Our friends over at the political watchdog group Cause of Action has issued a statement on the recent news regarding Mayor’s concession on the Echo Bay Project. The statement reads as follows:
“Cause of Action, a government accountability group, found that Forest City Residential Group and its Echo Bay project consultants used political contributions and lobbyists to try to get a sweetheart deal from the taxpayers of New Rochelle. Now Forest City’s Echo Bay project has been rejected by the citizens and elected officials in New Rochelle. Citizens of New Rochelle have delivered a stunning rebuke to cronyism that benefits the politically connected at the expense of the taxpayers.”
Cause of Action has been investigating the methods employed by Forest City Enterprises as they game the system to build profit on the back of the taxpayer.
The city pulling up stakes is an atypical move in Forest
City’s history. Historically it’s been Forest City who walks away from the table when the public money dries up. With New Rochelle pulling the plug, could this be the dawn of a new age for the politically savvy developer?
You can read their report by clicking HERE
Information reported by Cause of Action helped to confirm and galvanize the local opposition’s position that the current deal with forest City will benefit the developer while saddling the taxpayer with excessive costs.” Socializing the risk while privatizing the profits” as one opponent put it.
The battle over Echo Bay has been stewing for years and the opposition has grown dramatically as more and more citizens began to see the big picture as the facts unravelled.
In a strange turn of events, the Mayor, who has been criticized for dividing the city, finally gets the city to come together only to have it culminate in his being forced to give his second concession speech in a little over 2 weeks.
Bramson recently suffered a resounding loss in his attempt to run for the Westchester County Executive slot and ultimately wound up having no choice but to give his concession speech early in the election day voting.
Hats off to all who took the time to read the fine print about the Echo Bay deal and take a stand for New Rochelle. This truly is about a city coming together to bring out the best of what the city has to offer.
I hope the mayor realizes
I hope the mayor realizes that his attempts to implement Agenda 21 throughout Westchester and in NR are not welcome. We are fed up with public/private partnerships where the developers get richer and the taxpayers get poorer.
It’s also time for NR to end it’s membership with ICLEI and get rid of the sustainability coordinator. We don’t need a sustainability coordinator to tell us how to use commonsense methods to save energy.