To the Editor:

The judicial decision involving the development projects located in Guilderland’s Transit Oriented District, an overlay zone approved by the town after the completion of a detailed and very public planning process, is currently under appeal, and I offer no opinion one way or another on the ultimate outcome of that process.

One of the involved attorneys likened such opining to the reading of tea leaves, and I agree. We will learn the ultimate outcome in due time.

However, one thing that I will not be silent on is the gratuitous and unsubstantiated personal attacks on the integrity of town staff and administrative board members that have been made by persons involved in this litigation and their supporters. Commentary about “shady deals and decisions” in this paper, and ongoing remarks about “payoffs” in social media venues is utterly offensive on every level.

There does not seem to me to be any evidence of such behavior to be found anywhere. If the people making such remarks can supply some sort of credible evidence of specific allegations of inappropriate behavior, they have a civic duty to take such evidence to appropriate authorities, as such allegations are serious indeed.

In the absence of evidence, however, these allegations are no more than gutter talk, the variety that currently emanates from the White House in the wee hours of the night.

I find it particularly offensive to see such comments repeated without substantiation in the editorial pages of The Enterprise. A publication that frequently pats itself on the back for maintaining high standards of journalistic ethics ought not be repeating such unsubstantiated claims.

Donald Csaposs

Guilderland

Editor’s note: Our editorial last week, calling for members of the town’s zoning and planning boards to follow the law and to give at least as much heed to residents’ needs as they do to developers’ goals, quoted Thomas Hart, one of the Westmere residents who sued Pyramid and the town, saying that, if the suit hadn’t been brought, Pyramid’s current projects would have been approved without residents knowing about “all the shady deals and shady decisions that were made.”

The editorial quoted Albany County Supreme Court Judge Peter Lynch’s decision, which pointed out such dealings as the planning board improperly leaving the zoning board out of the process, not requiring Pyramid to present a scaled-down alternative of the projects, not requiring a view-shed analysis of the high-rise buildings, accepting Pyramid’s claim that high-rise buildings are not out of character with one-story bungalows in the nearby historic Rapp Road District hand-built by African Americans who came to the area from Mississippi during the Great Migration, and being misled by Pyramid which kept secret for months its plans to build a Costco Wholesale store while telling the county that the ghost neighborhood it had bought up would be used for a two-story project with “perhaps a civic component.”

Donald Csaposs works as a grant-writer for the town of Guilderland.

See related story on the town board’s vote to appeal Lynch’s decision.