The evening of 2025-08-18 was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls Board of Trustees.
Too much of the meeting was taken up with SEQR. I have this memory, that if the clock was rolled back far enough, SEQR was a faster process. A quick glance through the list, acknowledging the project didn’t meet the threshold, and check it off the list. Now my memory could well be wrong, wouldn’t be the first time. Either way, I think the process is drawn out too long. For this application (and recent Zoning Board), the process is overkill. And I’m of the opinion it qualifies as cruel, if all too usual, punishment.
What was the SEQR for? Revising waste water treatment plant project. None of the answers to questions changed, but parts of the description did.
In any case, current estimate for everything they want in the project comes to ~$17 million. Now grants do exist (at least one of which has been awarded). And just because it’s wanted at this point doesn’t meant they won’t find ways to trim the scope, or otherwise lower the final cost. Even as I say that, I do like it when my indoor plumbing works. It might not be pretty, but I want infrastructure to be working.
If you had a brick in the path at Harry Allen park and you would like the brick, call the Village. They’ve pulled them all out and have a pile. Sounds like they will be trying to reach out to people, but some of the bricks are hard to read.
Festival at the Falls appears to have gone well. Which is what you would expect, but good to hear. Also to be expected, there were challenges. But that happens. I walked through the event and I thought it looked nice enough. If they can’t use the park, for whatever reason, it is nice to have the alternate location of using West Main. Even if I think the park is overall a better location.
Talk of removing the ‘famous‘ totem pole continues. At this point, it sounds like the decision to remove has been made. Now it’s more around what to replace it with, if anything. I have no opinion on the totem pole as such, but…
Members of the Mendon Public Library’s Book Club showed up to request Harry Allen Park be renamed.
Before I go any further into this, I’ll point at my favorite of the suggested replacement names (of 4? they had a few): Norton Allen Park. Which all but demands the Village’s logo be changed to ‘come for the charm, stay for a NAP’. ‘Where’s the NAP? Next to the church’. ‘You can find me in the gazebo, having a NAP’. The jokes practically write themselves (even if mine aren’t very good). Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system…
More seriously, much like with the totem pole, I have no opinion on the change itself. My concern with this is the ‘why’ and potential repercussions. Civilization is built from multiple layers stacking together. We didn’t start where we are now, the past got us here. And like a Jenga tower, if we pull the wrong piece out it all falls down. Now I don’t think either the name or the totem pole are critical pieces here (nor am I really qualified to judge that). But in both cases we have inherited these from those that came before us. Let’s be sure before we throw them out. Or at least understand ‘why’ what was done was done.
I’m not saying those who came before us were any better or worse then we are. But I assume they, like us, did what they thought was best at the time. And they were closer to the moment. They might well have had good reasons which we have forgotten. We should at least make an attempt to understand what those reasons could have been before making a change.
This logic could apply to any change. From what I’ve heard, removing the totem pole appears to reach the threshold of understanding ‘why’ (promote garden club). I haven’t heard enough to convince me on the name of the park. To be fair, the ladies from the book club were waving a book around. It may well contain the answers I seek. Maybe I’ll visit the library and check it out…
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the August 18, 2025 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Board of Trustees.