To the Editor:Newtown Bee Editorial of February 4thTo cater to the needs of all our community and to help heal the entire community, we need large size community center, not more pools and ice rink. Let us build large community center without adding tax burden which is already higher than surrounding towns. Let us say No to a facility that will be used by a very small Newtown population and will not quite make it full time "community" center (see

This is regarding the upcoming April 5th referendum about the community center. I would certainly like to thank the commission members for their so much of time and efforts to develop this project. In view of 12/14 tragedy, GE was so kind to donate us a generous gift of ten million dollars to build a community center for Newtown community healing and another five million dollars towards its operation costs.

Ten million dollars can build a good size large community center of approx. 30,000 square feet and the five million dollars for operational expenses, with some volunteer help, will be sufficient to run the center for at least 20 years, if not more. All this, without any borrowing thru bond issue (CIP money).

However, referendum is for a proposal to make a fancy aquatic center with two pools (one being a 50-meter Olympic style competition pool) plus a small community center of approximately 13,000 square feet.  Since $10 million are not enough for this ambitious project, Newtown will need to borrow over $5 million in the form of bonds issues.  This has to be paid back, approximately $400,000 per year -- meaning cost to the town resulting in higher taxes eventually. To cover the much higher operating cost of aquatic center it would require renting out the facilities. Also, in commission meetings you could hear that soon it would be nice to add an ice rink which will require more borrowing resulting in more taxes.

So the choices are:

Either a large size community center of approximately 30,000 sq. ft. fully covered by GE gift without borrowing, or

a fancy aquatic center with a small community center of 13,000 sq. ft. with much higher cost resulting in higher taxes eventually. The aquatic center will be rented to outsiders meaning Newtown residents will end up paying higher taxes for a facility that would be used more by outsiders -changing character of town. We already have pools in town - why build more pools?

). Chris Carvalho puts it correctly in letter to Newtown Bee of February 12th - Does Newtown community want to heal through hockey? Or through swimming?

It appears some in community have an impression that if we say no, we will lose the GE donated money. This is not so. A no vote simply means no to fancy aquatic center, no to a small community center and no to borrowing.

Sincerely,

Sushil Gupta

7 Lincoln Road, Newtown