LETTER: Councilman Nathan Has “Personal Interest” in Nursery Field Outcome
In a letter, Martin Butler Court resident and CEO of boutique manufacturer of exotic high-performance racing and road cars Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus (SCG) Jim Glickenhaus says he was dismayed by the actions of Councilman Josh Nathan during Wednesday’s public hearing on the proposed artificial turf field development at Rye Recreation’s Nursery Field on Milton Road.
Glickenhaus is the husband of the former head of the Rye City Democratic Committee Meg Cameron (and former State Assembly and City Council candidate), who sent a letter earlier this week to MyRye.com.
Glickenhaus:
December 1, 2023
To our City Council and City staff,
First of all, I would like to thank each and every one of you for your service and for trying to make Rye a great place to live. I realize and appreciate that all of you are working as hard as you can, in good faith to move Rye forward in a positive way.
I was, however, dismayed by events at the public hearing on Nursery Field during the November 29 City Council meeting. In my opinion, Councilman Josh Nathan acted, perhaps inadvertently, in his own interest rather than the public’s. He appeared to violate at least two sections of the City Code.
[Amended 9-11-2013 by L.L. No. 2-2013]
A member of the Council or any officer, employee, department head, or board or commission member who has a direct or indirect financial interest in any matter before the Council who participates in the discussion before or makes a recommendation to or gives an opinion to the Council on that matter shall publicly disclose on the official record of the Council the nature and extent of such interest and recuse himself/herself from the discussion and from taking any action on the matter.
Councilman Nathan lives at 4 Hillside Place, near the field. Again and again, he has made it clear that he believes turfing the field would adversely affect the character of the neighborhood in which he owns a home.
Interests in conflict with official duties.
An officer or employee of the City shall abstain from making personal investments in enterprises which he/she has reason to believe may be directly involved in decisions to be made by him/her or which will otherwise create conflict between his/her public duty and his/her private interest, and shall refrain from passing upon any questions in which he/she or any member of his/her immediate family has an interest which might reasonably be deemed to create such a conflict.
During the hearing, Councilman Nathan talked about his enjoyment of Nursery Field as a park and “for bird-watching,” making it clear that he has a personal interest in keeping the site in its current state.
Many of Councilman Nathan’s questions and statements during the hearing served to discredit the project and the process.
One example is he claimed he had not even seen a memo outlining the basic details of the proposal, not even in “cocktail napkin” form. After he stated this, a visibly upset resident stood up and showed on his phone that Nathan had been sent all that information in detailed form back in June. Greg Usry confirmed that the City had received this information.
As we all know, Mayor Josh Cohn was skewered for violating a weak and virtually meaningless section of the City Code, the one about appearance of conflict. If anyone says they see a conflict, by definition there’s an appearance of conflict. Therefore, any elected official could be accused of violating this section at any time. Unlike Councilman Nathan, Mayor Cohn recused himself, yet he was still censured and attacked for his actions.
In contrast, Councilman Nathan is working to sway the City Council’s decision on a matter in which he has a personal interest, and he’s doing it in his role as an elected official.
If our local government is to continue representing the public effectively, Councilman Nathan must recuse himself from all further involvement with the Nursery Field proposal.
Sincerely,
Jim Glickenhaus
