May 7, 2011 The regular Ramapo town board meetings are scheduled for the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month in the evening (8pm) at Town Hall. State law requires notifying the press of these meetings "at least one week prior", and providing "conspicuous posting in one or more public locations at least 72 hours before such meeting." This year, there were two very important town board meetings about which the public got virtually no advance notice. The first, a daytime meeting on Feb. 17, was kept from the press and the public until 53 minutes before the meeting was to begin. The second, April 14, was scheduled for the morning after the regular Wednesday night meeting. On Monday, April 11, Supervisor St. Lawrence notified the board members of the meeting. He then sat on the information until late in the afternoon of the day before the 11am meeting, when he had it faxed it to the newspapers. At these two meetings, protected from public scrutiny, St. Lawrence and his board passed nine resolutions that itemized $51,721,990.85 in new spending—much of it for the ballpark project which had been rejected by the public last fall.

The notice is sent Feb. 17, at 11:07 in the morning. The meeting is scheduled to start just 53 minutes from the time of the sending of this fax. The town decided a "reasonable time" for public notice was not seven days, not 72 hours—it was 53 minutes. That’s neither reasonable nor is it, we believe, even legal.

Somebody didn’t want the public at this meeting. Why they didn’t is revealed in the minutes of the meeting. Unfortunately, a FOIL request for those minutes took months to get because the official minutes for this particular meeting were not accepted by the supervisor and board until after one of the bonds approved at this meeting had appeared as a public offering on the IPREO Calendar. That bond offering appeared Monday, April 11. Only then were the minutes of this meeting, which had taken place two months before, accepted at an official board meeting and made available to the public. So, not only was the meeting hidden from the public, the meeting notes were kept from us until after the cat was out of the bag (i.e. after the $25m bond was already up for sale).

The minutes for the Feb. 17 meeting list only two resolutions. One is to make the Town (read taxpayers) the guarantor of a $13.5 million bond for St. Lawrence’s Elm Street Housing project. The second is a $20 million bond for work on Project Grand Slam (the ballpark). You might recall the last time this supervisor and board tried to pass a $16 million guarantee for a bond to fund the ballpark. The public forced a referendum vote and spoke in a unified voice with seventy percent of those voting rejecting the ballpark spending outright. That was also the moment when St. Lawrence created the fundamental lie upon which this entire project has been built: "The stadium will be built with private money," St. Lawrence vowed in The Journal News. "There will be no taxpayer dollars. I got the message."

There are serious unresolved questions surrounding this meeting’s legitimacy.

April 14, 2011
The second hidden board meeting took place on Thursday morning, April 14. There had been the regular town board meeting the night before, but apparently there were resolutions that were not meant for prime-time exposure, so a special meeting was called for the next morning. And again, there are serious issues with public notice for this meeting.

Notice this document says nothing about the items that will be considered. The phrase "New Business" is essentially meaningless in this context. As a contrast, the Police Commission agenda for this same meeting time had this as an agenda:

Pledge of Allegiance
Acceptance of Minutes—for Meeting 01/20/11
Public Comments
Agenda items: (Subject to change)
1. Annual Report (2010)
2. Update on Canine Program—Chief Brower
3. Fleet Management—Capt. Cokeley
4. Car larcenies, Monsey area—Det. Lt. Emma
Commissioners Comments

The Police Commission portion of the meeting, then, had an actual agenda. Kind of begs the question, Why does the Town Board typically avoid posting the items on its agenda?

According to the fax timestamp, it was sent Wednesday April 13 at 15:19—about 3:20 in the afternoon, close enough to the end of the business day to avoid much notice. The newspapers weren’t about to print this notice in time for general public exposure. Actually, the best chance the public had of getting this information would have been on the website, but a handwritten note on one of the FOILed documents indicates a receipt of the information by the IT Department at 5:18, two hours later. The note reads: "Town Web Site—Web 4/13/2011 5:18 pm."

Nothing much was done at the Wednesday night board meeting, but what happened under the category of "New Business" the next morning was a little scary—about $15 million taxpayer dollars worth of scary.

Here are short descriptions of the resolutions that were not on the Wednesday regular meeting, but were saved for the 11am special meeting the next day.:

RESOLUTION NO. 2011-287
This piece of work is a legally dubious do-over vote. Originally, the land transfer of public land at the ballpark site from the taxpayers to St. Lawrence’s Local Development Corporation was opposed by Withers and Ullman but approved by St. Lawrence, Friedman, and Hunter. It’s also currently being challenged in court as part of the lawsuit against the ballpark. Well, this new resolution claims, "While the allegation questioning the validity of the [original] Resolution has been vehemently denied and is, in the opinion of our counsel, without merit, the board, nevertheless, wishes to avoid any appearance of impropriety in the action." So, out of public sight, they vote again to give the land away at no cost to St. Lawrence’s development company, only this time St. Lawrence abstains, and Withers votes for the transfer. Ullman was not present at the meeting so the do-over was 3-0 in favor. And they say it’s the right thing to do in order to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Yes, a group that gives a 50-minute notification for a public meeting and then secretly votes $33 million in new debt for the residents is sensitive to the perception of impropriety. The sensitivity of this group is to daylight, not to any chafing from impropriety.

RESOLUTION NO. 2011-288

This is a new $10 million bond "to pay a portion of the costs of construction, widening and resurfacing of roads, streets, and parking lots, embellishing parks, playgrounds and recreational areas. . .at various locations in and for said town." Hmm, let’s see. The parking lots have to be built at the ballpark site, and Fireman’s Memorial Drive has to be widened to accommodate increased traffic for the ballpark, and the streets in and out have to be paved, and it is a recreational area. So, how much of this $10 million will be spent at the ballpark site? It doesn’t say, and some think that lack of specificity would make this resolution improper. But it’s another $10 million to be dragged out of the taxpayers. Some think this will also become part of a slush fund to make all kinds of repairs and improvements just before the election this November. St. Lawrence and Friedman will be running as well as a second council seat with Fran Hunter stepping down.

