Chatham's Inbox Is Now Your Inbox

The town takes a stab at transparency, let’s see how they tackle accountability.

Is democracy alive? Sometimes I wonder, but in Chatham, this month, a pulse.

The action is on the town website, of all places. Transparency has arrived, and my well placed sources tell me the delivery was not painless. Not everyone in Town Hall enjoys having the curtains pulled back. Some people decorate better in the dark.

Still. Progress is progress.

The new gambit: every letter to the board, posted online for all to see. Per Beth Anne, “This change is intended to provide residents with greater access to information reviewed by Town Board members. Correspondence may include letters, emails, petitions, comments, and other written communications received by the Town relating to municipal business.”

So far only June is up, which makes sense because that's the start of Projet Transparence. The coming months are listed, which counts as a promise. There are four letters. Let’s open them together.

Letter one: a new grandfather thanking Donal and Tammy for connecting him with a gently used three-wheel jogger. Bravo for the Free Store. Even I can’t complain about that.

Letter two: a citizen worried the town ignores its seniors, who make up more than 20 percent of the population. Her concerns are valid and deserve more than a polite filing.

Which brings us to letters three and four. Fully half of Chatham’s June correspondence fixated on one subject: Bashford Road.

Four letters. History will note the revolution began quietly. But the question they keep asking has yet to be answered.

One writer put it plainly: “First is the lack of transparency around what I can only call the Bashford Road situation. We deserve to know what’s going on, and so far the board has failed us in that regard. I hope that the next board meeting will include this in the agenda. All of you work for the people of the town and we deserve full disclosure of this and other matters which affect us.”

The other went further: “Finally, the elephant in the room. I know I’m not the only citizen who reads The Powell House Express* and his continuing series on what he calls ‘The Wine Wars.’ He describes what appears to be a large can of worms that could land the town in a lot of hot water, depending how the problem is resolved. It seems to me to be a major problem, and yet it has never been on an agenda nor discussed publicly by the board. Why is that? How serious does such an issue that involves conflicts of interest, playing fast and loose with what constitutes ‘agriculture’ in the town, and the rights of neighbors who live on a dirt road in a district zoned residential? What are we waiting for?”

Dear reader, you are not alone. “The Wine Wars” has clocked thousands of hits. So the question stands, and I’ll repeat it: when, exactly, will this matter be addressed in public?

Because the story is not just the renegade vintner who, with a wink from Collins (a generous word for it), got his 1 percent vineyard into a NYS Agricultural District on an imaginative application. A designation that has now castrated the planning board, leaving it little power to rein in the Bashford Kardashians. But the vineyard isn't the story either. It's the conflict of interest. That's the part people can't stop chewing on.

The other letter raised an older ghost. “My other ask is for a resolution to be drawn up prohibiting members of the same family or household to serve on the board at the same time. As this has already occurred in the recent past it’s clearly not a theoretical issue, but one we should address in advance of it happening in the future. No matter who is involved, family members should never make up 2/5 of the board.”

Ah yes. That.

According to well-placed sources on the red side of the Powell House Press readership, the county Republicans already handled this one, quietly, because of a certain person's performances at town board meetings. The party's fear: that brand of "leadership" would send voters running. The spin was back pain. The reality was the boot.

They’re Chatham’s red version of the Clintons, toxic enough that residents now want the arrangement outlawed by resolution. PTSD, I’m told, every time this person joins a committee. Hard to argue.

So bravo, truly, to the town for posting the letters. Transparency: check. Now let’s see about accountability and ethics, the harder rooms to light.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting on my FOIL request to Ag and Markets to learn whether Falcon Crest East, AKA Fox Hill Estate and Vineyard, muscles its way onto Bashford Road after all. If it does, you’ll know exactly whom to thank. Your town supervisor.

For those wishing to write in to the town and have their missives shared publicly, as they should be, the address is Chatham@chathamnewyork.gov

*While I like The Powell House Express, that’s a quote not a typo.

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