[Announce] The Trail Grows Cold Searching for the City Landfill "Hotline"

Sun Jul 15 13:44:42 MDT 2007

This is part of an email I sent to one of our members who asked me about a statement I had made in one of our earlier email correspondences. 

  I first need to give you a bit of the background that was covered in those earlier emails in order for this one to make sense to you.

  As I was one of the first to arrive at the Wednesday evening 'secret' meeting at the Polish Community Center, I engaged in idle conversation with the CHA representative who conducted this meeting. He is the same fellow who conducted the earlier held  Scoping Session meeting which was also held at the Center.

  I asked him if Jason Gorman was present at this meeting. Mr. Gorman is the man who was calling folks and inviting them to the meeting. He is an employee of Clough Harbour and also the person who answers the City's odor complaint 'Hotline'. 

  He is also said to have acknowledged that this meeting should be open to the public but didn't want a bunch of folks there to complain about the proposed landfill expansion.

  So I asked the meeting's facilitator if Mr. Gorman was there. I was told that he was on vacation.

  I had informed the person I had been communicating with about this because they told me they had not heard anyone mention anything about Mr. Gorman. They also said that they didn't see the significance of whether Mr. Gorman was there or not. 

  So I gave them some of the background events that transpired before they arrived and that's what I've now given you. I need to add that they called the hotline after detecting the odors emanting from the landfill on the way home after the meeting and Mr. Gorman answered the telephone and informed that person that he had in fact attended the meeting and that he sat behind them in the audience.

   Below is the rest of my response to that person.

  As far as the significance of our being told that Mr. Gorman was on vacation: Being the first to arrive, I engaged in 'friendly' conversation
  with the CHA man who conducted the meeting and I asked him directly whether Mr. Gorman was there and I was told very specifically by him and Joe G that he was on vacation. They even went so far as to 'complain' that he had set up the meeting date and then went on vacation as if to avoid the 'punishment' they would be enuring by their having to attend the meeting that evening. They laughed at the irony of it all.

  "It was not significant to me whether he was there or not." you said.

  Whether he was there or not is of no significance at all. 

  Being lied to by the City's director of the landfill and their hired consultant is extremely significant.

  Being lied to is a crime if one does so while testifying in court. 

  Once someone is found out to have lied, the credibility of anything they say after that point is brought into question.

  Are they telling me the truth this time or are they lying to me, like they did before? 

  This question will always be on the mind of anyone engaging with a known lier. It makes whatever they say doubtful.

  When I raised my children I always stressed the importance of telling the truth because their word was all anyone had in this world, as everyone is always judged by the truthfullness of their word.

  Remember the childhood story about the boy who cried Wolf?

  As I said, if they have no problem in lying to us about something so trivial as whether or not someone was at a meeting, how can you trust them when they say there's no risk to human health posed by the landfill gas emission? The answer is clearly that you cannot.

  If you recall my comments at the meeting about the landfill "hotline" number not being available anywhere on the city's website and that the link to the landfill directed one to an empty page, did you notice that no one of the five or six or more of the City's representatives present offered it to any of us? 

  How is the public to call and complain about the 'odors' if there is no number to call? It's not listed anywhere!

  I have checked out every link on the landfill website and there is no phone number listed there at all, not even on their "Contact Us" page. A general information phone number used to be listed on this page, but it has been removed from the website. Why is that?

  If you have the "Hotline" number please publish it on the 'announce' list.

  As they are now actively recording complaints they receive, which they are required to keep and report to DEC, am I the only one who sees this as a problem?

  The complaints they will be reporting will mostly be from the same people, repeatedly. They will then report these complaints as having come from only a few "activists" or worse, a few "nuts".

  This appears to be a purposely contrived effort on the City's part to limit the number of complaints they receive from the public.

  http://www.capitalregionlandfill.com/contact/

  http://www.albanyny.org/Government/Departments/GeneralServices/TrashRecycling/landfill.aspx

  This is a problem, whether you recognize it or not. 

  DEC should be notified of this. 

  If Assemblyman McEneny is on the announce list, he too will receive this and thereby become informed that there's no 'hotline' or any other number for any member of the public to call and file a complaint about the landfill's noxious odors. The assemblyman should also be informed about how this meeting was called.

  Someone with standing should foil for Ms. Fox's and Mr. Clay's correspondence to CHA requesting this meeting, as claimed by Bill Bruce.

    He claimed that Fox, in conjunction with County Legislator Bill Clay were those whom had requested the meeting. 

  A contrived alibi designed to deceive, if ever I heard one.

  This meeting was clearly scheduled and held in violation of the 'open meetings' law and Bruce must have had to scramble to see which of Jerry's lackeys was available to claim they had called the meeting.

  I explained that we, Coeymans residents, had a right to know about the meeting, that it was a blatant violation of the open meetings law not to publicize it, and that we had a right to be there to observe how Albany conducts its business, seeing that they've targeted our town to site their proposed new landfill in.

  I asked Ms. Fox: "If you called the meeting Ms. Fox, let's see the email you sent to the others requesting this meeting."  (Meaning to Clough Harbour Associates asking them to contact the invitees and inform the of the meeting)    

  Fox's reply to my question to her, which was asked at the very end of the meeting was "I don't have to answer you. You're not one of my constituants." 

  This attitude is why these documents need to be requested through the FOILA. To determine who's telling the truth and who's lying.

  Jim Travers

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