Letter to the editor: Town not responsible for Save Prospect’s bills

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To the editor,

I sincerely hope that the Town of Prospect will not pay the legal bills for Save Prospect Corp.

I don’t remember anyone asking this group of people to form or to represent the entire town in Save Prospect’s fight against BNE.
In fact, I remember writing a letter to Save Prospect and to the Citizen’s News wherein I said that this whole process was simply a “Not In My Back Yard” knee jerk reaction to what might have been progress for the town and its taxpayers.

I happen to live on New Haven Road within sight of the proposed site of the wind turbines. I would have been one of those most directly effected by the building of the turbines, yet I did not feel that Save Prospect represented me or many of my neighbors on New Haven Road.

Save Prospect formed as committee to fight against BNE. I thought that they were melodramatic in their wording of their signs “kiss the sky goodbye” and a little over the top in declaring that Prospect needed “saving” from the two proposed wind turbines.

The members of the Save Prospect committee have to take the responsibility for the expenses incurred in their fight against BNE. They must have known from the beginning that this kind of “fight” is not cheap and that they would have to get the money from somewhere. I wonder just how they managed to convince the lawyers and the witnesses to represent them with no assurance of payment when the issue was finally settled one way or the other.

Asking the Town of Prospect to pay for their earnest yet unwise and unfunded fight is not only disingenuous but folly.

I agree with others who have written to the Citizen’s News that this would set a precedent for future requests of the town to pay for just about anything that a citizen of Prospect might choose to rail against.

Mayor Chatfield and the Town Council have kept the budget in trim so far. I hope that they will also see that spending any town money on this issue would not be in the best interests of the whole town and just in the interest of those few people who now find themselves in a bind.

As Mr. Angelo R. D’Agostino suggested in his Friday, June 3, 2011 letter to the Citizen’s News “send a donation to the Save Prospect group” if you so desire, but the Town of Prospect should in no way be responsible for money that Save Prospect Corporation spent on this issue.

Patricia Smith Zappone

Prospect