Who’s Opportunistic?

To The Editor:

In his annual letter, “No Winners,” Mr. DiPippo claims that the people of Garden City High School are opportunistic, along with being overpaid and pampered, and that the school had no Intel Scholar winners. In my view, Mr. DiPippo took the opportunity of the Newsday article to simply bash teachers of Garden City. If Mr. DiPippo were really concerned about why Garden City’s efforts fell short to promote Intel Scholars, he should inquire as to how the school participates in the program. There could be any number of reasons why GC High didn’t have any winners this year and it might be appropriate to get the facts straight before writing a nasty letter. In my view, Mr. DiPippo was opportunistic.

In addition I am personally offended by his letter because my husband is a teacher in the GC schools, and he is certainly not opportunistic, pampered nor overpaid. He has spent countless volunteer hours, mainly working with the athletes of Garden City. When he decided in 9 th grade he wanted to become a teacher I’m sure it never entered his mind “hey, great pension,” and talk about those benefits! He always wanted to become a teacher and has spent many years and a great deal of time and money attending graduate school with the sole purpose of becoming a better teacher. Having five children in the GC schools, I have been exposed to many wonderful, hard working, and caring teachers who do the same thing as my husband. Mr. DiPippo should do his homework first and not take cheap shots at our teachers.

Jenny Defliese

Save St. Paul’s

To The Editor:

I am responding to Virginia Messina’s letter of February 26 th in the Garden City News, -- No Virginia, you are all wrong. People from other communities are not laughing at us. They are looking at us in wonderment that we would demolish a beautiful, historic building - a building that enhances our community and sets us apart from other communities. they laugh because we have shut down and sealed up a building that has survived all of these years without anyone dying from asbestos or lead poisoning. (Check the obituaries of hundreds of students who lived in or graduated from that school.) There are many of us seniors who attended schools filled with lead as were the schools in Garden City. The Village Board has closed this building and prohibited anyone to enter because they do not want anyone to see that it is in very good condition, capable of restoring it to a building that can be put to community use. Yes, it will require a bundle of money, but destroying it and ruining the environment and paying for hauling the potentially “Waste Products” will cost much, much more. Quoting from Laura Heim, AIA Queens Chapter, “demolition and construction waste are the single biggest components of our waste stream. What sense does it make to recycle another plastic bottle if we are tossing tons of plaster, brick, stone and terra cotta into a landfill?” Could that be the reason we have not been informed of the cost of demolition and removal of thousand of bricks and the environmental waste that is supposedly in the building?

I hope and pray that we will wake up to the fact that this is indeed a wonderful landmark of our beautiful village, built in memory of our founder, A.T Stewart, one of our country’s first visionaries and developer of the Hempstead Plains, well worth saving as historic structures in other cities and foreign countries (Have you ever been to see historic structures in other cities and foreign countries Have you ever been to see their heritage?. Please join me and hundreds of others who want to save St. Paul’s School and keep it there, decorating the center of Garden City for our children, grandchildren and more to enjoy.

Kristine Harder

Need Debt Reduction Attitude

To the Editor:

We read the Village Trustee and Auditor debt story in the Garden City News last week, in which they said that the Inc. Village of Garden City health care liabilities/commitments are not debt (our School Board believes they are debt), that the Village can borrow up to $400 million ($53,000 per household), and that Moody’s now rates our Village bonds AA1.

We suggest the Trustees Google and read the Moody’s 2004 report titled “Other Postretirement Benefits - Moody’s Analytical Approach.” This report says Moody’s may conclude all or a portion of our healthcare liabilities/commitments (aka OPEB) to be debt-like. On the website alluded to in the Trustee story, one can see a synopsis of the debt figures in the Garden City Facts, Data forum under Financial Data. Taking on debt at the rate we have puts us on a very slippery slope and there is a tipping point, especially if rates go up as our Federal Government borrows excessively.

