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For information regarding the Trap & Skeet Gun Range please
visit our community partner:
Click to visit TrapandSkeet.Net
The following letter was sent to Chairman Scully and the commission on 11/24/08.
Pine Barrens Chairman
Peter Scully and commission members,
We the undersigned, all members of the South Yaphank Civic Association, attended
the Pine Barrens Commission meeting on Wednesday, November 19 and we are stunned and dismayed at the way we were treated by
yourself and your Commission.
As you are well aware, our ongoing struggle with the Suffolk County Trap & Skeet Range
is of paramount importance to our community and our quality of living. Representatives for our community have attended most
Commission meetings regarding the Range over the last three years and surely you understand our concerns about this issue.
We
have always conducted ourselves in a cordial and civil manner while pleading our case. Although we are admittedly growing
ever more impatient with the endless delays, we have nonetheless respected this Commission and the people who run it. As
you know we have to make special arrangements with our employers, families and otherwise adjust our schedules to attend these
meetings just to have a few minutes of time to address our concerns to the Commission, and then wait for hours in the hope
of hearing some positive news.
Chairman Scully, at the meeting on the 19th, several of us once again presented arguments
regarding the Range to you and the Commission. At one point you told the audience that the Commission would be discussing
this issue after the meeting’s scheduled agenda items were addressed and that several Commission members wished to do
so as well. When that time arrived, you announced that the Commission would enter into a Closed Advisory Session to discuss
matters pertaining to the Trap & Skeet Range and we were told to leave the room.
Then, after about a half-hour’s
time, we discovered (quite by accident) that the meeting was over and that most of the Commission had left the room without
so much as having the common courtesy of informing us of anything. This Commission simply chose to disregard our time, our
efforts, or our concerns and instead insulted us by what was tantamount to sneaking out the back door.
Chairman Scully,
it’s bad enough that an organization charged with protecting the Pine Barrens can’t agree that a skeet range pumping
tons of lead and other toxic materials into the trees and the land of a protected watershed in a Core Preservation Area is
wrong. But to have your organization treat us with such utter contempt and to leave us standing around waiting for some kind
of answer to our concerns while your membership puts on their coats and leaves to go home without so much as a word spoken
to us, is the epitome of arrogance and hubris.
We do not deserve to be treated in this manner, we deserve an answer
to our questions and we deserve an apology!
Signed,
NAMES WITHELD IN THIS PUBLICATION FOR FEAR OF RETRIBUTION.
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Is this scenario a concern for our community?
According
to public records and witnessed by community members in attendance:
When the Pine Barrens Commission met in May/June
2006, the meetings were full of supporters and opponents regarding the Trap & Skeet Range even though the range...was NOT
on the agenda...for the meetings. So...... When the Trap & Skeet Range.....WAS on the agenda....of the Pine Barrens Commission
in July 2006, when they could have effectively kept the range closed,... ONLY the OPPONENTS... of the range were there to
speak.
Why not contact our town representative to the commission and Councilwoman Kepert and ask them what they think
about this?
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