Neversink

To the editor:
We have been residents of the Town of Neversink for nearly 24 years. Your July 8th front page lead article entitled “Tale of Two Options,” about the proposed Kerilands development in the Town of Neversink, plumbed new lows in journalism. You could not have written a more uncritical, fawning puff piece if you tried.
The proposed Kerilands development is far from being the conservation-based development proposal portrayed in your article. It raises very serious questions about substantial adverse impacts to the environment, as well as to the surrounding localities and their economies. Your article completely ignored these concerns. The purported “second option” allegedly proposed by the developer is an obvious straw man and a transparently weak attempt to blackmail the Town of Neversink into supporting the vast changes that would be required for the Kerilands development, including to the Town’s Master Plan. There is no real world scenario in which the developer could build 297 individual residences on the Kerilands property. The actual proposed development in fact almost certainly includes all the acreage actually developable on the property, given steep slopes and other factors.
The Wall Street Journal, no bastion of liberalism, published an article some years ago about the developer, Jonathan Leitersdorf, that was significantly more balanced and revealing than yours. Among other things, his former partner at Savanna Partners, a real estate private equity firm, was quoted as saying “He’s not bound by the rules and regulations that stunt other people.”
https://tinyurl.com/5her5u8w
The Chalet L. Raphael, Sky Box and Shalom Tower Penthouse projects mentioned in the original 2021 Kerilands presentation to the Town of Neversink are simply his existing and planned residences in Switzerland, New York and Tel Aviv. The Sky Box project may never be built; it is mired in litigation.
https://tinyurl.com/5dkrtse5
The youth-supported local newspaper Manor Ink, published in Livingston Manor, thus far has done a much better job of covering the Kerilands project than the Sullivan County Democrat. Your readers should reasonably be able to expect more professional, insightful and probing journalistic work than was apparent in your July 8 Kerilands article.