The Beacon invites readers to present their views, ideas and issues. Please submit letters to the editor to us at PO Box 670, Babylon, NY 11702. Letters should be signed and include a daytime telephone number for verification purposes only. We do not accept personal thank you notes, political endorsements or anonymous letters, but will, under some circumstances withhold the name of a writer upon request. Dear editor:

Your lead article last week regarding the Turf Committee continued efforts to raise funds for their project (Babylon Turf Feld fundraising begins, Jan. 12, 2006), is interesting. To the casual reader it would seem that the project (once again), is a done deal and the only remaining issue is to privately raise funds for it. Your article quoted, Mr. Melito as saying, “Right now we are bowing to whatever the committee wants to do and it’s quite obvious we need this synthetic field and we are fully behind the Turf Committee to have it put in. Whether that takes two, three, four years, we’ll get it done.

This is quite a change from the promise Mr. Melito made to the community who showed up at the school board meeting last fall. At that time he stated that a public sub-committee would be formed to study the merits of the project, and regardless of the funding source, the project would not proceed without community consensus. I understand the public sub-committee was abandoned along with the county funding. It sounds as if the need for community consensus was also abandoned at some point. I look forward to an explanation on this change in attitude.

To minimize this controversy to a single issue of whether county funding was or wasn’t appropriate, is to ignore the vast and varied questions posed by the community regarding the proposal. The fact that a private committee is raising funds for the project only lays the groundwork for bypassing appropriate public oversight. If the school board itself had to appropriate funds for the project, it would either need to float a bond or include capital funds in its annual budget. In either case, the public would have an opportunity to cast their vote, by way of approval or denial.

The right thing for the school board to do is to proceed with a sub-committee that can validate or deny the vast unsubstantiated claims that have been made in reference to the project. Then when the public is provided with factual information, community consensus should be determined by referendum, not by some ad hoc process. These steps would allow the community to make an informed decision that will impact their kids and their pocketbook now and in the future.

Bill Costanzo, Babylon