It's time for the citizens of Roslyn to wake up to what is being done in the midst of our village. The Forest City Daly project will build over 220 units on the waterfront. B.I.T.I. now proposes to build an additional 80 units. Note that the Roslyn Gardens Apartments are a little more than 400 units, so imagine what traffic and congestion there will be with 300 new units in the village. That will probably mean more than 600 cars in and out several times a day on the two streets that serve this area.

Additionally, what about the rest of the infrastructure and services necessary, such as sewers, spaces in our schools, garbage collections, etc.? The advocates for these projects say that the village will receive needed tax revenues to off-set these expenses, but from what I understand the taxes to be paid to the village is going to be far less than what we were led to believe. If all the village gets in exchange for projects of this size is three acres of parks and waterfront boardwalk, that's simply not enough to give up the beautiful small-town charm that caused most of us to move here in the first place.

Finally, I take offense at the comment by Mr. Cohen, a principal for B.I.T.I., calling the Historic District and Planning Boards "renegade boards" for daring to suggest that maybe there should be a building moratorium until we have time to fully review these projects (whose size and designs change weekly) and possibly update the decade-old "Master Plan." If the character of our village changes for the worse after these projects are completed, Roslyn's citizens will wonder where were our elected officials during this process? Why were they not looking out for our best interests?

Michael Kauffman