Residents reject sale of school district land
More than 7,700 cast ballots on sale of 34-acre parcel
CLIFTON PARK, N.Y. >> Voters in the Shenendehowa Central School District by a vote of 5,442 to 2,323 on Tuesday rejected the Board of Education’s decision to sell a surplus 34 acre parcel to developer BBL for $2.05 million.
The vote is the culmination of a four-month effort by advocacy group Friends of Clifton Park Open Space to overturn the school board’s 4- 3 vote taken in December to sell the land for commercial development.
“It feels like David versus Goliath and David won,” Shenendehowa Board of Education member Bill Casey said.
Casey voted “no” on the initial land vote by the board.
“If you watched the logical progression, you could see the number of people’s names who were on the petitions was grow- ing. (After opening the RFPs) 20 minutes later we took a vote. I don’t think we were transparent, I would have preferred a public hearing.
“I sensed all along — and I am out there, I am in the community — that there was unbelievable passion, and in this case passion trumped resources. It trumped the amount of money being spent by the other side. When I saw people standing out in the rain tonight, I said ‘ We’re going to win this.’ In the end
it wasn’t even close, there was no ambiguity on a number; that’s more than 2-to-1,” Casey said.
Media reports say supermarket chain ShopRite was interested in building on part of the parcel.
The results of the vote will send the question of what to do with the land back to the school board.
The contentious issue on the disposition of the parcel has riveted residents of the entire Shen community for months.
“This number of people that want to be engaged with the school board is a good thing. And we as a community, in general, should be proud of that and the board should want to engage with them; after all, we are the constituency,” Friends of Clifton Park Open Space spokesperson Susan Burton said.
The group would like to see the entire parcel used for a park.
In the fall, members of the group requested the board of education hold public hearings on what to do with the land before taking any action on putting it out for bid. The requests were denied. The board said a request for proposal was to be announced shortly. When the bids were opened months later BBL’s bid was selected on a split vote by the board.
The Friends group suc-
cessfully challenged the school board’s vote to sell the land by obtaining enough signatures to force Tuesday’s public referendum.
“The message from the community tonight was ‘ We’re not committed to this proposal,’” Shenendehowa Board of Education President Bob Pressley said. “I don’t think at this point now we should read into whether we should go with one project.
“The board went with what we thought was the
best thing in front of us. It’s a very complicated proposal with many different viewpoints. Those concerns with the complexity we felt, as a board, we met when we awarded the ( RFP). We thought we’d be creating a park, but not using all 34 acres as a park, and it’s that kind of message that resonated with the people that voted ‘ no’ and a lot of people turned out. Their message was that they do not want to proceed with what we had awarded as a board.”