Those who attended the Garden City Village Board of Trustees Sept. 11 meeting had another chance to witness the distortion undertaken by mayoral candidate Thomas Lamberti and his friends in their goal to prevent the residents of Garden City from ever having finality when it comes to St. Paul's, unless that finality is exactly what they want.

Regrettably, I have found it necessary to write this letter because I, like our esteemed Trustee Lamberti, would like to have full transparency. Except that I actually will disclose what occurred between the Property Owner's Association (POA) presidents in our meetings regarding a potential poll regarding the future of St. Paul's. Trustee Lamberti decided he would play to his audience by attacking the two POAs (Estates and East) who refused to play along with his game. I will assume that Trustee Brudie decided to "pile on" out of any actual knowledge of many of the true circumstances.

At the request of the board of trustees, the four POA presidents met to come up with the format and questions to gauge public opinion on the Mayor's Committee Report and the AvalonBay proposal. There was no formal written submission to us and no formal statement from anyone as to how to get residents' opinions or what to specifically ask. Clearly, the guidepost was the Mayor's Committee Report on St. Paul's. Remember, this was the report submitted by the Mayor's Committee, which is headed by Trustee Lamberti.

The East, West and Estates were fairly in agreement that the starting point was the three options from the Mayor's Report. The three options are: the AvalonBay proposal, demolition or mothball. The East and Estates were in agreement that mothball - as stated in the report - was a waste of time. The West was hesitant and less committed than the East and Estates but was open to further discussion. None of us had any issues with further consideration of the various positions.

From moment one it was clear that the Central - Trustee Lamberti's POA - would not agree to anything other than yes or no on AvalonBay. They wanted no other questions. It was my belief - as I have stated to anyone I discuss this matter with - that the people in the village who are sick and tired of the issue and do not want to pay anymore taxes to maintain the building should have a right to voice that opinion. Further, the report included demolition as an option.

So for Trustee Lamberti and others to claim that the East and Estates "violated the JCC agreement" by not compromising is a bunch of baloney. Trustee Lamberti, was, as usual, grandstanding. It was his POA that refused to compromise on anything.

After the second meeting, the East, West and Estates agreed to go back to the trustees - yes, contrary to Mr. Lamberti's assertions last night - we went back to the trustees - to ask them if they would tell us what question or questions or format they wanted us to ask. It was Central who asked the other three POAs if we would go back to the trustees - and the other three POA presidents agreed. At that meeting, I explicitly asked Central if they would refuse to participate if the poll was not configured as it wanted it. Central would not state either way.

Dennis Donnelly, as head of the Joint Conference Committee of the POA Associations, advised the mayor we were having trouble coming to a consensus and that the four POAs had agreed to ask the trustees if they would give us any specific wording or more guidance. The mayor advised several - maybe all - of the other trustees and they started to work on it.

Trustee Lamberti was well aware of this - for him to claim this came out of the blue and he was shocked to learn about it - stretches all credibility. I admit that I should have stood up at the village meeting last night and challenged Mr. Lamberti on his version of the facts and his fallacious statements, but forgive my decision to be polite at the time.

Before the trustees could agree on wording - the Central POA decided to act on its own to try to influence the poll. It sent a letter to the trustees for public dissemination, which forced Mayor Bee to put it on the agenda for that meeting even though the trustees had not come to any consensus and had not met together to discuss the wording or format. At that next trustee meeting - the Central POA president stood up and read Central's letter. Then, Peter Negri, who heads the Committee to Save St. Paul's, stood up and discussed an item that he could not have known about unless the president of the Central POA told him. He is not even on the board of the Central POA, so how did he know that? One can only surmise that the Central POA is controlled by the committee.

So it was Central that acted on its own; not the rest of us. They tried to force the issue because it was not getting its own way.

Because Central openly challenged the still-being-negotiated poll questions - the rest of us were forced to disclose our then-current positions. We were not going to do so at that time - as we were waiting for the board of trustees to advise us if they could or would actually give us some formal poll language.

So then the four POA presidents met again. The East, West and Estates POA presidents were in agreement - and told Central - that Central had acted prematurely and it was not the right thing to do while we were still negotiating a compromise.

At that meeting (our third) it also became more apparent that Central was not going to change - the Central POA president told us Central would only participate in the poll if the question was AvalonBay, yes or no, and it would not agree to any other questions. West stated that it would not participate if the poll was a pick one - Avalon Bay or Demolish format. West wanted a separate mothball question and maybe even preferred an Avalon Bay yes or no format. So West declined to participate too.

At the end of that meeting, the West POA asked if we were going to meet again. Mr. Donnelly explicitly stated that he did not see the point since all POAs had established their positions. Further, both Mr. Donnelly and I stated that since the four POAs could not come to a mutual agreement, the East and the Estates were going to go forward with a poll - paid for by themselves and invite everyone in the Village to participate.

For Trustee Lamberti to attack the East and Estates POAs as "rogue" POAs is incredible to me. It was his PO, which was highly involved (not officially of course) with the recent attempt to have one of the Estates' Village Trustee positions taken over in a secret ballot campaign by a resident of Central! Where were Trustee Lamberti's statements of incredulousness at that? Where were his statements about "rogue" actions by a POA? Further, as he well knows, the POAs are not subject to any village governance, and the trustees had preferred that the POAs do the polling.

Brian C. Daughney

President, Estates Property Owners' Association