To the editor:
As I read the letter to the editor from L. Orcutt, I was compelled to respond. Normally I restrain from replying and getting into a debate that splits our community, business vs. residential. First, let me inform everyone that we are fortunate, in a time where most municipalities don’t have all volunteer boards, the village of Fayetteville does.
We have planning, zoning, historic preservation, parks, tree, deer, recreation and senior center. All these boards/commissions are served by village residents who give their time and talent to help the village they live in and love. They do this because they want to help and make the Fayetteville community better by doing their part. They are not killers of business; look at our village. We have a vibrant business climate and it is getting better.
Our village is one of the few villages that has to have monthly planning board meetings due to all the commercial development going on. There is even more in the planning phases. Is it frustrating and cumbersome sometimes? Yes, I would agree, but that doesn’t mean that they are inflexible and not understanding. All of our boards try to work with the residents as well as commercial businesses to make it work, but there are laws and rules to follow and these laws and rules protect all that live and work in our village.
Pastificio is a good business, we are glad to have them in our community, but you don’t have the whole story. When the building was sold from the cigar store to Pascale’s, they came to the planning board to get approval to operate the new business. They said they were going to take care of certain items in their site plan application and that if there were problems they would come back and fix them.
To date, they have not fixed three very large issues that have come up. Pastificio didn’t create these issues but is caught in the unfortunate circumstance that their landlord continues to ignore the issues of the original site plan application. The neighbors’ concerns are real, they have lived in the neighborhood for over 20 years, they have seen their neighborhood grow into a blossoming area, and these neighbors also have to live with these realities of this day in and day out. So what is the planning board to do after all these issues are ignored by the landlord? They do the right thing and give the extension, amid concerns from the neighbors, but then they put conditions to make sure the original complaints are dealt with. To me, this is pro-business as well as residential-friendly planning. L. Orcutt’s assumptions about our boards are absolutely not correct.
L. Orcutt, you are correct about one thing. We are always looking for new people to serve on our all-volunteer boards. For that comment, thank you. I hope any and all village residents will reach out and let me know about their interest in serving on any of these important boards.
Thank you for taking time to read this and to all our board members for your service to our community.
Mark Olson
Mayor of Fayetteville