Скачать или смотреть INCREDIBLE: CB 2, 6 & 8 Information Hiding Meeting with Forest City Ratner and ESDC

No plans presented, little information shared. That pretty much sums up Community Boards 2, 6, and 8's "informational meeting" on July 22, 2009 with Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin, ESDC Senior Counsel Steve Matlin, and the usual crowd of Eminent Domain Abuse loving hecklers. Now the public is expected to comment on changes they are still in the dark about at a series of public hearings on July 29th and 30th. THEN the new plans will be released in September!

ESDC Counsel Joe Petillo provided perhaps the only useful information of the night when he described what the ESDC was prepared to do to evict people who will try to stay in their homes when the ESDC siezes them, under Eminent Domain, to give to a private corporation, Forest City Ratner, in order to build a money-losing stadium with taxpayer dollars. When asked if he disputed a New York City study showing the stadium would lose money ESDC Senior Counsel Steve Matlin outrageously claimed that the ESDC does not study individual parts of its projects, only the whole thing. Huh?

Cash-strapped Forest City Ratner sent MaryAnne Gilmartin, who basically said FCR is a big, old company (like General Motors) and it is not anything to worry about that its stock dropped 90% this year. And even though she was in front of a microphone, actually whispered to Steve Matlin that she was "not going to answer" questions about how much cash FCR spent on Frank Gehry's unused designs. (FCR paid Frank Gehry to design Atlantic Yards, and then dumped him and his designs). Matiln stepped up by saying "no public money was used" as if a company that is taking public money has no responsibility to the public. Um, when public money offsets a private project's financing, you can't say that any part of the project is unsubsidized. And who whispers in front of a microphone?

MaryAnne Gilmartin's second biggest display of her disdain for the audience's intelligence came when she said FCR would seek no more public money, and then said that the project deserved stimulus funds (public money, the last time we checked) because it was "shovel ready," (despite ongoing lawsuits.)

The public got to see how FCR and the ESDC can tag-team the double-talk. These are highly paid professionals who seem to have at least a B.S. in B.S., setting up the public to comment on plans they refuse to release until after the comment period is safely over.

Why not move the hearing on the project revisions until AFTER the revisions have been released? I'm sure these slicksters would have a long-winded answer for that, too.