Yesterday I highlighted a letter from last year from State Senator Velmanette Montgomery giving her objections to Ratner's plan to over-develop Brooklyn. It was an excellent letter, but pre-dates the recent Empire State Development Corporation's loving analysis of their pal, Ratner's, plan. I do not have a more recent statement from Velmanette. However, I did find a very good statement from Bill Batson that responds to that ESDC analysis. Batson is running for Assembly and has been an active member of Community Board 8 and has been working hard to protect his community from arson and from losing historical sites such as Underground Railroad sites. Batson's dedication to the community and familiarity with the community's needs are excellent.

Bill Batson’s Statement on the "Atlantic Yards" Draft Environmental Impact Statement to the Empire State Development Corporation
August 23, 2006

Good Afternoon,

My name is Bill Batson. I am a member of Community Board 8, where I serve as the Co-Chair of the Committee on the Environmental Impact of the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards. I also stand here as a candidate for the Assembly from the 57th District. This is my second time appearing before the Empire State Development Corporation. As a volunteer, with hundreds of my neighbors, we spent the last year, including last summer, getting ready for this audience. We have held hearings and enlisted pro-bono experts to understand a proposal that was actually never really made available to us. But we worked. And we wrote your office on numerous occasions, as official community advisory council members. You ignored all of our letters. Last summer Mr. Gargano did not show his face here, as his consultants attempt to divide the largest real estate parcel in New York history.

I see that Mr. Gargano is not here today. If I were him, I would also avoid bearing witness to the attempted disenfranchisement of an entire borough of four million. To hold a hearing while all three affected advisory bodies are on vacation and to hold a dubious “forum” on primary day should draw the attention of the Justice Department. We are being disenfranchised.

After hundreds of hours of close examination of this project, with my neighbors and peers, I must condemn virtually every aspect of the Forest City Ratner (FCR) proposal for the following reasons:

* The use of eminent domain for a private developer is wrong and is a precedent that should never be set. I remind the audience that the same consultants used by Ratner and the ESDC (AKRF) are also attempting to use eminent domain to take a known Underground Railroad location on Duffield Street.
* Every promise made by this developer is worthless unless contained in a legally binding agreement with a local legislative body. In the past, FCR has promised street widening, an off ramp from the BQE, free parking and employment for local kids. Each promise was reneged on.
* Substantial public subsidies should involve substantial public review. There has been NO LEGITIMATE PUBLIC REVIEW OF THIS PROJECT. I propose that any public subsidy to a single developer of over one billion dollars should be put up to a referendum
* And finally, if built, this monstrosity will destroy the most storied county in American history. The shadows cast across Fort Greene would scar America’s first middle class black community. In 1820, African-Americans started Weeksville at the corner of Lincoln and Underhill and grew to Buffalo and Bergen. In Fort Greene Park, Richard Wright wrote Native Son and John Coltrane perfected his chops. Under the soil of the park, built by Walt Whitman, lie the bones of the 11,500 prison ship martyrs. This history, absent from this ESDC document should form the centerpiece of any development in Brooklyn, not an afterthought, or even worse, a victim.

Brooklyn’s fate should be in Brooklyn’s hands. That is why our ancestors fought and died in Prospect Park, and at Gowanus and in Wallabout Bay. We are a city of four million who must not only have representation for our taxation, but must reject this vulgar and undemocratic effort to use our own tax dollars and our own government against us. You have no authority that we in Brooklyn recognize. Go home and take your mega-developments with you. We will rebuild our Navy Yards and our own homes and preserve our own history.

We turned back the British and their Hessians. We’ll turn back the billionaires and their political thugs and puppets. ESDC go home, Brooklyn will house and feed our own. Thank you.