A Day At Town Hall, A Night With The Insane!

Civic Association Delivers "Close & Sell the Courtesy" Petitions Containing Over 2,000 Signatures To Supervisor Murray

“I am delighted to see that rumors to the effect that Hempstead Town Hall had been condemned and demolished have been greatly exaggerated.”

And NOW we remember why we rarely attend Town Board meetings anymore. Who could listen to all that jibber-jabber – from both the elected and the electorate – while still keeping either some semblance of sanity or even a straight face?

At last night’s meeting – from which we did not find egress until nearly 11 PM (and through which we, as West Hempsteaders, still can find no relief) – we heard the myriad stories of the plight of residents; stories told, again, again, and again, seemingly since time immemorial (or at least since Al D’Amato was Town Supervisor, which was about the same time).

A “renaissance” in Oceanside, as Councilman Santino lamented over seven illegal signs for cigarettes, posted on a fence alongside a Long Beach Road gas station. [Only SEVEN illegal signs, Tony? Come to West Hempstead. Walk the Turnpike or the Avenue. We’ll give you more illegal signs than there is MTBE in West Hempstead’s water – and we’ll throw in a few illegal accessory apartments for good measure.]

We heard the tale of “blight” in Roosevelt. Hmmm. Not that we’ve cornered the market on blight in West Hempstead, but at least ours gets the official designation from the Hempstead Town Board.

Then there were allegations of “torture” on the waterfront (a dispute between two neighbors over a fence and Riparian rights) – we know of torture in West Hempstead, both from the criminality that spills over into our once suburban haven by two supernovas of iniquity, the Courtesy and the Capri, and from the Town of Hempstead which, going on 12 ½ years now, has ignored a community’s impassioned pleas to close and demolish that which both Supervisor and Councilman have labeled a “scourge.”

And the excessive noise – coming from the night clubs on Barnum Isle, rattling the comatose at Long Beach Hospital, and reaching even the hearing impaired at the Bayview Nursing Home – which, compared to the excessive “noise” West Hempsteaders get from Town Hall (by way of letters and glossy Murraygrams, cycling through the rehashed verbiage of promises past), is but a mere din, barely audible over the sounds of silence that pass for action from the Town.

Ah, the tables turned on our Supervisor – a photo op in reverse, Ms. Murray now the unwitting recipient of petitions and letters with thousands of signatures demanding the closure of the Courtesy, all caught on camera at a forum most public. There will be no denying that the Town has been put on notice – again – of a community’s will. [Watch for Kate to be photo-shopped out of the pictures!]

A new day about to dawn over Washington Street, and the thought of borrowowing a line from President Reagan. You know, that famous exchange with the President of the then Soviet Union: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that hotel!” Better still, that old reverse psychology: “Keep the Courtesy open for all eternity, Madam Supervisor. That notorious hotel may well be the salvation of the West Hempstead community, after all!”

Not so much as a chuckle. [Where’s Don Clavin when you need him?] We could have all stayed at home, eaten dinner, taken in the ballgame, or watched a rerun of House. We came. We spoke. We heard much of the same from the Supervisor, and absolutely nothing from the Town Board (not even advices from Councilman Santino that we “enjoy” having the Courtesy in our backyard).

It was a night, not to remember, at Town Hall, but, rather, to add to the endless timeline of one hotel’s assault upon community, and one community’s courageous battle to pull the monkey – now a 500-pound gorilla – off its back. [The Town’s timeline, of course, only goes back as far as 2005. Memories before then not only fade, apparently, but are recast in the image of Greg Peterson crossing the Delaware.]

You really should come out to meetings of the Hempstead Town Board more often. Not just because misery loves company, but as each of us, at one time or another in our lives of quiet desperation, should bear witness to hypocrisy in action!