Halloran rants at civic leader on Facebook

From the Times Ledger:

As a Whitestone civic group fights to turn an overgrown, empty lot into a community sports complex, one resident’s innocuous post on Facebook has spawned a well-documented and surprisingly candid discussion into opinions on both sides of the fence.

The Malba Gardens Civic Association has been toying with the idea of building baseball, soccer and running facilities on the vacant, 6-acre lot along 150th Street for years, according to the civic’s president, Alfred Centola.

“My idea is to reacquire the land and give it back to the kids of the community,” he said of the lot, between 3rd and 6th avenues, which was previously owned by the Catholic Youth Organization.

The quest was laid out in an October Daily News opinion piece written by Centola, and it all seemed like a good idea to Steve Behar, who posted “Nice Op-Ed. My brother and I went to that CYO camp” at 5:56 p.m. Oct. 5 on Centola’s Facebook page.

Twelve minutes later, City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Whitestone) replied: “Steve — and who’s going to come up with the tens of millions to acquire, remediate, develop, build, and staff this facility?”

Halloran often tempered his responses with phrases like “guess you didn’t know that” or “you have no clue how discretionary spending works.”

Centola at one point referred to the councilman as “testy” and said “try and relax yourself, you might give yourself a heart attack.”

Well, at least he didn't drop the F-bomb repeatedly this time.