Planning Board is down by three

MILLERTON — The village Planning Board lost three of its five members Monday night. Chairman Thia Tarrab and members Nancy Brusie and Diane Cawley all submitted letters of resignation to the Village Board at its monthly business meeting.

"There was a lack of respect for us as individuals and a lack of respect for our ability and intelligence as a board," said Tarrab, moments after she and Brusie left an executive session with the Village Board. "How can you operate as a board when you’ve got the board that appointed you mocking you? How can you foster goodwill?"

But Mayor John Scutieri said that he was unaware of any hostility between the two boards.

"I’m just a little surprised and a little taken aback about the lack of respect they think they were given. I’m quite puzzled," he said Tuesday morning. "I don’t know what lack of respect they’re claiming. I’m still as confused today as I was last night; it wasn’t explained to me so I understood it."

Scutieri said he believed that much of the friction was probably the result of the village’s search for a Planning Board secretary.

"I think there was a lack of information in the last few weeks of the hiring of a Planning Board secretary, of which there was only one applicant. They were under the misunderstanding that there were several applicants and there were not," Scutieri said. "There were three, but two people withdrew their applications."

Nevertheless, Brusie said it was the way the village handled the hiring of the Planning Board secretary that stirred her ire.

"The Village Board said they would solicit Thia’s and my input in hiring a new secretary, and we assumed there would be a job description and we would be involved in the whole interview process. Neither of us were," Brusie said, adding that both she and Tarrab have worked as Planning Board secretaries for the town of North East. "Rather than come to us they just ignored us, which I thought was very inappropriate and unprofessional."

Brusie said if the board had come to her and Tarrab, perhaps the three applicants would have remained interested, instead of two of them removing themselves from the interviewing process.

"There’s just this grandiose control thing going on," Tarrab said.

Village Board members disagreed, and said that they care less about control than they do about running their boards with people who want to serve the public.

"I have definitely not witnessed the Village Board ever being inappropriate to the Planning Board," Scutieri said, adding that he will now be on the lookout for interested parties to step forward for the Planning Board positions. "We need somebody who likes to be involved with the community and likes to see the community grow in a positive way. As long as they can remain neutral on any issue, we’re interested in talking with them."

The three resigned members stressed that they were neutral in their letters of resignation.

"I would like people to know that I’ve been on the Planning Board since I’ve moved to this community six years ago," Tarrab said. "I am truly sad that I have to leave. It’s a shame that this new board is always claiming to be here for everyone, but they’re not here for their own board."

Tarrab mentioned that earlier this year, board members and she herself were pursued to nominate a specific individual as Planning Board chair. She also claimed that the Village Board all but condoned disrespectful remarks to be made by one Planning Board member to the others. And there were other incidents she called "tangible actions" that contributed to her resignation.

"This isn’t sour grapes. I’m walking away because the Village Board isolates us and makes us feel like we’re spinning our wheels," she added. "And I just want the community to know that I didn’t do this to them, or walk away from the affordable housing application. There’s just no way to be productive in an adversarial environment."

"I am walking away from the housing project, because it’s overwhelming and improperly done," Brusie said. "There was no starting point and I think the Village Board didn’t know how to handle the application when it first came to them." She said there were other reasons she resigned, too. "There’s more to life than volunteering your time and then going and being beat up by people who should respect you, and that includes members of the audience as well."

"I think the board was surprised and disappointed, but I think that it was a good time for them to resign if three people are going to do that at once, because there’s nothing before us at this minute," village Trustee Anne Veteran said. "And we still have two experienced people on our board, so we just have to rebuild our board.

"I think each of these people made a commitment to sit on the board for X amount of time and they chose not to fulfill their obligations, so in that sense I suppose it is a disservice to the community," Veteran added. "But is it going to paralyze the village? Absolutely not."

Anyone who is interested in joining the village Planning Board should contact the mayor or a village trustee, or the village clerk.