Guest Column By Liz Mansfield I used to be a community meeting non-attendee. Now I am going to just about every meeting offered in this town. I must say, though, I am not happy with any of the meetings I have currently attended. My disappointment comes from not knowing how or who is running this place. I hope I have your attention. I went to the last Rocky Point Board of Education meeting and at that meeting I listened to community members like you and me speak about what they thought would be great ideas for the Fairfield Properties Public Benefit Package. At this meeting there was an agreement to have on the Rocky Point School website, rockypointschools.org, a place the public could visit and express suggestions about what they would like to see obtained from Fairfield. This meeting presented an opportunity for the community to appear in front of the board and voice what they would want for their families. The suggestions were far and wide and included, but were not limited to, a community center, a pool, a cultural arts center, a library annex, turf fields for the schools, and many other ideas that all seemed valid to me. As soon as I heard that the portion of the RP School website was up and running, I set off to do what I considered my civic duty. I pulled every e-mail address of every person I knew in the Rocky Point School District and I took a very big step and e-mailed them that they had the opportunity to go to this website and express their views. Maybe what I thought to be a heroic gesture on my part was not as well received by the community, but I will tell you this: I went out to that website immediately and put in what I would like to see in my community. I took the opportunity to express my views and understood what it must have felt like when the first woman cast her vote in 1920. I felt empowered if only for that five minutes. Wednesday night rolls around and I know it is time to run off to the civic association meeting. I go to the meeting and some of the school board members are present. I listened to the school budget presentation and enjoyed what I assume is the regular bantering that goes on at this money-crunching time. Being the people watcher I am, I enjoyed watching faces scrunch and arms fold, and I think at one point I even saw a little smoke come out of a few people's ears. I waited anxiously for what I knew was going to be the explosive part of the meeting. The Fairfield conversation. Diane Burke, president of the civic association, probably didn't even get the words out of her mouth and I was ready. She said something that almost knocked me off of my chair. She said, "The school board will not entertain the idea of the pool." Keep in mind, I don't want the pool. I have a built-in swimming pool. But, I just left the school board meeting early in the month and thought that seemed like an idea that the school board was going to entertain. I was in awe of the work done by Diane Burke and Carolyn Reynen. They had put together a presentation for the board indicating that the cost formulas that were initially given out to the public were far overstated ($800,000) and that the situation would require someone giving it another once-over. This was done on their time and obviously they felt a need for investigation of the numbers presented to their community. I thought the board was going to get more feedback and have someone else look at the numbers. But apparently that door was slammed before the task was completed. Personally I feel that six to 10 individuals should not be deciding what benefit our community will derive from Fairfield. It needs to be a panel or a management company, and it needs to be something that will maintain itself along with not costing us any more tax dollars. We need to make sure that everyone is considered and that it is for the vast majority use. What is wrong with putting a referendum out there for the community? When the residents of the RP School District come out to vote for the budget, how about having computers set up to use as a voting vehicle? Maybe go the old-fashioned way and have the residents fill out a paper ballot? Old school, I know, but it gets the job done. Boy am I stumped. Does anyone know what is going on in Rocky Point? After attending two each of the school board meetings and the civic association meetings, I feel like I am still in the dark. I feel like there has been no resolution to the benefit package. The decision was with the civic association, who fought for this give-back from Fairfield, and then they gave it to the school district. Take the package decision back and form a panel of community members, not just the civic association and find some direction. - Liz Mansfield is a community correspondent for The North Shore Sun.
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