Way back in October 2014, I first reported about what was going on between the village, the sale of a parcel of land that had been previously used as de facto park land to a group of private citizens (the Franklin Court Mews LLC) and the seemingly behind-closed-doors manner in which this business had been conducted. With the erection of a six-foot high wrought-iron fence (in clear violation of existing building department statutes), that featured locked gates with keys only going to the select pay-for-play families that had been selectively invited to join the afore-mentioned collective, it didn’t take long for disenfranchised citizens in that neighborhood to mobilize and start questioning the impropriety of the whole situation. In the past few months, the FOIL (Freedom Of Information Law) has been invoked, petitions have been sent to local representatives (including Garden City’s own Sen. Kemp Hannon) and now there is the possibility that the village board of trustees violated the New York State Open Meetings Law which reads, “‘The official convening of a public body for the purpose of conducting public business.’ As such, when a quorum (a majority of the membership of a public body) gathers for the purpose of discussing public business, the meeting must be convened open to the public, whether or not there is an intent to take action and regardless of the manner in which the gathering may be characterized.” Throw in a race for mayor between current trustee Dennis Donnelly and Deputy Mayor Nicholas Episcopia (both of whom reside in the Eastern Property section of Garden City, where Franklin Court is located) and local village politics looks to be going down some interesting paths this early in 2015.
—Dave Gil de Rubio
