Town Board: Peconic School Needs to Be Open to Whole Community

Southold Town now owns and operates the as a community center in addition to the existing next door on Peconic Lane — and Supervisor Scott Russell wants to see the recently renovated building booked as much as possible.

Town recreation supervisor Ken Reeves told Town Board members during Wednesday’s work session that he’s running into possible conflicts in scheduling out events, programs and meetings, with interest from groups like the who are interested in scheduling a series of meetings throughout 2012 at the school.

“As of now we are getting a lot of new requests for the new building,” Reeves said. “Personally, I’d like to prioritize use of the school for recreation department activities and then accommodate other groups when we can.”

But Russell and members of the board were in agreement that the more people who use the building the better.

“We have it and we want to fill it up,” said Councilman Chris Talbot. “It’s a place for people to use.”

Reeves said that he’s been scheduling programs and classes like guitar and belly dancing lessons largely on the availability of the instructor. Russell said he thought priority of scheduling should be based around public need instead.

“I think the biggest issue now is this: rather than going on creating a program on what someone has to offer, ,” he said.

Council member Louisa Evans said she was concerned that the increased availability of the school would cause meetings to be taken out of libraries, but Russell, who is the former president of the , said not to worry about that.

“We weren’t looking for people  — people who use libraries use libraries,” he said. “We had to say no to groups because we didn’t have the space. This is a community center and it should be for the community.”