At last week's Board of Trustee meeting Mayor Peter Bee commented that the current atmosphere of antagonism regarding the St. Paul's property is having a damaging effect on the spirit of volunteerism in Garden City.

"I am disappointed by the process and by what we as a Village are doing to volunteers," he said. "I must tell you, my term will be up at the end of March and there are parts of this I will miss. There are parts I will not. As a volunteer, I consider myself to be a person of integrity; I would guess that each of us probably does about him or herself. It is disheartening to get up here and have allegations and innuendo made against you. That's a hard thing for my wife and my children to read about in the newspaper, as well as it is a hard thing to hear myself. I am doing the best I can. If you disagree with me, you are free to do so. But I'm doing the best I can."

We want to apologize to the mayor as well for any pain that he has been caused by the letters on these pages. We have always believed that the letters pages should be a place where the public can comment with only minimal editing on our part, but perhaps we have not enforced a code of civility that should have been enforced. On one hand, we don't want to censor the public's views, but on the other hand it seems that certain letter writers demonize those with whom they disagree.

What do you, our readers, think? Please send comments (either for publication or personal) to editor@gcnews.com and let us know whether we should enforce a higher standard of decorum on our letters page.

Meg Morgan Norris

Publisher