Suffern Special Board Meeting / Photo courtesy of Suffern Videos
Michael Curley’s next act in Suffern got interrupted by an unexpected intermission at Wednesday’s special Village Board meeting.
Mike Curley, who recently shuttered the popular Shamrock Hotel bar and restaurant, presented to the board his latest venture, Club Soda, set for Lafayette Avenue and which would need a special live music permit to succeed. / Photo courtesy of Suffern Videos
Curley, who recently shuttered his popular Shamrock Hotel bar and restaurant, appeared before the Suffern board to request a special use permit for his next venture — Club Soda, a teen music and eats hang out being readied at the site of the failed New Rock Bar & Grill at 26 Lafayette Avenue. Only problem for Curley was that after his energetic presentation, newly appointed Trustee and Deputy Mayor Jo Meegan Corrigan received no second on her motion to grant the special live music permit.
“You got to be kidding,” Curley could be heard exclaiming just out of camera range in the small packed Village Hall room were the meeting was being held due to the Clifford Theater’s use of the village auditorium for its upcoming production of Rent.
Trustee Ed Markunas appeared to suggest the applicant come back to the board after he received his certificate of occupancy from the Suffern Building Department.
Club Soda and the teen scene
Curley said he envisioned the teen club as a clean, safe place for Suffern teens to gather, hang out, listen to their own bands and DJ, eat food and, well, hang out and star in their own club scene. The idea is to create an environment that caters to the Suffern High School and beyond crowd.
Club Soda is slated for 26 Lafayette Avenue, home of the former place of New Rock Bar & Grill. But Club Soda needs a special use live music permit from
Suffern to have any chance of success with the teen crowd, who will then have a band land of their very own. / Photo courtesy Google Earth
The club would charge a cover and if teens left the premises, they’d have to pay to re-enter — a move that would keep kids from loitering around Club Soda and clogging up the street and alleyway. The club would be tentatively open Friday and Saturday from noon to 1 p.m., with Sunday’s hours projected at noon to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday would be noon to 12 p.m.
The Suffern Village Board has the authority to pull or rescind a special use permit if the end-user doesn’t meet all terms and conditions — a fact that didn’t budge the board’s troika of Ed Markunas, Bob Morris and Frank Hagen.
Trustee Markunas apparently wanted Curley’s planned Club Soda to provide all pertinent village building inspections, such as fire inspection and possibly even up to his Certificate of Occupancy, before the board would decide on his special use live music permit. Curley wanted the special permit before he went through an expensive build-out. Without live music, Club Soda would fail faster than a Split Rock Station.
“I don’t think the expensive restaurants are going to appreciate a bunch of kids hanging around,” said Trustee Morris in apparent opposition to the presence of youth culture in downtown Suffern’s high-end restaurant row.
After no other trustee seconded Meegan Corrigan’s motion, the room fell silent for a moment until Mayor Abato said, okay, well, let’s move along then.
Jo Meegan Corrigan gets sworn in front of a packed special village meeting. For a moment it appeared Trustee Bob Morris (at the table in dark shirt to Meegan’s side) greeted Meegan’s oath of office with the old Bronx Cheer. / Photo courtesy Suffern Videos
The return of Jo Meegan and the Bronx Cheer
Back in November 2014, Trustee Jo Meegan Corrigan had just been pitched from office by a mere 18 votes in a squeaker of an election. Corrigan had been a dynamo of activity on behalf of Suffern residents, working on flooding and FEMA issues in Suffern’s Squires Gates community and on local water and sewer fiscal matters. She was perhaps one of the most consistently engaged Suffern trustee over the course of her time on the board, responding to residents and fellow board members in detail on any number of issues.
Suffern Mayor Trish Abato appointed Meegan to the recently vacated board seat of Matt Byrne. A photo of Wednesday’s swearing in ceremony appeared to show Trustee Bob Morris clearly giving the moment a good old Bronx Cheer, just as Meegan swore to “faithfully discharge the duties of Trustee.”
A careful review of the board meeting video at the 1:28 mark is inconclusive but does show Morris setting his pencil down and maneuvering his index finger in a position to flip a bird — which is sustained just long enough to leave a wisp of doubt either way.
Maybe call it a Morrisism — whereupon said Trustee consistently and possibly inadvertently does or says nearly the exact wrong thing at the right time in which the results of said action then resonate in odd, intended or unintended ways.
Color analyst — or let’s have fun with the Board and more
Members of the Suffern Board have been at particular odds every since Morris and Markunas were sworn into office in December 2014 — which gave the village a Republican majority. The Village faces fundamental financial issues that include a budget deficit, a shrinking tax base, the need for municipal infrastructure investment, as well as investment in community services– enough for one to question the core mission of the village. The very idea of a sustainable Suffern Village way of life appears to be at stake, with constant community conversation about the direction of the village played out at board meetings and via daily social media commentary.
Morris and Markunas appear to work in tandem in matters of the board, steering an agenda that includes efforts to streamline village services and reduce costs and downsize the overall budget. Often their first response to any initiative is NO, with Morris presenting vocal opposition to process, procedures, and actions on near anything presented by Mayor Trish Abato.
Sometimes Morris can appear argumentative and particular about minutia but, Morrisisms aside, there’s often a valid point buried somewhere in his persistent questioning.
Markunas looks to be running a stealth mayoral campaign. With silent assent from Trustee Frank Hagen, Markunas and Morris control the board’s actions — they can extend debate on issues and sometimes come off as uncooperative as they address messy procedures and policies — or they can just abruptly shut down board action on an issue by failing to give support on a board motion.
Frank Hagen is the third man in the Suffern Board’s troika of votes. But Suffern really deserves a more serious Trustee than Hagen. With the village in need of leadership, each board seat is valuable real estate. Hagen to date has failed to articulate any plan or action or strategy that might serve the village now and into the future. Suffern voters should look long and hard at his place on the dais.
While longtime Village Attorney Terry Rice understands the inner workings of municipal law and the how-to of Suffern in particular after serving so many administrations, he can appear unprepared or not quite engaged by the issues at hand.
Case in point — at Wednesday’s meeting Mayor Abato passed the discussion of a resolution to Rice, who apparently had been tasked with presenting this particular issue. But Rice failed to bring or distribute any hard copy of the resolution to members of the meeting. Trustee Markunas asked several times if the village attorney had a copy of the resolution.
Rice responded, I emailed it to you. How might The Donald with orange pompadour might respond to such an answer: fiirrrrrreed daa.
Upon Rice’s assertion that he’d emailed the resolution to somebody, the board meeting descended momentarily into a sort of Keystone Cop routine with papers shuffled, trustees looking around for someone to cough up the document, and a brief he said/she said regarding who actually received the resolution.
Village Clerk Virginia Menschner could be heard lamenting that she didn’t even know that the Village Attorney was preparing a resolution. Finally, Mayor Abato bridged the awkwardness and said, let’s move on to the next issue.
A Village Attorney is paid for various skills and assets — preparation is high on that list. It is remiss for a Village Attorney earning some six figures to not bring hard copies of any and all relevant documents to a board meeting where those docs are scheduled for agenda discussion.
No matter the politics, an I emailed you the documents is an entirely unacceptable response from a Village Attorney to a Village Trustee.
