EAST GREENBUSH — Sitting before a standing-room-only crowd on Wednesday, town Supervisor Jack Conway delivered a defensive apology over a controversy that has absorbed East Greenbush politics.
Conway had threatened the East Greenbush Public Library board last month with eminent domain, a process that allows government entities to take land in exchange for fair market value compensation, if officials failed to negotiate selling a piece of grassy property for a new police station.
Despite stoking tensions among neighbors and library supporters, no formal proposal for eminent domain was ever put forward, however. Conway’s Wednesday apology was delivered at a lengthy public hearing, designed to gather feedback over the concept of putting a police station on library grounds, which the town supervisor still hopes to accomplish in the event that the institution will come around…