New Rochelle, NY—On Monday November 4th, the day before the Election I saw this shady character with Forest City Echo Bay Mailers and a petition sheet talking to commuters at the New Rochelle Metro North station. When I asked him how much he was getting paid to be there he sardonically responded "a lot". Well as you can guess that did not go over well with me. I made sure to loudly and publicly expose him as an agent of Forest City, the notoriously corrupt development company that was involved in bribery scandals with local politicians and also contributed heavily to Noam Bramson’s failed County Executive campaign.
According to the United Citizens for a Better New Rochelle Facebook page they received an email from another resident who had an interaction with this guy:
“Representatives from Forest City were at the New Rochelle train station (11/4) asking people to sign a petition for the Echo Bay project. They were handing out the mail piece that was sent to some of us. When I asked if they knew about the project and what it meant to New Rochelle, the young man replied he was learning about it as he went along.”
Today he was spotted again by residents at the Train Station . It appears Forest City has New Ro in its sights. Bramson is wasting little time and will attempt to ram through Echo Bay by the end of the year as promised. In Fact the Echo Bay project is on the Agenda for this coming Tuesday!
The Following Items are Specifically related to Echo Bay
1) Adoption of Findings
2) Amendments to Zoning Code
3) Amendments to Urban Renewal Plan
4) Authorization of the Land Disposition Agreement
Noam Bramson and Forest City are attempting to manufacture consent by getting signatures of commuters who may or may not live in New Rochelle, and may not be aware of the details of the project or it’s widespread opposition.
Most people will sign anything, in fact there have been prank petitions asking people to ban water, repeal the Bill of Rights, and install an Orwellian Nazi style police state in the United States. People in the spoofs signed the petition while explicitly being told that the petitions would strip them of their rights, but they happily signed them anyways.
Now think about how the average uninformed person will react when presented with the fantasy Echo Bay mailers and fed forest city’s propaganda on how marvelous their Echo Bay development will be? Half asleep and stressed out commuters would gladly sign the petition just to get the guy out of their faces so they can go about their day.
They can not possibly make an informed decision in those few minutes in the cold morning hours at the train platform. This is a desperate attempt to make it appear as though there is strong support for the project when in fact city wide opposition is overwhelming as evidenced by over 1000 “Stop Echo Bay” signs in front lawns from every corner of the city, and which was recently mentioned during the News12 County Executive debate. I guess counting heads matters to Bramson when it can benefit him and his corrupt developer pals!
If you see this guy or anyone else collecting petitions for Forest City at the train station or around New Rochelle make sure you also publicly and loudly expose what he is doing; deceiving people to support a corporate welfare project. One that will bring massive profits to a corrupt developer by taking money out of the pockets of New Rochelle residents. Make sure you do so civilly and with facts, don’t forget to refer your fellow citizens to go to EchoBayfacts.com when you confront him. When I did it he ran away like a cockroach after being exposed to the light. We cannot allow ourselves to be Forest City’s next victim, we have fought too hard to doze off now.
Now is the time to contact your council representative and express your opposition and if they are for the project, remind them that the results of this election prove heads DO COUNT! Remain vigilant!!
