To the Editor:
J. Johnson Smith made a serious allegation against me and two other people, New Lebanon Town Board member Doug Clark and Town Supervisor Candidate Mike Benson, in a letter published by you on October 21.
I sent Mrs. Johnson-Smith a record of email correspondence that proves that those allegations are false and I have asked for a retraction.
As juicy as it reads, there was no “coup” attempt disguised as a good-hearted extensive volunteer effort to help New Lebanon get a supermarket.
The allegation arose after Town Supervisor Meg Robertson fired Doug Clark as Deputy Supervisor. He was involved in a Hannaford meeting from which she claimed to have been excluded in favor of her opponent.
This was an engineering meeting I promoted in my capacity as the head of the Lebanon Valley Business Association.
The Supervisor did know in advance about the meeting, its purpose, its timing and the proposed professional roles of Doug Clark and Town Supervisor candidate Mike Benson. All of this is in the correspondence record. Rather than being excluded from the meeting, the Supervisor was initially going to participate in it.
LVBA had requested the civil engineering and commercial property development expertise of Mr. Clark and Mr. Benson to help us understand why the Hannaford withdrew. They graciously agreed. Their meeting with the Hannaford engineer produced all kinds of technical information we wouldn’t otherwise have.
For example, that is how we discovered just how much the current road speed is behind the DOT problems that plagued Hannaford and other local businesses. And now the Town has been able to move quickly on a fix for that.
I think highly of the Supervisor and am sure that there is a good reason for the confusion in the story.
But there is no reason for the reputation damage that has been caused by the accusation printed in your paper. I think both Mrs. Johnson-Smith and the Eastwick Press should have pursued facts before publishing inflammatory allegations in the middle of a local election. I did let the Eastwick Press know that there were more facts to the matter a week before you permitted the letter to run.
Please help to clear this up now. This controversy has created so much confusion in town.
Very truly yours,
Fiona Lally, President Lebanon Valley Business Association
Editor’s response: First, I have no record of Ms. Lally contacting this paper directly. Second, JJ Smith’s letter, to which Lally refers, is clearly an opinion, albeit corroborated to an extant by Robertson’s actions and statements. Third, I am sure we are all shocked that “inflammatory allegations” are being made in the middle of an election.