Really Mr. Hoff?

This was our favorite quote from the article concerning the Weis Market proposal and final approval at last night's Board of Supervisors meeting.

"People have not come forward too much at hearings to object (to the project)," Hoff said.

1) When this matter was before the Board of Supervisors-

* In July on 2006, the public spoke out against this 4 to 1. The meeting room was standing room only!
* At the Conditional Use Hearing again, once again, the public spoke out against this.
* In fact at every Board of Supervisors meeting when this topic came up, the majority of the public spoke out against this.

2) Has Mr. Hoff forgotten about the petitions submitted against this proposal when it was first proposed?

3) Our research aside for a moment, The Forks Action Committee conducted its own poll (survey #59) on this topic and 55.6% of the respondents felt that this was indeed "spot zoning."

4) As for people not objecting to the project, consider this-

* Public participation before the Zoning Hearing Board (ZHB) was supposed to be limited to questioning, and/or rebuking expert testimony, NOT offering personal opinions.

* By the time this got to the ZHB, it is safe to say that the public felt pretty defeated. After all, they already registered their protest and objections to the Board of Supervisors on many occasions and as usual in this township, they were ignored!

Lastly, interesting to us, the ONLY people who have publicly spoken out for this project in the last six months have been non Forks residents and certain candidates for the Board of Supervisors. Hmm, wonder why this is?

The developers, another citizens group, Weis, and the 3D's (Howell, Miller and Hoff) have done a good PR job of making this about a grocery store when in fact this was, and will always be about "spot zoning" and once again changing the rules of the game midstream.

No one should ever forget this. This project is slated to yield 100 times, or 10,000% more traffic on Sullivan Trail. Why didn't the Board of Supervisors impose stricter traffic controls and improvements on Sullivan Trail above and beyond PennDot which, they had the right to do?