The Baymack Team

Dump the Committee

To the Editor:

The current Mayor’s St Paul’s Committee should be eliminated.

I am responding to a full-page ad placed by the Mayor’s Committee in the GC News on March 24th, 2023. The purpose of the ad was to encourage the new Mayor and Trustees to continue to interact with the current Committee. The ad lists many things that they did. However, the Committee never reached consensus and was not able to reach a conclusion. Therefore the leadership should be replaced.

On Feb 25,2022 Mayor Veneziale wrote the following in the GC News. “As the Mayor’s Committee continues, we welcome all helpful, constructive advice as well as other recommendations from our residents as ‘We Strive to Preserve’ our truly unique, historic treasure”.

The Committee was formed to research and come up with a two question referendum. The Committee did not do this. They spent a lot of time doing research but never achieved their stated goal. The Committee received many ideas and recommendations for various scenarios and should have narrowed it down to one plan to be provided to Westerman to use for their cost estimate. Instead of this, the Mayor’s committee decided to use suggestions from one citizen and two trustees as the basis for Westerman to use.

This Committee was formed and controlled by the Mayor and for several months he would not let Trustees attend the committee meetings. He named Brian Deveney and Robert Schoelle as co-chairs of this group and several sub-committees were formed. Frank McDonough was Chair of the Programmatic Use Subcommittee. Frank stated that he would not submit any plans that were not “affordable”. He never defined affordable. Every piece of advertising and literature put out or discussed at the various town hall meetings was slanted toward restoration.

Let the new Mayor and Trustees take control of all information, mailings and town meetings so that the residents get accurate unbiased information. It’s time for a new start. New committees led by new Chairs. Let’s focus on “affordable”. What % tax increase is acceptable? Would you be ok with a 5%, 10% or 20% increase. Just to remind you, GC taxes have gone up about 2% a year over the past few years.

Robert Wolff St.

Paul’s cost comparisons

To the Editor:

The article in the GC News, “Board Discusses St. Paul’s Construction Cost Estimates” dated March 23rd offered a limited explanation on Facadism and Demolition. It does not explain to Village residents the full potential costs of Façadism and Demolition as evaluated by Westerman and the Committee Report.

The Facadism Options are highly complex and costly. The first step of any Facadism plan is to create a structure that resembles a Hollywood set with nothing behind it for $46mm.

The next step for Facadism includes Westerman’s cost estimates for two possible structures behind the facade: one, a new building, per the 2012 Erwin & Bielinski Report, or the second, a covered turf athletic field. Westerman estimates that a new building behind the Facade would cost an additional $60mm and a covered turf field with a “Moynihan Station Atrium Styled Roof” would cost approximately $80+mm.

Combining the cost of the initial Facade with one of the two building options (new building or turf field) results in two facade options: an initial façade cost of $46mm, plus $60mm for a new building ($106mm total—for a design based off of the 2012 Erwin & Bielinski Report) or plus $80mm for a covered turf field ($126mm total).

In the Westerman report, Demolition was estimated at $18mm with minimal landscaping. However, adding a more fully developed “Central-Park-styled”

See page 26