" Pleasant Rowland is a greedy sow who is trying to gobble up everything in sight in Aurora. The village should hold on to that property. "

" While commending the Citizen for informing Aurora residents of upcoming public hearing with USPS, there are 2 small errors in your article I’d like to point out. 1) It is incorrect to say, as your article does, that Rowland is “seeking to have the post office move from its existing village-owned location to the historic post office building.” Rather, she is seeking to move our postal facility into our historic 100-year-old School Building, a structure that served as a post office for about 20 years. 2) Your secondary headline, not seen above, is also inaccurate. The current post office building is not historic. PLEASE NOTE: the Aurora Coalition, Inc. has never asserted that the current p.o. is historic, and the group has no preservationist objection to its demolition. We do maintain that demolition of historic property in this project has already occurred in Rowland’s partial gutting and significant alteration of Aurora’s historic old school in anticipation of the building becoming a postal facility. Such “anticipatory demolition” in a project requiring a federal permit (in this case, a lease from the USPS) may violate federal law, specifically the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. Please see comments from the Deputy General Counsel of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington DC regarding this ill-advised project in Aurora at: aurorany.org/NTHP-USPS.html "

" At your end of town, Lance, I daresay you are right. There are efforts afoot in the area to do something about the big garbage trucks in particular -- those hauling garbage from downstate right up through Aurora and also along the east side of Lake Owasco, driving too fast and too heavy for the little country roads. But downtown Aurora has had a whole other set of troubles brought on by the pretty-on-the-outside, controlling-on-the-inside take-over of the right of village residents to determine their own fate by the Pleasant/Wells/Aurora Foundation conglomeration. As for elections, I personally don't put much stock in them -- I recognize them as official, but my view has always been that the results have more to do with who has the most money and can buy the best handler than anything to do with how the "people" feel about the issues. Just for the record, I am not a member of the Aurora Coalition and doubt they would have me. We don't exactly get along well. But maybe that is even more disturbing -- spontaneous unrelated upsprings of opposition to the Pleasant steamroller. I'd never claim the current post office as historic. That part is no issue to me, though it is to the Aurora Coalition. If the roof is the problem -- fix it. I had an experienced contractor friend look at the job and come back with an estimate of $5,000 tops -- no where near the absurd $30,000 figure Mayor Tom Gunderson keeps pushing around in public. Bottom line is that the lack of a loading dock has never been a problem, and if the roof and heat are problems, fixing them will result in a cheaper and better solution than moving into a totally un-handicap-friendly space controlled by -- guess who? -- Pleasant/Wells/Aurora Foundation. They are not content to already control nearly every commercial business in Aurora -- now they want to control government space as well. The website to which George refers is a travesty. Terribly designed without proper planning (I am a professional who is indeed in a position to judge), built to serve only the wealthy who can afford $45 a month or more for a fast internet connection -- it can't even be accessed at all from the Village offices -- and the focus is near-criminal. Taxpayer funds should never be paying for the marketing of commercial businesses, whether people believe that it is "good for the village" or not. An official government website should focus on providing government information to the residents, including the many residents who can only afford dial-up access, or can't afford access at all and must use the slower, older machines at the public library. Save your glossy travel brochure info for a Chamber of Commerce or Tourist Bureau website -- paid for by the businesses and not the taxpayers of the Village of Aurora. Karin Wikoff, no relation to Karen Hindenlang or the Aurora Coalition "

" The only factor that truly affects the safety and quality of life for Aurora residents, is the incessant "Big Rig" truck traffic. I suggest a great deal more attention and effort be directed towards combating that menace. "

" Dear Editor and Publisher: Your Saturday subheadline was misleading at best, wrong in fact and biased at worst. Perhaps you think the losing candidates of the Aurora Coalition are 'reliable sources'. Hardly. The vote went 4-1 against both candidates. Is that enough to stop their campaign. No. On they go. Elections mean nothing to them they were clearly THE ISSUE! Let me set the record straight. The current Aurora Post Office is in a reconfigured flat roofed garage with a bad heating system, no loading dock and a leaky roof. So inaqequate in every way that the USPS has told us that will not renew the current lease when it expires in 2009. It was designed and build in the 1950's to be a two bay garage for the Aurora Volunteer Fire Dept. See for yourself. The roof leaks, it has no loading dock and contrary to the Auburn Citizen 'print' headline, It is certainly NOT 'Historic'. The Citizen is still the official paper of record for the Village of Aurora. Please be sure to check your facts and your sources before you use adjectives as nouns in your front page headlines. Thanks for correcting the record, George Farenthold Village Trustee (To read the actual record of Village of Aurora Board decisions go to the offical web site of the Village of Aurora.) www.auroranewyork.us Click on 'Government' then 'Minutes' "

" Why give up the last village-owned income-producing piece of property in the heart of town for the use of a nigh-unto undevelopable piece of floodplain at the far edge of town which villagers have used for generations for free anyway? Why move from a post office which has worked well for the villagers for years to a very handicap unfriendly space controlled not by the village but by Pleasant/Aurora Foundation/Wells College? From negotiations behind closed doors to contradicting responses from U.S. Postal officials, this has been a shady and inept deal from the get-go. For more details , see: http://www.geocities.com/auroracoalition/PO.html "