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February 12, 2009
Om-bads-man!
The Brooklyn Paper
By Mike McLaughlin
The Brooklyn Paper is first to provide coverage of last night's meeting, sponsored by the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods, featuring a Q&A session between Atlantic Yards ombudsman Forrest Taylor and meeting attendees.
Atlantic Yards ombudsman Forrest Taylor faced down an inquisitive public on Wednesday night — but many left the meeting feeling that the project’s supposed troubleshooter left them in the dark.
Taylor, the sacrificial lamb sent by the Empire State Development Corporation to face dozens of angry and exasperated Atlantic Yards foes, deflected virtually every inquiry from the crowd at the Belarusian Church on Atlantic Avenue, from specific construction annoyances in the project’s footprint to the financial health of Bruce Ratner’s stalled arena and skyscraper development.
“I’m low on the totem pole,” Taylor, who’s been on the job for one year, said as a way of explaining his lack of details on the interactions between the state government and Ratner’s development company. At other points, Taylor, the supposed insider, said much of his information came from reading news stories about Atlantic Yards.
Although the headline implies that Forrest Taylor is "bad", it seems that he is more limited by his job description rather than any intention to do wrong.
“There are roadblocks intentionally in his way,” said Paul Palazzo, chair of the Fort Greene Association. “His job description is lacking in openness.”
Posted by steve at February 12, 2009 5:39 AM