Home buyers look at the property taxes and probably not the Village and School split, but the Garden City Village increases have of late been greater than our School. Our Village Administrator and CFO has done a nice job of maintaining Garden City over the years, but on his watch the Village of Garden City raised taxes 42% over the last 10 years compared with a 33% rise in the consumer price index (CPI). Tax and debt increases are now accelerating (2010-11 proposed Village taxes are +8.6%, School is +4.5%).

Raising taxes and debt to maintain the status quo is not thoughtful or responsible. Administrator Schoelle’s second retirement extension waiver will likely be voted on by our Trustees on April 1, 2010, and we implore the Trustees to consider a transition plan as we cannot tolerate this financial deterioration much longer.

Ron Tadross

Ray Rudolph

Opinions Should

Be Published

To the editor;

I find Ms. Virginia Messina’s response to my past letter very interesting. Her opinion on my hostile writing on our present National Governments condition & our president is my privilege under our present Constitution. That is unless this administration does not change that Constitution. She has her privilege to read it or not. AND can criticize my writing and opinion. But she does not have the privilege of telling the Editor of the Garden City News; “not to print what she does not agree with or like” That is the Editor’s decision.

Miss Messina also adds, Obama is our president like it or not. That piece was written the way I see it.

Just a short lesson on history, I was in Indonesia when he was an eight year old in school in Jakarta. I did not like J. Carter then and I still do not like him. But he was my president unfortunately. I was in Jakarta employed by an aircraft broker, on the mater of three leased Boeing 707’s. As is customary in the business world I was present at a meeting to meet all of the company managers.

One of those managers passed a derogatory remark against (our) in this case my president. Everyone had a good laugh. But I was closing my brief case preparing to leave. I would not accept that in a foreign country. The CEO intervened and told that manager to apologize and that he did.

Politically I see Ms. Messina and myself miles apart. I would have liked to have seen Mr. Powell nominated for that office. Instead we now have a “motivational speaker” who has surrounded himself with zeros. Add that to a Congress and Senate of the same and what do we have? I will add Ms. Messina should not read this, I am sure it will offend her.

Let us get to St. Paul, which is the problem. We now have a proposal for something constructive on the St. Paul’s matter. That is if no one starts another series of “law actions because they do not like it”. WE spent over fifteen years in those actions and spent a lot of tax payer money in the process. Let the home owners vote on that proposal or any other submitted proposal, is the only solution.

In closing I hope the Editor holds his/her ground and uses good judgment in printing our opinions.

I have been a Garden City homeowner for over forty years. In that period I spent some years advising the GC committee on our “aircraft noise problems”. The Western Property Owners were very much under the noise pattern approach to runway 22L at JFK. The southwestern corner of Garden City, in the area of the Fire House on Stewart and Edgemere was very heavily covered by low flying aircraft and noise. These aircraft were using 22L for landing. We put a good amount of work into that committee. I was not impressed with the support that committee received from the people controlling our village at that time.

In Newsday today it looks like we will be getting some much needed relief from low flying aircraft this spring and summer. That is if the traffic pattern identified on pages 2 & 3 is gospel. The “visual approach” should have minor impact on the eastern part of Garden City and the Roosevelt Field area. The Instrument approach is pretty much what it was many years ago. This approach to 22L is almost straight down the Cross Island Pky. And over the Belmont Race Track. JFK will be operating just three runways while the “bay” rwy 31L-13R (the longest of the four) is being repaired.

What the Newsday paper did not mention is that there will be a short period where JFK will be operating with possibly just the 22L-04R a north south runway for a short period of time. With runway 13L-31R the second runway. Runway 31L-13R crosses Runway 22R-04L. At one point they intersect. So any repair of the “bay” runway in that area will close that intersection. This is an assumption on my part, unless there is a plan to use part of 31L-13R. It is about 15,000 ft. long and could be used for takeoffs after the repairs are made on the western end.

