Working Together As A Community

To the Editor:

First of all I would like to thank all of you who volunteered to come out on Saturday to help us kick off our campaign by doing a community service project, cleaning up some Newtown streets. It was a lot of fun and we actually filled a six-yard dumpster in just a few hours. The dumpster was donated by Pat Caruso the owner of Associated Refuse, Thank you Pat! We really appreciate that. This project was just a sample of what can be accomplished with a little teamwork and positive energy; it was our way to communicate to the public that if we work together as a community we can accomplish many things.

We were happy to read in John Voket’s article in last week’s Bee that a number of town employees thought our ideas regarding volunteerism were noble and progressive, although they had some concerns. One of the concerns was that full-time employees have preference for all overtime work, I assume that refers to all necessary and available overtime work, because we may have to look at reducing the amount of overtime in the budget if we can, these are tough times and we have to work together to get through them.

Mr Samuelson from Parks and Recreation had a similar concern and also raised concern about maybe needing some paid staff to oversee volunteer projects, the key word there being some, I think that could be worked out rather easily. He also raised concern about if a volunteer gets hurt, what happens? What happens now if a volunteer football coach gets taken out on the sidelines and breaks a leg? I’m sure a simple waiver could be employed to overcome this potential issue. There are already many volunteers doing a lot of work for Parks and Recreation.

Mr Hurley from the department of public works noted that similar initiatives were successful until the initial enthusiasm waned; the problem there seems to be with the enthusiasm more than with the feasibility, perhaps a small token incentive would help. People want to get involved, let’s think outside the box and let them.

The most surprising comment came from Joan Libby the school district human resources director, who said “volunteer work that might infringe on contract or union employee work would generally be prohibited” and “to do it in such a way that made any financial difference….I’m not sure.” I believe Ms Libby is semi-new to the district, but she should look into how many playgrounds we would have at our schools without volunteers or how many hours hundreds of volunteers put into building the concession stand at the high school or installing lights for the field. Parents and teachers (PTAs) spend countless hours volunteering their time already, we are not trying to reinvent the wheel, just organizing them and getting them all pointing in the same direction. I’m happy these people are talking about our ideas, and I hope in November they can help us fine tune them.

Joe Hemingway

10 Overlook Knoll, Sandy Hook                           September 16, 2009