Black November. Last week they started clearing and cutting trees. Today the trucks and bulldozer and roller arrived and started digging up Swan Pond Park for the access road for the removal of the Little Dam (Fairbank Dam). Just about 14 months after the Army Corps awarded the contract for this project, the earth is being scraped away, a gravel road laid and rolled, a fence put up, and then … What? They did this months ago at the Armitage Dam and the only meaningful thing that has happened there is that they have a new project manager. Remember, this is the dam they claimed was in Lyons, and our village published the notice as such. This deal has been a fraud from its very inception.
No demolition permit has been issued, and neither the Building Department, the director of Public Works, the village manager nor the trustees has ever seen the executed contract between the Army Corps and the contractor, just as I predicted in September, 2010. Once the board gave away the easements before the plan was finished, they lost any control they might have had, and now the corps and contractor are digging up the park before anyone – board, commissions, department heads – has seen the detailed and final plan or contract , which is, after all, the only document that accurately spells out what will be done.
Here’s a project that President Gorman has called “the most important one we may ever see here” and our village government has never seen the final contract. What a way to run a railroad.
Today I saw several people down there shaking their heads, a woman crying. Questions of “Why would they do this?” Why indeed? Nov. 14, 2011. Remember this date …
Don Spatny