Michael Falabella

Save St. Paul’s

To the Editor:

Once again, the wrecking ball casts a shadow over a treasured Garden City landmark. Poised to follow the the fate of Stanford White’s Garden City Hotel, St. Mary’s School and almost half of the town’s original “apostle” houses, St. Paul’s School, the magnificent high-Victorian monument to founding father Alexander Stuart, stands abandoned and alone, awaiting the results of an environmental impact study that may be the final hurtle to demolition. To an outside observer, it would appear that the residents of Garden City have declared war on their own architectural heritage.

I hail from a more from a more familiar style of suburban town in Nassau County, and as a frequent visitor to Garden City, I had often glimpsed St. Paul’s across the rustic expanse surrounding another Stewart-era landmark, Incarnation Cathedral; I sensed some sort of communality between these two gothic figures which stood apart like distant relatives at a family gathering but only recently became aware of their mutual beginnings as the gifts of Cornelia Stewart.

Attending a book fair at St. Paul’s years later, I had an opportunity to move in for a closer look. Never mind finding a buyer for my 1902 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, for I had I stumbled upon the threshold of a magnificently unspoiled treasure. For an admirer of vintage buildings, this was architectural Shangri-La. Soaring above its main entrance, the spires, turrets and gables of St. Paul’s animated the sky and sent the imagination into overdrive. Here, in a suburban landscape, ever hungry for color and dimension was a banquet in stone, fancifully served up, bejeweled in imagination- a delight to the senses from every vantage point. How many hollow modern imitations inspired by just this sort of grand interworking of stone and art had I seen masquerading as historical reference and served up to those who had never been fortunate enough to experience the real thing? Here, windows sang in stone, weathered arches and sentinel spires spoke of a timeless constancy - of a confident jurisdiction over a way of life long past. The very entrance to St. Paul’s freezes the visitor in a moment of pomp and heraldry; the observant guest may notice that he is being scrutinized by reclusive gargoyles veiled in foliage beyond the stone-embroidered sidelights as he passes beneath the arches of a portal woven together like crossed sabers.

In just a few steps, the outer world was replaced by paneled walls, path-worn floors, ennobling stories come to life in stained glass, a hundred secret corners, all infused with a sweet spicy smell of aged wood that set the imagination loose in a flurry of fantasy. Here, with time suspended and senses charged, one could experience a palpable communion with lives played out before, with grand halls inhabited by youth swept along by some inner light not unlike that which flooded the chapel’s stained glass windows each morning.

Perhaps it takes an outsider to put things into perspective: I find Garden City a unique and tangible statement that suburbia need not be bland, lusterless and historically disconnected. I don’t live here but I am grateful St. Paul’s stands.

Perhaps the bricks and mortar of this particular village did not take shape simply by trading imagination for profit. It was, after all, the vision of an idealist with the means to build his dream. It was sustained by the faith of his widow when she emblazoned his name in stone over the entrance to St. Paul’s. Reducing Cornelia Stewart’s great signature monument to landfill would be a tragic mis-step, a squandered opportunity to engage in bold, creative planning, an erosion of village identity and an irreversible loss of Garden City’s sense of place. Not unlike Penn Station, most here will surely come to mourn the destruction when it is too late.

Public ownership or private development? Open land or mothballing? Higher taxes or demolition? Squabbling aside, could anyone credibly deny that there are countless ways to recycle St, Paul’s, and possibly realize a profit by reinventing this extraordinary building? Lost somehow amid all the disagreement is the astonishing fact that a majority of Garden City residents did not vote to demolish St. Paul’s. Certainly the six million dollar demolition cost could be more creatively spent: yes, it’s all been discussed before: adaptive re-use as senior housing, a new home for municipal offices. Is any of this really so objectionable when you consider the greater rewards to the village? Can the plain-vanilla boxes that now house the town hall and the library even begin to compare to the soaring grandeur of St. Paul’s with its gracious spaces, fireplaces and storybook windows framing greenery in three directions? There is room here for cafes, a library, a bookshop, a museum, a screening room, art galleries, a community gymnasium or health club, continuing education classes; one can easily envision the rebirth of the chapel as a Community theatre (complete with vintage organ as a backdrop); not to be overlooked is that all of this would be packaged within a, green, pedestrian-friendly environment, a selling point that could, and should, capture community imagination and the spirit of the times.

