We were amused by this gem in “The Villager’s” gossip column:
Don’t believe the blog hype? A Lower East
Side blog charged that representatives of the Mayor’s Office recently
“ducked out” of a Community Board 3 task force meeting on the
development of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area’s remaining
development sites. However, David McWater, the task force’s
chairperson, blasted the report as false. “Nobody ducked out of
anything,” McWater scoffed in an e-mail to us. “I had the flu and gave
them the courtesy of knowing it so they wouldn’t show up and have SPURA
not discussed. They all work 9 to 5, and it’s not cool to have them
going to meetings for nothing.”
Hmmmm! Where to begin? Let’s start with the facts. We didn’t charge anyone with anything. Our story (see it here) recounted in some detail exactly what we witnessed first-hand at last month’s community board meeting. To summarize, CB3 Chair Dominic Pisciotta announced that the Economic Development Corporation (not the mayor’s office, BTW) had canceled its planned presentation. While he also said it would not be appropriate to discuss SPURA without committee chair McWater, he certainly did not indicate that anyone at the community board had played a role in the EDC’s cancellation.
In fact, he assured a sizable group of residents outraged about the last minute change of plans, that he would discuss the situation with the EDC. “This happens every
once in awhile in a lot of other committees,” he said, “where things have to be pulled off
the agenda at the last minute. I will definitely be trying to talk to them more
about this.” Another community board member, Harvey Epstein, suggested writing a letter
to the EDC saying that it’s “not really appropriate, after we advertise a
public meeting, a day before to say you can’t attend.” So, while McWater may have initiated the cancellation, his colleagues on the board apparently weren’t aware of it.
Bottom line: “The Villager’s” on very shaky ground here. Having not bothered to attend the meeting themselves, they email a guy who wasn’t even present, for “the scoop.” While we’re flattered that the editors at the West-Side centric weekly are reading The Lo-Down, we wonder whether this anonymous tidbit is “The Villager’s” idea of objective, thorough reporting.
We have made a commitment to covering Community Board 3’s meetings (8 of them every month). “The Villager” says on its masthead they serve the “West and East Village, Chelsea, SoHo, NoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown and the Lower East Side.” But since we rarely, if ever, see their reporters on the East Side, we can only conclude our neighborhood isn’t much of a priority for “The Villager” and its sister publication “The Downtown Express.”
To be fair, they did send a reporter to last night’s town hall meeting on public housing at the Grand Street Settlement. I know this because a “Villager” reporter came over to me, asking for our photos of the event.
Nice try, guys.
