On Thursday, April 17, in the Estelle Heidtmann Auditorium of John Lewis Childs School, yet another public hearing was held on the proposed third track.

This one was hosted by Assemblyman Tom Alfano, whose committee included Mineola Mayor Jack Martins, New Hyde Park Mayor Dan Petruccio, Assemblyman Tom McKevitt who represents the 17th Assembly District (which includes all of Floral Park north of Jericho Turnpike) and our own Tim Dalton, the proprietor of Dalton Funeral Homes. Assemblyman Rob Walker and Trustee Ed Wise from Westbury are also included in the committee.

A quick mental survey showed that the panel was comprised of three attorneys, a businessman and one moral theologian. Yes, that's right. Mayor Dan Petruccio is the only politician I know of who is also a moral theologian, a subject he teaches at Chaminade High School. Some might find that to be a confounding combination where I, on the other hand, find it to be appealingly refreshing.

A partisan crowd gathered (what else would you expect in Floral Park!) to speak out on the third track. The president of the LIRR, Helena Williams, was also in attendance shaking hands and doing her best to look cheerful, a sensation, I would guess, that had to be as far from her heart as the east is from the west. Nevertheless, I doff my cap to her for having the courage to attend, something her predecessor, despite repeated invitations, refused to do.

Our state Assemblyman opened the meeting with some brief remarks and we were off to the races. After I welcomed everyone with an introductory analysis of where we are in the process, President Williams was invited to speak. Let me say from the outset that Ms. Williams is a nice and polite person, but if there is anyone who must feel like a modern day Sisyphus pushing the Third Track Boulder up the steep mountain of public opinion only to have it roll back down again, it must be her. Tonight the boulder would prove neither lighter, nor the mountain less steep.

Although received warmly, President Williams' slide show would lower the room temperature considerably as it analyzed the third track in its entirety rather than focusing on the impacts in Floral Park. One attendee, having already seen the slide show, moaned that this is going to take 40 minutes. It certainly seemed that way as President Williams honeycombed through every panel.

As President Williams lingered at each passing slide, Assemblyman Alfano was observed to be staring at his watch disconsolately; meanwhile a pervasive restlessness percolated throughout the auditorium as the odor of interminability, if not pointlessness, settled in like wet cement.

Emotions bubbled suddenly to the surface as a school board member stood up and questioned, to appreciative applause, the relevance of this exercise. Floral Park was here, after all, to be heard and not indoctrinated.

A hurried but awkward intermission ensued whereupon it was decided that President Williams would continue the presentation but at a much faster and abbreviated clip. This acceleration, however, forfeited any hopes of clarity as the arcs of explanations grew ever more vague until the entire presentation crash-dived into a soufflé of utter incomprehensibility.

The truth is this slide show never had a prayer of working. It was "dead on arrival" and the epitaph on its tombstone should read: "The wrong presentation, at the wrong time and to the wrong audience."

One thing that was, however, salvaged from the wreck, is that it appears the MTA/LIRR has secured funding for only 14 percent of the monies it needs to complete this undefined, unapproved and unnecessary project. It is also clear that the proposed $1.5 billion the third track project will now cost has escalated some threefold in three short years. What, one asks, will the cost be in 2010 when the construction is supposed to commence? Nobody knows. What is the Plan? Nobody knows. What is the scope? Nobody knows. Where will construction start? Nobody knows.

Well, maybe someone would know if the LIRR would release the preliminary DEIS (Draft Environmental Impact Statement) it has been sitting on for better than six weeks! In our Centennial year the spirit of Floral Park is flying high - but we're also flying blind as long as the DEIS is stamped "Top Secret."

When the ancient philosopher Confucius averred that knowledge means knowing what one knows and also what one does not know, he capsuled perfectly our present predicament. Without the DEIS we don't know what we know or, for that matter, what we don't know. For us, the DEIS is a secular version of the "Book of Revelation;" it is the DNA, the blueprint, a looking glass into nothing less than what is now an unchartered future.

The highlight of the April 17 hearing, as it was during the scoping hearings of 2005, was the heartfelt testimony of our residents and their concern for their homes, their schools, their village and their way of life. I'm just sorry that there was not time enough for more of them to speak. I was equally dismayed that while the hearing was videotaped, it was not also stenographically recorded.

Elected representatives, including all those from our village, attended to either affirm or reaffirm their vows of fidelity in eternally opposing the third track. Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, representing the silent minority, was herself silent and unseen. Senator Craig Johnson, who only a year ago was accused, though not yet convicted of opposing the third track made a full public confession that he is, and has been, guilty as sin in opposing this megaproject.

The fact is, however, that no amount of harrumphing, or breast beating, will change a thing unless all our resources are employed decisively and with planned effect. Toward this end, the Floral Park Task Force has mobilized a vast network of 136 organizations; it has knitted together a coalition of villages along the Main Line Corridor, CARE INC., which was funded by Senators Dean Skelos and Kemp Hannon in the sum of $25,000; it has persuaded the Nassau County Village Officials Association (an organization representing 64 villages) to join our ranks, as well as convincing the New York State Capital Review Board, in an unprecedented decision, to refuse to fund the third track until there was full disclosure, and we located and retained a nationally prominent environmental law firm to challenge the conclusions of the LIRR's preliminary DEIS.

Moreover, the LIRR has, at last notice, dramatically downscaled the project in Floral Park by forcing them to sheathe the sword of eminent domain and start construction further east, past the Tulip Avenue Business District. Finally, it was our persistence - Floral Park's persistence - that imploded the myth of the reverse commutes as the pivotal reason for building the third track.

These are great achievements, but more needs to be done. Having public hearings is a good thing since it serves as a trumpet blast that the community is not under sedation. But let us remember that right now the DEIS is not scheduled to be released until some time in November so it is imperative that this new committee build upon our efforts. At the hearing I made the following recommendations on where they can make a difference:

1. Put pressure on the LIRR to release the DEIS. Their argument that the FTA, being the lead agency, must first put its imprimatur on the DEIS is nothing more than a subterfuge to give us as little time as possible to review it.

2. Once the DEIS is released, the communities should be allowed at least 180 days to review the document. Since the LIRR's engineers and consultants consumed more than two years to complete the DEIS, allotting us six months is hardly asking for a lot.

3. Public hearings by the LIRR should be held in each of the communities along the mainline corridor.

4. Since the primary justification for the third track has changed from a reverse commute to a passing lane for direct trains, the process should begin anew. Thousands of comments made at the scoping hearings in 2005 and subsequent hearings were based on the premise of the reverse commute. To now argue that a passing lane was inherent in the original scoping hearings is arrant revisionism.

5. That the three Assembly members on the committee match the State Senate with a $25,000 grant of their own to fight this project.

I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to outgoing fire chief, Kevin Kelleher, not only for his service as chief of the Floral Park Fire Department but also for his entire career as a member of this great organization. Likewise, I want to congratulate Frank Wakely Jr. as our new fire chief, his incoming staff of chiefs and the men and women, all volunteers, who serve this great department. I will have much more to say about the Floral Park Fire Department in the near future.