Would not a reincarnation as senior housing or even as a college, allowing preservation of its landmark exterior, be preferable to seeing it disappear forever? With the desire for open land an issue, the town need not sell off all the property; certainly the adjacent athletic fields could be retained for public use with St. Paul’s as a key player offering ancillary services, town facilities, entertainment, and yes, a dramatic backdrop. Other communities have successfully found both profit and marketability in their recycled landmarks, many of them considerably less impressive than St. Paul’s. It is not hard to imagine St. Paul’s as the centerpiece of a unique tableau of attractions and services drawing people from the surrounding area and beyond. Here is an opportunity to boost community pride, achieve a sense of accomplishment, preserve history, and build on forward thinking that just might prove contagious to other communities seeking ways create new centers of public life.

The latest proposal for mixed use private housing and public space, in my opinion could not be a more ideal solution to all the wrangling; by turning over the future of this building to an investor with a forward, inclusive vision for its use, the town is released of its financial burden, preserves indefinitely, a key part of its history and taps into a viable, profitable market, sustainable for years to come. The property, restored to its glory, will serve as a unique beacon of community pride and identity, rather than a deteriorating eyesore.

An article published in June of 1897 in the New York Times spoke of St. Paul’s thus: “(the school)... has attained a position which makes it an object of pride to the New Yorker...the graduates...making themselves known at Yale, Harvard and Princeton... The boys at St. Paul’s are a fine healthy, wholesome set. They are healthy because they are in a healthful place...” The writer goes on to describe the spacious halls, the athletic traditions, and the spiritual quality found at St. Paul’s: “At the head of the grand staircase, on the second floor is the chapel, a wonderfully beautiful little worship room which has more of the truly religious atmosphere than most cathedrals...The cathedral at Garden City is not so important an institution as St. Paul’s School.”

It is sad to think how far from grace St. Paul’s has fallen since that article was written. If the stone entablature reigning over the entrance to St. Paul’s bearing the inscription, “In Memoriam Alex. Turney Stuart”, is allowed to be ripped from its walls and tossed to the ground in a heap of rubble, Garden City will have diminished itself both materially and spiritually. It would be tragic if Garden City does not step in, search its heart, and stay the wrecking ball before it is too late. Sometimes, making the right choice, in this instance, choosing glorious rebirth over advancing mediocrity, should not require so much debate.

William S. Simari

Great Service

To the Editor:

I would like to take a moment, on this very snowy Friday, to share a story about a local merchant. Unable to drive, due to some surgery, I called Key Food Marketplace, on Seventh St. Joe, the owner, assured me that my food delivery would come, and wished me a good recovery. Orders placed by noontime are delivered the same day. True to his word, the groceries were delivered and, to my great surprise, a get-well present was included... a rather costly fresh fruit salad - “on the house”... Joe is a great person, a good businessman, and a great neighbor to have.

Linda Crapotta

A Friend Forever

To The Editor:

Just wanted the world to know how fortunate I was to have Kay Thompson as my friend for 59 years.

As I got to know her better my friends and I were in awe of all her wonderful qualities - friend, wife, mother, volunteer, teacher etc! How did she do it all?

Simply put, she was happiest when she was helping others how fortunate her children were for having her as a mom! Talk about Good Example... I notice they all seem to be taking after her.

For all you people who knew her: The world would be a better with more Kay Thompson's in it - agree?

I miss her so!

Ann E. Corcoran