This is the statement I was planning to read at the last Village Board meeting on Tuesday. I decided against it for two reasons. The mayor right from the start seemed visibly annoyed and irritated so I didn’t want to provoke his anger because I felt that that would have been counterproductive.

At the same time, I knew that had I spoken, I would have had to include in my statement my strong objection to the restrictions he had just imposed to our free speech. It is my opinion that in doing so he violated our First Amendment rights. To be clear; the “public portion” part of the meeting where members of the public are given the opportunity to speak, is not a right given by law. It is within the powers of the mayor to suspend it at will for whatever reason.

If, however, there is a public portion the mayor cannot selectively ban topics arbitrarily. He could have advised the board members not to publicly discuss the specifics of the new lawsuit. I believe, however, that he overstepped his authority by miles when he attempted to restrict the ability of the public to do so and even more when he included in the restrictions any discussion of the reservoir or Save Our Reservoir.

My statement was as follows:

“(Tuesday) morning the mayor went to the radio station presumably to discuss the new lawsuit. He said he was disappointed and sounded pretty angry. During the discussion he said a few things that caught my attention. He said that the previous lawsuit cost the taxpayers roughly $32,883. Although he chose not to mention the particulars, the implication was that those who initiated that lawsuit were responsible for that expense. Not quite. If a state police officer gives you a ticket because you were going 90 mph on the Thruway and you had to pay a fine, you don’t get to go around accusing that officer of costing you $500. It was obviously your fault. You violated the law, you had to pay for that violation.

It was exactly the same scenario with that lawsuit. The Board did not follow the law when they chose to pass a resolution to dismantle the water system and the reservoir without taking the appropriate steps required by New York state. Namely, they needed a study of all possible environmental, financial and social consequences their chosen act could have had. It’s called SEQR and it’s something like “call before you dig”.

The study wasn’t done, the mayor allowed the resolution to go forward and at the end the only action left was to file a public lawsuit and let the court decide. State Supreme Court Judge ruled in our favor, vacated the entire resolution, and send them back to the drawing board with specific instructions. We did not cost the village taxpayers a single dime. If anyone is responsible for this almost $33,000 expense is the board. They violated the law and the taxpayers footed the bill.

In discussing the current lawsuit, the Mayor said, among other things, that it will ultimately cost taxpayers as much as $8 million to $13 million due to a possible loss of grant funding from the State. I don’t really know why he said that as I am sure he understands that without a complete and appropriately done SEQR the grant application will probably be dismissed.

Finally, in what I personally regard as the lowest point of his discussion, the mayor urged the taxpayers to step up and speak out against the three Fredonia residents who had the audacity to question the board’s actions even though, once again, the board did not follow state law, Village law, local law, or the judge’s instructions. Talk about dividing the people you are supposed to unite and lead.

Many questions are still unanswered. For example; The water filtration plant right now processes about a million gallons of water a day. If we dismantle it, what will we do with an additional 1,000,000 gallons of water a day? The reservoir was built in part to alleviate floods that used to happen quite often. How can we make sure this will not happen again? Would we need to maintain the dam? Who will pay for it? To this moment we have no answers and no relevant information from anyone on this topic.

Lastly, a few words about the petition you, no doubt, have expected. The purpose of the petition was to force a public vote on borrowing up to $17,500,000 in order to start your “water project”. The reason, however, was that after you raised taxes by 56%, the water rate by 60%, and even the sewer rate we don’t completely trust your financial decisions.

Some of you conceitedly announced that we would need at least 1,000 signatures to force a referendum. That is not correct. Based on state law and the number of voters who participated at the last general village election, the actual number is 378. The 300 signatures I brought to you before were nor adequate, you never even spared a single minute to mention them.

In truth you don’t need anybody’s signature to order a public vote, it is within your power to do it and show all of us that you actually care, even slightly, for our opinion or our willingness to carry all that extra debt. After all, we are the ones that will have to pay it back.”

Athanasia Landis is former mayor and current Fredonia resident.