing more and more scarce, and thereby precious each day.

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Before the April 3rd Common Council meeting, when reviewing my notes on the narrow-minded comments made by Boykin, Hockley, Greer, Bernstein and the Mayor, I often had to recheck my dates..."No those shallow comments couln't have been made on only March 6th! It seems a whirlwind of "Saving the Woods" activity had occurred since then!

But yes, once the tiny-printed legal notices and March 6th Common Council statements were made, it was like those five men were in a burning building, and there could be no time to pause and be prudent...no time to allow a good, cautious thought process, financial studies, or further environmental testing to be done.

One Councilman stated at our March 27th neighborhood meeting at Ridgeway School, that he wasn't impressed by a petition with 500 signatures on it, because this was a much larger city. If given a chance, we could have gotten far more signatures and possibly forced a referendum.

The Council people who had supporters did it through the a tax threat scare, blaming the innocent woods and its inhabitants for the financial hidden hole in the budget, and conveniently leaving off the extra cost to the infrastructure and services, expecially $24.000.00 per student which the extra houses would incur on same taxpayers' revenue-neutral, as our ally, Mr. Roach termed it.

Maybe all all of this was done legally, but I'll tell you it stinks anyway.

Paula Piekos, (President, Rocky Dell, Reynal Park Organization)

PS - How can I get a check on police reports for Commerce St through the years? I really want to to try to find the report from when I called about 2 years ago and said I had become sick on the lawn of 11 Commerce and was afraid the smell of the dump was going to harm the health of the then elderly, but alive. It bothers me that the City claims they haven't had complaints before this land went on sale. I know of people who have complained.   Paula