Critical Condemnation/ Eminent Domain Meeting June 24 at Town Hall

Next Tuesday, June 24 at 7:00PM the Town of Prattsburgh has planned a special meeting at the Town Hall. They are inviting the school boards, SCIDA and UPC/First Wind to meet with them in executive session to try to resolve the lawsuits. When they come out of executive session they plan to vote on the "Determination of Findings" concerning eminent domain. The Determination is being written by our Town attorney, John Leyden, who is also the attorney for SCIDA, the lead agent for this wind farm project.

Our understanding is that if they vote to accept the determination, then they will have to approach the landowners to try to pay for the easements. If the offers are rejected, then the Town Board will go to a judge, show that they have tried to buy the easements and ask for permission to condemn the properties. Once the landowners are notified of condemnation, there will be 30 days to appeal.

We learned at this past Tuesday’s Town Board meeting (June 17) that the town received 70 written comments, in addition to those presented at the public hearing itself. There are over 100 pages in the transcript of the meeting alone. A big thank you goes to everyone who took the time to make your opinions be known.

There are a lot of unknowns about this meeting. At this time we don't know whether the school boards will accept the invitation, so it could conceivably turn out that they will not be in executive session for that long. They did say, however, that they are committed to voting next week, and for this reason it will be good for people to be there for this vote. Please come prepared to wait comfortably until they let us in. A Board member suggested that the meeting be in a bigger place, but Town Supervisor Harold McConnell vetoed this, so it is unclear whether they will move the meeting if the crowd is large.

We will try to send out last minute e-mails on Tuesday, June 24, if things change. A video of the June 17 Town Board meeting will be posted on this website shortly. Please see Ruthe Matilsky’s report below on the meeting, the town supervisor’s rant and his failure to condemn violence at the meeting.