Flip through the pages of any issue of the Record for the past five months, and you’re bound to see an article, a tidbit, or at least a reference to the so-called Nautical Park project at the corner of Ocean and Merrick. Even if I overlook the arrogant and condescending tone of these articles towards the families that lived there and the properties that once stood there, it still strikes me as completely unnecessary to barrage us with these annoying articles with such frequency. Of course the landlords did not keep up with maintenance of the houses, but they did not have to be torn down. The town could have bought them, fixed them up, and turned them into better housing for those families, instead of shuffling these people away like our whole society does with the underprivileged these days. These pieces that so explicitly support the destruction of people’s homes only serve to give the project a worse reputation than it already has among the many dissenting members of our community, and they are simply written in very bad taste. Those who support the project do not need to be swayed in its favor, and those who oppose it will not be swayed by such empty articles.

If you wish to continue to run these articles, I ask that you at least include more than a passing mention of the current status of the families that previously called those dilapidated eye-sores their homes. Please, show them some respect as the human beings they are; the only significant mention of them I found in the online archives of the Record was a quote by our beloved Mayor Imbert that referred to them as nothing more than a delay in the advancement of the project. Please either abate the flow of these repetitive and ineffectual editorials or be responsible journalists and include an opposing point of view, but don’t continue this disgraceful show of one-sided reporting.

Ian Lamb,

Amityville