38°
To the editor:
"A solution in search of a problem." Despite the lack of a compelling rationale for the proposed roundabout, and ignoring the opposition of the Chamber of Commerce and hundreds of residents, Mayor Gearity insists on heedlessly blasting the project through the wall of resistance.
A "Downtown Redevelopment Working Committee" is to propose a grand plan, but that group won't report until July. Work on the roundabout is set to begin in June. The obvious intent? To present residents with a fait accompli.
"To do otherwise would be negligible and irresponsible," Gearity has said, misusing one word and employing another to put forth a claim that can't be supported.
"It would really distinguish us from other towns", she continued. In what meaningful way? Our trove of 19th buildings does that job.
She said she's "annoyed" that the traffic circle wasn't done before she became mayor. Obviously, someone didn't anticipate her wishes. "Our intersection is not up to standards." Whose standards are those? Hers.
And because she knows how any vote would go, she refuses to put the issue to a referendum.
Just you listen to Aunt Gearity. She knows what's best.
Her dismissive and patronizing attitude was echoed in a letter to The Gazette last week by a woman who declared that voices of dissent over the project were "irrational". They are not.
She is "sorry", she says, "that public opinion may be preventing our elected officials from doing their job." Their job, most of us might have thought, is to act - or not - on the wishes of the voters who put them in office. The writer said she's lived all over the world and that roundabouts seem normal to her. Having visited over sixty countries in my career, I can confirm the ubiquity of traffic circles.
But "normal" doesn't mean "good".
Bailey Livesey, Ossining
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