Adler: I would like to see a new study done. We don’t know what environmental impact Sandy has had on the fields over there. As for the bond, I know it’s been asked numerous times at the board meetings, how much it would cost to break the bond. Is it cost effective? What will it cost the district? And those questions have not been answered, so we don’t know. Again, that speaks to the disconnect between the board and the community. So we don’t know if it’s cost-effective, if it is legal, what the penalty is if we do, or if it’s worth it.
Lester: A new environmental impact study would be quite costly. I think it is absolutely essential that after the water that came up, we do new soil drillings and new soil testing. There’s no question about that. But, I really am not into spending the couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars it might cost for a complete environmental study for the fields, since most of it has not changed. There is a concern about what had happened with the water coming in because a lot of that water had sewage from Bay Park, but that’s something that can be done with soil testing.
As far as Mr. Adler’s claim that we have not told the public what it would cost to break the bond, we do discuss this and have discussed this at meetings. We would save an additional $2 million, and it will cost us $2 million. It is a $4 million cost for the fields at the high school. We’ve already put in enough that we would be liable for the cost of the contractors’ profits and a few other things, but we would save probably $2 million. But then we would not have fields, and most high schools do have fields. As a matter of fact, I think we’re the only high school on Long Island that does not have its own field. So we have been aware of what the cost is to break that bond.