A third committee of the Board of Supervisors has now signed onto the decision earlier this week to move ahead with the “Porreca Plan” for the airport.
Finance Committee member Mike Benson of New Lebanon launched yet another last-minute campaign to derail the Plan’s momentum. (The Airport and Economic Development committees voted to advance it to the full Board earlier this week.)
Less than 24 hours before the meeting, Benson attempted to argue that the Porreca Plan, which would, slightly shorten the Ghent runway at the north end while lengthening it at the south end, was “go[ing] backward”—and somehow would “devalue a County asset.”
Benson, who missed some 75% of the meetings of the Airport Committee two which he was appointed, fired his salvo as usual via email. But Benson then skipped the actual meeting. Had he attended, he would have heard County comptroller Ron Caponera back up Airport chair Art Bassin in stating that the Porreca Plan would increase the airport’s value, not lessen it, as reported by Patti Matheney of GhentCANN who was present.
With all three key committees now in agreement, the resolution now proceeds to a vote in the next few weeks by the full Board of Supervisors. Will Benson try again to argue against it, and will he again use arguments he would have learned to be erroneous had he attended his meetings?
