Editor,

This is in response to Mr. Hassapelis’ letter to the editor which appeared in last week’s paper. I want you to know that I am a Standish town councilor and that the following represents my own personal knowledge and is in no way intended to represent the views of any other councilor or the council as a whole.

I appreciate Mr. Hassapelis’ interest in and frustration with the issues of the community center. For in the spring of 2006 just prior to the vote on the referendum to purchase the Moody Road property I sent a letter to the editor of this paper and he published it. In it I urged the voters not to vote for the purchase of the Moody Road property for the very reasons noted in Mr. Hassapelis’ letter, the lack of an appraisal of the property by the town and the lack of any soils testing. However, I believe he and his readers should know the following.

I was at the last Community Center Building Committee meeting and there was no mention of a new offer by the Standish Kiwanis Club. The committee meets again on Dec. 18 and I’m sure the members would like to hear what Mr. Hassapelis knows of this offer by the Kiwanis Club.

Further, the negotiations with the Kiwanis Club for some of its land were held during 2005 and conducted between the Community Center Building Committee (an ad hoc committee of the council) and the Kiwanis Club. The acceptance of the Kiwanis land never came before the full council that was seated at that time.

In the fall of 2005, after the negotiations for the Kiwanis land failed and after the negotiations for the Boulter property next to the Town Hall failed, the council that was seated at that time, by a split vote, voted to buy the Moody Road property subject to the voters approving a referendum to do so. In June of 2006 the people of Standish voted on that referendum and despite my letter, passed it. The property was subsequently purchased for $325,000, not $375,000.

I’m confused as to which councilors Mr. Hassapelis wants to resign because five of the seven councilors who voted in the fall of 2005 on the council order to purchase the Moody Road property are no longer on the council. Three new councilors were voted in during June 2006 and two more new councilors were voted in during June 2007. And of the two remaining councilors, one voted in the negative to purchase the land.

So I may be wrong, but it appears that the voters have fulfilled, over the past two years and more especially during June of this year, exactly what Mr. Hassapelis has advocated.

Lou Stack

Standish Town Councilor