To the Editor:Bee entitled "Community Center Plans Encounter Hurdle" and the only thing that surprised me was that anyone was actually surprised that the proposed plans for a pool were not financially viable. Plenty of people came to the community center planning meetings with facts and figures that quite evidently showed that in our area, given the nature of what's available in surrounding communities, that the plans would not only not be profitable but would actually lose money. For those who think that we should relook at the "ice option," the data available is even less supportive and quite clearly shows that an ice rink would be even more of a loss leader than a pool. If you disagree with this, all we have to do is wait for a professional study which will, no doubt in my mind, show what all the rest of the data shows - that here in Newtown, all factors considered, an ice rink will cost us more and regularly lose more money than even a pool.

I read the article in last week's

Some of you might now be thinking "So what should we do with the money we were given for a community center?" Allow me to propose a radical idea: how about we build an actual Community Center? From the dictionary: "com·mu·ni·ty center (noun): a place where people from a particular community can meet for social, educational, or recreational activities." All those things in the definition are easily doable without a pool or an ice rink and at a fraction of the cost. How about we focus on the concepts of "Nicer in Newtown" and "Be Kind" and built a facility that brings all the community together in a multitude of activities that are social, educational, and recreational? We don't need some grandiose vision and/or high cost centerpiece to accomplish doing the right thing for the most people in Newtown.

We build a place where there are multiuse rooms inside and plenty of outside areas the can be used by all the various groups, clubs, and organizations in town. We can build such a place for considerably less than the "$10 million to build, $5 million to maintain" that keeps getting tossed around. How about $8 million to build and $7 million to maintain? And when you don't have to maintain a pool or an ice rink I think we will find that $7 million can last for many years, most especially if we prove the "Nicer in Newtown" and "Be Kind" mottos by trading use for service.

How about the Garden Club and the Forest Association use the outdoor space and maintain it for all of Newtown? How about all the organizations that want to use indoor space for meetings and activities get use of that space by having their members donate time to whatever the Community Center needs … maintenance, information booth, etc? How about we let restaurants in town sell food at events in exchange for them cleaning up after those events? How about we have performance areas both indoors and outside and in exchange for being able to use those performance areas those who do have to maintain them and clean up after events?

Service for access, what a nice idea!

Robert Rabinowitz

30 Alpine Drive, Sandy Hook         August 29, 2016