Supervisor Assures Community That LeRoy is a Safe Place
The LeRoy town supervisor wants residents to know the community is still a safe place. Village and town officials met for a regularly scheduled meeting Wednesday night, but the topic surrounding the mystery illness that several high school students have came up. Some parents want town and village leaders to be more vocal with information and answers.
To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.
Then come back here and refresh the page.
It's a town still consumed by questions and concerns.
"I am here looking for answers. I have found the community is divided. There's a lot of speculation,” said Karen Callahan.
Callahan says she is a parent representative for LeRoy High School.
"I would love to have answers to go back and tell the people who are asking me questions,” Callahan said.
Questions she believes village and town officials should be answering. She says getting those answers is the reason why she came out to this village and town meeting.
"What we need is black and white answers to questions and put the speculation to the side."
According to LeRoy Town Supervisor Steve Barbeau, speculation is what LeRoy leaders are working to limit.
"Despite all the conjecture and speculation by folks that had to find us on the map, the town, village of LeRoy is a safe place. I've lived here my entire life. There's absolutely no reason for anybody to be unsafe,” said Barbeau.
Barbeau says the town and village board has been in constant communication with the district through its testing process. He says they agree with the district's move to hire the independent environmental and safety consulting firm, Leader, to perform additional air and soil testing on school grounds. He says they are also keeping tabs on the latest information regarding the 1970 train derailment site.
“The town is following up with our state and federal agencies with respect to our Superfund site of the train derailment of 1970. That is a federal site. The federal EPA controls what occurs on that site,” said Barbeau.
Barbeau encourages the community to listen to the facts as professional test results are made available by the DEC and EPA at the public library. He says that information should guide the community's concern.
"Folks gotta understand though, of the science and the data – that takes time."