Listening to the hearing on the proposed expansion of the Hess station made us wonder about the job of the Oyster Bay Town Board.

The Hess group went to a meeting of the Oyster Bay Civic Association and local residents asked questions and approved and disapproved of the application on May 17.

At the hearing, on May 22, most of those who had spoken at the civic meeting did not speak again. They had "spoken their piece." That left us worried. Did the forum dilute the response the board would have gotten, if the people hadn't already spoken.

One person said he wrote a letter to the board expressing his views. The board does keep their hearing files open for two weeks, to allow people who have not spoken to send in their views on an issue. In some cases the board extends the time allowance to a month. That is what Oyster Bay Town Supervisor John Venditto did at the end of the Hess hearing.

Someone once said that our elected officials lead from the rear. It is an interesting way to put it: they want to know what the voters want before they step out with their opinion.

That gives them the assurance that they are keeping the voters' wishes in mind. When covering the town under then Supervisor Joseph Colby, he would explain another problem for the board. When they voted down a proposed use for a commercial entity, they would be taken to court and sometimes the resulting decision of the judges would give the community a worse plan than originally presented. He used to talk about a fur retailer in Jericho or Syosset, who ended up with a building that used the site edge to edge with no green buffer as a result of such a decision.

That again explains why Supervisor Venditto was talking about the new tobacco ordinance "passing muster." They want to word the new law in such a way as to ensure that it will remain if and when it is challenged by the tobacco industry.

In the case of the Hess decision we think the best decision is to create a moratorium to truly consider what is going to happen in Oyster Bay when all the proposed plans come to fruition. When Michael Galante of Frederic P. Clark Associates looked at traffic in the hamlet he already identified the Hess station corner as two of the hot spots in town. There is a great deal going on and the decisions will last a lifetime. They really need to be considered with great attention.

- DFK