RESOLUTION NO. 2011-289

This one’s kind of ominous. Remember the other "state-of-the-art" sports facility called the Joseph T. St. Lawrence Center built by the town? Well, this resolution is a change order that brings the total "for the repair of the football turf field" at the Center to $512,005.71. This facility is not even producing the kind of revenues that will pay for its own upkeep and repairs. Like that other money pit, the horse stable, this sports center has become just another albatross that this administration has hung around the necks of the taxpayers. To repeat this business model for Project Grand Slam (current cost to build approx. $60 to $70million) will be a disaster for taxpayers. There already is the liability of the league’s history (failure rate of 73% of all teams in Can-Am history), and to marinate that with the Supervisor’s business acumen puts the Ramapo taxpayer in one stinking economic stew.

RESOLUTION NO. 2011-290

This is an additional charge (cost overrun) from Turco Golf for work on the ballpark grounds: "Installation of additional stone and stabilized field subgrade, slot drain change, differential at warning track, snow removal, stabilization fabric, frost removal"—cost to taxpayers is $263,009.21. Cost overruns from Turco for ballpark work has now gone from $1,821,852.80 to $2,084,862.01. Withers not only voted to approve, he moved this motion. St. Lawrence’s lie about no taxpayer’s funds spent at the ballpark? Well, the lie continues to grow.

RESOLUTION NO. 2011-291

Approve payment of cost overrun (from $119,500 to $173,000) to John Collins Engineers, PC, "for the design of roadway improvements and traffic lights with respect to Fireman’s Memorial Drive Recreation Facility (aka the Project Grand Slam ballpark). The resolution did not list the Source of Funds—some part of some town budget line.

RESOLUTION NO. 2011-292

Two more cost overruns for Morano Bros. of $365,924.85 and $287,859.34 for erosion control, stone, removal of unsuitable soils, survey and layout of parking lot lighting, etc. The text doesn’t mention the ballpark, but the source of funds is from a Fireman’s Memorial Drive budget line. Morano has several contracts for ballpark work. These two cost overruns bring the costs for this work from $1,990,546.67 to $2,644,330.86 (taxpayer dollars).

RESOLUTION NO. 2011-293

More cost overruns from Morano for work at the ballpark. These two are pretty big: $1,030,250.29 for "Bridge wing walls, snow removal, frost removal, utilities excavation"; and $712,941.45 for "Erosion control, unsuitable soils stockpile management, excavation for other trades, importing stone." These overruns boost the cost of this Morano contract from $9,286,119.37 to $11,029,311.11.

RESOLUTION NO. 2011-294

Finally, the last resolution doesn’t have to do with more money for the ballpark. No. 294 offers a favorable opinion on a Spring Valley restaurant’s application for a liquor license.

The Reasons for the Hidden Meetings
Add up the new millions for St. Lawrence’s ballpark and the reason for these two secretive meetings becomes clear. To flaunt this list of new bonds and cost overruns at one of the regular evening board meetings would have been very difficult for St. Lawrence. How many times can you just grimace and look away after someone asks, "I thought you said no taxpayer dollars were going into this." And it now becomes an embarrassment for board members Pat Withers and Itzy Ullman as well who, apparently, have decided to drop their pledge to support the taxpayers who voted down any public money for this fiasco. They are now voting to allow residents to pick up the construction costs for the ballpark. As for the other two board members, Fran Hunter has voted to approve every new cost to the taxpayers with no regard for anything other than her loyalty to St. Lawrence. Daniel Friedman has recently been making a lot of noise about how he would like to cut costs in the fire districts and at town hall, but he also has voted for all these construction costs to be loaded onto the residents. Perhaps there’s a lack of moral depth to understand the hypocritical disjuncture of these two positions. Or maybe it’s just because he doesn’t pay taxes—still living at home with the folks.

Toxic Thursdays
So, are the supervisor and board members going to have to repeat this pathetic charade of minimal or no notice at all every time they are confronted with a list of resolutions they want to hide from the public? Maybe not, for at the last town board meeting (Wed. April 27) they decided to institutionalize the "dark Thursday" venue for regular meetings. They have added a third meeting each month, so now in addition to the Wednesday meetings at 8pm, they will meet once a month on a Thursday, during the day when most of the taxpayers are at work. 

Yes, I know, it sounds a little like that genius engineering crew that decided for the safety of their astronauts they would have them make their landing on the sun at night rather than during daylight. The power of the Freedom of Information Legislation can shine a light into whatever back office our brave crew might want to retire to. If they close the door for their meetings on Thursday, you and your neighbors should submit a FOIL for copies of every resolution made during that meeting.

A Closing Footnote
A few weeks ago, during a hearing about the Preserve Ramapo lawsuit against the ballpark, Judge Linda Jamieson asked town attorney Michael Klein whether the February 17 meeting was given proper notice. That was the meeting where the $25 million ballpark bond was passed. The exchange in the transcript reads: "Court asked the Town, ‘Is there any way anybody could have found about the February 17th meeting?’" (Apr. 11, 2011 Tr. at 15).

Counsel for the Town responded: ‘Yes, your Honor, it was noticed . . . It was not hidden. It was a public meeting. Anybody who is entitled to be there it was noticed and it was attended by all five board members.’"

Klein did not tell the judge the notice was withheld until 53 minutes before the meeting was to begin. And he was not asked what the state law defining "reasonable notice" means.

Since that hearing, our attorneys have provided the court with the details of what the town did to keep that meeting out of public sight. When the court responds, we will publish Jamieson’s comments here.