Letters

We will all go to the polls this week on Thursday, November 3, to vote on the Marsden Street lots.

There has been misinformation and much secrecy from the School Board in trying to disguise the truth about what it wants to build on Marsden Street.

1. The proposed athletic facility will cost $26 million, inclusive of the contract with Mashashimuet Park, which Sandi Kruel, the Sag Harbor School Board president, has acknowledged would need to be the ongoing plan, and has previously been budgeted at $13.5 million. Only the (partial) purchase price of $3.325 million has been included in the numbers from the school. But the actual purchase price is $9.325 million, all of it from taxpayers. This figure excludes the estimated Marsden build-out costs of an estimated $3.2 million, and even that figure includes no funding for maintenance. Superintendent Jeff Nichols also said at the meeting last week at Pierson that the school would be going to the village for a bond issue for more funds.

2. The village has said no, more than once, to artificial turf — six years ago, with a 10-to-1 vote turndown, and again more recently, when Mashashimuet Park declined to include it in the park infrastructure. So the School Board has worked around this by asking the Community Preservation Fund for much of the money. There is no precedent for CPF funds to be used to tear down trees and green space or to install synthetic turf, and no precedent for funds being used to fund a school facility in this way.

3. Artificial turf is unsafe and toxic for both kids and adults playing on it, and for the rest of us when PFA runoff gets into our water table. Marsden is prone to flooding and within 100 feet of wetlands. The report issued by H2M seeming to say otherwise was done by the very engineering firm that would get the job of installing synthetic turf!

4. The Marsden Street lots are enclosed by totally residential streets in the village historical district. The school’s own schematic drawing shows toilets built on Marsden Street, bleacher-style seating on Marsden Street, and also stadium-style lighting, in addition to synthetic turf. There also is likely to be loudspeaker noise, and bus and other traffic, and that belongs in Mashashimuet Park, not the small streets of the Marsden neighborhood. And how are those buses going to get to Marsden? Through all the streets in the village.

Please vote no on this on Thursday.

Janis Donnaud

Sag Harbor