It's always a huge, time-consuming effort for a community to get itself together to process issues and respond with one voice, especially when working to respond to a big, resourceful, well-organized corporation.

I'm on the Community Board and all I can tell you is that scheduling a major public hearing for the last two weeks of August really has a major impact on a community's ability to get itself together to provide thoughtful input.

A lot of people go away during the summer for modest breaks or simply try to focus on other things. Not just rich people or people with a "house in the Hamptons." It is very hard to get community groups to process and sign off on decisions when even just one or two members are out of town for periods of time.

I think that it is entire fair for community advocates to say that scheduling this hearing at this time is a contemptuous and un-Democratic move by the ESDC.

That Community Boards are not in session hardly prevents "community experts and residents" from attending this hearing. If they hold it later we might be faced with them saying, "We don't have enough time to consider your recommendations."

I do remember the meeting scheduled during Christmas break. Had they scheduled it in the weeks before Christmas people would have pitched a fit about how busy they were before the holidays. Had they scheduled it during the first week of January, we would have heard that people were busy getting settled back at work after their vacations.

If the issue is so important, and I believe it is since it will affect the community for generations, it's worth getting a sitter or missing a day at the Hamptons.

A better time? That's easy.

How about any of the other ten months of the year when the city's Community Boards are in session and not officially on recess. Regardless of school, work and other commitments, from September through June you will find thoughtful, diligent and, yeah, sometimes difficult community members working on important local oversight issues via their Community Boards.

You can support the project and still acknowledge that the ESDC and the developer scheduled the one public hearing on the project at this particular time to limit public input, participation and hassle. I don't think that is either NIMBY or conspiracy theory. I think that that is simply brass knuckles NYC development politics. 

If you've been following the story for the past couple of years then you know that this is completely consistent with the way that the "public process" for this project has been run since the very beginning. Brooklynites will recall, as well, that the public comment period for the massive Downtown Brooklyn Rezoning was scheduled during the Christmas vacation a few years back.

So when would have been a better time? When citizens were preoccupied with back-to-school, the high holidays, and other things that take up people's schedules? If they had waited "a few weeks" people would have found something else to complain about.

I'm not saying the AY project should go forward as planned, but this line of reasoning speaks of NIMBY politics at its worst. They should give people more time simply because 60 days it not enough time to review such a huge study. That people are busy with vacations is a ridiculous excuse.

Not good.

I say sue the bastids.