*** EMERGENCY ***
from John Cushman
Dated 11/18/06

On November 21st, 2006 at 9:00 AM in the Suffolk County Legislative Building on Veterans Memorial Highway in Hauppauge, NY the Suffolk County Legislature will hear, consider and vote on IR-2123-2006.

This bill IR-2123-2006 introduced by Legislator Kate Browing is supposedly intended to create an impartial fact finding search committee to see if there is an alternative site that can be used to relocate the Suffolk County Trap & Skeet Range from its present location to another. I say supposedly because Ms. Browning, the Parks and Recreation Committee or any member of the County Legislaure has had a number of years to simply write a letter to those in charge requesting an inventory of all land available in the County that could be used as an alternative to the current Suffolk Trap & Skeet Range location. My question is why hasn't anyone bothered to do just that? Moreover, I made this same suggestion any number of times before at and during the numerous hearings I have attended. While I have no objection to looking for such a location, I do object to certain language in this bill. Specifically subdivision 5 of the 2nd, Resolved, that portion of the bill that says the Legislative Representative from the 3rd, Legislative District (Ms. Browning) is to have the power to appoint an individual who currently lives adjacent to the existing range. The makeup of the rest of this search committee is supposedly composed of neutral people concerned with reviewing a list of all land available and each ones suitability to becoming a Trap & Skeet Range. It is my opinion that the person appointed by Ms. Browning cannot and will not be neutral and will be there to simply to create friction among the committee people and bring a degree of anger and frustration to the proceedings. I firmly believe that the committee would function much better without an adversarial person on it which is what I believe this person would be. After all, this person would be the only one there who would have a PERSONAL stake (gain) in the outcome of any deliberations while the rest of the committee would be concerned only with the facts.

I hope all of you attend and make it clear that if this bill is passed it should only be passed if amended to exclude subdivision 5 of the 2nd Resolved.

John L. Cushman

Semper Fidelis (always faithful)
Semper Vigilante (always vigilant)

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