Nature Center called ‘political football’
Panel argues that town board’s reluctance to authorize certain work has shut them down
The Daily Mail
Sept. 8, 2009

CAIRO — The Cairo Nature Center Committee and the Cairo Town Board agreed to meet with each other to discuss future plans for the center after each aired groups expressed its unhappiness with the way communication has been handled.

Members of the committee told the Town Board that they thought the Town Board had effectively shut their committee down by its reluctance to authorize certain maintenance work at the Nature Center.

The Center on Route 23, which opened two years ago, features hiking and biking trails, picnic areas and fishing spots in a reservoir. Earlier this summer, a bridge railing in the Nature Center was broken. It has since been fixed.

Committee Chairman Neil Schoenfeld said that after the park was dedicated two years ago, it closed for a year pending permit process review, some volunteers left the committee and residents seemed to lose interest, calling the progression “disheartening.”

He also said he had never run into the negativity and trouble the park has caused.

“Since this place has been open it has been nothing but a political football,” he said.

Schoenfeld said he did not mind doing maintenance in the park so long as he had support from the Town. He said such support was missing, citing past instances when he asked the Town for assistance in removing metal from the park and laying gravel in the park.

“This is a town designated park,” he said, adding that municipalities have taken over every other similar park of nature center he had built.

Town Supervisor John Coyne said he and other Town Board members did not like the tone of a letter sent by a second committee with overlapping membership to the Town Board regarding possible work on St. Edmund’s Chapel. The Town Board responded to that letter saying they did not want that committee to commence with work without speaking to the board first.

The Town Board expressed concerns that any volunteer contractors brought to the Chapel or the Nature Center might not be covered by the Town’s insurance policies.

Schoenfeld said work at the Chapel and in the Nature Center had essentially been stopped by the Town’s reluctance to allow the volunteer contractors commence work.

Cairo Nature Center Committee member Michael Esslie said problems between the committee and the Town Board should not have come to head over repairs over the bridge railing, as he believed they had, if communication between the two entities had been better.

Esslie said the committee had assumed the Town would maintain the park. The board seemed to have taken the opposite view that the committee would not ask the Town to make or finance repairs.

“We have to define roles,” he said. “If the Town has expectations, I think the Town needs to set forth what those expectations and where those limits are.”

He said once expectations are described, the committee will discuss whether they can meet the Town’s requests.

Committee members said they had tried to create interest in the park from civic organizations to use the park but few have held events there.

Esslie dispelled Coyne’s notion that the board had dissolved in the wake of the response letter saying that the committee would continue to encourage usage of the Nature Center and try to keep it and its facilities usable.

“We have not abandoned our project, we are participating here,” he said.

The committee and the Town Board agreed that as the Nature Center was used more, vandalism there would cease to be a problem.

They agreed also to hold joint meetings to discuss future plans for and work needed at the Nature Center.

Neil Schonefeld said after the Thursday meeting that a discussion with members of the Town Board on future work at either site would be impossible until the Town resolved the insurance issues for volunteers.