Mother Nature blows away Eric May’s concert

NewsApril 19, 2011Examiner

Because of poor planning, the Goo Goo Dolls concert scheduled for Sunday at SUNY Brockport was cancelled Scheduling an outdoor concert in Brockport in mid-April was not a very smart idea.

What goes around comes around. Brockport Student Government President Eric May messed with Mother Nature, and Mother Nature won.

The concert had to be was cancelled because of high winds and snow.

Maybe that’s his karma for misleading the Brockport Village Board about the concert. He set himself up for a fall, and Mother Nature tripped him up.

May was rude and disrespectful to the members of the Board at the March 23rd Village Board Meeting. First of all he was late, despite the fact that he was listed as a guest speaker on the agenda.

When he finally arrived, Mayor Castaneda was polite enough to interrupt the flow of the meeting and invite him to speak to the Board. She didn’t have to do that. She could have recognized that he was present and notified him that he would have to wait until the end of the meeting to speak because he was late.

Mayor Castaneda went out of her way to be polite to Eric May, but May did not return the favor.

When May stepped up to the podium to speak, people in the audience looked at each other in disbelief. He was wearing a pair of worn jeans and a pullover long sleeve shirt with no collar. He hadn’t even bothered to wear a pair of Dockers and a button down shirt.

You have to wonder if he dresses that way when he has to meet with the college president.
When he spoke, it was obvious that it was all about him, and that he didn’t have much respect for the Village Board.

Instead of requesting an exemption from the Village Noise Ordinance for the outdoor concert by the Goo Goo Dolls scheduled for April 17th, he told the Board that he really didn’t need their approval because the college was exempt from the ordinance.

May tricked the Village Board into granting the exemption from the Village Noise Ordinance by claiming that Brockport Police Chief Daniel Varrenti, who was on vacation the night of the meeting, supported the event.

That was not true.

So add Eric May’s name to the long list of people who have made false statements during Village Board meetings alongside Connie Castaneda, Norm Giancursio, Rich Miller, and Gino Romano, etc.

According to an article in the April 12th edition of The Stylus, Village trustee ‘angry’ over BSG president’s statements, May also tried to mislead the staff of SUNY Brockport newspaper, The Stylus, but caught with his pants down there too.

“May also said in a later interview that he informed the board that Varrenti was "unhappy" with the concert's venue and time.

“Varrenti refuted these claims, stating that in two separate meetings with BSG — one that included University Police — he expressed his disapproval of an outside concert.  Varrenti said he stated both times that a concert with 4,000 people on Palm Sunday, April 17, "should not go on."  Palm Sunday is a Christian holiday and many people in the village are likely to be outdoors at the time of the concert.”

When he spoke before the Village Board, and when he was interviewed by the Stylus, May claimed that “the concert is exempt from the noise ordinance, as it's part of a state-chartered school.”

But Chief Varrenti told the Stylus that this in inaccurate.

The Village Noise Ordinance, Section 55-3 A of the village code, contains an exception for a “school licensed or chartered by the State of New York."

But Varrenti said the exception applies only to the college itself and does not apply the concert because the concert was being put on by the Brockport Student Government (BSG) not by the college itself.

Thanks to Mother Nature, the people of Brockport didn’t have to put up with a loud violation of the noise ordinance on Sunday.

It must be April in Western New York.

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