Letter: Article on Grace Farms Misrepresents, Misleads

Dear Editor:

As the attorney for Grace Farms Foundation, Inc. in its “Renewed Application for Second Amended Special Permit” before the Planning and Zoning Commission, I write to correct serious inaccuracies in the above-referenced article you wrote yesterday [“Bested in Legal Arguments, Attorneys for Grace Farms ….” published April 23]. These inaccuracies misrepresent the procedural posture of the Foundation’s Renewed Application and misleadingly suggest that the Commission has already acted on a part of it. You mention late in the article the “prepared statement” of the Foundation on its decision, and focus instead on the speculation of persons who did not participate in the decision. However, the Foundation’s statement of its decision to withdraw and then refile its Renewed Application relates precisely what transpired between Commission Counsel Ira Bloom, Town Planner Steve Palmer, and the undersigned on Friday, April 21, 2017. Indeed, the reason the Foundation published its statement was to avoid the very uncorroborated speculation in which you have engaged.