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Leadership or arrogance?
Long Island
Advance April 24, 2008
Mr.
Levy, your response to my letter in
The
Long Island Advance was so far off the topic
it scares me.
I
wrote about how the Brookhaven Town Assessor recently
determined that 228 homes have been negatively affected
by the noise generated by the Trap & Skeet Range here in
Yaphank that you were so adamant about reopening. Your
pet project will now deprive the South Country School
District of nearly $200,000 each year in needed tax
revenue. This, in addition to our daily concerns
regarding lead pollution, lead dust, and how it affects
all of us, as well as the fragile Pine Barrens and
groundwater the range operates atop—groundwater that
Suffolk County’s own documents acknowledge are
threatened with lead contamination.
But
instead of addressing the issues in my letter, you wrote
about your proposed over-the-top affordable housing
project which we call Levy World. You seem more
interested in protecting or defending your image than
simply admitting that some of your decisions have
adversely affected people and children, ruined the
quality of life for thousands, threaten the very
environment you claim to want to protect, and were
unwise and blatantly self-serving. Part of good
leadership is the ability to admit when you’re wrong,
but you seem incapable of such an emotion. Yes,
leadership takes courage, but it also requires
listening, and your arrogance in that regard is obvious
when it comes to issues here in Yaphank.
Before you respond so imperiously, you should do your
homework and also take your own advice and respond to
the hundreds of residents’ calls, emails, and
invitations extended to you through our civic
association. If done properly, then maybe you could
address the problems you’ve created if you weren’t so
full of yourself. Instead, you’ve created a fiefdom
wherein you see yourself as the omnipotent ruler and
people such as Brookhaven Town Supervisor Brian Foley
are merely water bearers for your special interest
collusion. All of this is happening because you chose to
appease a handful of your buddies by reopening the
shooting range and in the process you’ve trashed an
entire community, a county park and continue to poison
the environment as well as the very water we all drink.
Sorry, but that doesn’t seem like leadership to me.
Deborah O’Brien
Yaphank
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