By ANTHONY R. BORRELLO
After reading the letters and comments over the past month on Forestville's issues, I just needed to put this in for your thoughts.
Forestville residents, are you happy now? You must be, due to the fact that you managed to decimate most of your village officials in under a year.
Let's start with the mayor. Did he make some mistakes? Probably.
Did he deserve to be attacked constantly? No.
When he ran for re-election, I did not see any of you running against him, so you must have been happy with his job.
He ran for mayor when no one else wanted it, to try and help the village, but when he did anything he was attacked for being wrong. Again, where were you when the mayor's job opened up? If you have all the answers, why did you not run? I will tell you why. You wouldn't do that job for the pay and grief you would have to put up with seven days a week. At least he attempted to do something.
Now, let's look at the supervisor's job. He moved into your village, purchased property, improved it to help make the village better. His wife thought enough about your village to open a business and also help the tax base.
He accepted a job that took a lot of time and effort to do, for a mediocre pay and did it gladly. He walked into a water system that was already in trouble and did the best he could to keep it running. He plowed your streets, mowed your lawns, worked constantly on bad water lines, worked with the people putting a new water source into service, and what was his thanks? Attacks.
Where were you when he was up at 2 a.m. repairing broken lines, keeping your streets open so you could get to work or school in the mornings? Sleeping, of course, because you knew it would get done.
How many of you have a CDL license, could operate a dump truck, backhoe and loader, run a snowplow, be a plumber, etc.?
Well, the job was open, so why didn't you apply? You had all the answers. You didn't apply because there was no way you would work for that salary. Some of you complaining make more working 40 hours a week and would never do what he did for that money. But you were there for the attacks.
You wondered why he would not go to the meetings. My feeling is would you have gone, if no matter what you said, it would not be right? From some of the past articles, you were mad at him because he bought a new truck, and someone spoke up that he did not talk to you on the street when he was working. You complained about the water being dirty. Well guess what, it's been dirty for 50 years. He didn't make it any worse.
I would like to know if any of you would have showed up knowing you would be judged guilty before the trial?
Lastly, let's look at the OBSERVER's part in this mess.
I always thought a newspaper's job was to report the news, not be part of it. This paper threw more fuel on the fire than anyone else with their so-called opinions. Almost every week there was some comment on the state of affairs in Forestville. You complained about the meetings, a lot about salaries and everything that they did wrong.
Did the village make errors? Yes, but as you can see around here, most of them do, but this paper seems to have a sore spot for Forestville and I do not know why. So why don't you just report the news and let the people fix their own problems. They don't need you to help.
It's too bad the majority of the people in Forestville did not speak up for these two people, that again, a few caused enough trouble to put another village in disarray.
Anthony R. Borrello is a Silver Creek resident.
