Letters to the Editor March 9

Posted 3/8/17

Zoning laws that protect us under threat As a resident of this town I feel my civil rights are being tested. Narrowsburg has zoning laws, laws, and regulations that shape this town. Special-use …

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Letters to the Editor March 9

Posted

Zoning laws that protect us under threat

As a resident of this town I feel my civil rights are being tested. Narrowsburg has zoning laws, laws, and regulations that shape this town. Special-use permits allow town officials to shape a project with respect to the districts as far as density and rural characteristics. This is something the comprehensive plan of our town indicates. I feel that the planning board allowing a 10-family apartment complex to be built in a low-density district on a single-family plot disregards many of our town laws. We now know proper time to appeal is after a permit is issued by the code enforcer.

After requesting an appeal to the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) for an interpretation of zoning laws concerning the legal allowances of this project, we were denied by the ZBA chairman Neil Latkowski, twice. Our lawyer has confirmed we have the right to appeal. The New York Law states, “Anyone who could be ‘aggrieved’ by the decision or action of the enforcement officer, has standing to take an appeal before the ZBA.”

We are putting this situation before our town board members on March 14 at 6:30 p.m.

I would like our town officials to follow town zoning laws as well as our comprehensive plan. Please come in support of town and state laws that protect rural areas.

Here is a link to a letter generated by our legal counsel, which gives perspective on the issues, making this easy to understand: https://tinyurl.com/zsjfdzx.

Wanda Gangel

Narrowsburg, NY

We are all immigrants

The heart-breaking images of refugees fleeing conflicts around the world has long flooded and numbed our sense of humanity. World leaders have run out of options in dealing with the overwhelming crisis flaring up in all continents. Some people stop watching the news. Some travel to refugee camps and volunteer their aid. We here in Northeast PA can reach out and in our own little way assist the families who are new to this country, under the care of The Church of the Mediator in Allentown and other charitable organizations in Scranton. 

Unless you can trace your roots back to Native Americans, we are all immigrants and descendants of immigrants. Once refugees, the families from Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Eritrea, and Myanmar in Allentown are now immigrants just like us. Having gone through the rigorous multi-year vetting process, they have been accepted by our government as full members of the American family. Like our ancestors who first came, they may not speak the native language with fluency, or know the local customs, but they are now our neighbors. They are refugees no more, because they have now found their home, our American home. Based on our values of justice, respect and equality, let us give them a warm welcome.

Reggie Cheong-Leen

Milford, PA

Déjà vu

Since the inauguration of your president (not mine), we keep getting a daily dose of toxic information in the form of tweets and executive orders (25 to date) that dismantle existing environmental, banking and other critical regulations that protect us. At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, former Goldman Sachs banker and Breitbart News board member, spoke of “the deconstruction of the administrative state,” which really means the destruction of our governmental agencies as we now know them. Deconstruction began the day Trump sat down at his desk on January 20, nominating people to his cabinet posts who were handpicked to destroy those very agencies. Billionaires and corporations have officially taken over our government. Is this what you voted for? I guess you did.

Wake up America, this scenario was already rearing its ugly head back in 1980 when David Koch of Koch Industries ran as Vice President of the Libertarian Party with a platform that proclaimed it would abolish Medicare, Medicaid, repeal Social Security, abolish and privatize the Postal Service, repeal minimum wage laws, end the public school system, privatize the national highway system and oppose all government welfare relief projects and aid-to-the-poor programs. Now that the Tea Party conservative agenda rules Congress they have been advocating dismantling the EPA, IRS and weakening unions—exactly what the Republicans and the Tea Party have been salivating about over the past eight years.

Another issue brought up by Bannon at CPAC was “the corporate globalist media,” which Trump has described as “the press is the enemy of the people.” He now selectively bans critical members of the media from attending his press conferences. Many of us have lived through this before, and it was called “Watergate.” Déjà vu all over again. If only we could see the same outcome in the form of resignation or full-blown impeachment.

John Hahn

Shohola, PA

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