To the Editor:

An interesting statement continues to be made and was included in Hammond Supervisor’s letter to the editor.

I learned it was also pointed out in his presentation to the Alex Bay Town Board earlier this month. It was restated in last week’s TI Sun by a gentlemen from Cape Vincent who wrote another letter to the editor.

To view the supervisor’s letter, visit: tinyurl.com/nlzdfee.

Quote: “To put the impact of SASS in perspective, for the period of 2000-2014 within the SASS designated area on the Hudson River, there were 1917 applications requiring evaluation. Of these, 23 were considered for closer review and only four were found to have a significant issue relative to impact on the view shed…”

That information sounds rather questionable, for several reasons. For instance:

1. Who is doing the counting here? (i.e. how accurate, and objective is their data?)

2. What projects are they counting exactly? (I.e. did someone re-do their front porch?...BIG question!)

3. If 23 projects needed "closer" review, how many really needed a "close" review?

4. What was the cost in time and money of doing all these extra reviews?

5. What was the cost to the project owners, for the delays of doing all these extra reviews?

6. How many of those 23 projects could have been addressed by local laws and regulations? (Another big question: who needs more regulations?!)

7. How did the communities really benefit by the four projects that were stopped or changed?

8. If the SASS review only found four out of 1900+ projects (.2%) to be a problem, it doesn't sound like SASS is all that effective. Put another way, why should we give up some local control over our community, for a .2% possible benefit?

The Supervisor’s letter goes on to say:

“We live with many state regulations with little or no disturbance to our lives: they are here to protect us and our community.”

Do you mean that there’s a state agency that really doesn’t want to control our lives?

Who exactly are they protecting us from? Terrorists? Aliens? Our next-door neighbors?

You see, SASS is all about protecting us from ourselves! I vote with other concerned citizens who believe that this matter warrants a much bigger investigation before we sign up for more big brother control in our relatively peaceful river communities.

Ruth Brooks

Hammond