Will Jimmy McDonough Park upgrades erase Scout volunteer work?

Dear Editor,

I am a resident of Mahopac and am very disappointed with our representatives in town.

I have reached out to the Town Board and Supervisor and never heard one word back regarding the plans for Jimmy McDonough Park.

I used to be a fixture at Town Board meetings, school board meetings and finance meetings for the school board. I was on the Touchdown Club for over four years. I was an involved constituent and to see what has become of our Town Board saddens me. I have tried to check agendas on the website for the town to see when anything concerning this will be coming up, but the agendas are never updated promptly. Over the years I’ve had to pull back my involvement due to other priorities. I’ve been primary caregiver to two elderly family members.

It’s come to my attention that the town is trying to get a budget of $13.8 million for Jimmy McDonough Park to redo the fields. I have a huge problem with that. At the time, my son, Michael Olivier, had the biggest Eagle project for Putnam and Westchester, which was the two baseball dugouts there. The 90-foot dugouts was his original project and Jim Gilchrist had asked him to do the 60-foot one also, so my son also took that on. The 60-foot field had a flooding problem, which he had to get an environmental engineer in to help fix before even attempting to build those dugouts. All of this was done at no expense to the town.

I think you’d be surprised by how many Boy Scout Life and Eagle projects and Girl Scout Gold Award projects there are in the area. An Eagle Scout project is a non-paid service assignment that a Scout plans, organizes, and leads for school, a religious institution, or community group (excluding Scouting itself) to demonstrate leadership.

So, is all my son’s hard work going to be destroyed? And for what? Just to redo the fields and at a price tag of $13.8 million of taxpayer dollars?

-Anita Olivier, Mahopac