I wrote a letter to Colonie Spotlight on May 8 which illustrated that the Town of Colonie made two critical errors when it used a survey in the comprehensive plan proceeding. The survey intends to measure the views of all citizens in Colonie but it excluded a large portion of the population in Colonie specifically in the villages of Colonie and Menands.
The citizens of the villages of Colonie and Menands pay property taxes to the Town of Colonie in the same manner as other Town of Colonie taxpayers. The Town of Colonie budget process charges the citizens in the villages of Colonie and Menands for items such as town roads, town parks and for many other services. Instead of discussing the obvious sampling error and the generalization error in the survey, the Town of Colonie sent in a letter on May 15 from a government lawyer using irrelevant legal citations to try to hide the problem with the survey. The lawyer also tried to hide the fact that the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act process was hidden from the Town of Colonie citizens by not placing the SEQRA material on the Colonie website for review in the comprehensive plan case.
It is worth noting that my letter summarizes the extensive written comments that I sent into the Town of Colonie comprehensive planning process. Of course, the Town of Colonie failed to place those comments on the Colonie comprehensive plan website for the public to review.
The Colonie Town Board should reject the survey because of the obvious errors in it. Rather than relying on a government attorney who does not understand the survey issues, the Colonie Town Board should come forward and include all tax paying citizens of the Town of Colonie in the survey. The Colonie Town Board should reject the current comprehensive plan draft due the extensive problems with the public input to the plan. The Colonie comprehensive plan needs two words for improvement which are clearly lacking: Common Sense.
Kevin M. Bronner, Ph.D.
Loudonville
